More than 18 years ago, self-described Mafia hit man Richard (Iceman) Kuklinski complained bitterly about the way he was being treated by a SWAT team of cops and federal agents who arrested him on murder charges that would put him behind bars for life.

“These guys watch too many movies,” the shackled Kuklinski bellowed to a TV news team, which videotaped his remarks after a joint task force of investigators pulled him from his car and collared him a block from his home at Dumont, N.J., on December 17, 1986.

Since then, Kuklinski is the one who has been watching too many gangster movies. That’s the only possible explanation for his actions during a secret jailhouse meeting he had the other day with two lawyers for Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, whom the Iceman has accused of murdering a corrupt cop.

Kuklinski, who estimates he has killed “more than 100 people,” was the focus of a 1992 book and is the subject of a work in progress by an author who has written about serial killers, Philip Carlo. Kuklinski has also starred in no fewer than three HBO docudramas about his life. But sources said he bombed last month when he tried to play the role of a savvy wise guy to the hilt at the Trenton State Prison, much as Jimmy Cagney might have 50 years ago.

At the March 22 session with Gravano’s lawyers, the Iceman coolly wrote on a piece of paper that he was willing to throw the case for $200,000, according to sources familiar with his performance.

As the lawyers looked on in disbelief, Kuklinski dramatically tore the sheet of paper into little pieces, stuffed them in his mouth, swallowed them with a flourish in the best tradition of a street-smart tough guy – and smiled like a Cheshire cat.

The only problem with the Iceman’s efforts to play human paper-shredder was that he left an impression of his offer on the pad that he left behind.

As even a casual viewer of TV’s “CSI” shows surely knows, modern crime-fighters would have little difficulty in recreating the words that Kuklinski used in his original note.

With current technology, a professor of forensic science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Lawrence Kobilinsky, said, it’s “quite simple” for authorities to determine the written message that Kuklinski displayed to Gravano’s lawyers.

“As long as you have the page beneath the one upon which the person wrote,” the forensics expert said, “there is standard equipment available that will enable investigators to enhance the indented writing.”

The day after the Iceman’s faux pas, sources told Gang Land, Gravano lawyer Anthony Ricco notified a judge of Hackensack Superior Court, William Meehan, of Kuklinski’s alleged extortion attempt. The lawyer asked that the murder charges against his client be dismissed.

During a session that apparently was not transcribed, Judge Meehan declined but ordered the assistant prosecutor on the case, Wayne Mello, to investigate Mr. Ricco’s charges and report back at a status conference scheduled for May 3, according to sources familiar with the recent developments in the two-year-old murder case. Mr. Ricco also contacted the FBI, which retrieved the telltale pad and has begun an investigation into the entire episode, sources said.

Gravano was arrested and subsequently indicted in February 2003, two years after Kuklinski first asserted in an HBO special that he had shot to death an NYPD detective, Peter Calabro, on March 14, 1980. Based on Kuklinski’s allegations that Sammy Bull hired him to whack Calabro, Gravano was charged by the Bergen County prosecutor, John Molinelli.

To kill Calabro, Kuklinski said during the HBO special, he waited for hours for the cop to drive from Queens to Saddle River, N.J., and then hid, poised behind a van that he double-parked on the road. As Calabro slowed to drive around the van, the Iceman stepped out and killed him with a shotgun blast, Kuklinski said.

“I never knew the man, what he looked like, or what his job was,” Kuklinski said with a smile. “I found out the next day he was a police officer.”

An FBI spokesman James Margolin, Judge Meehan, and Mr. Mello declined to comment. Mr. Ricco said he was “reluctant to go into detail” but confirmed that he and co-counsel Ed Wilford “did meet with Kuklinski.”

“The subject matter of that meeting,” Mr. Ricco said, “was reported to the appropriate authorities and is the subject of an investigation.”

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Too bad that the acting Genovese family boss, Dominick (Quiet Dom) Cirillo, didn’t pull his own paper-eating act Tuesday when FBI agents arrested him on racketeering charges that include extortion and loan sharking.

Instead, Cirillo left a list of six proposed family members and the dead wise guys they would replace on his kitchen table, adding fuel to allegations by the feds that Quiet Dom has a lot to say about the shape and face of the city’s most powerful crime family.

“Cirillo has substantial responsibility for determining who is inducted into the Genovese family,” Brooklyn federal prosecutors Katya Jestin and Taryn Merkl stated in court papers, arguing that he should be detained without bail as a danger to the community.

Cirillo, 75, has been a stand-in for the family’s imprisoned boss, Vincent (Chin) Gigante, since the mid-1990s. Five years ago, he convened a panel of top gangsters to determine whether an associate who had crossed the family should be killed, the prosecutors said. Two members of the panel, capos Lawrence (Little Larry) Dentico, 81, and John (Johnny Sausage) Barbato, 70, allegedly decided that the associate should be killed, and they were charged with murder conspiracy, as well as extortion and loansharking.

A fourth defendant, capo Anthony (Tico) Antico, 69, was charged with loansharking, extortion, and intimidating a witness who was called to testify before a grand jury that was looking into the murder plot.

Magistrate Judge Robert Levy ordered the four defendants held without bail pending a full-blown detention hearing today.

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today on www.ganglandnews.com.