The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [59]
“We pulled into this apartment complex, and these Mexicans were on their shit,” he remembers. “They had walkie-talkies, ear-pieces, and all that stuff. We walk into the apartment, and there’s two Mexicans in the apartment. One’s sitting in the living room and one’s in the kitchen. I follow Ritchie in, and the guy in the kitchen immediately gives me the eye. He looked crazy to me, a serious gangbanger.”
“Who’s this vato?” the dealer asked Ritchie, pointing to Art. After Ritchie explained that Art was on the level, the dealer nodded and they sat down at the kitchen table and got down to business. Ritchie told the dealer that he wanted an eighth of a key, about seven thousand dollars’ worth, then dumped the money from a bag onto the table. Half of it was counterfeit.
At first the dealer seemed unfazed. He got on the walkie-talkie and ordered his associates, who were at another location, to bring in the drugs. At least that’s what Art assumed, since the conversation was in Spanish. As they waited for the delivery, the dealer counted the money, his fingers moving ever more slowly through the stacks.
“You know, the last time you came here you gave me some bad money,” the dealer said. “I go to the store, and they mark it with the pen, and it don’t come back. What was that all about?”
Art’s heart began to pound. He could tell by the dealer’s eyes that he was fully aware that Ritchie was attempting to salt the money again.
“You’re kidding me,” Ritchie said, playing dumb.
“No, I’m not, vato,” the dealer said calmly. “I bought a pen myself and found a whole bunch of them.”
There was little doubt in Art’s mind where this was heading. “This dealer was crazy, and he had his shit together,” he says. “I knew that whoever was on the other end of that walkie-talkie wasn’t bringing in no drugs. They were gonna come in and trap us in there. They were about to put bullets in us.”
Art was sitting with his back to the door. He leaned his chair away from the table, listening for footsteps. The Mexican in the living room, he noticed, had his eye on the door as well, and once the bagman arrived their only exit would be blocked.
As soon as the door opened and the new arrival entered, Art leapt out of his chair, slammed the bagman to the side, then bolted out of the apartment. Remembering his Chicago street rules, he had parked Natalie’s car on the main road just outside the apartment complex, far enough away so he wouldn’t be trapped on the lot. He sped off and left Ritchie to his fate, later learning that the dealer survived the wrath of the Mexicans by blaming the counterfeit solely on Art.
The incident’s lesson was loud and clear: “Right at that point I knew I had to step it up a notch,” says Art. “I couldn’t go with the old money that didn’t mark properly. It had to change.”
Art had already done plenty of research on the pen. He knew that because it reacted to the acidic starch contained in the newsprint, there were only two ways to beat it: either prevent the reaction from taking place by means of a chemical blocker, or find a new, acid-free paper to print on. He decided to pursue both options; while he searched for a substance that would block the pen, Natalie engaged in a phone campaign, calling as many national paper manufacturers as she could find and having samples sent to a P.O. box.
For all of the popularity and faith people put in the pen, Art was surprised by how fast they got results. After visiting several art- and printing-supply stores, he found numerous solutions that moderated the pen’s effect—various gelatins, acid-free glosses, and even hair spray prevented the ink from turning dark brown. At one point, just out of curiosity, he even treated some newsprint with glutamine gel—a fitness supplement he used for bodybuilding—and found that it turned the Dri Mark ink amber. While neither it nor the other treatments produced the bright, affirming yellow of real currency, the important