The Art of Making Money

by Jason Kersten

  Ed’s was a hangout for greasers, dopers, city workers, teenie boppers, blue-haired bingo ladies, cops, winos, gangsters, gangbangers, lonely old men, horny young men, college students, ex-cons, and families. You never knew what kind of crowd you’d see in there. We knew them all. We didn’t even try to remember all their names, so we gave most of them nicknames. I’m guessing that a lot of the nicknames were given because some people would rather no one knew their name. I knew people with names like: “Bloomers,” “Fallin’ Eddie,” “Pennsylvania Eddie,” “Bridgeport Eddie,” “Pete the Cop,” “Blonde Headed Sharon,” “Fuck Chuck,” “Mugsy,” “Crazy Charlie,” “Puerto Rican Sammy,” “Sarge,” “Large Marge,” “Cavey,” “Stormy Weather,” “Little Joe,” “Indian Joe,” “Billy Moon,” “Size Ten Mary,” “Mother Mary,” “Pollack Paul,” “Mr. T,” “Cono,” “Li’l Bit,” “Guy Guy,” “Big Mickey,” “Slick,” “Red,” and “Ronnie the Preacher.” Sometimes we just called them what they ordered every day, like “Boston with three sugars” or “Raisin toast no butter.”

  Pete “da Vinci” was an easygoing Italian who usually perched by himself in a booth up front, across from the counter. At about five seven, he was short, but striking thanks to his deeply tanned skin, and eyes so yellow they were almost gold. He was in his mid-forties but looked much younger, and unlike most of Ed’s characters, who tended toward the blue collar, da Vinci had a bohemian air about him. His defining accessory was a black leather beanie. Unless he was asleep, in the shower, or at church, it sat on his head with the permanency of a tattoo.

  Like all the other characters at Ed’s, da Vinci was not his real name. It’s a street name that Art later gave him because of his fondness for drawing and painting. “I liked him from the beginning,” says Art. “He had class. He didn’t curse, he didn’t raise his voice. But most importantly he treated my mom really well, better than any man ever did.”

  Art first noticed him as a regular presence about two months after his mom starting working at Ed’s. He’d show up and Pete would be nursing a coffee, cracking jokes with Malinda. He had a naturally sunny disposition, and he’d see Art come in and shout, “Hey kid, how ya doin’ today!” and he always had a huge grin that went ear to ear. Art never once saw him complain about his life, and when Pete was around, Art could see in his mother shades of the happy-go-lucky country girl who had been cowed by abandonment, poverty, and a crippling mental disease. And after a few months, Art and Wensdae were no longer asking Malinda for spending cash. “There was just this point where he’d insist,” remembers Art. “We all knew my mom didn’t make any real money there, and he was just going to give it to her in tips anyway. So he’d lay a little cash on us, nothing big, nothing more than she would have given us.”

  Pete’s stated occupation was that he was “in construction,” Bridgeport’s oldest and most ubiquitous occupation. It meant that he was either really in construction or a criminal—probably both. Da Vinci certainly didn’t dress like a foreman or crewman, and if he was overseeing some nearby development, then its dust never powdered his shoulder or interfered with his quality time at Ed’s. He drove a white Cadillac, and Art simply assumed that he had some kind of a racket going, but he could never glean what it was, and in Bridgeport you do not ask questions.

  Criminal or not, da Vinci was generous and warm, and that was what Malinda noticed. After about four months, Pete was dining with the family at the house, watching a bit of TV, then discreetly slipping out before bedtime. He also began taking the family out to the movies, or on weekend trips to Indiana Dunes, a magnificent stretch of rolling sand hills along the shores of Lake Michigan. The excursions, and the presence of a kindly, older male in the house, was a welcome change to Art, but he didn’t invest too heavily in Pete’s long-term presence.

  ART HAD OTHER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT than his mother’s love life. Karen gave birth to a son on August 28, 1990. Few things are more telling about Art than the name he insisted on calling him. Of the all the shoes in the world a boy can be asked to fill, he picked the ones made biggest by their emptiness: Arthur J. Williams III.

  To raise money for the new arrival, Art, like his mother, took a job. It came to him one morning shortly after Karen became pregnant, when a young man driving by in a pickup truck spotted him and a friend throwing a football around in the project’s parking lot.

  “You guys want some work?” he asked. All he told Art was that he’d be working at a construction site. The pay was low—$3.25 an hour in cash—but Art needed the money, so he jumped in the back. He was taken to the North Side, where a crew was reroofing an old woman’s house. There, he met his new boss, Morty Bello.

  Morty was infamous in Bridgeport, though Art was too young to have heard of him. He was short, fat, and charming, with dark circles under his eyes and a deep Romanian accent—a bona fide gypsy. Morty made his living by looking up the addresses of elderly people—usually women—then sending crews to their houses to knock on their doors. They’d point out problems with their roofs or siding and offer to fix everything for a bargain rate. By the time Morty’s crew was done, half of the old women’s savings—along with various heirlooms—would be in his pocket. He paid poor kids like Art chicken feed to create the pretense of labor, doling out plati tudes and encouragement to hide the fact that he was exploiting them. He was the first in a long line of paternal misfires that Art would glom on to.

  “I really liked Morty,” says Art. “He definitely liked me, or at least acted like he did. Sometimes he’d take me to his home and feed me dinner. He had a nice house on Parnell Avenue, a big family, and he treated me like a member of the family. He did all that to make it easier to use me.”

  Sometimes Morty wouldn’t even pay Art; he’d cry poor and promise to reimburse him come the next job. But whether Morty paid or not, Art wasn’t making anywhere near enough to support his girlfriend and their child. After consulting with a few Disciples, he opted for a side job that was almost as conventional in Bridgeport: auto theft.

  Halsted Street was Chicago’s chop-shop capital, and since the age of thirteen Art had been hotwiring vehicles for fun. It wasn’t a big step to simply drop the cars off at a garage, and depending on the make and model he could earn up to two thousand dollars per vehicle. Cars were usually insured, he rationalized, and in the event of discovery the stolen item itself offered a mode of escape. Best of all, at seventeen he was also too young to go to prison; if caught, he faced no more than a few months in juvie. And every bit as enticing as the fast money was the excitement and a chance to prove his manhood.

  About four months after Karen gave birth, Art hotwired a Buick Regency on Poplar Avenue, a long block from the projects. As he was pulling away, his jittery teen reflexes got the better of him and he clipped a nearby parked car, smashing the Buick’s front. He quickly abandoned the Buick, then sprinted back toward the projects. But an elderly woman, drawn by the noise of the crash, had seen him. By now Art was well known to the Ninth District, and the woman’s description of him was good. Twenty minutes later, two Chicago PD officers knocked on the door of the Williamses’ apartment.

  Pete da Vinci answered.

  Art’s delinquency had been a story to Pete until that moment, told by an aggravated mother to a sympathetic ear. While Art hid in his room upstairs, he listened to Pete talk with the cops. The tone he took was something Art had never heard in Pete before—that of a concerned and irate father. “It was embarrassing,” Art remembers, “I knew that he knew I was up to stuff, but now he was actually seeing what a shit I was.” Malinda was right there at his shoulder, and she was convinced that it was high time that Art was taught a lesson.

  “Arty! Come down here!” she shouted.

  Art sheepishly made his way downstairs, knowing full well what was coming. The officers arrested him and drove him to the district house, where the elderly woman identified him. A juvenile court judge later sentenced him to three months in a youth detention facility. But a little over a month la
ter, just as he had calculated, he was free.

  Pete and Malinda were waiting for him at the release center. It was a happy occasion, but Pete was somber and preoccupied. They took Art out to a celebratory lunch at Ed’s, and when Malinda excused herself to go to the bathroom, Pete looked him directly in the eye.

  “I’m not here to lecture you,” he said evenly, “but if you keep up with the stealing, your baby’s going to have a crummy life.”

  It certainly sounded like the beginning of a lecture to Art.

  “I understand that you’re under a lot of pressure,” Pete continued. “You’re still a kid, but you’re also a father. Did you know that kids whose fathers abandoned them are much more likely to abandon their own children?”

  “Really?” Art said snidely. He was thinking that Pete didn’t know anything about him.

  “I know you’re a smart kid. I know all about your achievements in school, and I know that the last few years haven’t been easy on you. I know you don’t want your own son growing up in these projects, and if you give me a chance, I’d like to help you get out.”

  Art was now intrigued, but Malinda returned from the restroom before Pete could continue. “We’ll talk more later,” he said before she sat down.

  Later that night as Art lay in bed, he heard the muffled tones of an argument taking place across the hall. He couldn’t make out the words, but he had the distinct feeling that they were arguing about him, and that Pete was trying to convince his mother to allow him to do something. Later on, he realized that Pete had probably been asking her for permission. The argument cooled down and Art drifted off to sleep, assuming that it was a typical spat between a mom and a boyfriend giving her unsolicited advice on how to raise her son. But when Art awoke the next morning, Malinda was nowhere to be seen. Pete was downstairs sipping a cup of coffee.

  “Remember what we talked about yesterday?” he said. “If you’re up to it, there’s something I’d like to show you. So get dressed. We’re going for a ride.”

  Based on the look in Pete’s eye, Art knew that they were not headed off to a construction site.

  THEY DROVE SOUTH, which in that part of Chicago is back in time. They passed the eastern railroad approaches to the Union Stockyards, where generations of Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Slavic immigrants once labored in the largest concentration of slaughter-houses in the world—an industry immortalized in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Later on the area became a haven for bootleggers, who could mingle in with the packing and storage facilities without drawing much attention. How many criminal operations had set up shop in Packingtown since then was anyone’s guess, but its industrial anonymity was daunting. As da Vinci wheeled the Cadillac deeper into blocks of buildings bracketed by vacant lots and truck parks, neither of them spoke.

  Pete finally parked next to an old stone quarry. For the briefest of moments Art wondered if maybe he was legitimate after all. “I try not to park right in front of my business,” the older man explained. “A block away is fine.”

  They continued on foot to a three-story, nineteenth-century brick building with a loading dock in front. Once inside, they made their way down a long hallway to the back of the building. There, Pete plugged a key into an elevator call box. A few moments later, a pair of double doors reeled back to reveal an old-style, top-gated lift. After they entered, Pete pushed the down button, taking them below ground level, where he unlocked another door, revealing a space that was almost pitch-black except for a few block windows. Pete flicked on a nearby switch, blasting the space with fluorescent light that emanated from long, buzzing bulbs. And as Art’s eyes adjusted, he was surprised to encounter a familiar scene.

  Spread out before them in a large room was a full-service offset print shop, a smaller version of the sort of setup he’d seen next to the Bridgeport News. Immediately to the left was a photography alcove, which was followed by a light table, a platemaking station, and then the offset press itself—a beautiful, six-foot-long AB Dick. After that came an industrial paper cutter.

  “It was a perfectly kept setup,” remembers Art. “Everything was in order, each machine placed right where it should be in the overall process. You could work clockwise through the room, and by the time you came to the end you would have a finished, printed product.”

  Da Vinci remained silent as Art walked around and inspected the shop, giving him some time to figure out the situation for himself. At first glance, it struck Art as a completely normal, “camera ready” print shop, the kind neighborhood printers used to make flyers, posters, and pamphlets for local businesses. But if that was the case, then why all the secrecy? The first odd detail that caught Art’s eye was a steel cabinet filled with ink canisters. Aside from a few yellows and reds, the vast majority of the cans were forest green, charcoal black, and white. Even sitting on the shelves, the colors brought to mind only one image. When he saw a shrink-wrapping machine sitting at the very end of the print line, he moved from suspicion to conviction. He could picture the small rectangles coming off the cutter, then being wrapped into neat little bricks of plastic, ready for sale.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Art gasped.

  Pete answered with a simple, “Yeah.”

  “You’re a counterfeiter.”

  Art had barely ever used the word. He immediately recalled an encounter he’d had about a year earlier, when he’d been taken to the precinct house for questioning after a street battle with some Latin Kings. Waiting with him in the holding cell was a kid in his late teens who told him he’d been picked up for “copying.” He was dressed in a suit, and he was wired up and smiling like he’d just won the lottery. He explained to Art that while working as a janitor at the Sears Tower, he had seen a cutting-edge color copier in one of the offices and snuck in after hours to run off dozens of twenty-dollar bills. He’d spent the next two days on a wild spending binge, buying clothes, expensive meals, and drugs, until a suspicious cashier at a shoe store ran an eraser across one of his bills and the ink blurred. She called the police, who picked him up running down the street with a pocketful of bills. The kid had had so much fun that he was planning to print more bills as soon as he got out of jail, and Art had always wondered what became of him. The idea that people could print their own money astonished him, and it struck him as the ultimate crime.

  Da Vinci was obviously way beyond amateurish larking with color copiers. Based on his equipment alone, Art could tell that Pete was a professional, a far higher grade of criminal than anyone he had ever met. All this time, his mother had been dating a man who held the keys to his own bank.

  “Come over here and sit down, Arty,” da Vinci beckoned. Art joined him at some chairs he had set up near the light table. He could not believe what was happening. Were they going to print money right now?

  “This has been in my family for a long time,” da Vinci began. His tone was serious, but not threatening. “I learned it from my father when I was young, right about your age. He learned from his uncle. The man who taught my great-uncle was not a relative, and I don’t know much about him. I know that he was from Italy, and somebody certainly taught him. It probably goes back hundreds of years. If you’re interested, I’m willing to teach you. It’s safer than stealing cars and there’s more money in it, but it’s also harder. It’s also a federal crime, and if you’re stupid enough to get caught, odds are you’ll be convicted. You won’t get out in a month like you did yesterday. You’ll do years, up to twelve for just your first offense. Are you interested?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, but there are some rules,” da Vinci continued, and began a list that would grow longer than Art ever imagined.

  The first rule was that Art could tell no one, not even relatives. “Once people realize what you do they will ask you for money,” Pete explained. “If you refuse to give it to them, they will hate you. If you give it to them, they will get caught and probably turn you in.”

  The second rule was to never spend counter
feit money in the area where he lived. For reasons that Art would learn later, every counterfeit bill inevitably triggers an alarm, whether it’s in the hands of a grocery store clerk or a sophisticated bank counting machine. And once counterfeit bills are identified, they can be fingerprinted, forensically analyzed, and plotted and traced on a map that the authorities—namely the United States Secret Service—will use to close the geographical noose until it tightens around the counterfeiter’s neck.

  The third rule was the most general and the most important. “Never be greedy,” da Vinci said. “If you’re cautious, you can have a good life. But if you print too much, you will be caught.”

  Art swore to follow all the rules.

  “Do you have any questions?” da Vinci asked him.

  “How much do I get to keep?”

  “You don’t get to keep any,” Pete said. “That’s not how this works. Passing counterfeit is a whole different ball game from making it, and if you got caught your mother would murder me. Every time we print, I’ll pay you seven thousand dollars in real money. Does that sound good?”

  “Yeah.” It was more money that Art had ever made in his life.

  “Any other questions?”

  “What happens to the money after we make it?”

  “It will go to clients.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s none of your business, and you’ll never know. That’s for your own good, Arty. Another rule is that you never reveal who your clients are.”

  Da Vinci gave Art no more instruction that first day. After spending less than twenty minutes in the shop, he stood up and said that it was time to go. Just before they left, he spoke two final words.

  “He told me to ‘get ready’ with that little devil smile he had,” remembers Art. “I was so fucking anxious, I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up all night long thinking that I was gonna make some money.”