Catch Me If You Can

by Frank W. Abagnale

  He called the first time bearing two bottles of wine, one red and one white. “Most of our wines do not suit American palates,” he said in his booming, yet gentle, voice. “But there are a few good wines in the Languedoc, and these two are among them.”

  I am not a tastevin, but having drunk of the good wines I determined never to sample the others. But the people of Montpellier drank more wine than any other liquid. A lunch or dinner was not served without wine. I have even seen wine consumed at breakfast.

  From Armand I learned that God actually had nothing to do with Languedoc ’s poor record as a producer of quality wines. Nearly one hundred years past, he said, an insect, the phylloxera, had ravaged all the vineyards of France, almost dealing a death blow to the wine industry. “I have heard that this pest was brought to France attached to the roots of vines imported from America,” said Armand. “But I do not know that to be true.”

  However, Armand told me, he did know it to be truth that the great bulk of France ’s grape vines were of American rootstock, immune to the wine bug, onto which French plants had been grafted. And, he said slyly after I had gained his confidence, Americans and other nationals probably consumed more Languedoc wines than they were aware of.

  Almost daily, he informed me, tanker trucks filled with the cheap wines of the Languedoc chugged northward to the great wine districts, where their cargoes were blended with the choice wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux. “It is called stretching, like adding water to whiskey,” said Armand. “I do not think it is honest.”

  Montpellier was a good place to learn about wines, he said. “We have the Wine University of France right here in our city,” he said proudly. “You can go there and study.”

  I never visited the university. Since I had no taste for wine, although I drank it on social occasions, I had no yen to acquire a knowledge of wine. I was satisfied with the bits and pieces of information imparted by Armand. He was a good teacher. He never gave tests and he never graded me.

  It was difficult for me to stay busy. Loafing is hard work. I spent a lot of time driving around. I would drive to the coast and spend a few days exploring the sand dunes. Or I would drive to the Spanish border and spend hours hiking in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Occasionally I visited Armand’s vineyard or the orchard of another winegrower. At the end of the first month, I drove to the small village where my grandparents lived and spent three days with them. My grandmother corresponded regularly with my mother, and she was aware of all the happenings at home. I wormed them out of her discreetly, for I did not want her to know I had exiled myself from my family. My mother was well, as were my sister and brothers. My father was still courting my mother, which my grandmother found amusing. My mother had apparently told my grandmother that I was “hitchhiking” around the world, seeking a goal and attempting to decide my future, and I fostered that impression during my visit.

  I did not tell my grandparents that I was living in Montpellier. I told them I was on my way to Spain, with the thought in mind of enrolling in one of the Spanish universities. I visited them a second time during my stay in Montpellier. I told them on that occasion that I hadn’t found a Spanish college that challenged me and was returning to Italy to explore the universities there.

  As I became more satisfied with my life in Montpellier, I actually contemplated resuming my education. Montpellier is the seat of one of France ’s twenty academic districts and a small but fine state university was located in the city. I visited the campus and learned that several courses were available to foreigners, although none was taught in English. However, that was no bar to me, since French was a second tongue for me, acquired from my mother.

  I also started thinking about getting a job or opening some kind of small business, perhaps a stationery store, since I was growing sleek and plump in the idle, luxurious life I was leading. Even Armand remarked on my increasing stoutness. “There is not much exercise in writing, eh, Robert?” he said, poking me in the stomach.

  “Why don’t you come to work for me in the vineyards, and I will make you lean and tough.” I declined the offer. Physical labor is not my forte. Nor could I force myself to exercise.

  I was still mulling the thought of registering at the university, and the idea of finding some useful employment, when both issues were rendered moot. Four months after taking up residence in Montpellier, I learned a bitter truth: when the hounds have help, there is no safe place for a fox to hide.

  I shopped regularly at a small (by American standards) market on the outskirts of Montpellier, a grocery Armand had recommended. I went to the store twice weekly to supply my larder, or whenever I needed something. This occasion was one of my scheduled shopping trips and the store clerk was sacking my groceries when I remembered I needed milk. I told the boy to set my foodstuffs aside (there were others in line) and strolled to the back ot the store for the milk. Returning to the check-out counter, I walked around a shelf of canned goods and saw four men at the checker’s stand, now devoid of customers and clerk.

  One had a shotgun, another had what appeared to be a short-barreled machine gun and the other two had pistols. My first thought was that bandits were robbing the store and that the employees and customers were on the floor.

  But as I wheeled to seek cover behind the shelves, one of the men shouted, “Abagnale!”

  I ducked behind the shelves only to be confronted by three uniformed gendarmes, all pointing pistols at me. They came at me from all sides then, men in uniform, men in plainclothes and all pointing a pistol, shotgun, machine gun or rifle at me. Orders cracked around my ears like whip pops.

  “Hands up!”

  “Hands on your head!”

  “Up against the shelves, spread-eagle!”

  “Face down on the floor!”

  I had my hands up. I didn’t know which of the other commands to obey, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be shot. And some of the officers were handling their weapons in a manner that scared me. As a matter of fact, they were scaring their fellow officers.

  “For God’s sake, don’t shoot,” I shouted. “One of you tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”

  A tall, lean man with austere features pointed his pistol at me. “Get on the floor, facedown!” he barked. I did as he instructed, helped by several less-than-gentle hands. Rough hands twisted my arms up behind my back and other uncaring hands clamped steel circlets tightly around my wrists.

  I was then hauled unceremoniously to my feet and, surrounded by Surete detectives, Interpol agents, gendarmes and God knows what other kind of fuzz, I was hustled out of the store and rudely shoved into the back seat of an unmarked sedan. I can’t say French police are brutal, but I will say they handle suspects with undue firmness. I was driven directly to the Montpellier police station. No one said a word en route.

  At the station, the austere detective and two other officers, also Surete agents, ushered me into a small room. French policemen have a wide latitude in the handling of criminals, especially in interrogations of suspects. They get right to the point, dispensing with the reading of any rights a criminal may have. I don’t think a crook has any rights in France.

  “My name is Marcel Gaston, of the Surete!,” said the lean officer in curt tones. “You are Frank Abagnale, are you not?”

  “I’m Robert Monjo,” I said in indignant tones. “I’m a writer from California, an American. I’m afraid you gentlemen have made a very serious mistake.”

  Gaston slapped me, a sharp, stinging blow. “Most of the mistakes I make, monsieur, are serious mistakes, but I have not made a mistake in this instance. You are Frank Abagnale.”

  “I am Robert Monjo,” I said doggedly, searching their faces for a hint of doubt.

  One of the other Surety agents stepped forward, his hand balled into a fist, but Gaston put out an arm and stopped him, without releasing me from his fixed stare. Then he shrugged.

  “We could beat it out of you, but that isn’t necessary,” he said. “I have all the
time in the world, Abagnale, but I don’t intend to waste too much of it on you. We can hold you until doomsday, or at least until we have located witnesses to identify you. Until then, unless you choose to cooperate, I am going to place you in the cell for common drunks and petty criminals. You can stay there for a week, two weeks, a month, it makes no difference to me. However, you will not be fed and you will have no water until you decide to confess. Why don’t you just tell us what we want to know right now? We know who you are. We know what you have done. You will only inconvenience yourself.

  “One other thing, Abagnale. If you force us to go to a lot of trouble to get the information you could give us at this moment, I will not forget it. And you will always remember the consequences, I promise you.”

  I looked at Gaston and knew he meant every word he had spoken. Marcel Gaston was one tough bastard.

  “I’m Frank Abagnale,” I said.

  I never really gave them the kind of confession they wanted. I never volunteered any details on any of the offenses I’d committed in France. But if they knew of a particular caper and outlined it for me, I’d nod and say, “That’s about the way it happened, all right,” or, “Yes, that was me.”

  Gaston made up a document, setting down a lot of my crimes, the circumstances of my arrest and my interrogation, and let me read it. “If that is essentially correct, you will help yourself by signing it,” he said.

  I couldn’t quarrel with the instrument. He’d even included the fact that he’d slapped me. I signed it.

  The affidavit also disclosed how I’d been caught. Major airlines didn’t serve Montpellier, but it was visited frequently by stewardesses and other flight personnel. An Air France flight attendant, visiting relatives in Montpellier, had spotted me shopping a couple of weeks past and had recognized me. She had seen me get into my car and had jotted down the license number. On her return to Paris, she had sought out her captain and told him of her suspicions. She was positive enough about her identification that her captain called the police.

  “I’m positive it’s him. I dated him,” she insisted.

  I never learned which Air France stewardess put the finger on me. No one would tell me. I had dallied with several, over the years. I hoped it wasn’t Monique, but to this day I still don’t know the informant’s identity. I don’t think it was Monique, however. Had she seen me in Montpellier, she would have confronted me.

  I was kept six days in Montpellier, during which time several lawyers appeared to offer their services. I selected a middle-aged man whose mannerisms and appearance reminded me of Armand, although he frankly stated he didn’t think he could win me my freedom. “I have gone over all the police documents, and they have you dead to rights,” he commented. “The best we can hope for is a light sentence.”

  I told him I’d settle for that.

  Scarcely a week after my arrest, to my astonishment, I was removed to Perpignan and the day after my arrival there I was brought to trial in a court of assizes, made up of a judge, two assessors (prosecutors) and nine citizen jurors, all of whom would jointly decide my guilt or innocence.

  It wasn’t much of a trial, really, lasting less than two days. Gaston listed the charges against me and the evidence he’d gathered to support the accusations. There were ample witnesses available to appear against me.

  “How does the defendant plead?” inquired the judge of my attorney.

  “My client will offer no defense against these charges,” replied the lawyer. “In the interest of time, we would like to sum up our position now.”

  He then launched into an eloquent and impassioned plea for leniency in my behalf. He cited my youth-I was still not twenty-one-and portrayed me as an unfortunate and confused young man, the product of a broken home “and still more of a delinquent than a criminal.” He pointed out that a dozen other European nations where I had perpetrated similar crimes had placed formal demands for extradition, once my debt to France was paid.

  “This young man will, in all probability, never see his native land for many, many years, and even when he does return home, he will return in chains and only to face prison there,” argued the lawyer. “I need not point out to this court the harshness of the prison life this young man will have to endure here. I ask the court to take that into account in setting a penalty.”

  I was adjudged guilty. But at the time I thought jubilantly that my attorney, if he’d lost a battle, had won the war. The judge sentenced me to only one year in prison.

  I was remanded to Perpignan ’s prison, the “House of Arrest,” a gloomy, forbidding stone fortress constructed in the seventeenth century, and not until I had been there for a few days did I realize just how lenient the judge had been.

  I was received by two guards who brusquely ordered me to strip and who then escorted me, still naked, to an upper floor where I was marched down a narrow corridor devoid of cells as such. On either side were only stone walls set with solid steel doors. The guards halted before one of the metal portals and one unlocked and opened the door. It screeched open with a sound reminiscent of a horror movie, and the other guard shoved me inside the dark cubicle. I stumbled and fell forward, striking my head against the back of the cell, for the cell was a sunken one. I had not noted the two steps leading to the floor. I was never actually to see the steps.

  I was in total darkness. A damp, chilling, breath-stifling, frightening darkness. I stood up to grope around for the light switch and cracked my head against the steel ceiling.

  There was no light switch. There was no light in the cell. There was, in fact, nothing in the cell but a bucket. No bed, no toilet, no wash basin, no drain, nothing. Just the bucket. The cell was not a cell, actually, it was a hole, a raised dungeon perhaps five feet wide, five feet high and five feet deep, with a ceiling and door of steel and a floor and walls of stone. The ceiling and door were chill to the touch. The walls wept chilly tears constantly.

  I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. No light filtered into the cell from any source. There were no cracks in the overhead or walls. The ancient door to my steel and stone box seemed to blend itself into its aperture like a hermetic seal. My eyes did not adjust. The eyes do not adjust to total darkness.

  There was air entering the cell. Periodically a cold draft explored my skin like clammy fingers, raising goose bumps as much from the eerie sensation as from the chill. I wondered whence it came. Whatever its channels, they also were dark.

  I slumped on the floor, shivering and feeling like I’d been entombed alive. Panic added to my shaking. I sought to calm myself by rationalizing my situation. Surely, I told myself, this was not to be the cell I would occupy during the entire year. Probably I was in here for observation. I discarded the theory immediately. Anyone observing me in this cell would have to have X-ray eyes. All right, then, I was being given a taste of what could happen to me if I misbehaved. I clung to the second supposition. Yes, this treatment was calculated to ensure my good behavior once I was released among the general prison population. After all, only unruly prisoners were confined in solitary under such harsh conditions, weren’t they? Certainly no civilized country would permit such cruel and inhumane punishment to be meted out by its prison warders without cause.

  France does. Or did.

  I was not fed my first day in Perpignan ’s prison. I had been placed in my grim cell late in the afternoon. Several hours later, exhausted, cold, hungry, bewildered, frightened and desolate, I laid down on the hard floor and fell asleep. I slept curled in a ball, for I am six feet tall.

  The screeching of the door awakened me. I sat up, wincing from the soreness and cramps caused by my uncomfortable sleeping position. The dim form of a guard loomed in the doorway. He was placing something on the steps inside my crypt. I was galvanized into action as he straightened and started to close the door.

  “Wait! Wait!” I shouted, scrambling forward and placing my hands against the inside of the door, trying to restrain its closing.

  “Why am I
being kept in here? How long will I stay in here?”

  “Until you have completed your sentence,” he said, and shoved shut the door. The words clanked on my ears with the metallic finalness of the door slamming against the stone jamb.

  I fell back, stunned by the ghastly truth. A year? I was to live in this black coffin a year? Without light? Without bedding? Without clothing? Without toilet facilities? And without God knows what else? It was impossible, I told myself. No man could live in such a dark void, under such conditions, for a year. He would die, and his death would be slow and torturous. It would have been better had I been sentenced to the guillotine. I loved France. But what kind of country was it that countenanced such punishment for such a crime as mine? And if the government was ignorant of such prison conditions, the people unknowing, what manner of men were the French penologists, into whose hands I had been delivered? Depraved monsters, madmen, perverts, undoubtedly.

  I was suddenly scared, actually fearful. I did not know how, or if, I could survive a year in this Stygian vault. I still have nightmares from my stay in Perpignan ’s House of Arrest. Compared to Perpignan prison, the Black Hole of Calcutta was a health spa, Devil’s Island a vacation paradise.

  I had not expected prison life to be easy. My one experience behind bars, and then for only a few hours, had convinced me that jails and prisons were not nice places to reside. But nothing I had ever read, heard or seen had ever indicated that imprisonment could be as brutal and heartless as this.

  I felt around and located the food the guard had broughc. It was a quart container of water and a small loaf of bread. The simple breakfast had not even been brought on a tray. The guard had simply set the container of water on the top step and had dropped the bread beside it on the stone. No matter, I wolfed down the loaf of bread and gulped down the water in one swig. Then I huddled miserably against the wet granite wall and contemplated the machinations of French Justice.