The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [29]
“Did you guys get in a fight?”
“No, no fights. That’s why I’m worried.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Art consoled his mom, but he was bothered himself. The last time he had seen Pete, nothing had been out of the ordinary. He told Art that they’d been doing another run in six weeks and jokingly admonished him not to forget everything he’d learned. He’d made no mention of any impending trips, and Art had assumed he’d see him around the house as usual. If Pete had known he’d be leaving, it would have been completely out of character not to say good-bye and offer an explanation.
At the same time, Art understood that Pete wasn’t in the kind of business that benefits from predictability and informing others of your actions. If Pete had a reason for staying away it was probably a good one. Had he been under surveillance by the Secret Service or even arrested, Pete would not have risked exposing Art and his mother by calling. Thinking that might be the case, Art avoided sniffing around da Vinci’s print shop or his house.
He did start swinging by Ed’s on a daily basis. He’d stick his head in the door, scanning the usual crowd of heads in the hope of spotting the beanie. He figured that Pete would be back any day and have one hell of a story about why he had left town. But as the days turned to weeks and the date of their appointed print run passed, Art started getting a bad feeling. Unable to contain his worry any longer, he began driving by both the house and the print shop, hoping to spot the Caddy. When it never appeared he even knocked on the door and peeked in the windows of Pete’s house; no one answered, and although Pete’s stuff was still there, the place had an empty aura, as if it hadn’t been inhabited for weeks. Art finally began wondering about another explanation, one he’d forced himself not to consider.
It happened all the time in Chicago. He pictured Pete pulling the Caddy up to a hotel or an out-of-the-way lot. The client would have been someone he knew well, a regular who he felt comfortable with. He exited the car carrying a satchel filled with the same bills Art himself had helped create. For some reason—greed or paranoia—the buyer had decided that this would be the last deal, but Pete didn’t know that. He would have greeted his executioner the way he greeted everyone, with that happy-dog smile.
Art thought about making a few inquiries to some of the local associates of the Outfit—Chicago’s Italian Mafia—then thought better of it. If Pete had met his end at the hands of the mob, a search for answers could easily take him on the same trip Pete had made, into the suffocating darkness of a car trunk and the illimitable voids of Lake Michigan.
“I’d like to think that he’s still alive and out there somewhere,” Art says. In his heart, he still wants to believe that Pete never would have left both him and his mother without an explanation.
4
ESCAPE
The American dream is, in part, responsible for a great deal of crime and violence because people feel that the country owes them not only a living but a good living.
—DAVID ABRAHAMSEN, CRIMINAL PSYCHIATRIST,
QUOTED IN THE San Francisco
Examiner & Chronicle, 1975
Art’s hopes of becoming a master counterfeiter disappeared with his mentor. He was still a kid, and the discipline, financial resources, and equipment necessary to start his own operation seemed unobtainable. With three printings under his belt, he had a solid understanding of the basics, but he didn’t possess the intuition and experience that separates fiddler from master. Most of all he lacked patience, and as he looked around for new options he saw his friends making faster money the Bridgeport way—by their wits and their balls.
Many of the SDs were now dealing drugs, cocaine mostly, while others had gotten deeper into auto theft. Art dabbled in both, but fresh from da Vinci, those crimes didn’t fulfill his sense of craftsmanship or excitement. He had become something of criminal snob, a condition as common to counterfeiters as inky fingers.
Art had been spending a lot of time hanging