The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [109]
Sharon explained that she had scheduled a photo shoot for Alex, and needed him in Dallas that afternoon.
Art thought it was a little strange that suddenly they were hearing about a photo shoot for Alex right after they’d decided to avoid Dallas, but he trusted Sharon implicitly. She had been the one to convince him to follow his instincts and abandon Alaska, and had been there for him more than his own mother. But even with that faith, Dallas still felt like a bad move.
“Tell her there is no way we’re heading back there,” Art instructed Natalie. “We just went out of our way not to go there. She can reschedule the shoot.”
Natalie was conflicted. She was tired of taking Art’s orders, especially when they seemed driven by paranoia. In this case, her mom had made a commitment, and her boy had an opportunity to put away some money for college. They argued, inevitably drawing Will Grant in as the referee.
“If there was something going down in Dallas, you’d know it,” was Grant’s take. “Sharon would figure out a way to let you know.” He was perfectly willing to divert there, although he didn’t want to stay for long. After some argument, Art finally agreed to wait in a restaurant while the others swung by Sharon’s. But Dallas was three hours away, and by the time they reached the city Art had relaxed enough to think that maybe it was safe enough to take a quick shower at Sharon’s before heading toward Longview again. He wanted to clean up, and it would give his mother-in-law some time to visit with her new granddaughter. He was in the front hallway bathroom, enjoying the soft drum of water on his tired head, when four loud bangs came through the din like underwater explosions. They were followed by four words.
“United States Secret Service!”
Art didn’t even bother turning off the water. “I figured they had me at that point, so I just tried to enjoy the rest of the shower. Good bet it was the last private shower I’d have in a long time! But those motherfuckers came right into the bathroom.”
“Art Williams?” one of them asked, poking his head in the door.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Get out, get dressed. We need to talk to you.”
Art toweled off, threw on some jeans, and stepped out of the bathroom to find himself facing two Secret Service agents and two deputies from the local sheriff’s office. The lead agent identified himself as Adrian Andrews—a name that Art thought was a little too obviously fake. He was black, in his early thirties, with a polite yet determined air. He had wanted to be a Secret Service agent since the age of thirteen and would later go on to head the Oklahoma City field office. Since the Service refuses to comment, what occurred next is based entirely on Art’s recollection.
“There are children in the house, so your mother-in-law has suggested we talk in the back bedroom,” Andrews said. Art’s heart dropped. Before jumping in the shower, he had set down the travel bag containing the laptop in precisely that room. When they entered it, Andrews handcuffed Art, read him his rights, then sat him down on the bed. Andrews took a chair in the corner. The bag, with the laptop actually sticking out of it, was literally inches from the agent’s feet.
“So we went through your father’s house,” Andrews explained. “Your stepmother, Anice, pretty much told us everything. We know about the House of Blues, we know you went up to Alaska, we have counterfeit that you made and statements from four individuals corroborating that you made it. You’re done, we know everything. But there are still things you can do to cooperate. We want the files, Art, your computer, the disks.”
Art wasn’t convinced he was in such a bad position. He and Natalie possessed no counterfeit currency. Secret Service agents have a long history of lying and exaggerating to extort confessions, and Art was thinking that the only thing that the agents knew was what