The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [97]
“It’s going to be risky and it’s going to be expensive, because these items are heavy and shipping them will cost a small fortune,” he told his father. He was half hoping his dad would call it off.
“Then let’s go, just you and me.” Senior shrugged. “Why don’t we hit the road? We’ll fly down to Seattle, rent a car, and drive to Chicago and get whatever you need. We can have some fun spending money along the way.”
A spending trip with his old man. The thought had never occurred to Art, but it had the ring of destiny. Suddenly the journey went from being a fretted chore to an adventure. Just the two of them on the road, freebooting across the country and slamming hard along the way. “I remember thinking, ‘Me and Pops are gonna do it. Not Anice, not Natalie, not anybody—just us.’ ” He could already picture them laughing over the memories years later.
“Are you serious?” Art asked him.
“Sure I am. Don’t you think it’d be fun?”
“I do,” said Art. “You crack me up. You’re starting to sound like me.”
Natalie, having given birth only two weeks earlier, was less thrilled with the idea. The prospect of Art taking off on a spending trip made her worry that he’d get arrested and never return. Since she’d agreed to resume counterfeiting, however, she had little choice but to admit that the only way it could happen was if they obtained new equipment. Before they left, Art made sure to give her a project: While he was away with Senior, she’d be working on the computer, polishing up scans of the new fifty-dollar note. Although it was unusual for him to print fifties, he and his father would be dropping so many hundreds over the next few weeks that he didn’t want to risk printing any more upon their return to Alaska. He wanted a new bill ready to go, something different, something that would allow him to embark on a new life with his dad without rousing the authorities.
13
FAMILY BONDING
It is simply impossible to convict counterfeiters, as a rule, without the aid of their confederates. The lesser criminals in this secretly conducted business can alone obtain the confidence of the greater villains.
—GEORGE PICKERING BURNHAM
They flew to Seattle, where they rented a white Crown Victoria, a model that satisfied Art’s requirement of looking as much like a cop as possible while committing crimes. As they pulled out of Sea-Tac Airport, Senior turned and gave him a devilish grin.
“You ready to do this?” he said.
“Hell, yeah.”
Within an hour they were hammering gas stations along Interstate 90 East. Art had always avoided spending counterfeit at gas stations because they bristle with security cameras, but three decades of nine-dollar change-raising scams had given Senior a tactician’s knowledge of how to avoid being taped. They’d cruise down the highway, wait until they spotted a forest of signage ahead, then swoop in from the off-ramps. They’d circle a station once to get a feel for its layout, then park away from the pumps, where the cameras are usually aimed. Art junior would then enter and buy a pack of cigarettes and a soda. They’d usually be gone in less than a minute. “It was cigarettes and pop all day long,” Art remembers, “and every time we’d get back ninety-two dollars in change. Sometimes there’d be four gas stations on one intersection, and we’d knock them all—bing, bing, bing, bing. At the end of that first day we counted out about $4,200 in a hotel room just across the state line in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. We just started laughing because we’d never seen so many gas stations.”
Based on their change returns, they calculated they’d hit roughly forty-five stations in just over three hundred miles—about one station for every seven miles of road. The closest call they encountered turned out to be right there at the hotel in Coeur D’Alene. Later that evening, Art ventured down to the lobby