Catch Me If You Can

by Frank W. Abagnale

  New York made me nervous. I felt I should head for a foreign clime again, but I couldn’t decide whether to return to Paris and Monique or visit some new and exciting place.

  While I was debating with myself, I flew to Boston, where I got myself flung into jail and robbed a bank. The former was a shock, like an unplanned pregnancy. The latter was the result of an irresistible impulse.

  I went to Boston simply to get out of New York. I thought it would be as good as any place along the eastern seaboard as a point of embarkation, and it also had a lot of banks. On arrival, I stowed my bags in an airport rental locker, put the key in my ID folder and called at several of the banks, exchanging some of my Pan Am check facsimiles for genuine currency. I returned to the airport early in the evening, intending to catch an overseas flight as soon as possible. I had garnered over $5,000 in my felonious foray through Bean Town, and I stowed $4,800 of it in my bags before checking on what foreign flights were available that night.

  I didn’t have a chance to make my inquiries until late that night. Turning away from the locker, I encountered a pretty Allegheny Airlines stewardess from my embryo days as a pilot without portfolio.

  “Frank! What a neat surprise!” she exclaimed. Naturally, we had to have a reunion. I didn’t get back to the airport until after 11 p.m., and by then I’d decided to go to Miami and make an overseas connection from there.

  I walked up to the Allegheny Airlines counter. “When’s your next connecting flight to Miami?” I asked the ticket agent on duty, a man. I had changed into my pilot’s uniform.

  “You just missed it.” He grimaced.

  “Who’s got the next flight, National, American, who?” I inquired.

  “No one,” he said. “You’ve missed any flight to Miami until tomorrow. Nothing flies out of here after midnight. Boston ’s got a noise-control ordinance, now, and no outgoing traffic is allowed after midnight. No airline can put a plane in the air until 6:30 a.m., and the first flight to Miami is National’s at 10:15 a.m.”

  “But it’s only 11:40 now,” I said.

  He grinned. “Okay. You want to go to Burlington, Vermont? That’s the last flight out tonight.”

  All things considered, I declined. I walked over and sat down in one of the lobby chairs, mulling the situation. The lobby, like most large airport vestibules, was ringed with gift shops, newsstands, coffee shops, bars and various other shops, and I noted idly, while cogitating, that most of them were closing. I also noted, suddenly interested, that many of them were stopping at the night depository of a large Boston bank, situated near the middle of one exit corridor, and dropping bags or bulky envelopes-obviously their day’s receipts-into the steel-faced receptacle.

  My observation was interrupted by two chilling words:

  “Frank Abagnale?”

  I looked up, quelling a surge of panic. Two tall, grim-visaged Massachusetts state troopers, in uniform, stood over me.

  “You are Frank Abagnale, aren’t you?” demanded the one in stony tones.

  “My name is Frank, but it’s Frank Williams,” I said, and I was surprised that the calm, unflustered reply had issued from my throat.

  “May I see your identification, please?” asked the one. The words were spoken politely, but his eyes said if I didn’t promptly produce my ID, he was going to pick me up by the ankles and shake it out of my pockets.

  I handed over my ID card and my fraudulent FAA pilot’s license. “Look, I don’t know what this is all about, but you’re badly mistaken,” I said as I tendered the documents. “I fly for Pan American, and these ought to be proof enough.”

  The one studied the ID card and license, then passed them to his partner. “Why don’t you knock off the bullshit, son? You’re Frank Abagnale, aren’t you?” said the second one, almost gently.

  “Frank who?” I protested, feigning anger to cover my increasing nervousness. “I don’t know who the hell you’re after, but it’s not me!”

  The one frowned. “Well, we ain’t gonna stand around here arguing with you,” he growled. “Come on, we’re taking you in.”

  They didn’t ask where my luggage was, and I didn’t volunteer. They took me outside, placed me in their patrol car and drove me directly to the state police offices. There I was ushered into the office of a harried-looking lieutenant, whom I assumed was the shift commander.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded in exasperated tones.

  “Well, we think it’s Frank Abagnale, Lieutenant,” said one of the troopers. “He says he’s a pilot for Pan Am.”

  The lieutenant eyed me. “You don’t look very old to be a pilot,” he said. “Why don’t you tell the truth? You’re Frank Abagnale. We’ve been looking for him for a long time. He’s supposed to be a pilot, too. You fit his description-perfectly.”

  “I’m thirty years old, my name is Frank Williams and I fly for Pan Am, and I want to talk to my lawyer,” I shouted.

  The lieutenant sighed. “You ain’t been charged with nothin‘ yet,” he said. “Take him over to the city jail, book him for vagrancy and then let him call a lawyer. And call the feds. He’s their pigeon. Let them straighten it out.”

  “Vagrancy!” I protested. “I’m no vagrant. I’ve got nearly $200 on me.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Yeah, but you ain’t proved you’re gainfully employed,” he said wearily. “Get ‘im out of here.”

  I was taken to the county jail in downtown Boston, which had all the appearances of a facility that should have long ago been condemned, and had been, and I was turned over to the booking sergeant.

  “Damn me, what did he do?” he queried, looking at me.

  “Just book him for vagrancy. Someone will pick him up in the morning,” said the one trooper.

  “Vagrant!” bellowed the sergeant. “By damn, if he’s a vagrant, I hope you guys never bring in any bums.”

  “Just book him,” grunted the one trooper, and he and his partner left.

  “Empty your pockets, lad,” the sergeant said gruffly, pulling a form in triplicate from a drawer. “I’ll give you a receipt for your goods.”

  I started placing my valuables before him. “Listen, can I keep my ID card and pilot’s license?” I asked. “Company regulations say I have to have them on me at all times. I’m not sure if being arrested is included, but I’d still like to keep them, if you don’t mind.”

  The sergeant examined the card and the license and pushed them toward me. “Sure,” he said kindly. “I’d say there’s been some kind of mix-up here, lad. I’m glad I’m not involved.”

  A jailer took me upstairs and placed me in a dingy, rusty cell adjoining the drunk tank. “If you need anything, just holler,” he said sympathetically.

  I nodded, not replying, and slumped on the cot. I was suddenly depressed, miserable and scared. The game was over, I had to admit. The FBI would pick me up in the morning, I knew, and then it would be just one courtroom after another, I figured. I looked around the jail cell and hoped that prison cells were more tenable. Jesus, this was a rat hole. And I didn’t have a prayer of getting out. But then no man has a prayer, I thought regretfully, when he worships a hustler’s god.

  Even a hustler’s god, however, has a legion of angels. And one appeared to me now, preceded by a thin, wavering whistle, like a kid bolstering his courage in a graveyard. He hauled up in front of my cell, an apparition in a hideous, green-checked suit topped by a face that might have come out of a lobster pot, questioning lips punctuated by an odorous cigar and eyes that regarded me as a weasel might look on a mouse.

  “Well, now, what the hell might you be doing in there?” he asked around the cigar.

  I didn’t know who he was. He didn’t look like anyone who could help me. “Vagrancy,” I said shortly.

  “Vagrancy!” he exclaimed, examining me with his shrewd eyes. “You’re a pilot with Pan Am, aren’t you? How the hell can you be a vagrant? Did somebody steal all your planes?”

  “Who’re you?” I asked.

 
He fished in his pocket and thrust a card through the bars. “Aloyius James ‘Bailout’ Bailey, my high-flying friend,” he said. “Bail bondsman par excellence. The cops bring ‘em, I spring ’em. You’re on their turf, now, pal. I can put you on mine. The street.”

  Hope didn’t exactly spring eternal in my breast, but it crow-hopped.

  “Well, I’ll tell you the truth,” I said cautiously. “There was this guy at the airport. He was getting pretty obnoxious with a girl. I racked his ass. They ran us both in for fighting. I should’ve stayed out of it. I’ll probably lose my job when the skipper finds out I’m in jail.”

  He stared at me, unbelieving. “What the hell you sayin‘? You ain’t got nobody to bail you out? Call one of your friends, for Chris’ sakes.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t have any friends here. I flew in on a charter cargo job. I’m based in Los Angeles.”

  “What about the rest of your crew?” he demanded. “Call one of them.”

  “They went on to Istanbul,” I lied. “I got time off due me. I was going to deadhead to Miami to see a chick.”

  “Well, goddamned! You have got your ass in a crack, haven’t you?” said Aloyius James “Bailout” Bailey. Then he smiled, and his features suddenly took on the charm of a jolly leprechaun. “Well, my fighter-pilot chum, let’s see if we can’t get your butt out of this Boston bastille.”

  He disappeared and was gone for an agonizing length of time, all of ten minutes. Then he hove to in front of my cell again. “Goddamn, your bond is $5,000,” he said in a surprised tone. “Sarge says you must have given the troopers a hard time. How much money you got?”

  My hopes came to a standstill again. “Just $200, maybe not that much,” I sighed.

  He mulled the reply; his eyes narrowed. “You got any identification?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, passing my ID and pilot’s license through the bars. “You can see how long I’ve been a pilot, and I’ve been with Pan Am seven years.”

  He handed back the documents. “You got a personal check?” he asked abruptly.

  “Yeah, that is, the sergeant downstairs has it,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because I’m gonna take your check, that’s why, Jet Jockey,” he said with a grin. “You can write it out when the sarge lets you loose.”

  The sarge let me loose thirty-five minutes later. I wrote Bailey a check for the standard 10 percent, $500, and handed him a hundred in cash. “That’s a bonus, in lieu of a kiss,” I said, laughing with joy. “I’d give you the kiss except for that damned cigar!”

  He drove me to the airport after I told him I was taking the first flight to Miami.

  This is what happened later. I have it on unimpeachable sources, as the White House reporters are fond of saying. An ecstatic O’Riley, high enough with joy to require a pilot’s license himself, showed up at the jail. “Abagnale, or whatever the hell name you’ve got him booked under, trot him out,” he chortled.

  “He made bond at three-thirty this morning,” volunteered a jailer. The sergeant had gone home.

  O’Riley flirted with apoplexy. “Bond! Bond! Who the hell bonded him out?” he finally shrieked in strangled tones.

  “Bailey, ‘Bailout’ Bailey, who else?” replied the jailer.

  O’Riley wrathfully sought out Bailey. “Did you post bond for a Frank Wiliams this morning? he demanded.

  Bailey looked at him, astonishd. “The pilot? Sure, I went his bail. Why the hell not?”

  “How’d he pay you? How much?” O’Riley grated.

  “Why, the regular amount, $500. I’ve got his check right here,” said Bailey, offering the voucher.

  O’Riley looked at the check and then dropped it on Bailey’s desk. “Serves your ass right,” he growled, and turned toward the door.

  “What do you mean?” Bailey demanded as the FBI agent grasped the door handle.

  O’Riley grinned wickedly. “Run it through your bank account, turd, and you’ll find out what I mean.”

  Outside, a Massachusetts detective turned to O’Riley. “We can get out an APB on him.”

  O’Riley shook his head. “Forget it. That bastard’s five hundred miles away. No Boston cop’s gonna catch him.”

  A prudent man would have been five hundred miles away. I wasn’t prudent. When you’re hot, you’re hot, and I had the cajones of a billy goat.

  No sooner had Bailey dropped me at the airport, and was gone, than I grabbed a cab and checked in at a nearby motel.

  The next morning I called the bank that had a branch at the airport. “Security, please,” I said when the switchboard operator answered.

  “Security.”

  “Yeah, listen, this is Connors, the new guard. I don’t have a uniform for tonight’s shift. My damned uniform got ripped up in an accident. Where can I get a replacement, lady?” I spoke in outrage.

  “Well, we get our uniforms from Beke Brothers,” the woman replied in mollifying tones. “Just go down there, Mr. Connors. They’ll outfit you with a replacement.”

  I looked up the address of Beke Brothers. I also had my fingers do some walking through other sections of the Yellow Pages.

  I went first to Beke Brothers. No one questioned my status. Within fifteen minutes I walked out with a complete guard’s outfit: shirt, tie, trousers and hat, the name of the bank emblazoned over the breast pocket and on the right shoulder of the shirt. I stopped at a police-supply firm and picked up a Sam Browne belt and holster. I called at a gun shop and picked up a replica of a.38 police special.

  It was harmless, but only an idiot would have ignored it were it pointed at him. I then rented a station wagon, and when I left my motel each door sported a sign proclaiming

  “SECURITY-BEAN STATE NATIONAL BANK.”

  At 11:15 p.m. I was standing at attention in front of the night-deposit box of the Bean State National Bank Airport Branch, and a beautifully lettered sign adorned the safe’s depository: “night deposit vault out of order, please

  MAKE DEPOSITS WITH SECURITY OFFICER.“

  There was an upright dolly, with a large mail-type bag bulking open, in front of the depository.

  At least thirty-five people dropped bags or envelopes into the container.

  Not one of them said more than “Good evening” or “Good night.”

  When the last shop had closed, I secured the top of the canvas bag and began hauling the loot to the station wagon. I became stuck trying to get the dolly over the weather strip of the exit door. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the damned thing across the little ridge. It was just too heavy.

  “What’s going on, buddy?”

  I twisted my head and nearly soiled my drawers. They weren’t the same ones, but a pair of state troopers was standing less than five feet away.

  “Well, the box is out of order, and the truck broke down, and I’ve got the bank’s station wagon out here and no goddamned hydraulic pulley, and I ain’t exactly Samson,” I said, grinning sheepishly.

  The older one, a ruddy-faced redhead, laughed. “Well, hell, let us help you with it,” he said, and stepped forward and grabbed the handle of the dolly. With three of us tugging, it came over the ridge easily. They helped me drag the dolly to the station wagon and assisted me in lifting the bulky, cumbersome cargo into the back of the vehicle. I slammed shut the tailgate and turned to the officers.

  “I appreciate it, boys,” I said, smiling. “I’d spring for the coffee, but I’ve got to get this little fortune to the bank.”

  They laughed and one lifted a hand. “Hey, no sweat. Next time, okay?”

  Less than an hour later, I had the booty in my motel room and was sorting out the cash. Bills only. I tossed the change, credit-card receipts and checks into the bathtub.

  I netted $62,800 in currency. I changed into a casual suit, wrapped the haul in a spare shirt and drove to the airport, where I retrieved my bags. An hour later I was on a flight to Miami. I had a thirty-minute layover in New York. I used the time to call the manager of the airport in Boston. I d
idn’t get him but I got his secretary.

  “Listen, tell the Bean State Bank people they can get the majority of the loot from last night’s depository caper in the bathtub of Room 208, Rest Haven Motel,” I said and hung up.

  The next day I winged out of Miami, bound for Istanbul.

  I had an hour’s layover in Tel Aviv.

  I used it upholding my code of honor. In my entire career, I never yenched a square John as an individual.

  I sought out a branch of an American bank. And laid a sheaf of bills on the counter before a teller.

  “I want a $5,000 cashier’s check,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. And your name?”

  “Frank Abagnale, Jr.,” I said.

  “All right, Mr. Abagnale. Do you want this check made out to you?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Make it payable to Aloyius James ‘Bailout’ Bailey, in Boston, Massachusetts.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT. A Small Crew Will Do- It’s Just a Paper Airplane

  An entourage is expected of some people. The President. Queen Elizabeth. Frank Sinatra. Muhammad Ali. Arnold Palmer. Most celebrities, in fact.

  And airline pilots.

  “Where’s your crew, sir?” asked the desk clerk in the Istanbul hotel. It was a question I’d encountered before.

  “I don’t have a crew with me,” I replied. “I just flew in to replace a pilot who became ill.” It was my standard answer to such queries, which were much more numerous in Europe and the Middle East than in the United States. Continental hotels, obviously, were more accustomed to catering to entire air crews. A lone pilot aroused curiosity.

  And curiosity breeds suspicion.

  I needed a crew, I mused that evening while dining in a Turkish restaurant. I had doffed my uniform. Save on special occasions, I now wore it only when checking in and checking out of a hotel, passing a check or cadging a free ride.

  The matter of a crew had entered my mind before. In fact, it entered my mind each time I saw a command pilot surrounded by his crew. His status was not only more believable than mine, but he also always seemed to be having much more fun than I. Stews, I had noticed, tended to act as handmaidens to the pilots. My life as a bogus birdman, on the other hand, was essentially a lonely existence. But then a man on the run is usually a forlorn figure. It’s hard to play the social lion when you’re moving like a scalded cat. My dalliances, by and large, had all the permanency of rabbits’ relationships and about the same degree of satisfaction.