Read Online The Art of Making Money by Jason Kersten - Free Book Online

beautiful, six-foot-long AB Dick. After that came an industrial paper cutter.
    “It was a perfectly kept setup,” remembers Art. “Everything was in order, each machine placed right where it should be in the overall process. You could work clockwise through the room, and by the time you came to the end you would have a finished, printed product.”
    Da Vinci remained silent as Art walked around and inspected the shop, giving him some time to figure out the situation for himself. At first glance, it struck Art as a completely normal, “camera ready” print shop, the kind neighborhood printers used to make flyers, posters, and pamphlets for local businesses. But if that was the case, then why all the secrecy? The first odd detail that caught Art’s eye was a steel cabinet filled with ink canisters. Aside from a few yellows and reds, the vast majority of the cans were forest green, charcoal black, and white. Even sitting on the shelves, the colors brought to mind only one image. When he saw a shrink-wrapping machine sitting at the very end of the print line, he moved from suspicion to conviction. He could picture the small rectangles coming off the cutter, then being wrapped into neat little bricks of plastic, ready for sale .
    “Is this what I think it is?” Art gasped.
    Pete answered with a simple, “Yeah.”
    “You’re a counterfeiter .”
    Art had barely ever used the word. He immediately recalled an encounter he’d had about a year earlier, when he’d been taken to the precinct house for questioning after a street battle with some Latin Kings. Waiting with him in the holding cell was a kid in his late teens who told him he’d been picked up for “copying.” He was dressed in a suit, and he was wired up and smiling like he’d just won the lottery. He explained to Art that while working as a janitor at the Sears Tower, he had seen a cutting-edge color copier in one of the offices and snuck in after hours to run off dozens of twenty-dollar bills. He’d spent the next two days on a wild spending binge, buying clothes, expensive meals, and drugs, until a suspicious cashier at a shoe store ran an eraser across one of his bills and the ink blurred. She called the police, who picked him up running down the street with a pocketful of bills. The kid had had so much fun that he was planning to print more bills as soon as he got out of jail, and Art had always wondered what became of him. The idea that people could print their own money astonished him, and it struck him as the ultimate crime.
    Da Vinci was obviously way beyond amateurish larking with color copiers. Based on his equipment alone, Art could tell that Pete was a professional, a far higher grade of criminal than anyone he had ever met. All this time, his mother had been dating a man who held the keys to his own bank.
    “Come over here and sit down, Arty,” da Vinci beckoned. Art joined him at some chairs he had set up near the light table. He could not believe what was happening. Were they going to print money right now ?
    “This has been in my family for a long time,” da Vinci began. His tone was serious, but not threatening. “I learned it from my father when I was young, right about your age. He learned from his uncle. The man who taught my great-uncle was not a relative, and I don’t know much about him. I know that he was from Italy, and somebody certainly taught him. It probably goes back hundreds of years. If you’re interested, I’m willing to teach you. It’s safer than stealing cars and there’s more money in it, but it’s also harder. It’s also a federal crime, and if you’re stupid enough to get caught, odds are you’ll be convicted. You won’t get out in a month like you did yesterday. You’ll do years, up to twelve for just your first offense. Are you interested?”
    “Yes.”
    “All right, but there are some rules,” da Vinci continued, and began a list that would grow longer than Art ever imagined.
    The first rule was