The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [41]
They met in a South Side hotel room three weeks later. Art brought along Bill Barcus, a six-foot-tall, 280-pound Lithuanian friend that he knew from Taylor Street, who was better known as “Big Bill.” Art was really beginning to like the Horse, but with that much cash and counterfeit in play he had no intention of walking into a deal without an insurance policy, which in Barcus’s case also included a 9mm.
The Horse, who brought two of his own men with him, was nonplussed by Big Bill’s presence and got right down to business. They both brought out their goods. Art’s satchel was filled with shrink-wrapped counterfeit hundred-dollar bills, and the Horse’s backpack contained twenty-five thousand genuine dollars.
The exchange was flawless, casual, and precise—everything Art had hoped for.
The Horse was so impressed with Art’s money that he ordered another batch two months later, once again explaining that it would circulate locally. When he called the Horse to arrange delivery, Art assumed that it would be in another hotel, but this time, the Horse had other plans.
“Why don’t you come to the On Leong Building,” he told Art. “We can have a good time.”
Art was astonished. Being invited into the On Leong Building was a privilege reserved for only the highest echelons of Chicago’s criminals and businessmen (distinctions that, incidentally, have a long history of fuzziness), and there was a very good reason. Deep inside the building was a massive, windowless gambling den with a swanky bar, high-end Asian prostitutes, and table service that included drugs—an inner sanctum and playpen for both the Chinese Mafia and the Outfit. Like everyone else in Bridgeport, Art had heard stories about the den, but when he set foot inside, it defied his wildest dreams. There were gambling tables everywhere, dozens of them—blackjack, mah-jongg, poker, roulette, craps—and because it had been partially designed by men who had investments in Vegas, it looked like Vegas, without the meddlesome influence of government regulation. As Art made his way onto the floor, following the Horse, he looked to his right and saw a VIP section filled with Sicilians, faces that members of the city’s organized-crime task force probably stared at on a peg board all day, wondering how to get as close to them as Art now was. They were Outfit guys, doing their thing, and there he was, a kid from the projects, walking right past them with a satchel as he did his own thing.
The Horse led Art to a booth where they ordered drinks, then they stepped into a private side room to quickly exchange satchels before returning. Art spent the rest of the night partying with the Horse, his friends, and some of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. At the end of the evening, one of the women led him downstairs to a room in the Chinatown Hotel and gave him the “executive treatment”—on the house, of course.
WITHIN SIX MONTHS of rolling with the Chinese, Art secured two more clients from organized-crime groups. Like the Horse, both of them were close to his own age, young men with whom he’d had dealings during his earlier days as a street criminal and who were now trying to expand their operations.
The first, Pedro “Sandy” Sandoval, was Mexican. Art had known Sandy since age fourteen, when he started hanging out on Taylor Street. Short, laid-back, and tattooed up his legs with depictions of various Aztec and Mayan gods and geometry, Sandy was from the west side of Taylor Street, an area long known as Pilsen. Once home to thousands of immigrants from Bohemia as well as Eastern and Northern Europe, it was now mostly Latino. Sandy’s uncle was a member of the Mexican Mafia, the most powerful Mexican crime group in the nation, with origins dating back to a California prison gang in the 1950s. Though relatively new to Chicago, the Mexican Mafia was expanding rapidly, in no small part due to its cocaine-smuggling connections. Sandy was dealing cocaine for his uncle,