The Art of Making Money (12 page)

Art had stashed the money in a large-sized manila envelope. When the dealer opened it and flipped through the bills, centuries passed between the beats of Art’s heart.

“Go ahead and count it,” Mikey said amicably, but after running his thumb through the two-inch-thick bricks, the dealer was satisfied. By the time they got back to their own car, Art was uncharac teristically nervous, insisting that they speed away immediately. He still thought the bills were too dark, and was certain the dealer would recognize this.

“Relax,” Mikey told him. “The money will pass.”

The dealer called Mikey two hours later.

“Your guy gave me counterfeit bills,” he said. Mikey played dumb and told the dealer he wanted to come over and inspect the bills himself. The dealer was hesitant, and gave Mikey vague warnings that there’d be “repercussions.” Unfortunately for the Kenosha Kid, it was just the kind of threat that Pepitone’s inner thug delighted in answering. Mikey had a cop friend run the Kid’s license plate for an address, then went to his house and popped him over the head with a tire iron. “It was too bad it ended that way,” says Mikey, “because I was looking forward to establishing a relationship with him so I could fuck him again.”

They never heard from the Kenosha Kid again. Art split the six pounds with Mikey, and within two weeks he had unloaded most of his half for a profit of twelve thousand dollars. He kept a few ounces for himself and stuffed it in the Dungeon’s freezer.

Although the pot deal had been lucrative, Art cringed at the fact that a bumpkin had identified his bills as fake after a mere two hours—a vulnerability that could have gotten him killed by a more streetwise dealer. It was also the kind of reckless, bottom-dwelling deal that his old mentor would have sneered at. “Da Vinci would have been appalled,” says Art. “Something like that was way beneath him. And I wanted to do the kind of deals he had done, big batches with deep-pocketed clients.”

The only way to do that was to improve his bills, so he went back to the print shop. And this time he threw out the rulebook.

Part of the reason his bills had been too dark had to do with his press. Thanks to its advanced age, it lacked agility when it came to registering fine lines off a plate. To compensate, Art had darkened his colors, sacrificing detail for the illusion of substance. He guessed that the dealer in Kenosha had been convinced enough in the dim light of a car ceiling bulb, but once he’d taken them home and counted them in good light, the faces caught his attention. His suspicions piqued, the dealer probably then compared serial numbers and noticed the same four again and again—the final tell.

The only way to eliminate the darkness and improve his lines was to buy a better press, but Art was curious about the computer equipment. He scanned some bill fronts and started experimenting with the Photoshop program, which at the time was only a few years old. It didn’t take him long to realize that by spending hours touching up a scan he could boost the output on the ink-jet printer to the point where it surpassed the level of detail he was getting from his old AB Dick. “Right away I saw that the computer could take care of my darkness problem and give me fine lines,” says Art. “Even back then you could get the ink-jets and computers to do amazing things. In fact, some of the older printers will do things new ones can’t.”

At the same time, Art saw the limitations. There were things the digital equipment just couldn’t do well: the faint, almost imperceptible green background of bills, the sharpness of the seals and the serial numbers, and the minuscule red and blue silk fibers all looked pixilated and artificial. Every advantage the computer technology gave him came with a weakness. The solution he came up with was almost unheard of at the time: a hybrid bill that utilized both offset
and
digital. He employed the offset for his background, seals, serial numbers, and fibers, then moved his sheets to the inkjet to print his faces. Overall, it was no more or less time-consuming than purely sticking to the offset, but it gave him more control, and the results were immediate and dramatic. “I don’t want to say that they were as good as da Vinci’s bills . . . ,” Art hems. “They were different. He probably wouldn’t like them because he was old school. But they were infinitely better than that first batch. I was pretty sure I could get thirty cents on the dollar, in daylight.”

 

 

 

ART KNEW that if he wanted to sell a hundred thousand dollars in counterfeit at thirty cents on the dollar, then he needed clients with both the cash to pay for his product and a network to distribute it. That meant he really had only one choice.

Organized crime loves counterfeit money. Since their own businesses are illegitimate, their patrons are usually in no position to complain. If you’re running gambling rackets, you can mix counterfeit into the payoffs and people are not only unlikely to protest, but they won’t be in a hurry to seek the police. If you’re smuggling, the fakes go abroad, where a third-worlder is as likely to stuff American dollars under his mattress as he is to deposit them in a bank. It’s even better if you’re running drugs, because then you’re dealing with so much cash that a hundred thousand dollars in counterfeit may well be a drop in the pond. And there are always the middlemen, the ones who buy counterfeit for thirty cents on the dollar and sell it downstream for fifty cents to guys without connections.

Fortunately for Art, Chicago was about as bountiful in Mafia as it was in printers. The most accessible group was the Outfit, which had dominated the city since the days of Al Capone. Having grown up in Bridgeport and made a second home of Taylor Street, Art personally knew Outfit associates from two of the six different “crews” that ran the city much in the same way that New York’s Five Families divided up their turf. The Twenty-sixth Street or “Chinatown” Crew was right there in Bridgeport and specialized in truck hijacking, gambling, extortion, and juice loans. Some of its members even lived on his street (albeit on a nicer block) and he knew them on a first-name basis. Art was even better connected to the Taylor Street or “Ferriola” Crew, which was heavily involved in gambling and bookmaking. With one phone call, he could have arranged a meeting with a made man who was sure to want hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But there were problems when it came to doing business with the Outfit. As every crook in Chicago knew, once a crew had you on their radar, you risked becoming their personal ATM. If they didn’t try to run Art’s operation outright, at the very least they’d force him to pay a “street tax” of twenty-five percent on everything he made—under penalty of death. For this reason, Art not only discounted doing business with the Outfit, but also refused to have any direct contact with it.

That still left an entire city in which virtually every immigrant group had a criminal adjunct, and Bridgeport, whose sociocriminal intricacies were as familiar to Art as the run of a backyard stream, was home to many of them. One of the groups that impressed him the most was the Chinese Mafia. Better known as the On Leong organization, the group had a long history in the city, evolving out of a traditional Chinese secret society, or
tong
, of the same name. It operated out of Chinatown’s most iconic structure, the On Leong Merchants Association Building, a traditional pagoda-style edifice on Wentworth Avenue. From there, the organization ran a small criminal empire that included gambling, prostitution, auto theft, human trafficking, and selling heroin. To keep the Italians off its back, On Leong paid a street tax that constituted one of the Outfit’s biggest cash cows.

Art had gotten to know an On Leong member a year earlier through Carlos Espinosa, a half-Chinese, half-Mexican acquaintance who ran a chop shop in Bridgeport. Knowing that Art occasionally stole cars, Espinosa had approached him with an unusual job offer: The Chinese were looking for someone to steal Corvettes, and claimed to have not only the addresses of every car, but an electronic key that would open all of them. Art thought the story about the key was “full of shit,” but he said he’d at least meet with the On Leong guy and hear what he had to say. His contact’s name, Espinosa told him, was the Horse.

“Why’s he called that?” Art asked.

Carlos smiled. “Believe me, dude. You’ll see.”

A few days later, Art went to the corner of Thirty-fourth and Wal lace, where a Chinese guy pulled up in a white Corvette. When Art hopped into the car, he was transfixed as the driver, speaking from a face that could have graced a Palomino, introduced himself as the Horse.

In a thick Chinese accent, the Horse explained the job. He wanted only Corvettes, and he would pay Art five thousand dollars for each one. He handed Art a key chain with a small plastic box attached to it, along with a list of addresses where he could find the vehicles. Art signed on dubiously, but when he visited the first address, the car was right where the Horse had said it would be, and the little magic box, which emitted a radio signal that was the equivalent of a master key, worked flawlessly. Over the next week, he stole seven ’Vettes for the Horse for a total of thirty-five thousand dollars. It was the easiest and best money he’d ever made at crime. On Leong was clearly all about conducting business with as few surprises as possible, and to Art that made them the ideal potential clients.

Hoping that the Horse might be interested in purchasing some counterfeit, Art gave him a call and arranged a meeting at Ping Tom Park, a pleasant patch of green on the edge of Chinatown that skirts the South Branch of the Chicago River. As they once again sat in the Horse’s ’Vette, Art handed him a bill and explained, proudly, that he was its maker.

“I thought you were a car thief !” the Horse said after scrutinizing the bill. “You’re full of surprises.”

The Horse told Art that he was impressed and interested, but first he had to consult his superiors in Chinatown and do a background check on the street. Two days later, the Horse offered him twenty cents on the dollar for a hundred thousand dollars. Art asked for thirty and they settled on twenty-five.

“It’s none of my business what you do with the money and I don’t care, but there is one thing,” Art explained as they went over details. “If my money will be distributed in the Chicago area, I need to know. It helps me understand my risk. You know what I’m saying?”

The Horse thought about it for a moment and nodded his long face.

“Sure, I understand. This money will stay here,” he said. It wasn’t the answer Art had hoped for, but at least he knew. He made a mental note to not sell locally bound bills again too quickly. Let the money pop, let the Service sniff around, then give the trail time to dry up before executing another deal. And make sure the next batch is different enough to raise doubts about its origin.

They met in a South Side hotel room three weeks later. Art brought along Bill Barcus, a six-foot-tall, 280-pound Lithuanian friend that he knew from Taylor Street, who was better known as “Big Bill.” Art was really beginning to like the Horse, but with that much cash and counterfeit in play he had no intention of walking into a deal without an insurance policy, which in Barcus’s case also included a 9mm.

The Horse, who brought two of his own men with him, was nonplussed by Big Bill’s presence and got right down to business. They both brought out their goods. Art’s satchel was filled with shrink-wrapped counterfeit hundred-dollar bills, and the Horse’s backpack contained twenty-five thousand genuine dollars.

The exchange was flawless, casual, and precise—everything Art had hoped for.

The Horse was so impressed with Art’s money that he ordered another batch two months later, once again explaining that it would circulate locally. When he called the Horse to arrange delivery, Art assumed that it would be in another hotel, but this time, the Horse had other plans.

“Why don’t you come to the On Leong Building,” he told Art. “We can have a good time.”

Art was astonished. Being invited into the On Leong Building was a privilege reserved for only the highest echelons of Chicago’s criminals and businessmen (distinctions that, incidentally, have a long history of fuzziness), and there was a very good reason. Deep inside the building was a massive, windowless gambling den with a swanky bar, high-end Asian prostitutes, and table service that included drugs—an inner sanctum and playpen for both the Chinese Mafia and the Outfit. Like everyone else in Bridgeport, Art had heard stories about the den, but when he set foot inside, it defied his wildest dreams. There were gambling tables everywhere, dozens of them—blackjack, mah-jongg, poker, roulette, craps—and because it had been partially designed by men who had investments in Vegas, it looked like Vegas, without the meddlesome influence of government regulation. As Art made his way onto the floor, following the Horse, he looked to his right and saw a VIP section filled with Sicilians, faces that members of the city’s organized-crime task force probably stared at on a peg board all day, wondering how to get as close to them as Art now was. They were Outfit guys, doing their thing, and there he was, a kid from the projects, walking right past them with a satchel as he did his own thing.

The Horse led Art to a booth where they ordered drinks, then they stepped into a private side room to quickly exchange satchels before returning. Art spent the rest of the night partying with the Horse, his friends, and some of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. At the end of the evening, one of the women led him downstairs to a room in the Chinatown Hotel and gave him the “executive treatment”—on the house, of course.

 

 

 

WITHIN SIX MONTHS of rolling with the Chinese, Art secured two more clients from organized-crime groups. Like the Horse, both of them were close to his own age, young men with whom he’d had dealings during his earlier days as a street criminal and who were now trying to expand their operations.

The first, Pedro “Sandy” Sandoval, was Mexican. Art had known Sandy since age fourteen, when he started hanging out on Taylor Street. Short, laid-back, and tattooed up his legs with depictions of various Aztec and Mayan gods and geometry, Sandy was from the west side of Taylor Street, an area long known as Pilsen. Once home to thousands of immigrants from Bohemia as well as Eastern and Northern Europe, it was now mostly Latino. Sandy’s uncle was a member of the Mexican Mafia, the most powerful Mexican crime group in the nation, with origins dating back to a California prison gang in the 1950s. Though relatively new to Chicago, the Mexican Mafia was expanding rapidly, in no small part due to its cocaine-smuggling connections. Sandy was dealing cocaine for his uncle, who was a major supplier for the Chicago area. Given the tremendous amount of cash that the cocaine business generates, Art figured that his friend might be able to put the
fugazi
to good use as “padding”—counterfeit cash mixed into large shipments of genuine currency.