—DAVID ABRAHAMSEN, CRIMINAL PSYCHIATRIST,QUOTED IN THE San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, 1975 Art’s hopes of becoming a master counterfeiter disappeared with his mentor. He was still a kid, and the discipline, financial resources, and equipment necessary to start his own operation seemed unobtainable. With three printings under his belt, he had a solid understanding of the basics, but he didn’t possess the intuition and experience that separates fiddler from master. Most of all he lacked patience, and as he looked around for new options he saw his friends making faster money the Bridgeport way—by their wits and their balls. Many of the SDs were now dealing drugs, cocaine mostly, while others had gotten deeper into auto theft. Art dabbled in both, but fresh from da Vinci, those crimes didn’t fulfill his sense of craftsmanship or excitement. He had become something of criminal snob, a condition as common to counterfeiters as inky fingers. Art had been spending a lot of time hanging out on Taylor Street—Chicago’s Little Italy.
