The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [74]
And so after three months on the road, they began backtracking. As promised, after Los Angeles Art drove them back to Mount Shasta, where they stayed for another week as he picked at the bones of his old happiness, but the past held less meat for him than the future. He still wanted to pursue his dream of land and a quiet life, but he was convinced that to achieve it he needed to return to the crucible that had always nurtured his life as a counterfeiter. Rather than staying in Mount Shasta and spawning, he steered them back to Chicago, the city in which, for him, pitfalls and possibilities are always indistinguishable.
SAILING ALONG ON THEIR CURRENTS OF COUNTERFEIT, Art and Natalie had been entirely oblivious to events transpiring back in Chicago. Just as Art had feared, during his absence Ron Jarrett’s murder had led to a massive FBI investigation in Bridgeport, code-named Operation Vendetta II. By wiretapping a known Outfit member and Jarrett associate, the Bureau learned of Jarrett’s cocaine smuggling operation—and the name Tim Frandelo. It had also uncovered that Frandelo was supplying many of Art’s former friends in the Satan’s Disciples with the drug, and that the SDs were dealing large amounts of cocaine out of the projects. In late October, Frandelo and fourteen other suspects would be swept up in a sting for trafficking in cocaine. Art’s name never came up as a Frandelo associate, and in that regard his plan to flee the city worked. But it came at a cost.
He had ceased communication with his family during his absence, just at the time that Wensdae had needed him most. Right before Art left the city, her five-year relationship with the Greek dentist had come to a bitter end. She had moved into a new apartment on Sawyer Avenue, and for the first time in her life she was completely alone. Stoked by the recent loss, the depression, pain, and panic that had haunted her for as long as she could remember reignited with unprecedented ferocity. On the evening of May 15, 2000, she was alone in the apartment, dousing the flames with a fifth of Bacardi, when she decided to end her pain permanently.
Her new apartment was on the fourth floor, with a window overlooking an alley. That evening she opened window, then lay on the ledge on her stomach, testing the waters of her own death. She had flirted with suicide-by-fall many times before and had always pulled back, but this time she went deeper. She grabbed the ledge tightly, then slid off until she was hanging by her fingers. Then she let go.
She remembers very little about the fall, but two police officers on their dinner break at a White Castle fifty yards away saw her just as she dropped. According to the report they later filed, Wensdae plummeted down the wall, grazing it on the way down, then crashed feet-first into the cement below. As the officers radioed for a paramedic, they were stunned to see Wensdae stand up in the alley as if the impact hadn’t even fazed her, then walk around the corner toward the building’s main entrance. They ran after her, but her location wasn’t clear to them until a few minutes later, when they spotted her at the same window, climbing out a second time.
They couldn’t believe their eyes. She had somehow hobbled back to her apartment. Once again Wensdae crawled out on the ledge and dangled by her fingers, but now she decided she wanted to live. She screamed for help. One of the officers ran into the building, but just before he reached her, she lost her grip. Miraculously, a series of power lines running parallel to the building broke her second fall; she hit the wires, then spun forward, again landing on her feet, but this time she lost consciousness. The last thing she remembered was hearing one of the police officers yell to the other, “She jumped again.”
Wensdae awoke two weeks later in a bed at Mercy Hospital. Both her ankles were completely shattered