The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [44]
Despite such praise, Art is dismissive about the counterfeit he made during his Dungeon days. “It was caveman stuff,” he says. “Compared to what came later, I don’t even like to think about it.” But his cohorts have a different opinion.
Chris Sophocleus, a Greek social-club owner who was a close friend of Art’s, had so much faith in the “Dungeon dollars” that he put them to the ultimate test one night when Chicago PD and the FBI raided his club. Art was in the club at the time, and carrying about five thousand dollars in counterfeit—bills that would surely be scrutinized once the officers and agents began searching patrons.
“Give me whatever you’re holding,” Chris whispered to him. “I can mix it into the cash box.”
Art quickly passed Chris the bill roll, and a few minutes later both he and Chris watched as an FBI agent proceeded to count out the contents of the box, including Art’s five grand, on the hood of a CPD cruiser.
The agent gave every single bill back to Chris.
AS HIS OPERATION FELL INTO PLACE, for the first time in his life Art had more money than he knew what to do with. Having been raised with a scarcity of dollars, he might have taken a conservative approach to spending, but the knowledge that he could always make more overrode any parsimonious instincts. His outlook, certainly not uncommon to criminals, was purely feast or famine, almost as if the money would expire if he didn’t spend it first. “We’d do a deal and Art’d have five thousand dollars in his pocket,” remembers Pepitone. “We’d hit a bar and he’d go in there and the first thing he’d do was buy everyone a round, the whole bar. Then he’d just spend and spend. By Monday morning he’d be asking me if he could borrow twenty bucks.”
“No one could spend money like me,” Art proudly admits. “If I had it, I spent it. I was stupid, because if I had invested the money I made I’d never have to work again. But that’s the criminal attitude: You live from one crime to another.” Art wielded his cash the Bridgeport way: He carried a fat roll in his right front pocket, small notes shelling the large so no one could see how much he had. Wallets were for squares, people who didn’t understand that the best way to get anything done was to whip out that wad at a moment’s notice, crack out a C-note, then get the roll back in your pocket and next to your cock as fast as possible. All day long the roll came out; for groceries, smokes, cocaine, alcohol, oversized tips, strippers, new clothes, bets, valet parking.
Art’s favorite exuberance was to rent limousines for a night out with friends. For this, he’d call a driver in his sixties who went by the name “Mr. U.” Despite or perhaps because of his age, Mr. U. loved nothing more than taking the kids for a night out. He’d drive with the partition window down so he could be one of the boys, breaking balls and telling stories about his own days as an outlaw. “He was Irish mob straight to the core: red in the face with only two fingers on his left hand. People said he got the other two shot off doing something back in his younger days.” A typical night would start out with Mr. U. meeting Art, Mikey, and Giorgi on Taylor Street, then they’d pick up a few more friends and head for a steak dinner at Gibson’s or the Chop House. After that, they’d hit the bars and clubs. If Art was feeling particularly elated over a deal, or if he was just plain drunk and happy, he’d pony up the bar round. “People would freak out because that’s something you only see in movies. You drop a grand in one shot. But the best thing about it is that the women see shit like that and they just swarm in.”
The vast majority of money Art