The Art of Making Money (34 page)

“That’s cool, whatever,” Art said, and started running again, perplexed and at the same time painfully cognizant that, after all those years of successfully hiding his operations from the Outfit, they’d finally discovered him in federal prison.

Art was heading out to the rec yard when Bombacino approached him again two weeks later.

“Hey, Arty. We just wanted to let you know that you’re a good kid,” he said. “You never said anything about anybody. We’d like you to come to breakfast tomorrow, if you don’t mind. We’d just like to catch up on the neighborhood.”

Now Art was truly mystified. Who was the “we”? And for a bunch of guys who didn’t get much news from the neighborhood, they had tapped into the lowdown on him pretty fast. Art wondered whom they’d contacted. Giorgi? The Chinese? He’d never know.

The next morning at breakfast he brought his tray up to a table occupied by three old men. There was an empty seat just for him. Before he sat down, Louie introduced him to the two other men: Bobby Ferrare and Jerry Scalise. Art was awed. He had heard both of their names before. Ferrare was a well-known boss from Kansas City who was doing time for a vending-machine scam, while Scalise was nothing less than a legend. A longtime thief for the Outfit, in 1980 he and a cohort named Arthur “The Genius” Rachel had robbed a London jewelry store of more than $1.5 million in gems, including the famed Marlborough Diamond—a forty-five-carat stone once owned by Winston Churchill’s cousin. Although Scalise was later convicted of the heist, authorities never recovered the diamond, and rumors were that he had buried it on his property in DuPage County. Scalise also had a famous nickname—Wither-hand—due to the fact that he was missing four fingers on his left hand. Having already done his time in the UK for the jewelry heist, he was now serving a nine-year sentence for participating in a drug-running ring.

“I sat down, and we just started talking about the neighborhood,” remembers Art. “They’re asking me things like ‘What changed here?’ et cetera. And then the awe kind of fell off me, and I just started listening to them tell stories about the old days, about how when they’d steal shit everyone in the whole neighborhood would be wearing Armani suits or something. I’d get a real kick out of it.” Art became a regular at their table, and along with reading, that’s how he clocked his time at Waseca—hanging out with four old crooks and listening to stories of the glory days. Every once in a while Scalise would grill him for the details of his counterfeiting formula, and Art would just smile and give his patented answer: “I’ll tell you how I counterfeited the Note if you tell me where you hid the Marlborough Diamond.”

And so the months dripped by, bracketed by books, breakfasts, and a little piece of Bridgeport in the pen.

 

 

 

SENIOR WOUND UP at the FCI in Sheridan, Oregon, a combination medium- and minimum-security camp about ninety miles south of Portland. Counting Leavenworth, this was his second stint in federal prison. Almost as soon as he arrived, he and Art began writing each other on a regular basis. Sadly, none of their letters survive, but Art remembers many of the words he and his dad exchanged, at least the parts that mattered most to him.

“We did pretty much forgive each other,” he says. “Both of us recognized that the way we made contact again was destructive. He blamed himself for not being a good father, I blamed myself for exposing him to my lifestyle. We both made huge mistakes. But the important thing about those letters was that they were full of love. Yeah, it had come at a huge price, really too much, but we did start to have a relationship again. We talked about picking up where we left off once we were both out. He wanted to see me. He told me that he didn’t want anything to come between us again.”

Chrissy, who visited Senior once at Sheridan and spoke to him on the phone frequently, echoes that sentiment. “He held absolutely nothing against Art for what had happened. He loved Art. His only regrets were for the choices he made. He accepted responsibility for his own actions.”

Wensdae saved every letter Senior wrote her from prison. They are among the most valuable pieces of paper and ink she owns, and in many of them he evinces a desire to become the father he never was:

Wensdae mailed him pictures, and Senior indeed sent a letter to Jason. According to Wensdae, the pair’s correspondence was minimal. By the time he and his father connected, Jason had spent most of his twenty-four years in institutions and become more a child of the state than a son of Senior’s.

COMPARED WITH HIS EARLIER PRISON STINT IN TEXAS, Art’s time at Waseca flew by. He had already been credited with about six months of time served before he arrived, and with good behavior he was eligible to spend the last six months of his sentence at a halfway house in Chicago. And so less than a year and a half after he entered Waseca, he was walking toward the main gate, on his way back into the world.

Jerry Scalise and the rest of Art’s breakfast crew, along with a few other friends, lined up near the exit to see him off. As each man hugged him good-bye, one of the men (he won’t say who) handed him a letter for someone on the outside. “He told me not to read it and asked that I hand-deliver it,” laughs Art. “I remember being scared, thinking ‘What the fuck am I doing? I’ve gotta be out of my mind to take a letter from the mob and give it to someone. On the day I’m leaving, I’m already fucking up!’ ”

Natalie’s probation requirements prevented her from leaving Texas, so she couldn’t be there for Art’s release. But he didn’t reenter the world alone. Waiting out front to give him a ride to the halfway house was his first love, Karen Magers, and Little Art, who was now thirteen years old. Art jumped for joy and hugged both of them wildly, reveling in his first minutes of freedom. It was a strange scene. Two years earlier, after years of putting off her dream while she raised her son, Karen had completed her academy training and become a full-fledged CPD patrolwoman. Because she was about to go on shift, she’d shown up in full uniform and driving a police cruiser.

“If you two want to sit together, you’ll have to sit in back,” she told Art with a smile.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, picking up the bait. “I’m not out of prison five minutes and I’m already in the back of a cop car. That figures.”

The halfway house Art was assigned to was in downtown Chicago. He had his own room, and was free to leave during the day, provided that it was for work and that he was back by the seven P.M. curfew. The provisions of his release required him to meet with his parole officer and undergo drug testing once a week. Any violation of the rules could be grounds for returning to prison, or an extension of his probation. He was also forbidden to be employed at any job that placed him in the proximity of “credit, credit cards, or negotiable instruments”—a condition that he would soon learn could be interpreted by his parole officer however she saw fit.

Art landed his first job within two days, working at a real estate brokerage run by his old friend, Mikey Pepitone. Mikey had gone legit while Art had been in prison, and when he heard that Art needed work he convinced his boss to hire him, swearing by his smarts. It was clerical work, filing and letters mostly, but knowing how quickly Art picked things up Mikey thought there was also the possibility that he could be selling houses himself within a year.

“Are there bank-account numbers on these papers you file?” Art’s PO asked him on their first meeting, three days after he started.

“I guess so, probably,” Art told her.

She insisted that he quit immediately. Shocked, Art explained that if he was going to commit a crime, it wouldn’t be at the place where his best friend had vouched for him and it wouldn’t be something so moronically traceable. He also reminded her that he had printed millions in counterfeit over the years, and that it wouldn’t be logical for him to steal somebody else’s money when he could just as easily print his own. But she wouldn’t budge. The next job he took, waiting tables at a restaurant, needless to say had far less of a future than real estate. Even though he knew it required him to work a cash register and take credit cards, he took it anyway, thinking that such a dead-end job had to fall beneath the radar of even the most obtuse PO. When he reported for his usual Thursday check-in, she not only forced him to quit that job, too, but threatened to send him back to Waseca. The week after that, he made sure to show up with an airtight position: A friend of his had offered him a gig installing cigarette display cases in gas stations. It paid well, and the closest he’d get to a “negotiable instrument” would be to the pennies in the change dish. She refused to let him take it on the grounds that it would occasionally require him to leave the state.

From that moment on Art was convinced that his PO didn’t understand him, had no interest in helping him, and was possibly even taking pleasure in dashing his hopes. The one job she finally allowed him to take was working at a boatyard run by an old friend of his aunt Donna. It was boring, menial labor for minimum wage, and until he had fulfilled his probation requirements, he was stuck.

Despite the setbacks, Art tried to look forward to the day when he could leave the halfway house and start fresh. The closer that day drew near, the more he thought about using his expanded freedom to rectify some of the mistakes he had made with his father. Three days before he was released, he received a letter from Senior, who had been counting the days before his son was finally free. He was excited for Art, and wanted to know if it would be possible for him to come visit him at the FCI in Sheridan in the near future. Art quickly wrote his dad, explaining that he wanted nothing more than to do exactly that. It would require some paperwork and wrangling with his parole officer, but Art was determined to see his father as soon as possible. “We’d wasted too much time,” says Art. “Along with seeing my kids, seeing my dad was one of my main plans when I got out. He was back in my life and I wanted to keep him there.”

 

NO SPECIAL FAREWELLS AWAITED ART the morning he left the halfway house. The setting’s transient nature discouraged close friendships, and he’d had little interest in socializing. He simply packed up his bags, signed a few papers, and walked out the front door. It was February 25, 2004, a date he’d anticipated so much over the last few months that he’d awoken that morning charged up like a kid on Christmas.

He had the day planned down to the hour. Wendz would pick him up out front and take him to see his old limo driver friend, Mr. U., who had arranged for Art to borrow a black Crown Vic free of charge for the next month. Once he had his own wheels, he’d drive over to Wensdae’s, relax, and call some friends. Then he’d pick his son up from school and spend a couple hours knocking around the city. His celebratory plan for the evening was to drive up to Lincoln Park, where one of his old friends from Bridgeport, Ned Cunningham, was starting up a Mediterranean restaurant. The launch party was that night, and Art couldn’t think of a better culmination to his first day of freedom than a restaurant full of merrymakers and good food.

Art had just picked up the car and was driving down Twenty-fourth Street, on his way to Wendz’s, when his cell phone rang. Checking the number, he was happily surprised to see that it was Chrissy calling from Alaska. They had written each other frequently over the past two years, and he was impressed that she had recalled the exact day that his freedom was final.

“I’m free! You remembered!” he answered cheerily, expecting to hear congratulatory whoops on the other end. Instead, it sounded like she was crying.

“Arty, I’ve got some bad news,” she stammered. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Just go ahead and tell me,” he replied. “I’m free, nothing can bring me down today.” By now he was convinced that she was playing a joke on him.

Chrissy began speaking again, and as she fought to deliver the words with precision it dawned on him that she was not playing a joke. She explained that earlier that morning she had received a phone call from the warden at FCI Sheridan. That morning, Senior’s cell mate had been unable to wake him for the first count. Medics had rushed to the cell, and it was later determined that he had suffered a massive coronary attack. He had passed away in his bunk.