The Art of Making Money (3 page)

 

 

 

SENIOR DROVE STRAIGHT TO ANICE’S house in Schaumburg. She had a room prepared for Art junior and his siblings, and welcomed them in as if she’d been expecting their arrival for weeks. Senior told his children flatly, “This is your new mother, we’ll be living with her from now on.”

Art’s first instinct was to not trust her; the last time he’d seen Anice, after all, his mother was pounding on her face. But he quickly grew to like her. Anice employed all the dialogical tricks that suggest coziness, calling Art and Wensdae “kiddo” and “honey” and even referring to Jason as “my baby.” She was particularly affectionate when Art senior was present. Over the next several months she cooked for them, played games with them, and seemed remarkably unperturbed by the fact that she had gone from two kids to five overnight.

Anice’s own children, Larry and Chrissy, were older than Art junior—Larry by four years and Chrissy by two. Larry, a budding jock who had always wanted a younger brother, duly drafted Art junior as his number one sports buddy, a role Art junior happily embraced. They’d play basketball at the courts at a nearby school on an almost daily basis, and Little Art beamed when the older boy began calling him “bro.” Chrissy, a gabby little blonde, was less enthused by the three new “brats” who had taken over the house, but she eventually came to love them. Neither of Anice’s kids had any relationship with their own father, and Art junior noticed that early on Anice encouraged them to call Art senior “Dad.” Art junior called Anice by her name.

The kids were just adapting to the new arrangement when Malinda was released from the hospital. She quickly got an apartment in Arlington Heights and a job cleaning houses, then demanded that Art senior give her custody of the kids under threat of bringing in the law. Even though her mental stability was questionable, he made no attempt to resist.

 

 

 

ART JUNIOR AND HIS SIBLINGS didn’t see their father for several months after rejoining Malinda. Senior called the house numerous times and spoke to the kids, but Malinda, horrified by what she had seen at Uncle Rich’s, refused to allow him to visit. He swore to her that nothing had happened—he had experienced a moment of weakness, but her entrance into the room had prevented it from going further. He loved his daughter and would never let that happen again. Malinda experienced a moment of weakness too. She finally gave in and consented to let him have the kids for a weekend, stipulating that she did not wish to see his face. She would drop the kids off at her sister Donna’s house on Saturday morning, where he’d pick them up and return them Sunday evening. She made sure that her eldest child knew the plan.

Everything began as it was supposed to. The kids waited at Aunt Donna’s, then Senior showed up and took them out to lunch. They joked and teased each other over burgers, delighted to be spending two full days with Dad. After lunch, he told them that he had a surprise planned for them, and they piled back into the car with glee.

Art watched his father closely as he steered onto the highway, trying to divine where they were headed. All he knew was that they were not headed into the city. After an hour of watching off-ramps whiz past, shiftings of doubt moved through his stomach. His mom had never mentioned anything about a long trip.

After three hours, he began repeatedly asking his father where they were going. He wanted to go home.

Senior refused to tell him, and became short with him. He told him that they were taking a vacation, and that he shouldn’t complain. Art junior started to cry, but it didn’t do any good.

They drove 2,200 miles, all the way to Lobster Valley, Oregon. By the time they finally broke away from the highway two days later, Art junior and Wensdae knew that they were not going home. They were now farther away from it than they’d ever been, in a fascinat ingly alien landscape of pine trees, mountains, dirt roads, and ranches. Senior drove deep into the countryside, winding the car through hairpin turns until they finally crackled up a gravel drive to an A-frame house somewhere in the middle of a forest. As Senior killed the engine, from the front door of the house emerged the first familiar thing Art had seen in two days.

As always, Anice was smiling and expectant.

 

 

 

MALINDA CALLED THE POLICE, but they couldn’t help her much. Kidnapping aside, Senior would not have been using his real name. Later on she’d come to believe that the entire time she’d been sequestering the kids from him, he’d been setting up camp with Anice in Oregon, waiting for the opportune moment to take them back.

By now Art junior had moved so many times that he was developing a feel for impending relocation, along with a sense of absolute powerlessness. Other than food and entertainment, his desires—to stay in one place, to be with his mother, simple regularity—were irrelevant. He controlled the only thing he could, his imagination, and latched himself to books and studies as a way of riding out the parental storms. No matter where he was, school was a sanctuary, and he consistently placed in the top of his class. “He was a little geek,” remembers Wensdae. “He had these big glasses and he was always reading, usually stuff way beyond whatever grade he was in, almost like he was trying to stay ahead.”

Art’s childhood dream was to be a lawyer; he’d read that it had been the formative occupation of the founding fathers and it had the ring of accomplishment. On another level, it embodied the guiding structure that he was missing at home. Fair play, a governing set of rules and principles—the way things should be. Deep inside, he knew that he was at a disadvantage compared with the kids he’d meet in other towns whose fathers were not convicts, whose mothers were stable. He wanted to cross over into that realm, and his desire had not yet turned to anger.

 

 

 

THEY STAYED IN LOBSTER VALLEY for a few months, then it was on to Lebanon, Oregon, and later Mount Shasta, California. In each town, Williams, now aided by Anice, would hang paper just before departing. Art junior was learning to read the signs. The grown-ups would start speaking in hushed voices and appear preoccupied. The house would suddenly fill up with new goods that never emerged from their boxes—televisions, stereos, expensive suits. There’d be a celebratory night—a nice dinner out, a trip to the movies, or a few gifts for the kids—followed by a predawn exit. When they left Lebanon, Art actually saw the cash—a few thousand dollars on the kitchen table. He was excited until he realized that he wasn’t getting any of it.

As the towns and months went by, the separation from Malinda and the itinerant lifestyle wore on Art and Wensdae, who increasingly complained to their father that they wanted to see their mother; but the more they bugged him about it, the meaner he became. Wensdae had it the hardest. Senior had of course lied to Malinda about nothing happening that day at Uncle Rich’s—he had raped his own daughter. According to Wensdae, that was the only time he ever sexually abused her, but her psychic wound would only grow with her body. Shortly after Senior kidnapped the children, she started wetting the bed, and on her sixth birthday Art rewarded her with a large present, beautifully wrapped. She eagerly opened it to find that it was a box of diapers. She ran off crying. Art junior ran after her and tried to console her, but he was so miserable himself and shocked by his father’s cruelty that he just ended up crying with her over the fact that they wanted to go back to Mom.

Anice’s colors darkened too. Once it was clear that Senior had no intention of returning to Malinda, both Art junior and Wensdae got the feeling that they had become unwanted baggage. “She was completely fake,” says Wensdae. “She’d ignore us when my dad wasn’t around; then if he was she’d suddenly try to act like a mom.”

The one place Art junior began to feel at home was Mount Shasta, a town of about three thousand tucked away among the mountains and redwoods near California’s border with Oregon. Surrounded by national parks and graced with stunning views of an eponymous fourteen-thousand-foot dormant volcano, the town had the magical aura of a wonderland. He made fast friends with a local girl who lived up the road. Her name was Lisa Arbacheske, and during the summer of ’82 he spent nearly every day with her.

“Her life seemed so perfect,” he remembers. “She had a house down by the river, a big, beautiful log cabin. They had horses. She was the most beautiful little girl, with long, brown, curly hair. My first kiss was with her, on a log near her house. It was the happiest I’d been in a long time. She made me feel loved.”

Art wanted to stay in Mount Shasta, but by then Wensdae’s psychological rebellion had intensified beyond Senior’s control. In addition to the bedwetting, she developed a habit of muddying her clothes after her father dropped her off at school, and sometimes removing them altogether. When school authorities complained, Senior and Anice panicked that he’d be discovered and arrested.

Toward summer’s end Senior left town, taking Wensdae and Jason with him. He came back two weeks later driving a brand-new Ford Bronco, but the kids weren’t with him. He told Art that he had dropped them off in Chicago with their mother, and to pack his bags because he would be joining them in a week.

“I didn’t believe him,” says Art. “I thought he had done something with them, and I freaked out. I remember fighting with him, and that was the first time he ever hit me, really hard in the face.”

A few days later, Art said a tearful good-bye to Lisa, then climbed into the back of the Bronco, which was crammed with the family’s belongings. He still didn’t believe that his dad was taking him back to Illinois, and spent much of the next three days sobbing in the back while the rest of the family repeatedly told him to shut up. But he wasn’t the only miserable child on the trip. “On the way back my parents ran out of money,” remembers Chrissy. “So we stopped in these little towns, and my parents made us get out of the car and knock on people’s doors to beg for money. I hated it; we all hated it. That’s how we got gas money.”

It was only once they crossed into Illinois that Art junior began to think his father might be telling the truth; when the Chicago skyline came into view, he was convinced. Senior drove all the way downtown, where he parked in front of a shelter for women and children on Sheridan Road. He told Art to wait, then went inside. A few minutes later he reemerged. Malinda was with him.

Over the years Art would scour his memory for clues and explanations for what happened next.

“He gave me a hug, and I asked him if I’d see him again soon,” remembers Art. “He said he loved me and said, ‘Yeah, I’ll see you again.’ ”

It was a perfectly normal farewell, as if the nine months he had spent as a kidnapped child had really been a weekend after all.

 

 

 

IT WAS A ONE-TWO PUNCH that ended Art’s childhood. The first was his father’s leaving; the second blow came about a year afterward. The family had continued to live in Schaumburg after Senior’s departure, and although Malinda found it a struggle to support three kids on her own, things hadn’t gone too badly. The children were overjoyed to be back with their mother, and Art, now free from the constant moving, excelled at his new school, Eisenhower Elementary. He not only achieved the best grades in his class but became a star on the school’s wrestling and baseball teams, his success on the latter no doubt thanks to many an afternoon spent practicing with Larry.

Malinda had gotten back to normal too. She’d had no more breakdowns since leaving the Elgin Mental Health Center, and had even begun taking an interest in her sister’s seven-year-old son, Gregory, who had tragically developed a brain tumor. There was little hope for him, but Malinda did not believe that her sister was responsibly seeing to the boy’s care. Donna had started dating a biker named Bobby, and Malinda was outraged that her sister was engaged in a romance with a leather-clad hooligan while her son was fighting for his life. And as siblings are prone to do, she reported the situation to her mother in Texas, who in turn chastised Donna.

Donna was furious. She showed up at Malinda’s apartment with Bobby in tow. Malinda was out grocery shopping with the kids at the time, but upon their return Donna and Bobby were waiting by his motorcycle. As Malinda emerged from the car carrying bags of groceries, Donna intercepted her, and the two sisters immediately fell into a heated argument. Art was at first excited at watching the two adults fight, but the feeling quickly turned to terror.

Without warning, Donna reached into one of the grocery bags Malinda was carrying, snatched out a bottle of beer, and struck Malinda square in the temple. Malinda dropped as quickly as if she’d been hit by a sniper’s bullet. Art ran to her.

“She wasn’t moving,” he remembers. “I knew it was bad. A neighbor called the paramedics and I could see by the looks on their faces that it was really serious. They tried to rouse her but they couldn’t. They took her away fast.”

Donna was long gone by then. She’d sped off with Bobby as soon as she heard the sirens, and the kids spent that night at the home of the neighbor, a kind woman who lived alone who had called 911. When she called the hospital for an update, she was informed that Malinda was in a coma.

The coma would last one month.

 

 

 

THE NEXT DAY, the neighbor turned the kids over to Child Protection Services. Unable to find a family willing to care for three children, CPS had no choice but to separate them. Wensdae went to a girls’ home, while Jason and Art were sent to live with foster families. For the next three months, none of them would have any idea what was happening with the others, or the condition of their mother.

Art’s foster family already had a real son, and the two boys didn’t get along. He’d later theorize that the other boy was jealous of his arrival, but, in any case, after a month the family sent him back to CPS. He was then sent to a boys’ home, which he ended up liking much better. At the home Art befriended an older boy whose name he no longer remembers, but he became the first in a long line of older males that Art would follow like a duckling chasing bread crumbs. He was ruddy, blond, and tall, and he spent all his free time bent over a sketch pad, drawing pictures of himself behind the wheels of muscle cars, usually accompanied by curvy and admiring women in bikinis. The boy was immensely popular because he’d do similar sketches for other boys he liked, thus keeping the rooms of the home perpetually blossoming with sexually empowering motor fantasies.