The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [3]
He’d been born Arthur Julius Luciano, the son of an alcoholic trucker from Sicily, and a mentally ill Irish mother. In his early years, the family, which also included his younger brother Richard, had lived in Bridgeport—one of the toughest neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. When he was twelve, the Lucianos moved to the suburb of Lemont, a quarry town about fifteen miles southwest of Chicago. There they were among the poorest families in town. Their house lacked running water, and Luciano and his brother would lug their water from a nearby gas station, using it to drink and fill their toilet. On their beds were packing blankets from their dad’s truck.
Things only got tougher. Within a year of moving to Lemont, Luciano’s father died after driving his rig off an overpass on Chicago’s Damen Avenue. His mother was ill-equipped to raise the boys alone. She was prone to spells of verbal fixation in which she would repeat the phrase Lotti-fa-dotti to herself, sometimes for hours. Within a year she remarried another alcoholic trucker, who had a tendency to go after the boys with a belt after a few whiskeys. Whatever mitigating influence their mother might have had on their stepdad’s violence ended when she died of natural causes, when Luciano was only fourteen.
Poverty can always afford paradox, and the great one of Luciano’s childhood was that somehow the family always managed to feed a pack of five or six dogs. Completely undisciplined, they were of every breed and bark and occupied the house with the same prerogatives as the children. They’d sleep in the beds with the kids, and Luciano adored them. “I can’t say for sure that Art ever really loved anybody, but he definitely loved those dogs,” says Bruce Artis, one of Luciano’s childhood friends. “That was just the strangest thing about him, but maybe it wasn’t so strange—given his folks, I mean.”
By the time he was sixteen, Luciano had decided that home was not the place to be. He fixed up a broken-down ’65 Ford that his stepfather had abandoned in the front yard and began road-tripping as far from Lemont as he could afford. On one occasion he stole some checks from his stepdad to fuel a trip to Florida. After he used one to buy some fancy shoes in Pensacola, a suspicious clerk called the sheriff, who picked up Luciano and called his stepdad, who made him ride a bus back to Lemont barefoot. When Luciano was nineteen, an acquaintance recently released from prison taught him how to be a short-range con artist. He’d take a twenty-dollar bill and buy something for a dollar at a gas station. After getting his change, he would say, “Know what, buddy? I didn’t want to break that twenty. If I give you a five and five singles back can you give me a ten?” But Luciano would hand a five and four singles to the attendant, who would pass him the ten, then look at him and say, “You only gave me nine.” That’s when Luciano would respond, “Sorry about that. You know, I might as well just take back the twenty. You got nine, here’s another dollar which makes that ten and here’s another ten, so can I just get back my twenty?” By the time he was done confusing the attendant, Luciano would have an extra ten dollars.
Change raising was an ideal con for Luciano. It allowed him to make money on the road by using his natural charms. He was laid-back and funny, impossible not to like even though he was always on the make, whether it was fast money or women. With his high self-confidence, he began ranging farther afield, and to fuel his travels he graduated to paper hanging. He’d pull into a town, establish a residence and a checking account under a false name, and embark on a shopping spree. After a week or two, he’d return the goods for cash. By the time the checks bounced he’d be in the next state, on to the next scam.
It was during a ramble