The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [80]
Amy did know a few things. She knew that Art and Natalie were the ones who had made the bills, and that they had been doing it for some time. She’d heard stories about hitting malls. But she also knew that Art and Natalie were family, and that there was no way she was going to turn against them.
ART WAS FAR MORE COOPERATIVE. He told the agents outright that he alone had created the bills and that they should let Amy go. “He confessed,” remembers O’Flaherty, who was in the interrogation room at the time. “And he was very arrogant. He told them that they had no idea who they had. He even told them how he had beaten each part of the bill.”
“I figured that was it, I had been caught with the money and it was over,” says Art. “I knew the conviction rate for counterfeiters. You don’t beat the feds. They don’t allow it.”
Unlike their treatment of Amy, the agents let Art talk and talk. He had been dodging them for so many years that the interrogation took on the relieving air of a meeting that both parties had long desired. Who else but the Secret Service could truly appreciate what he had done? Art’s weakness—his desire to be admired—flowered in that windowless room. The agents and O’Flaherty listened raptly while he affably schooled them on just how shortsighted the Treasury Department had been when it designed the New Note. “I thought he was real nice guy, he could charm his way out of anything,” says O’Flaherty. “I told him, ‘With all the right marks you had on your bill, you could have done anything. You could have had your own company.’ ”
Despite his long-windedness, Art’s confession was far from total. He did not tell them what equipment he used, where it was, or the names of any of the other people involved in the manufacturing, distribution, and passing of his bills. He filled the airspace with time-consuming vagaries, and whenever the agents tried to get him to be specific, he smiled and shrugged, indicating—compassionately, almost—that he couldn’t and wasn’t going to help them.
At the same time, he was steadily bargaining. He needed to call Natalie, he told them, so that she’d know what had happened to her sister. By law he was entitled to one phone call, but the agents could postpone it for hours if they wanted. More than anything, the agents wanted an address where they could look for equipment. And late that afternoon they decided to gamble and let him call Natalie most likely in the hopes that they could trace the line and get a location.
“He got ahold of his girlfriend, and said he was in trouble, but couldn’t talk much,” remembers O’Flaherty. “And the Secret Service dropped the ball in letting him make that call.”
Art was on the phone for a minute at most, long enough for the Service to trace the call to a fairly localized area in Marshall, but they still had to determine the address and get a warrant. The call was far more advantageous to Art. He was able to let Natalie know, without saying it, that she needed to destroy every piece of incriminating equipment in the house.
WHY THE SERVICE DIDN’T IMMEDIATELY DISPATCH AGENTS to Marshall is known only to them. An hour later, they decided to release Amy, and were even able to obtain directions to the house; Art wrote them down for her so she could drive the rental car back.
Poor Amy’s ordeal was far from over when she left the station. Even though Art had more than three hundred dollars in genuine currency on him at the time of her arrest, the Service gave her only seventeen—barely enough for gas. Driving through an unfamiliar state with no food or sleep, she missed her exit and wound up in Indiana. After running out of money for tolls, she broke down crying at a gas station, where a sympathetic clerk drew her a map, gave her fourteen dollars and a toll card, then escorted her back to the highway. She got lost again on the back roads of Marshall, where she finally woke up an elderly couple living in a trailer at the end of a dirt road. Seeing her distress, they told her to leave the car till morning and mercifully