9 Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can

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CHAPTER ONE

The Fledgling

A man’s alter ego is nothing more than his favorite image of himself. The mirror in my room in the Windsor Hotel in Paris reflected my favorite image of me—a darkly handsome young airline pilot, smooth-skinned, bull-shouldered and immaculately groomed. Modesty is not one of my virtues. At the time, virtue was not one of my virtues.

Satisfied with my appearance, I picked up my bag, left the room and two minutes later was standing in front of the cashier’s cage.

“Good morning, Captain,” said the cashier in warm tones. The markings on my uniform identified me as a first officer, a co-pilot, but the French are like that. They tend to overestimate everything save their women, wine and art.

I signed the hotel bill she slid across the counter, started to turn away, then wheeled back, taking a payroll check from the inside pocket of my jacket. “Oh, can you cash this for me? Your Paris night life nearly wiped me out and it’ll be another week before I’m home.” I smiled ruefully.

She picked up the Pan American World Airways check and looked at the amount. “I’m sure we can, Captain, but I must get the manager to approve a check this large,” she said. She stepped into an office behind her and was back in a moment, displaying a pleased smile. She handed me the check to endorse.

“I assume you want American dollars?” she asked, and without waiting for my reply counted out $786.73 in Yankee currency and coin. I pushed back two $50 bills. “I would appreciate it if you would take care of the necessary people, since I was so careless,” I said, smiling.

She beamed. “Of course, Captain. You are very kind,” she said. “Have a safe flight and please come back to see us.”

I took a cab to Orly, instructing the driver to let me off at the TWA entrance. I by-passed the TWA ticket counter in the lobby and presented my FAA license and Pan Am ID card to the TWA operations officer. He checked his manifest. “Okay, First Officer Frank Williams, deadheading to Rome. Gotcha. Fill this out, please.” He handed me the familiar pink form for nonrevenue passengers and I penned in the pertinent data. I picked up my bag and walked to the customs gate marked “CREW MEMBERS ONLY.” I started to heft my bag to the counter top but the inspector, a wizened old man with a wispy mustache, recognized me and waved me through.

A young boy fell in beside me as I walked to the plane, gazing with unabashed admiration at my uniform with its burnished gold stripes and other adornments.

“You the pilot?” he asked. He was English from his accent.

“Nah, just a passenger like you,” I replied. “I fly for Pan Am.”

“You fly 707s?”

I shook my head. “Used to,” I said. “Right now I’m on DC-8s.” I like kids. This one reminded me of myself a few years past.

An attractive blond stewardess met me as I stepped aboard and helped me to stow my gear in the crew’s luggage bin. “We’ve got a full load this trip Mr. Williams,” she said. “You beat out two other guys for the jump seat. I’ll be serving the cabin.”

“Just milk for me,” I said. “And don’t worry about that if you get busy. Hitchhikers aren’t entitled to anything more than the ride.”

I ducked into the cabin. The pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer were making their pre-takeoff equipment and instrument check but they paused courteously at my entrance. “Hi, Frank Williams, Pan Am, and don’t let me interrupt you,” I said.

“Gary Giles,” said the pilot, sticking out his hand. He nodded toward the other two men. “Bill Austin, number two, and Jim Wright. Good to have you with us.” I shook hands with the other two airmen and dropped into the jump seat, leaving them to their work.

We were airborne within twenty minutes. Giles took the 707 up to 30,000 feet, checked his instruments, cleared with the Orly tower and then uncoiled himself from his seat. He appraised me with casual thoroughness and then indicated his chair. “Why don’t you fly this bird for a while, Frank,” he said. “I’ll go back and mingle with the paying passengers.”

His offer was a courtesy gesture sometimes accorded a deadheading pilot from a competing airline. I dropped my cap on the cabin floor and slid into the command seat, very much aware that I had been handed custody of 140 lives, my own included. Austin, who had taken the controls when Giles vacated his seat, surrendered them to me. “You got it, Captain,” he said, grinning.

I promptly put the giant jet on automatic pilot and hoped to hell the gadget worked, because I couldn’t fly a kite.

I wasn’t a Pan Am pilot or any other kind of pilot. I was an impostor, one of the most wanted criminals on four continents, and at the moment I was doing my thing, putting a super hype on some nice people.

I was a millionaire twice over and half again before I was twenty-one. I stole every nickel of it and blew the bulk of the bundle on fine threads, gourmet foods, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes, fine wheels and other sensual goodies. I partied in every capital in Europe, basked on all the famous beaches and good-timed it in South America, the South Seas, the Orient and the more palatable portions of Africa.

It wasn’t altogether a relaxing life. I didn’t exactly keep my finger on the panic button, but I put a lot of mileage on my running shoes. I made a lot of exits through side doors, down fire escapes or over rooftops. I abandoned more wardrobes in the course of five years than most men acquire in a lifetime. I was slipperier than a buttered escargot.

Oddly enough, I never felt like a criminal. I was one, of course, and I was aware of the fact. I’ve been described by authorities and news reporters as one of this century’s cleverest bum-check passers, flimflam artists and crooks, a con man of Academy Award caliber. I was a swindler and poseur of astonishing ability. I sometimes astonished myself with some of my impersonations and shenanigans, but I never at any time deluded myself. I was always aware that I was Frank Abagnale, Jr., that I was a check swindler and a faker, and if and when I were caught I wasn’t going to win any Oscars. I was going to jail.

I was right, too. I did time in a French poky, served a stint in a Swedish slammer and cleansed myself of all my American sins in the Petersburg, Virginia, federal jug. While in the last prison, I voluntarily subjected myself to a psychological evaluation by a University of Virginia criminologist-psychiatrist. He spent two years giving me various written and oral tests, using truth-serum injections and polygraph examinations on various occasions.

The shrink concluded that I had a very low criminal threshold. In other words, I had no business being a crook in the first place.

One of the New York cops who’d worked hardest to catch me read the report and snorted. “This head doctor’s gotta be kiddin‘ us,” he scoffed. “This phony rips off several hundred banks, hustles half the hotels in the world for everything but the sheets, screws every airline in the skies, including most of their stewardesses, passes enough bad checks to paper the walls of the Pentagon, runs his own goddamned colleges and universities, makes half the cops in twenty countries look like dumb-asses while he’s stealing over $2 million, and he has a low criminal threshold? What the hell would he have done if he’d had a high criminal threshold, looted Fort Knox?”

The detective confronted me with the paper. We had become amiable adversaries. “You conned this shrink, didn’t you, Frank?”

I told him I’d answered every question asked me as truthfully as possible, that I’d completed every test given me as honestly as I could. I didn’t convince him. “Nah,” he said. “You can fool these feds, but you can’t fool me. You conned this couch turkey.” He shook his head. “You’d con your own father, Frank.”

I already had. My father was the mark for the first score I ever made. Dad possessed the one trait necessary in the perfect pigeon, blind trust, and I plucked him for $3,400. I was only fifteen at the time.

I was born and spent my first sixteen years in New York’s Bronxville. I was the third of four children and my dad’s namesake. If I wanted to lay down a baby con, I could say I was the product of a broken home, for Mom and Dad separated when I was twelve. But I’d only be bum-rapping my parents.

The person most hurt by the separation and subsequent divorce was Dad. He was really hung up on Mom. My mother, Paulette Abagnale, is a French-Algerian beauty whom dad met and married during his World War II army service in Oran. Mom was only fifteen at the time, and Dad was twenty-eight, and while the difference in ages didn’t seem to matter at the time, I’ve always felt it had an influence on the breakup of their marriage.

Dad opened his own business in New York City after his discharge from the army, a stationery store at Fortieth and Madison Avenue called Gramercy’s. He was very successful. We lived in a big, luxurious home and if we weren’t fabulously wealthy, we were certainly affluent. My brothers, my sister and I never wanted for anything during our early years.

A kid is often the last to know when there’s serious trouble between his parents. I know that’s true in my case and I don’t think my siblings were any more aware than ? I. We thought Mom was content to be a housewife and mother and she was, up to a point. But Dad was more than just a successful businessman. He was also very active in politics, one of the Republican wheels in the Bronx precincts. He was a member and past president of the New York Athletic Club, and he spent a lot of his time at the club with both business and political cronies.

Dad was also an avid salt-water fisherman. He was always flying off to Puerto Rico, Kingston, Belize or some other Caribbean spa on deep-sea fishing expeditions. He never took Mom along, and he should have. My mother was a women’s libber before Gloria Steinem learned her Maidenform was flammable. And one day Dad came back from a marlin-chasing jaunt to find his home creel empty. Mom had packed up and moved herself, us three boys and Sis into a large apartment. We kids were somewhat mystified, but Mom quietly explained that she and Dad were no longer compatible and had elected to live apart.

Well, she had elected to live apart, anyway. Dad was shocked, surprised and hurt at Mom’s action. He pleaded with her to come back home, promising he’d be a better husband and father and that he’d curtail his deep-sea outings. He even offered to forgo politics.

Mom listened, but she made no promises. And it soon became apparent to me, if not Dad, that she had no intention of reconciling. She enrolled in a Bronx dental college and started training to be a dental technician.

Dad didn’t give up. He was over at our apartment at every opportunity, pleading, cajoling, entreating and flattering her. Sometimes he’d lose his temper. “Damn it, woman—can’t you see I love you!” he’d roar.

The situation did have its effect on us boys, of course. Me in particular. I loved my dad. I was the closest to him, and he commenced to use me in his campaign to win back Mom. “Talk to her, son,” he’d ask of me. “Tell her I love her. Tell her we’d be happier if we all lived together. Tell her you’d be happier if she came home, that all you kids would be happier.”

He’d give me gifts to deliver to Mom, and coach me in speeches designed to break down my mother’s resistance.

As a juvenile John Alden to my father’s Myles Standish and my mother’s Priscilla Mullins, I was a flop. My mother couldn’t be conned. And Dad probably hurt his own case because Mom resented his using me as a pawn in their game of marital chess. She divorced Dad when I was fourteen.

Dad was crushed. I was disappointed, for I had really wanted them to get back together. I’ll say this for Dad: when he loved a woman, he loved her forever. He was still trying to win Mom back when he died in 1974.

When Mom finally divorced my father, I elected to live with Dad. Mom wasn’t too keen on my decision, but I felt Dad needed one of us, that he shouldn’t have to live alone, and I persuaded her. Dad was grateful and pleased. I have never regretted the decision, although Dad probably did.

Life with Father was a whole different ball game. I spent a lot of time in some of New York’s finest saloons. Businessmen, I learned, not only enjoy three-martini lunches, but they belt out a lot of boilermaker brunches and whack out scores of scotch and soda dinners. Politicians, I also noted quickly, had a better grasp of world affairs and a looser lid on their pork barrels when they were attached to a bourbon on the rocks. Dad did a lot of his business dealing and a goodly amount of his political maneuvering close to a bar, with me waiting nearby. My father’s drinking habits alarmed me at first. I didn’t think he was an alcoholic, but he was a two-fisted drinker and I worried that he had a drinking problem. Still, I never saw him drunk although he drank constantly and after a while I assumed he was immune to the juice.

I was fascinated by my dad’s associates, friends and acquaintances. They ranged the gamut of the Bronx’s social stratum: ward heelers, cops, union bosses, business. executives, truckers, contractors, stock brokers, clerks, cabbies and promoters. The whole smear. Some were right out of the pages of Damon Runyon.

After hanging out with Dad for six months, I was streetwise and about five-eighths smart, which is not exactly the kind of education Dad had in mind for me, but it’s the kind you get in sauce parlors.

Dad had a lot of political clout. I learned this when I started playing hookey from school and running with some loose-end kids from my neighborhood. They weren’t gang members or anything like that. They weren’t into anything really heavy. They were just guys with a screwed-up family situation, trying to get attention from someone, if only the truant officer. Maybe that’s why I started hanging out with them. Perhaps I was seeking attention myself. I did want my parents together again, and I had vague notions at the time that if I acted like a juvenile delinquent, it might provide a common ground for a reconciliation.

I wasn’t too good as a juvenile delinquent. Most of the time I felt plain foolish, swiping candy and slipping into movies. I was much more mature than my companions, and much bigger. At fifteen I was physically grown, six feet and 170 pounds, and I guess we got away with a lot of minor mischief because people who saw us abroad thought I was a teacher shepherding some students or a big brother looking out for the younger crowd. I sometimes felt that way myself, and I was often irritated at their childishness.

What bothered me most was their lack of style. I learned early that class is universally admired. Almost any fault, sin or crime is considered more leniently if there’s a touch of class involved.

These kids couldn’t even boost a car with any finesse. The first set of wheels they lifted, they came by to pick me up, and we weren’t a mile from my house when a squad car pulled us over. The jerks had taken the car from a driveway while the owner was watering his lawn. We all ended up in the Juvenile Hilton.

Dad not only got me out, but he had all mention of my part in the incident erased from the records. It was a bit of ward-heeling wizardry that was to cost a lot of cops a lot of sleep in future years. Even an elephant is easier to find if you can pick up his trail at the start of the hunt.

Dad didn’t chew me out. “We all make mistakes, son,” he said. “I know what you were trying to do, but that’s not the way to do it. Under the law, you’re still a child, but you’re man-sized. Maybe you ought to try thinking like a man.”

I dropped my erstwhile chums, started going to school regularly again and got a part-time job as a shipping clerk in a Bronxville warehouse. Dad was pleased—so pleased he bought me an old Ford, which I proceeded to fix up into a real fox trap.

If I had to place any blame for my future nefarious actions, I’d put it on the Ford.

That Ford fractured every moral fiber in my body. It introduced me to girls, and I didn’t come to my senses for six years. They were wonderful years.

There are undoubtedly other ages in a man’s life when his reasoning power is eclipsed by his libido, but none presses on the prefrontal lobes like the post-puberty years when the thoughts are running and every luscious chick who passes increases the flow. At fifteen I knew about girls, of course. They were built differently than boys. But I didn’t know why until I stopped at a red light one day, after renovating the Ford, and saw this girl looking at me and my car. When she saw she had my attention, she did something with her eyes, jiggled her front and twitched her behind, and suddenly I was drowning in my thoughts. She had ruptured the dam. I don’t remember how she got into the car, or where we went after she got in, but I do remember she was all silk, softness, nuzzly, warm, sweet-, smelling and absolutely delightful, and I knew I’d found a contact sport that I could really enjoy. She did things to me that would lure a hummingbird from a hibiscus and make a bulldog break his chain.

I am not impressed by today’s tomes on women’s rights in the bedroom. When Henry Ford invented the Model-T, women shed their bloomers and put sex on the road.

Women became my only vice. I reveled in them. I couldn’t get enough of them. I woke up thinking of girls. I went to bed thinking of girls. All lovely, leggy, breathtaking, fantastic and enchanting. I went on girl scouting forays at sunrise. I went out at night and looked for them with a flashlight. Don Juan had only a mild case of the hots compared to me. I was obsessed with foxy women.

I was also a charming broke after my first few close encounters of the best kind. Girls are not necessarily expensive, but even the most frolicsome Fraulein expects a hamburger and a Coke now and then, just for energy purposes. I simply wasn’t making enough bread to pay for my cake. I needed a way to juggle my finances.

I sought out Dad, who was not totally unaware of my discovery of girls and their attendant joys. “Dad, it was really neat of you to give me a car, and I feel like a jerk asking for more, but I’ve got problems with that car,” I pleaded. “I need a gas credit card. I only get paid once a month, and what with buying my school lunches, going to the games, dating and stuff, I don’t have the dough to buy gas sometimes. I’ll try and pay the bill myself, but I promise I won’t abuse your generosity if you’ll let me have a gas card.”

I was as glib as an Irish horse trader at the time, and at the time I was sincere. Dad mulled the request for a few moments, then nodded. “All right, Frank, I trust you,” he said, taking his Mobil card from his wallet. “You take this card and use it. I won’t charge anything to Mobil from now on. It’ll be your card, and within reason, if 11 be your responsibility to pay this bill each month when it comes in. I won’t worry about your taking advantage of me.”

He should have. The arrangement worked fine the first month. The Mobil bill came in and I bought a money order for the amount and sent it to the oil firm. But the payment left me strapped and once again I found myself hampered in my constant quest for girls. I began to feel frustrated. After all, the pursuit of happiness was an inalienable American privilege, wasn’t it? I felt I was being deprived of a constitutional right.

Someone once said there’s no such thing as an honest man. He was probably a con man. It’s the favorite rationale of the pigeon dropper. I think a lot of people do fantasize about being a supercriminal, an international diamond thief or something like that, but they confine their larceny to daydreams. I also think a lot of other people are actually tempted now and then to commit a crime, especially if there’s a nice bundle to be had and they think they won’t be connected with the caper. Such people usually reject the temptation. They have an innate perception of right and wrong, and common sense prevails.

But there’s also a type of person whose competitive instincts override reason. They are challenged by a given situation in much the same manner a climber is challenged by a tall peak: because it’s there. Right or wrong are not factors, nor are consequences. These people look on crime as a game, and the goal is not just the loot; it’s the success of the venture that counts. Of course, if the booty is bountiful, that’s nice, too.

These people are the chess players of the criminal world. They generally have a genius-level IQ and their mental knights and bishops are always on the attack. They never anticipate being checkmated. They are always astonished when a cop with average intelligence rooks them, and the cop is always astonished at their motives. Crime as a challenge? Jesus.

But it was the challenge that led me to put down my first scam. I needed money, all right. Anyone with a chronic case of the girl crazies needs all the financial assistance that’s available. However, I really wasn’t dwelling on my lack of funds when I stopped at a Mobil station one afternoon and spotted a large sign in front of the station’s tire display racks, “PUT A SET ON YOUR MOBIL CARD—WE’LL PUT THE SET ON YOUR CAR” the sign read. It was the first inkling I’d had that the Mobil card was good for more than gas or oil. I didn’t need any tires—the ones on the Ford were practically new—but as I studied the sign I was suddenly possessed by a four-ply scheme. Hell, it might even work, I thought.

I got out and approached the attendant, who was also the owner of the station. We were casual acquaintances from the many pit stops I’d made at the station. It was not a busy gas stop. “I’d make more money holding up filling stations than running one,” he’d once complained.

“How much would it cost me for a set of whitewalls?” I asked.

“For this car, $160, but you got a good set of treads,” the man said.

He looked at me and I knew he sensed he was about to be propositioned. “Yeah, I don’t really need any tires,” I agreed. “But I got a bad case of the shorts. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll buy a set of those tires and charge them on this card. Only I don’t take the tires. You give me $100 instead. You’ve still got the tires, and when my dad pays Mobil for them, you get your cut. You’re ahead to start with, and when you do sell the tires, the whole $160 goes into your pocket. What do you say? You’ll make out like a dragon, man.”

He studied me, and I could see the speculative greed in his eyes. ‘What about your old man?“ he asked cautiously.

I shrugged. ‘He never looks at my car. I told him I needed some new tires and he told me to charge them.“

He was still doubtful. “Lemme see your driver’s license. This could be a stolen card,” he said. I handed him my junior driver’s license, which bore the same name as the card. “You’re only fifteen? You look ten years older,” the station owner said as he handed it back.

I smiled. “I got a lot of miles on me,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ll have to call into Mobil and get an approval—we have to do that on any big purchase,” he said. “If I get an okay, we got a deal.”

I rolled out of the station with five twenties in my wallet.

I was heady with happiness. Since I hadn’t yet had my first taste of alcohol, I couldn’t compare the feeling to a champagne high, say, but it was the most delightful sensation I’d ever experienced in the front seat of a car.

In fact, my cleverness overwhelmed me. If it worked once, why wouldn’t it work twice? It did. It worked so many times in the next several weeks, I lost count. I can’t remember how many sets of tires, how many batteries, how many other automobile accessories I bought with that charge card and then sold back for a fraction of value. I hit every Mobil station in the Bronx. Sometimes I’d just con the guy on the pumps into giving me $10 and sign a ticket for $20 worth of gas and oil. I wore that Mobil card thin with the scam.

I blew it all on the broads, naturally. At first I operated on the premise that Mobil was underwriting my pleasures, so what the hell? Then the first month’s bill landed in the mailbox. The envelope was stuffed fuller than a Christmas goose with charge receipts. I looked at the total due and briefly contemplated entering the priesthood, for I realized Mobil expected Dad to pay the bill. It hadn’t occurred to me that Dad would be the patsy in the game.

I threw the bill into the wastebasket. A second notice mailed two weeks later also went into the trash. I thought about facing up to Dad and confessing, but I didn’t have the courage. I knew he’d find out, sooner or later, but I decided someone other than me would have to tell him.

Amazingly, I didn’t pull up while awaiting a summit session between my father and Mobil. I continued to work the credit-card con and spend the loot on lovely women, even though I was aware I was also diddling my dad. An inflamed sex drive has no conscience.

Eventually, a Mobil investigator sought Dad out in his store. The man was apologetic.

“Mr. Abagnale, you’ve had a card with us for fifteen years and we prize your account. You’ve got a top credit rating, you’ve never been late with a payment and I’m not here to harass you about your bill,” said the agent as Dad listened with a puzzled expression. “We are curious, sir, and would like to know one thing. Just how in the hell can you run up a $3,400 bill for gas, oil, batteries and tires for one 1952 Ford in the space of three months? You’ve put fourteen sets of tires on that car in the past sixty days, bought twenty-two batteries in the past ninety days and you can’t be getting over two miles to the gallon on gas. We figure you don’t even have an oil pan on the damned thing. . . . Have you given any thought to trading that car in on a new one, Mr. Abagnale?”

Dad was stunned. “Why, I don’t even use my Mobil card—my son does,” he said when he recovered. “There must be some mistake.”

The Mobil investigator placed several hundred Mobil charge receipts in front of Dad. Each bore his signature in my handwriting. “How did he do this? And why?” Dad exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” replied the Mobil agent. “Why don’t we ask him?”

They did. I said I didn’t know a thing about the swindle. I didn’t convince either of them. I had expected Dad to be furious. But he was more confused than angry. “Look, son, if you’ll tell us how you did this, and why, we’ll forget it. There’ll be no punishment and I’ll pay the bills,” he offered.

My dad was a great guy in my book. He never lied to me in his life. I promptly copped out. “It’s the girls, Dad,” I sighed. “They do funny things to me. I can’t explain it.”

Dad and the Mobil investigator nodded understanding-ly. Dad laid a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, boy. Einstein couldn’t explain it, either,” he said.

If Dad forgave me, Mom didn’t. She was really upset over the incident and blamed my father for my delinquencies. My mother still had legal custody of me and she decided to remove me from Dad’s influences. Worse still, on the advice of one of the fathers who worked with Catholic Charities, with which my mother has always been affiliated, she popped me into a C.C. private school for problem boys in Port Chester, New York.

As a reformatory, the school wasn’t much. It was more of a posh camp than a remedial institution. I lived in a neat cottage with six other boys, and except for the fact that I was restricted to campus and constantly supervised, I was subjected to no hardships.

The brothers who ran the school were a benevolent lot. They lived in much the same manner as their wards. We all ate in a common dining hall, and the food was good and plentiful. There was a movie theater, a television room, a recreation hall, a swimming pool and a gymnasium. I never did catalogue all the recreational and sports facilities that were available. We attended classes from 8 A.M. to 3 P.M., Monday through Friday, but otherwise our time was our own to do with as we liked. The brothers didn’t harangue us about our misdeeds or bore us with pontifical lectures, and you really had to mess up to be punished, which usually meant being confined to your cottage for a couple of days. I never encountered anything like the school until I landed in a U.S. prison. I have often wondered since if the federal penal system isn’t secretly operated by Catholic Charities.

The monastic lifestyle galled me, however. I endured it, but I looked on my stint in the school as punishment and undeserved punishment at that. After all, Dad had forgiven me and he had been the sole victim of my crimes. So what was I doing in the place? I’d ask myself. What I disliked most about the school, however, was its lack of girls. It was strictly an all-male atmosphere. Even the sight of a nun would have thrilled me.

I would have been even more depressed had I known what was happening to Dad during my stay. He never went into details, but while I was in the school he ran into some severe financial difficulties and lost his business.

He was really wiped out. He was forced to sell the house and his two big Cadillacs and everything else he had of material value. In the space of a few months, Dad went from living like a millionaire to living like a postal clerk.

That’s what he was when he came to get me after I’d spent a year in the school. A postal clerk. Mom had relented and had agreed to my living with Dad again. I was shocked at the reversal of his fortunes, and more than a little guilt-ridden. But Dad would not allow me to blame myself. The $3,400 I’d ripped him off for was not a factor in his business downfall, he assured me. “Don’t even think of it, kid. That was a drop in the bucket,” he said cheerfully.

He did not seem to be bothered by his sudden drop in status and finances, but it bothered me. Not for myself, but for Dad. He’d been so high, a real wheeler-dealer, and now he was working for wages. I tried to pump him for the causes. “What about your friends, Dad?” I asked. “I remember you were always pulling them out of tight spots. Didn’t any of them offer to help you?”

Dad just smiled wryly. “You’ll learn, Frank, that when you’re up there’re hundreds of people who’ll claim you as a friend. When you’re down, you’re lucky if one of them will buy you a cup of coffee. If I had it to do over again, I’d select my friends more carefully. I do have a couple of good friends. They’re not wealthy, but one of them got me my job in the post office.”

He refused to dwell on his misfortunes or to discuss them at length, but it bugged me, especially when I was with him in his car. It wasn’t as good as my Ford, which he’d sold for me and placed the money in an account in my name. His car was a battered old Chevy. “Doesn’t it bother you at all to drive this old car, Dad?” I asked him one day.

“I mean, this is really a comedown from a Cadillac. Right?”

Dad laughed. “That’s the wrong way to look at it, Frank. It’s not what a man has but what a man is that’s important. This car is fine for me. It gets me around. I know who I am and what I am, and that’s what counts, not what other people might think of me. I’m an honest man, I feel, and that’s more important to me than having a big car…. As long as a man knows what he is and who he is, he’ll do all right.”

Trouble was, at the time I didn’t know what I was or who I was.

Within three short years I had the answer. “Who are you?” asked a lush brunette when I plopped down on Miami Beach beside her.

“Anyone I want to be,” I said. I was, too.

CHAPTER TWO

The Pilot

I left home at sixteen, looking for me.

There was no pressure on me to leave, although I wasn’t happy. The situation on my dual home front hadn’t changed. Dad still wanted to win Mom back and Mom didn’t want to be won. Dad was still using me as a mediator in his second courtship of Mom, and she continued to resent his casting me in the role of Cupid. I disliked it myself. Mom had graduated from dental technician’s school and was working for a Larchmont dentist. She seemed satisfied with her new, independent life.

I had no plans to run away. But every time Dad put on his postal clerk’s uniform and drove off to work in his old car, I’d feel depressed. I couldn’t forget how he used to wear Louis Roth suits and drive big expensive cars.

One June morning of 1964,1 woke up and knew it was time to go. Some remote corner of the world seemed to be whispering, “Come.” So I went.

I didn’t say good-bye to anyone. I didn’t leave any notes behind. I had $200 in a checking account at the Westchester branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank, an account Dad had set up for me a year before and which I’d never used. I dug out my checkbook, packed my best clothes in a single suitcase and caught a train for New York City. It wasn’t exactly a remote corner of the globe, but I thought it would make a good jumping-off place.

If I’d been some runaway from Kansas or Nebraska, New York, with its subway bedlam, awesome skyscrapers, chaotic streams of noisy traffic and endless treadmills of people, might have sent me scurrying back to the prairies. But the Big Apple was my turf. Or so I thought.

I wasn’t off the train an hour when I met a boy my own age and conned him into taking me home with him. I told his parents that I was from upstate New York, that both my mother and father were dead, that I was trying to make it on my own and that I needed a place to stay until I got a job. They told me I could stay in their home as long as I wanted.

I had no intentions of abusing their hospitality. I was eager to make a stake and leave New York, although I had no ideas at the moment as to where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do.

I did have a definite goal. I was going to be a success in some field. I was going to make it to the top of some mountain. And once there, no one or nothing was going to dislodge me from the peak. I wasn’t going to make the mistakes my dad had made. I was determined on that point.

The Big Apple quickly proved less than juicy, even for a native son. I had no problem finding a job. I’d worked for my father as a stock clerk and delivery boy and was experienced in the operation of a stationery store. I started calling on large stationery firms, presenting myself in a truthful light. I was only sixteen, I said, and I was a high school dropout, but I was well versed in the stationery business. The manager of the third firm I visited hired me at $1.50 an hour. I was naive enough to think it an adequate salary.

I was disillusioned within the week. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to live in New York on $60 a week, even if I stayed in the shabbiest hotel and ate at the Automats. Even more disheartening, I was reduced to the role of spectator in the dating game. To the girls I’d met so far, a stroll in Central Park and a hot dog from a street vendor’s cart would not qualify as an enchanted evening. I wasn’t too enchanted with such a dalliance myself. Hot dogs make me belch.

I analyzed the situation and arrived at this conclusion: I wasn’t being paid lowly wages because I was a high school dropout but because I was only sixteen. A boy simply wasn’t worth a man’s wages.

So I aged ten years overnight. It had always surprised people, especially women, to learn I was still a teen-ager. I decided that since I appeared older, I might as well be older. I had excelled in graphic arts in school. I did a credible job of altering the birth date on my driver’s license from 1948 to 1938. Then I went out to test the job market as a twenty-six-year-old high school dropout, with proof of my age in my wallet.

I learned the pay scale for a man without a high school diploma wasn’t something that would embarrass the creators of the Minimum Wage Act. No one questioned my new age, but the best offer made me was $2.75 an hour as a truck driver’s helper. Some prospective employers bluntly told me that it wasn’t age that determined a worker’s salary, but education. The more education he had, the more he was paid. I ruefully concluded that a high school dropout was like a three-legged wolf in the wilderness.

He might survive, but he’d survive on less. It did not occur to me until later that diplomas, like birth dates, are also easily faked.

I could have survived on $110 a week, but I couldn’t live on that amount. I was too enamored of the ladies, and any horse player can tell you that the surest way to stay broke is playing the fillies. The girls I was romancing were all running fillies, and they were costing me a bundle.

I started writing checks on my $200 account whenever I was low on fun funds.

It was a reserve I hadn’t wanted to tap, and I tried to be conservative. I’d cash a check for only $10, or at most $20, and at first I conducted all my check transactions in a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Then I learned that stores, hotels, grocery markets and other business firms would also cash personal checks, provided the amount wasn’t overly large and proper identification was presented. I found my altered driver’s license was considered suitable identification, and I started dropping in at the handiest hotel or department store whenever I needed to cash a $20 or $25 check. No one asked me any questions. No one checked with the bank to see if the check was good. I’d simply present my jazzed-up driver’s license with my check and the driver’s license would be handed back with the cash.

It was easy. Too easy. Within a few days I knew I was overdrawn on my account and the checks I was writing were no good. However, I continued to cash a check whenever I needed money to supplement my paycheck or to finance a gourmet evening with some beautiful chick. Since my paycheck seemed always in need of a subsidy, and because New York has more beautiful chicks than a poultry farm, I was soon writing two or three bad checks daily.

I rationalized my actions. Dad would take care of the insufficient checks, I told myself. Or I’d assuage my conscience with con man’s salve: if people were stupid enough to cash a check without verifying its validity, they deserved to be swindled.

I also consoled myself with the fact that I was a juvenile. Even if I were caught, it was unlikely that I’d receive any stern punishment, considering the softness of New York’s juvenile laws and the leniency of the city’s juvenile judges. As a first offender, I’d probably be released to my parents. I probably wouldn’t even have to make restitution.

My scruples fortified by such nebulous defenses, I quit my job and began to support myself on the proceeds of my spurious checks. I didn’t keep track of the number of bum checks I passed, but my standard of living improved remarkably. So did my standard of loving.

After two months of cranking out worthless checks, however, I faced myself with some unpleasant truths. I was a crook. Nothing more, nothing less. In the parlance of the streets, I had become a professional paperhanger. That didn’t bother me too much, for I was a successful paperhanger, and at the moment to be a success at anything was the most important factor in the world to me.

What did bother me were the occupational hazards involved in being a check swindler. I knew my father had reported my absence to the police. Generally, the cops don’t spend a lot of time looking for a missing sixteen-year-old, unless foul play is suspected. However, my case was undoubtedly an exception, for I had provided plenty of foul play with my scores of bad checks. The police, I knew, were looking for me as a thief, not a runaway. Every merchant and businessman I’d bilked was also on the alert for me, I speculated.

In short, I was hot. I knew I could elude the cops for a while yet, but I also knew I’d eventually be caught if I stayed in New York and continued to litter cash drawers with useless chits.

The alternative was to leave New York, and the prospect frightened me. That still-remote corner of the world suddenly seemed chill and friendless. In Manhattan, despite my brash show of independence, I’d always clutched a security blanket. Mom and Dad were just a phone call or a short train ride away. I knew they’d be loyal, no matter my misdeeds. The outlook appeared decidedly gloomy if I fled to Chicago, Miami, Washington or some other distant metropolis.

I was practiced in only one art, writing fraudulent checks. I didn’t even contemplate any other source of income, and to me that was a matter of prime concern. Could I flimflam merchants in another city as easily as I had swindled New Yorkers? In New York I had an actual, if valueless, checking account, and a valid, if ten years off, driver’s license, which together allowed me to work my nefarious trade in a lucrative manner. Both my stack of personalized checks (the name was real, only the funds were fictional) and my tinseled driver’s license would be useless in any other city. I’d have to change my name, acquire bogus identification and set up a bank account under my alias before I could operate. It all seemed complex and danger-ridden to me. I was a successful crook. I wasn’t yet a confident crook.

I was still wrestling with the perplexities of my situation several days later while walking along

Forty-second Street

when the revolving doors of the Commodore Hotel disgorged the solution to my quandary.

As I drew near the hotel entrance, an Eastern Airlines flight crew emerged: a captain, co-pilot, flight engineer and four stewardesses. They were all laughing and animated, caught up in a joie de vivre of their own. The men were all lean and handsome, and their gold-piped uniforms lent them a buccaneerish air. The girls were all trim and lovely, as graceful and colorful as butterflies abroad in a meadow. I stopped and watched as they boarded a crew bus, and I thought I had never seen such a splendid group of people.

I walked on, still enmeshed in the net of their glamour, and suddenly I was seized with an idea so daring in scope, so dazzling in design, that I whelmed myself.

What if I were a pilot? Not an actual pilot, of course. I had no heart for the grueling years of study, training, flight schooling, work and other mundane toils that fit a man for a jet liner’s cockpit. But what if I had the uniform and the trappings of an airline pilot? Why, I thought, I could walk into any hotel, bank or business in the country and cash a check. Airline pilots are men to be admired and respected. Men to be trusted. Men of means. And you don’t expect an airline pilot to be a local resident. Or a check swindler.

I shook off the spell. The idea was too ludicrous, too ridiculous to consider. Challenging, yes, but foolish.

Then I was at Forty-second and Park Avenue and the Pan American World Airways Building loomed over me. I looked up at the soaring office building, and I didn’t see a structure of steel, stone and glass. I saw a mountain to be climbed.

The executives of the famed carrier were unaware of the fact, but then and there Pan Am acquired its most costly jet jockey. And one who couldn’t fly, at that. But what the hell. It’s a scientific fact that the bumblebee can’t fly, either. But he does, and makes a lot of honey on the side.

And that’s all I intended to be. A bumblebee in Pan Am’s honey hive.

I sat up all night, cogitating, and fell asleep just before dawn with a tentative plan in mind. It was one I’d have to play by ear, I felt, but isn’t that the basis of all knowledge? You listen and you learn.

I awoke shortly after 1 P.M., grabbed the Yellow Pages and looked up Pan Am’s number. I dialed the main switchboard number and asked to speak to someone in the purchasing department. I was connected promptly.

“This is Johnson, can I help you?”

Like Caesar at the Rubicon, I cast the die. “Yes,” I said.

“My name is Robert Black and I’m a co-pilot with Pan American, based in Los Angeles.” I paused for his reaction, my heart thumping.

“Yes, what can I do for you, Mr. Black?” He was courteous and matter-of-fact and I plunged ahead.

“We flew a trip in here at eight o’clock this morning, and I’m due out of here this evening at seven,” I said. I plucked the flight times from thin air and hoped he wasn’t familiar with Pan Am’s schedules. I certainly wasn’t.

“Now, I don’t know how this happened,” I continued, trying to sound chagrined. “I’ve been with the company seven years and never had anything like this happen. The thing is, someone -has stolen my uniform, or at least it’s missing, and the only replacement uniform I have is in my home in Los Angeles. Now, I have to fly this trip out tonight and I’m almost sure I can’t do it in civilian clothes. … Do you know where I can pick up a uniform here, a supplier or whatever, or borrow one, just till we work this trip?”

Johnson chuckled. “Well, it’s not that big a problem,” he replied. “Have you got a pencil and paper?”

I said I did, and he continued. “Go down to the Weil-Built Uniform Company and ask for Mr. Rosen. He’ll fix you up. I’ll call him and tell him you’re coming down. What’s your name again?”

“Robert Black,” I replied, and hoped he was asking simply because he’d forgotten. His final words reassured me.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Black. Rosen will take good care of you,” Johnson said cheerfully. He sounded like a Boy Scout who’d just performed his good deed for the day, and he had.

Less than an hour later I walked into the Well-Built Uniform Company. Rosen was a wispy, dour little man with a phlegmatic manner, a tailor’s tape dangling on his chest. “You Officer Black?” he asked in a reedy voice and, when I said I was, he crooked a finger. “Come on back I followed him through a maze of clothing racks boasting a variety of uniforms, apparently for several different airlines, until he stopped beside a display of dark blue suits.

“What’s your rank?” Rosen asked, sifting through a row of jackets.

I knew none of the airline terminology. “Co-pilot,” I said, and hoped that was the right answer.

“First officer, huh?” he said, and began handing me jackets and trousers to try on for size. Finally, Rosen was satisfied. “This isn’t a perfect fit, but I don’t have time to make alterations. If 11 get you by until you can find time to get a proper fitting.” He took the jacket to a sewing machine and deftly and swiftly tacked three gold stripes on each sleeve cuff. Then he fitted me with a visored cap.

I suddenly noticed the uniform jacket and cap each lacked something. “Where’s the Pan Am wings and the Pan Am emblem?” I asked.

Rosen regarded me quizzically and I tensed. I blew it, I thought. Then Rosen shrugged. “Oh, we don’t carry those. We just manufacture uniforms. You’re talking about hardware. Hardware comes directly from Pan Am, at least here in New York. You’ll have to get the wings and the emblem from Pan Am’s stores department.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, smiling. “In L.A. the same people who supply our uniforms supply the emblems. How much do I owe you for this uniform? I’ll write you a check.” I was reaching for my checkbook when it dawned on me that my checks bore the name Frank Abagnale, Jr., and almost certainly would expose my charade.

Rosen himself staved off disaster. “It’s $289, but I can’t take a check.” I acted disappointed. “Well, gosh, Mr. Rosen, I’ll have to go cash a check then and bring you the cash.”

Rosen shook his head. “Can’t take cash, either,” he said. “I’m going to have to bill this back to your employee account number and it’ll be deducted from your uniform allowance or taken out of your paycheck. That’s the way

^. «.**? ~C ,,—-_ _…._ 1——1-

we do it here.“ Rosen was a veritable fount of airline operations information and I was grateful.

He handed me a form in triplicate and I commenced to fill in the required information. Opposite the space for my name were five small connected boxes, and I assumed rightly that they were for an employee’s payroll account number. Five boxes. Five digits. I filled in the boxes with the first five numbers that came to mind, signed the form and pushed it back to Rosen. He snapped off the bottom copy, handed it to me.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Rosen,” I said, and left, carrying the lovely uniform. If Rosen answered, I didn’t hear him.

I went back to my room and dialed the Pan Am switchboard again. “Excuse me, but I was referred to the stores department,” I said, acting confused. “What is that, please? I’m not with the company, and I have to make a delivery there.”

The switchboard girl was most helpful. “Stores is our employee commissary,” she said. “It’s in Hangar Fourteen at Kennedy Airport. Do you need directions?”

I said I didn’t and thanked her. I took an airport bus to Kennedy and was dismayed when the driver let me off in front of Hangar 14. Whatever stores Pan Am kept in Hangar 14, they had to be valuable. The hangar was a fortress, surrounded by a tall cyclone fence topped with strands of barbed wire and its entrances guarded by armed sentries. A sign on the guard shack at each entrance warned “EMPLOYEES ONLY.”

A dozen or more pilots, stewardesses and civilians entered the compound while I reconnoitered from the bus stop. I noticed the civilians stopped and displayed identification to the guards, but most of the uniformed personnel, pilots and stewardesses, merely strolled through the gate, some without even a glance at the guard. Then one turned back to say something to a sentry and I noticed he had an ID card clipped to his breast pocket below his wings.

It was a day that threatened rain. I had brought a raincoat along, a black one similar to the ones some of the pilots had draped over their arms. I had my newly acquired pilot’s uniform in a small duffle bag. I felt a little like Custer must have felt when he chanced upon Sitting Bull’s Sioux.

I reacted just like Custer. I charged. I went into one of the airport toilets and changed into the uniform, stuffing my civies into the duffle bag. Then I left the terminal and walked directly toward Hangar 14’s nearest entrance.

The guard was in his shack, his back toward me. As I neared the gate, I flipped the raincoat over my left shoulder, concealing the entire left side of my jacket, and swept off my hat. When the guard turned to confront me, I was combing my hair with my fingers, my hat in my left hand.

I didn’t break stride. I smiled and said crisply, “Good evening.” He made no effort to stop me, although he returned my greeting. A moment later I was inside Hangar 14. It was, indeed, a hangar. A gleaming 707, parked at the rear of the building, dominated the interior. But Hangar 14 was also an immense compartmented office structure containing the offices of the chief pilot and chief stewardess, the firm’s meteorology offices and dozens of other cubicles that I presumed accommodated other Pan Am functions or personnel. The place was teeming with human traffic. There seemed to be dozens of pilots, scores of stewardesses and innumerable civilians milling around. I presumed the latter were clerks, ticket agents, mechanics and other nonflying personnel.

I hesitated in the lobby, suddenly apprehensive. Abruptly I felt like a sixteen-year-old and I was sure that anyone who looked at me would realize I was too young to be a pilot and would summon the nearest cop.

I didn’t turn a head. Those who did glance at me displayed no curiosity or interest. There was a large placard on a facing wall listing various departments and with arrows pointing the way. Stores was down a corridor to my left, and proved to be a military-like cubicle with a myriad of box-holding shelves. A lanky youth with his name embroidered on the right side of his shirt rose from a chair in front of a large desk as I stopped at the counter.

“Can I he’p ya?” he asked in molasses tones. It was the first real southern drawl I’d ever heard. I liked it.

“Yes,” I said and attempted a rueful grin. “I need a pair of wings and a hat emblem. My two-year-old took mine off my uniform last night and he won’t, or can’t, tell me what he did with them.”

The storekeeper laughed. “We got mo‘ wings on kids ’n gals ‘n we got on pilots, I ’spect,” he said drolly. “We shore replace a lot of ‘em, anyway. Here you are. Gimme yore name and employee number.” He took a form from a file slot on his desk and laid it on the counter with a pair of golden wings and a Pan Am cap badge and stood, pen poised.

“Robert Black, first officer, 35099,” I said, affixing the hat emblem and pinning the wings on my tunic. “I’m out of Los Angeles. You need an address there?”

He grinned. “Nah, damned computers don’t need noth-in‘ but numbers,” he replied, handing me a copy of the purchase form.

I loitered leaving the building, trying to mingle unobtrusively with the crowd.

I wanted to pick up as much information as possible on airline pilots and airline operations, and this seemed a good opportunity to glean a few tidbits. Despite the number of pilots and other aircrewmen in the building, they all seemed to be strangers to one another. I was especially interested in the plastic-enclosed cards, obviously identification of some sort, that most of the pilots sported on their breasts. The stewardesses, I observed, had similar ID cards but had them clipped to their purse straps.

A couple of pilots were scanning notices tacked on a large bulletin board in the lobby. I stopped and pretended to look at some of the notices, FAA or Pan Am memos mostly, and was afforded a close-up view of one pilot’s ID card. It was slightly larger than a driver’s license and similar to the one in my pocket, save for a passport-sized color photograph of the man in the upper right-hand corner and Pan American’s firm name and logo across the top in the company’s colors.

Obviously/ I reflected as I left the building, I was going to need more than a uniform if I was to be successful in my role of Pan Am pilot. I would need an ID card and a great deal more knowledge of Pan Am’s operations than I possessed at the moment. I put the uniform away in my closet and started haunting the public library and canvassing bookstores, studying all the material available on pilots, flying and airlines. One small volume I encountered proved especially valuable. It was the reminiscences of a veteran Pan American flight captain, replete with scores of photographs, and containing a wealth of airline terminology. It was not until later I learned that the pilot’s phraseology was somewhat dated.

A lot of the things I felt I ought to know, however, were not in the books or magazines I read. So I got back on the pipe with Pan Am. “I’d like to speak to a pilot, please,” I told the switchboard operator. “I’m a reporter for my high school newspaper, and I’d like to do a story on pilots’ lives—you know, where they fly, how they’re trained and that sort of stuff. Do you think a pilot would talk to me?”

Pan Am has the nicest people. “Well, I can put you through to operations, the crew lounge,” said the woman. “There might be someone sitting around there that might answer some of your questions.”

There was a captain who was happy to oblige. He was delighted that young people showed an interest in making a career in the airline field. I introduced myself as Bobby Black, and after some innocuous queries, I started to feed him the questions I wanted answered.

“What’s the age of the youngest pilot flying for Pan Am?”

“Well, that depends,” he answered. “ We have some

flight engineers who’re probably no older than twenty-three or twenty-four. Our youngest co-pilot is probably up in his late twenties. Your average captain is close to forty or in his forties, probably.“

“I see,” I said. “Well, would it be impossible for a copilot to be twenty-six, or even younger?”

“Oh, no,” he answered quickly. “I don’t know that we have that many in that age bracket, but some of the other airlines do have a lot of younger co-pilots, I’ve noticed. A lot depends, of course, on the type of plane he’s flying and his seniority. Everything is based on seniority, that is, how long a pilot has been with a company.”

I was finding a lot of nuggets for my poke. “When do you hire people; I mean, at what age can a pilot go to work for an airline, say Pan Am?”

“If I remember correctly, you can come on the payroll at twenty as a flight engineer,” said the captain, who had an excellent memory.

“Then feasibly, with six or eight years’ service, you could become a co-pilot?” I pressed.

“If s possible,” he conceded. “In fact, I’d say it wouldn’t be unusual at all for a capable man to make co-pilot in six or eight years, less even.”

“Are you allowed to tell me how much pilots earn?” I asked.

“Well, again, that depends on seniority, the route he flies, the number of hours he flies each week and other factors,” said the captain. “I would say the maximum salary for a co-pilot would be $32,000, a captain’s salary around $50,000.”

“How many pilots does Pan Am have?” I asked.

The captain chuckled. “Son, that’s a tough one. I don’t know the exact number. But eighteen hundred would probably be a fair estimate. You can get better figures from the personnel manager.”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “How many places are these pilots?”

“You’re talking about bases,” he replied. “We have five bases in the United States: San Francisco, Washington D.C., Chicago, Miami and New York. Those are cities where our aircrews live. They report to work in that city, San Francisco, say, fly out of that city and eventually terminate a flight in that city. It might help you to know that we are not a domestic carrier, that is, we don’t fly from city to city in this country. We’re strictly an international carrier, serving foreign destinations.”

The information helped me a lot. “This may sound strange to you, Captain, and it’s more curiosity than anything else, but would it be possible for me to be a co-pilot based in New York City, and you to be a co-pilot also based in New York, and me never to meet you?”

“Very possible, even more so with co-pilots, for you and I would never fly together in the same plane,” said the talkative captain. “Unless we met at a company meeting or some social function, which is improbable, we might never encounter one another. You’d be more apt to know more captains and more flight engineers than co-pilots. You might fly with different captains or different flight engineers and run into them again if you’re transferred, but you’d never fly with another co-pilot. There’s only one to a plane.

“There’re so many pilots in the system, in fact, that no one pilot would know all the others. I’ve been with the company eighteen years, and I don’t think I know more than sixty or seventy of the other pilots.”

The captain’s verbal pinballs were lighting up all the lights in my little head.

“I’ve heard that pilots can fly free, I mean as a passenger, not as a pilot. Is that true?” I prompted.

“Yes,” said the captain. “But we’re talking about two things, now. We have pass privileges. That is, me and my family can travel somewhere by air on a stand-by basis. That is, if there’s room, we can occupy seats, and our only cost is the tax on the tickets. We pay that.

“Then there’s deadheading. For example, if my boss told me tonight that he wanted me in L.A. tomorrow to fly a trip out of there, I might fly out there on Delta, Eastern, TWA or any other carrier connecting with Los Angeles that could get me there on time. I would either occupy an empty passenger seat or, more likely, ride in the jump seat. That’s a little fold-down seat in the cockpit, generally used by deadheading pilots, VIPs or FAA check riders.”

“Would you have to help fly the plane?” I quizzed.

“Oh, no,” he replied. “I’d be on another company’s carrier, you see. You might be offered a control seat as a courtesy, but I always decline. We fly on each other’s planes to get somewhere, not to work.” He laughed.

“How do you go about that, deadheading, I mean?” I was really enthused. And the captain was patient. He must have liked kids.

“You want to know it all, don’t you?” he said amiably, and proceeded to answer my question.

“Well, it’s done on what we call a pink slip. It works this way. Say I want to go to Miami on Delta. I go down to Delta operations, show them my Pan Am ID card and I fill out a Delta pink slip, stating my destination and giving my position with Pan Am, my employee number and my FAA pilot’s license number. I get a copy of the form and that’s my ‘jump/ I give that copy to the stewardess when I board, and that’s how I get to ride in the jump seat.”

I wasn’t through, and he didn’t seem to mind my continuing. “What’s a pilot’s license look like?” I asked. “Is it a certificate that you can hang on the wall, or like a driver’s license, or what?”

He laughed. “No, if s not a certificate you hang on the wall. If s kind of hard to describe, really. If s about the size of a driver’s license, but there’s no picture attached. It’s just a white card with black printing on it.”

I decided it was time to let the nice man go back to his comfortable seat. “Gee, Captain, I sure thank you,” I said. “You’ve been really super.”

“Glad to have helped you, son,” he said. “I hope you get those pilot’s wings, if that’s what you want.”

I already had the wings. What I needed was an ID card and an FAA pilot’s license. I wasn’t too concerned about the ID card. The pilot’s license had me stumped. The FAA was not exactly a mail-order house.

I let my fingers do the walking in my search for a suitable ID card. I looked in the Yellow Pages under IDENTIFICATION, picked a firm on Madison Avenue (any ID company with a Madison Avenue address had to have class, I thought) and went to the firm dressed in a business suit.

It was a prestigious office suite with a receptionist to screen the walk-in trade. “Can I help you?” she asked in efficient tones.

“I’d like to see one of your sales representatives, please,” I replied in equally businesslike inflections.

The sales representative had the assured air and manner of a man who would disdain talking about a single ID card, so I hit him with what I thought would best get his attention and win his affection, the prospect of a big account.

“My name is Frank Williams, and I represent Carib Air of Puerto Rico,” I said crisply. “As you probably know, we are expanding service to the continental United States, and we presently have two hundred people in our facilities at Kennedy. Right now we’re using only a temporary ID card made of paper, and we want to go to a formal, laminated, plastic-enclosed card with a color photograph and the company logo, similar to what the other airlines use here. We want a quality card, and I understand you people deal only in quality products.”

If he knew that Carib Air existed and was expanding to the United States, he knew more than I did. But he was not a man to let the facts stand in the way of a juicy sale.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Williams. Let me show you what we have along that line,” he said enthusiastically, leading me to his office. He pulled down a huge, leather-bound sample catalogue from a shelf, leafed through the contents, which ranged from vellum to beautifully watermarked bond, and displayed a whole page of various identification forms.

“Now, most of the airlines we serve use this card here,” he said, pointing out one that seemed a duplicate of Pan Am’s ID cards. “It has employee number, base, position, description, photograph and, if you wish, a company logo. I think it would do very nicely.”

I nodded in complete agreement. “Yes, I think this is the card we want,” I said. It was certainly the card I wanted. He gave me a complete cost rundown, including all the variables.

“Can you give me a sample?” I asked on impulse. “I’d like to show it to our top people, since they’re the ones who’ll have the final say.”

The salesman obliged in a matter of minutes. I studied the card. “This is fine, but it’s blank,” I said. “Tell you what. Why don’t we fix this up, so they’ll have an idea of what the finished product looks like? We can use me as the subject.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion,” said the salesman, and led me to an ID camera that produced ID-sized mug shots within minutes.

He took several photographs, we selected one (he graciously gave me the culls) and he affixed it to the space on the card, trimming it neatly. He then filled in my phony name, adopted rank (co-pilot), fictitious employee number, height, weight, coloring, age and sex in the appropriate blanks. He then sealed it in a clear, tough plastic and handed it to me with his business card.

“I’m sure we can do a good job for you, Mr. Williams,” he said, ushering me out.

He already had done a good job for me, save for one detail. The lovely ID card lacked Pan Am’s distinctive logo and firm name. I was wondering how to resolve the problem when a display in the window of a hobby shop caught my eye. There, poised on gracefully curved mounts, was an array of model planes, among them several commercial airliners. And among them a beautiful Pan Am jet, the firm’s famed logo on its tail, and the company legend, in the copyrighted lettering used by the airline, on the fuselage and wings.

The model came in several sizes. I bought the smallest, for $2.49, in an unassembled state, and hurried back to my room. I threw the plane parts away. Following instructions in the kit, I soaked the decal and lettering in water until they separated from their holding base. Both the logo and the company name were of microscopically thin plastic. I laid the Pan Am logo on the upper left-hand corner of the ID card and carefully arranged the firm legend across the top of the card. The clear decals, when they dried, appeared to have been printed on the card.

It was perfect. An exact duplicate of a Pan Am identification card. It would have required an examination with a spectroscope to reveal that the decals were actually on the outside of the plastic seal. I could have clipped the ID card on my breast pocket and passed muster at a Pan Am board meeting.

As a fake pilot, however, I was still grounded. I recalled the words of the captain I’d interviewed under false pretenses: “Your license is the most important thing. You’ve got to have it on your person at all times when operating an aircraft. I carry mine in a folder that also contains my ID. You’ll be asked to show your license as often as you’re asked for your ID.”

I mulled the issue over for days, but could think of no solution short of working my way through commercial aviation school. I started frequenting bookstores again, thumbing through the various flying publications. I wasn’t sure of what I was looking for, but I found it.

There it was, a small display ad in the back of one of the books placed by a plaque-making firm in Milwaukee that catered to professional people. The firm offered to duplicate any pilot’s license, engraved in silver and mounted on a handsome eight-by-eleven-inch hardwood plaque, for only $35. The company used the standard, precut license die used by the FAA. All a pilot had to do was supply the pertinent information, including his FAA license number and ratings, and the firm would return a silver replica of his license, suitable for display anywhere. The FAA did have a mail-order branch, it appeared.

I wanted one of the plaques, naturally. I felt there had to be a way, plaque in hand, to reduce it to the proper size on appropriate paper. And I’d have my pilot’s license!

I was feverish with the idea. I didn’t write the firm; I called their offices in Milwaukee. I told the salesman I wanted one of the plaques and asked if the transaction could be handled by telephone.

He expressed no curiosity as to why I was in such a hurry. “Well, you can give me all the necessary information over the telephone, but we’ll have to have a check or money order before we actually make up the plaque,” said the man. “In the meantime, we can start roughing it out and we’ll treat it as a special order. It’ll be $37.50, including postage and special handling.”

I didn’t quibble. I gave him my alias, Frank Williams. I gave him my spurious age and my correct weight, height, color of hair and eyes and social security number. A pilot’s license or certificate number is always the same as his social security number. I gave myself the highest rating a pilot can attain, an air transport rating. I told the man I was checked out on DC-9s, 727s and 707s. I gave him my address in care of general delivery, New York City (not unusual for commercial pilots who spend a lot of time in transit), and told him I’d have a money order in the mail that same day. I had the money order in the mail within an hour, in fact. It was the only valid draft I’d given in several weeks.

The plaque arrived within a week. It was gorgeous. Not only was I certified as a pilot in sterling, but the license replica even boasted the signature of the head of the Fed eral Aviation Agency.

I took the plaque to a hole-in-the-wall print shop in Brooklyn and sought out the head printer. “Look, I’d like to get my license reduced down so I can carry it in my wallet, you know, like you would a diploma. Can it be done?” I asked.

The printer studied the plaque admiringly. “Geez, I didn’t know pilots got this sort of thing when they learned to fly,” he said. “It’s fancier’n a college diploma.”

“Well, an actual license is a certificate, but it’s back at my home in L.A.,” I said. “This is something my girl gave me as a gift. But I’ll be based here for several months and I would like to have a wallet-sized copy of my license. Can you do it with this or will I have to send for the certificate?”

“Nah, I can do it from this,” he said, and, using a special camera, he reduced it to actual size, printed it on heavy white stock, cut it out and handed it to me. The whole process took less than thirty minutes and cost me five bucks. I laminated it with two pieces of plastic myself. I’d never seen a real pilot’s license, but this sure as hell looked like one.

I put on my pilot’s uniform, which I had had altered to a perfect fit, tilted my cap at a rakish angle and caught a bus to La Guardia Airport.

I was ready for flight duty. Provided someone else flew the plane.

CHAPTER THREE

Fly a Crooked Sky

There is enchantment in a uniform, especially one that marks the wearer as a person of rare skills, courage or achievement.

A paratrooper’s wings tell of a special breed of soldier. A submariner’s dolphin denotes the unusual sailor. A policeman’s blue symbolizes authority. A forest ranger’s raiment evokes wilderness lore. Even a doorman’s gaudy garb stirs vague thoughts of pomp and royalty.

I felt great in my Pan Am pilot’s uniform as I walked into La Guardia Airport. I obviously was commanding respect and esteem. Men looked at me admiringly or enviously. Pretty women and girls smiled at me. Airport policemen nodded courteously. Pilots and stewardesses smiled, spoke to me or lifted a hand in greeting as they passed. Every man, woman and child who noticed me seemed warm and friendly.

It was heady stuff and I loved it. In fact, I became instantly addicted. During the next five years the uniform was my alter ego. I used it in the same manner a junkie shoots up on heroin. Whenever I felt lonely, depressed, rejected or doubtful of my own worth, I’d dress up in my pilot’s uniform and seek out a crowd. The uniform bought me respect and dignity. Without it on, at times, I felt useless and dejected. With it on, during such times, I felt like I was wearing Fortunatus’ cap and walking in seven-league boots.

I milled with the crowd in La Guardia’s lobby that morning, glorying in my make-believe status. I fully intended to bluff my way aboard a flight to a distant city and start operating my check swindles there, but I delayed implementing my decision. I was having too much fun luxuriating in the attention and deference I was receiving.

I became hungry. I stepped into one of the airport’s many coffee shops, dropped onto a stool at the counter and ordered a sandwich and milk. I was almost finished eating when a TWA co-pilot sat down on a stool eater-cornered from me. He looked at me and nodded. He ordered coffee and a roll, then regarded me with mild curiosity.

“What’s Pan Am doing here at La Guardia?” he asked casually. Apparently, Pan Am did not fly out of La Guardia.

“Oh, I just deadheaded in from Frisco on the first flight I could catch,” I replied. “I’ll catch a chopper to Kennedy.”

“What kind of equipment you on?” he asked, biting into his roll.

My brains turned to ice cubes. I nearly freaked out. Equipment? What did he mean, equipment? Engines? Cockpit instruments? What? I couldn’t recall having heard the word before in connection with commercial airlines. I frantically searched for an answer for it was obviously a normal question for him to ask. I mentally reread the reminiscences of the veteran Pan Am captain, a little book I’d really liked and which I’d virtually adopted as a manual. I couldn’t recall his ever using the word “equipment.”

It had to have some significance, however. The TWA airman was looking at me, awaiting my reply. “General Electric,” I said hopefully. It was definitely not the right answer. His eyes went frosty and a guarded look crossed his features. “Oh,” he said, the friendliness gone from his voice. He busied himself with his coffee and roll. >

I gulped the rest of my milk and dropped three dollars on the counter, more than ample payment for my snack. I stood up and nodded to the TWA pilot. “So long,” I said, and headed for the door.

“Fruzhumtu,” he growled. I wasn’t sure of his exact words, but they sounded suspiciously like something I couldn’t actually do to myself.

Whatever, I knew I wasn’t sufficiently prepared to attempt a deadheading venture, despite all my prior work and research. It was evident that I needed a better command of airline terminology, among other things. As I was leaving the terminal, I noticed a TWA stewardess struggling with a heavy bag. “Can I help you?” I asked, reaching for the luggage.

She relinquished it readily. “Thanks,” she said with a grin. “That’s our crew bus just outside there.”

“Just get in?” I asked as we walked toward the bus.

She grimaced. “Yes, and I’m pooped. About half the people in our load were whiskey salesmen who’d been to a convention in Scotland, and you can imagine what that scene was like.”

I could, and laughed. “What kind of equipment are you on?” I asked on impulse.

“Seven-o-sevens, and I love ‘em,” she said as I heaved her suitcase aboard the bus. She paused at the bus door and stuck out her hand. “Thanks much, friend. I needed your muscles.”

“Glad I could help,” I said, and meant it. She was slim and elegant, with pixie features and auburn hair. Really attractive. Under other circumstances I would have pressed to know her better. I didn’t even ask her name. She was lovely, but she also knew everything there was to know about flying passengers from this place to that one, and a date with her might prove embarrassing.

Airline people manifestly loved to talk shop, and at the moment I obviously wasn’t ready to punch in at the factory. So equipment was an airplane, I mused, walking to my own bus. I felt a little stupid, but halfway back to Manhattan I burst out laughing as a thought came to mind. The TWA first officer was probably back in the pilot’s lounge by now, telling other TWA crewmen he’d just met a Pan Am jerk who flew washing machines.

I spent the next few days in the boneyard. In the past I’d found my best sources of information on airlines were airlines themselves, so I started calling the various carriers and pumping their people for information. I represented myself as a college student doing a paper on transportation, as an embryo book author or magazine writer, or as a cub reporter for one of the area’s dailies.

Generally I was referred to the airline’s public relations department. Airline PR people love to talk about their particular airline, I found. I quickly confirmed my suspicions that my aviation education was strictly elementary, but within a week I had zoomed through high school and was working on my bachelor’s degree.

The airline flacks, a lot of whom had been members of aircrews themselves, obligingly filled me in on a wealth of juicy facts and technical tidbits: the types of jets used by both American and foreign carriers, fuel capacities and speeds, altitudes, weight limits, passenger capacities, number of crewmen, weight limits and other such goodies.

I learned, for instance, that a large number of commercial airline pilots are drawn from the military. Those without an air force or naval aviation background had come up from small, bush-league airlines or were graduates of private flying schools such as Embry-Riddle, I was told.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, is the most respected, and probably the largest, commercial flight-training school in the nation, I was informed. It’s the Notre Dame of the air. A kid out of high school, with no knowledge of aeronautics whatsoever, could enter ground school at Embry-Riddle and leave several years later able to fly any current jet liner.

“Those of our pilots who didn’t come to us from the air force or the navy came to us from Embry-Riddle,” said one airline flack pridefully.

I knew nothing about the military. I couldn’t tell a private from a vice admiral. So I awarded myself a scholarship to Embry-Riddle, graduated fantasy cum laude, and then gave myself a few years of mythical experience with Eastern Airlines.

As my knowledge of airlines and airline terminology broadened, my confidence returned. I opened a checking account in the name of Frank Williams, with a post-office box address, and when my order for two hundred personalized checks arrived general delivery, I tried cashing a few checks in my guise as an airline pilot.

It was like going on safari in the Bronx Zoo. Cashiers couldn’t get the money out of the tills fast enough. Most of them didn’t even ask for identification. I shoved my phony ID card and my ersatz pilot’s license in their faces anyway. I didn’t want my handiwork to go unnoticed. The first couple of checks I wrote were good. The others had all the value of bubble-gum wrappers.

I started hanging around La Guardia regularly, not with any intentions of catching a flight, but to meet airline personnel and to eavesdrop on airline talk. Testing my vocabulary, so to speak. I shunned Kennedy, since Pan Am operated out of there. I was afraid that the first Pan Am pilot I encountered at Kennedy would recognize me as a fraud, court-martial me on the spot and strip me of my wings and buttons.

At La Guardia I made out like a possum in a persimmon tree. Some books are judged by their covers, it seems, and in my uniform I was an immediate best seller. I’d walk into a coffee shop, where there would usually be a dozen or more pilots or other crewmen taking a break, and invariably someone would invite me to join him or them. More often it was them, for airline people tend to gaggle like geese. It was the same in cocktail lounges around the airport. I never took a drink in the bars, since I had yet to try alcohol and wasn’t sure how it would affect me, but no one questioned my abstinence.

Any pilot, I’d learned, could gracefully decline a drink by pleading the required “twelve hours between the bottle and the throttle.” It apparently never occurred to anyone that I’d never seen a throttle. I was always accepted at par value. I wore the uniform of a Pan Am pilot, therefore I must be a Pan Am pilot. Barnum would have loved airline people.

I didn’t do a lot of talking initially. I usually let the conversations flow around me, monitoring the words and phrases, and within a short time I was speaking airlinese like a native. La Guardia, for me, was the Berlitz of the air.

Some of my language books were absolutely gorgeous. I guess the stewardesses just weren’t that used to seeing a really young pilot, one that appeared to be an age peer. “Hel-looo!” one would say in passing, putting a pretty move on me, and the invitation in her voice would be unmistakable. I felt I could turn down only so many invitations without seeming to be rude, and I was soon dating several of the girls. I took them to dinner, to the theater, to the ballet, to the symphony, to night clubs and to movies. Also to my place or their place.

I loved them for their minds.

The rest of them was wonderful, too. But for the first time I was more interested in a girl’s knowledge of her work than in her body. I didn’t object, of course, if the one came with the other. A bedroom can be an excellent classroom.

I was an apt student. I mean, it takes a certain degree of academic concentration to learn all about airline travel-expense procedures, say, when someone is biting you on the shoulder and digging her fingernails into your back. It takes a dedicated pupil to say to a naked lady, “Gee, is this your flight manual? It’s a little different from the ones our stewardesses use.”

I picked their brains discreetly. I even spent a week in a Massachusetts mountain resort with three stewardesses, and not one of them was skeptical of my pilot’s status, although there were some doubts expressed concerning my stamina.

Don’t get the impression that stewardesses, as a group, are promiscuous. They aren’t. The myth that all stewardesses are passionate nymphs is just that, a myth. If anything, “stews” are more circumspect and discriminating in their sexual lives than women in other fields. The ones I knew were all intelligent, sophisticated and responsible young women, good in their jobs, and I didn’t make out en masse. The ones who were playmates would have hopped into bed with me had they been secretaries, nurses, bookkeepers or whatever. Stews are good people. I have very pleasant memories of the ones I met, and if some of the memories are more pleasant than others, they’re not necessarily sexually oriented.

I didn’t score at all with one I recall vividly. She was a Delta flight attendant whom I’d met during my initial studies of airline jargon. She had a car at the airport and offered to drive me back to Manhattan one afternoon.

“Would you drop me at the Plaza?” I requested as we walked through the lobby of the terminal. “I need to cash a check and I’m known there.” I wasn’t known there, but I intended to be.

The stewardess stopped and gestured at the dozens of airline ticket counters that lined every side of the huge lobby. There must be more than a hundred airlines that have ticket facilities at La Guardia. “Cash your check at one of those counters. Any one of them will take your check.”

“They will?” I said, somewhat surprised but managing to conceal the fact. “It’s a personal check and we don’t operate out of here, you know.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re a Pan Am pilot in uniform, and any airline here will take your personal check as a courtesy. They do that at Kennedy, don’t they?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had occasion to cash a check at a ticket counter before,” I said truthfully.

American’s counter was the nearest. I walked over and confronted a ticket clerk who wasn’t busy. “Can you cash a $100 personal check for me?” I asked, checkbook in hand.

“Sure, be glad to,” he said, smiling, and took the bouncing beauty with barely a glance at it. He didn’t even ask me for identification.

I had occasion to cash checks at airline counters frequently thereafter. I worked La Guardia like a fox on a turkey ranch. The air facility was so immense that the risk of my being caught was minimal. I’d cash a check at the Eastern counter, for instance, then go to another section of the terminal and tap some other airline’s till. I was cautious. I never went back to the same counter twice. I worked a condensed version of the scam at Newark, and hit Teterboro a few elastic licks. I was producing rubber faster than a Ceylon planter.

Every gambler has a road game. Mine was hitting the hotels and motels where airline crews put up in transit. I even bought a round-trip airline ticket to Boston, an honest ticket paid for with dishonest money, and papered Logan Airport and its surrounding crew hostelries with scenic chits before scurrying back to New York.

Flushed with success, emboldened by the ease with which I passed myself off as a pilot, I decided I was finally ready for “Operation Deadhead.”

I’d been living in a walk-up flat on the West Side. I’d rented the small apartment under the name Frank Williams and I’d paid my rent punctually and in cash. The landlady, whom I saw only to tender the rent money, thought I worked in a stationery store. None of the other tenants knew me and I’d never appeared around the building in my pilot’s uniform. I had no telephone and I’d never received mail at the address.

When I packed and left the flat, there was no trail to follow. The best bell-mouthed hound in the Blue Ridge Mountains couldn’t have picked up my spoor.

I took a bus to La Guardia and went to Eastern’s operations office. There were three young men working behind the enclosure’s counter. “Yes, sir, can I help you?” one of them asked.

“I need to deadhead to Miami on your next flight, if you’ve got room,” I said, producing my sham Pan Am ID.

“We’ve got one going out in fifteen minutes, Mr. Williams,” he said. “Would you like to make that one, or wait until our afternoon flight? The jump seat’s open on either one.”

I didn’t want to tarry. “I’ll take this flight,” I said. “It’ll give me more time on the beach.”

He slid a pink form toward me. I’d never seen one before, but it was familiar because of my interview with the helpful Pan Am captain. The information elicited was minimal: name, company, employee number and position. I filled it out, handed it back to him and he popped off the top copy and handed it to me. I knew that was my boarding pass.

Then he picked up the telephone and asked for the FAA tower, and my stomach was suddenly full of yellow butterflies.

“This is Eastern,” he said. “We’ve got a jump on Flight 602 to Miami. Frank Williams, co-pilot, Pan Am. . . . Okay, thanks.” He hung up the telephone and nodded toward a door outside the glass window. “You can go through there, Mr. Williams. The aircraft is boarding at the gate to your left.”

It was a 727. Most of the passengers had already boarded. I handed my pink slip to the stewardess at the door to the aircraft and turned toward the cockpit like I’d been doing this for years. I felt cocky and debonair as I stowed my bag in the compartment indicated by the stewardess and squeezed through the small hatch into the cabin.

“Hi, I’m Frank Williams,” I said to the three men seated inside. They were busy with what I later learned was a check-off list, and ignored me except for nods of acceptance.

I looked around the instrument-crammed cabin and the butterflies started flying again. I didn’t see a jump seat, whatever a jump seat looked like. There were only three seats in the cockpit and all of them were occupied.

Then the flight engineer looked up and grinned. “Oh, sorry,” he said, reaching behind me and closing the cabin door. “Have a seat.”

As the door closed, a tiny seat attached to the floor clicked down. I eased down into the small perch, feeling the need for a cigarette. And I didn’t smoke.

No one said anything else to me until we were airborne. Then the captain, a ruddy-faced man with tints of silver in his brown hair, introduced himself, the-co-pilot and the flight engineer. “How long you been with Pan Am?” asked the captain, and I was aware from his tone that he was just making conversation.

“This is my eighth year,” I said, and wished immediately I’d said six.

None of the three evinced any surprise, however. It apparently was a tenure compatible with my rank. “What kind of equipment are you on?” queried the co-pilot.

“Seven-o-sevens,” I said. “I was on DC-8s until a couple of months ago.”

Although I felt like I was sitting on a bed of hot coals all the way to Miami, it was really ridiculously easy. I was asked where I had received my training and I said Embry-Riddle. I said Pan Am had hired me right out of school. After that, the conversation was desultory and indifferent and mostly among the three Eastern officers. Nothing else was directed toward me that might threaten my assumed status. At one point the co-pilot, who was handling traffic, handed me a pair of earphones and asked if I wanted to listen in, but I declined, saying I preferred a rock station. That brought a laugh. I did monitor their talk diligently, storing up the slang phrases that passed among them and noting how they used the airline jargon. They were all three married and a lot of their conversation centered around their families.

The stewardess who served the cabin was a cute little brunette. When I went to the toilet I stopped en route back to the cockpit and engaged her in a conversation. I learned she was laying over in Miami and before I returned to the cabin I had made a date with her for that night. She was staying with a girl friend who lived there.

I thanked the flying officers before deplaning. They casually wished me luck and the captain said the jump seat was generally available “anytime you need it.”

I’d never been to Miami before. I was impressed and excited by the colorful tropical vegetation and the palms around the terminal, the warm sun and the bright, clean air. The lack of tall buildings, the seeming openness of the landscape, the gaudy and casual attire of the people milling around the airport terminal made me feel like I’d been set down in a strange and wonderful land. I was inside the terminal before I realized I didn’t have the slightest idea where Pan Am housed its people in Miami. Well, there was an easy way to find out.

I walked up to the Pan Am ticket counter and the girl behind the counter, who was busy with passengers, excused herself and stepped over to face me. “Can I help you?” “ she asked, looking at me curiously.

“Yes,” I said. “This is my first layover in Miami. I’m here on a replacement status. I normally don’t fly trips in here, and I came in such a hurry that no one told me where the hell we stay here. Where do we lay over here?”

“Oh, yes, sir, we stay at the Skyway Motel if it’s going to be less than twenty-four hours,” she responded, suddenly all aid and assistance.

“It will be,” I said.

“Well, it’s only a short distance,” she said. “You can wait on the crew bus or you can just take a cab over there. Are you going to take a cab?”

“I think so,” I replied. I knew I was going to take a cab. I wasn’t about to get on a bus full of real Pan Am flight people.

“Wait a minute, then,” she said and stepped over to her station. She opened a drawer and took out a claim-check-sized card and handed it to me. “Just give that to any of the cab drivers out front. Have a good stay.”

Damned if it wasn’t a ticket for a free cab ride, good with any Miami cab firm. Airline people lived in the proverbial land of milk and honey, I thought as I walked out of the terminal. I liked milk and I knew I was in the right hive when I checked in at the motel. I registered under my phony name and put down General Delivery, New York, as my address. The registration clerk took the card, glanced at it, then stamped “AIRLINE CREW” in red ink across its face.

“I’ll be checking out in the morning,” I said.

She nodded. “All right. You can sign this now if you want, and you won’t have to stop by here in the morning.”

“I’ll just sign it in the morning,” I replied. “I might run up some charges tonight.” She shrugged and filed the card.

I didn’t see any Pan Am crewmen around the motel. If there were any around the pool, where a lively crowd was assembled, I drew no attention from them. In my room, I changed into casual attire and called the Eastern stewardess at the number she’d given me.

She picked me up in her friend’s car and we had a ball in the Miami Beach night spots. I didn’t put any moves on her, but I wasn’t being gallant. I was so turned on by the success of my first adventure as a bogus birdman that I forgot about it. By the time I remembered, she’d dropped me at the Skyway and gone home.

I checked out at 5:30 the next morning. There was only a sleepy-faced night clerk on duty when I entered the lobby. He took my key and gave me my room bill to sign.

“Can I get a check cashed?” I asked as I signed the tab.

“Sure, do you have your ID card?” he said.

I handed it to him and wrote out a check for $100, payable to the hotel. He copied the fictitious employee number from my fake ID card onto the back of the check and handed me back my ID and five $20 bills. I took a cab to the airport and an hour later deadheaded to Dallas on a Braniff flight. The Braniff flight officers were not inquisitive at all, but I had a few tense moments en route. I wasn’t aware that Pan Am didn’t fly out of Dallas. I was aware that deadheading pilots were always supposed to be on business.

“What the hell are you going to Dallas for?” the co-pilot asked in casually curious tones. I was searching for a reply when he gave me the answer. “You in on a charter or something?”

“Yeah, freight,” I said, knowing Pan Am had worldwide freight service, and the subject was dropped.

I stayed overnight at a motel used by flight crews of several airlines, stung the inn with a $100 bum check when I left in the morning and deadheaded to San Francisco immediately. It was a procedural pattern I followed, with variations, for the next two years. Modus operandi, the cops call it.

Mine was a ready-made scam, one for which the airlines, motels and hotels set themselves up. The hotels and motels around metropolitan or international airports considered it just good business, of course, when they entered into agreements with as many airlines as possible to house transit flight crews. It assured the hostelries of at least a minimum rate of occupancy, and no doubt most of the operators felt the presence of the pilots and stewardesses would attract other travelers seeking lodging. The airlines considered it a desirable arrangement because the carriers were guaranteed room space for their flight crews, even during conventions and other festive affairs when rooms were at a premium. I know from numerous conversations on the subject that the flight crews liked the plan whereby the airlines were billed directly for lodging and allotted meals. It simplified their expense-account bookkeeping.

The deadheading arrangement between airlines everywhere in the world was also a system based on good business practices. It was more than a courtesy. It afforded a maximum of mobility for pilots and co-pilots needed in emergency or essential situations.

However, supervision, auditing or other watchdog procedures concerning the agreements and arrangements were patently, at least during that period, lax, sloppy or nonexistent. Airport security, understandably, was minimal at the time. Terrorist raids on terminals and plane hijackings were yet to become the vogue. Airports, small cities that they are in themselves, had a low crime ratio, with theft the common problem.

No one, apparently, save under extreme circumstances, ever went behind the pink “jump” forms and checked out the requesting pilot’s bona fides. The deadheading form consisted of an original and two copies. I was given the original as a boarding pass and I gave that to the stewardess in charge of boarding. I knew the operations clerk always called the FAA tower to inform the tower operators that such-and-such flight would have a jump passenger aboard, but I didn’t know that a copy of the pink pass was given the FAA. Presumably, the third copy was kept in the operations files of the particular airline. An airline official who made a statement to police concerning my escapades offered what seemed to him a logical explanation:

“You simply don’t expect a man in a pilot’s uniform, with proper credentials and obvious knowledge of jump procedures, to be an impostor, dammit!”

But I have always suspected that the majority of the jump forms I filled out ended up in the trash, original and both copies.

There were other factors, too, that weighed the odds in my favor. I was not at first a big operator. I limited the checks I cashed at motels, hotels and airline counters to $100, and not infrequently I was told there wasn’t enough cash on hand to handle a check for more than $50 or $75. It always took several days for one of my worthless checks to traverse the clearing-house routes to New York, and by the time the check was returned stamped “insufficient funds,” I was a long time gone. The fact that I had a legitimate (on the face of it, at least) account had a bearing on my success also. The bank didn’t return my checks with the notation “worthless,” “fraudulent” or “forgery.” They merely sent them back marked “insufficient funds to cover.”

Airlines and hostelries do a volume business by check. Most of the checks returned to them because of insufficient funds aren’t attempts to defraud. It’s usually a bad case of the shorts on the part of the people who tendered the checks. In most instances, such persons are located and their checks are made good. In many cases involving checks I passed, the checks were first placed for collection before any attempt to locate me was made through Pan Am. In many other instances, I’m sure, the victimized business simply wrote off the loss and didn’t pursue the matter.

Those who did usually turned the matter over to local police, which further aided and abetted me. Very few police departments, if any, have a hot-check division or bunco squad that is adequately staffed, not even metropolitan forces.

And no detective on any police force is burdened with a case load heavier than the officer assigned to the check-fraud detail. Fraudulent check swindles are the most common of crimes, and the professional paperhanger is the wiliest of criminals, the hardest to nab. That’s true today and it was true then, and it’s no reflection on the abilities or determination of the officers involved. Their success ratio is admirable when you consider the number of complaints they handle daily. Such policemen usually work on priorities. Say a team of detectives is working on a bum-check operation involving phony payroll checks that’s bilking local merchants of $10,000 weekly, obviously the handiwork of a ring. They also have a complaint from a jeweler who lost a $3,000 ring to a hot-check artist. And one from a banker whose bank cashed a $7,500 counterfeit cashier’s check. Plus a few dozen cases involving resident forgers. Now they’re handed a complaint from a motel manager who says he lost $100 to a con artist posing as an airline pilot. The offense occurred two weeks past.

So what do the detectives do? They make the routine gestures, that’s what. They ascertain the man’s New York address is a phony. They learn Pan Am has no such pilot on its payroll. Maybe they go so far as to determine the impostor bilked the one airline out of a free ride to Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles or some other distant point. They put a message to whichever city is appropriate on the police teletype and pigeonhole the complaint for possible future reference, that’s what they do. They’ve done as much as they could.

And like the bumblebee, I kept flying and making honey on the side.

So it’s not too amazing that I could operate so freely and brazenly when you consider the last two factors in my hypothesis. The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) did not exist as a police tool during the period. Had I had to contend with the computerized police link, with its vast and awesome reservoir of criminal facts and figures, my career would probably have been shortened by years. And lastly, I was pioneering a scam that was so implausible, so seemingly impossible and so brass-balled blatant that it worked.

In the last months of my adventures, I ran into a Continental captain with whom I had deadheaded a couple of times. It was a tense moment for me, but he dispelled it with the warmth of his greeting. Then he laughed and said, “You know, Frank, I was talking to a Delta stewardess a couple of months ago and she said you were a phony. I told her that was bullshit, that you’d handled the controls of my bird. What’d you do to that girl, boy, kick her out of bed?”

My adventures. The first few years that’s exactly what they were for me, adventures. Adventures in crime, of course, but adventures nonetheless.

I kept a notebook, a surreptitious journal in which I jotted down phrases, technical data, miscellaneous information, names, dates, places, telephone numbers, thoughts and a collection of other data I thought was necessary or might prove helpful.

It was a combination log, textbook, little black book, diary and airline bible, and the longer I operated, the thicker it became with entries. One of the first notations in the notebook is “glide scopes.” The term was mentioned on my second deadhead flight and I jotted it down as a reminder to learn what it meant. Glide scopes are runway approach lights used as landing guides. The journal is crammed with all sorts of trivia that was invaluable to me in my sham role. If you’re impersonating a pilot it helps to know things like the fuel consumption of a 707 in flight (2,000 gallons an hour), that planes flying west maintain altitudes at even-numbered levels (20,000 feet, 24,000 feet, etc.) while east-bound planes fly at odd-numbered altitudes (19,000 feet, 27,000 feet, etc.), or that all airports are identified by code (LAX, Los Angeles; JFK or LGA, New York, etc.).

Little things mean a lot to a big phony. The names of every flight crew I met, the type of equipment they flew, their route, their airline and their base went into the book as some of the more useful data.

Like I’d be deadheading on a National flight.

“Where you guys out of?”

“Oh, we’re Miami-based.”

A sneak look into my notebook, then: “Hey, how’s Red doing? One of you’s gotta know Red O’Day. How is that Irishman?”

All three knew Red O’Day. “Hey, you know Red, huh?”

“Yeah, I’ve deadheaded a couple of times with Red. He’s a great guy.”

Such exchanges reinforced my image as a pilot and usually averted the mild cross-examinations to which I’d been subjected at first.

Just by watching and listening I became adept in other things that enhanced my pose. After the second flight, whenever I was offered a pair of earphones with which to listen in on airline traffic, I always accepted, although a lot of pilots preferred a squawk box, in which case no earphones were needed.

I had to improvise a lot. Whenever I’d deadhead into a city not used by Pan Am, such as Dallas, and didn’t know which motels or hotels were used by airline crews, I’d simply walk up to the nearest airline ticket counter. “Listen, I’m here to work a charter that’s coming in tomorrow. Where do the airlines stay around here?” I’d ask.

I was always supplied with the name or names of a nearby inn or inns. I’d pick one, go there and register, and I was never challenged when I asked that Pan Am be billed for my lodging. All they asked was Pan Am’s address in New York.

At intervals I’d hole up in a city for two or three weeks for logistics purposes. I’d open an account in, say, a San Diego bank, or a Houston bank, giving the address of an apartment I’d rented for the occasion (I always rented a pad that could be had on a month-to-month basis), and when my little box of personalized checks arrived, I would pack up and take to the airways again.

I knew I was a hunted man, but I was never sure how closely I was being pursued or who was in the posse those first two years. Any traveling con man occasionally gets the jitters, certain he’s about to be collared, and I was no exception. Whenever I got a case of the whibbies, I’d go to earth like a fox.

Or with a fox. Some of the girls I dated came on pretty strong, making it apparent they thought I was marriage material. I had a standing invitation from several to visit them in their homes for a few days and get to know their parents. When I felt the need to hide out, I’d drop in on the nearest one and stay for a few days or a week, resting and relaxing. I hit it off well with the parents in every instance. None of them ever found out they were aiding and abetting a juvenile delinquent.

When I felt the situation was cool again, I’d take off, promising the particular girl that I’d return soon and we’d talk about our future. I never went back, of course. I was afraid of marriage.

Besides, my mother would not have permitted it. I was only seventeen.

CHAPTER FOUR

If I’m a Kid Doctor,

Where’s My Jar

of Lollipops?

National Flight 106, New Orleans to Miami. A routine deadheading deception. I was now polished in my pettifoggery as a pilot without portfolio. I had grown confident, even cocky, in my pre-empting of cockpit jump seats. After two hundred duplicitous flights, I occupied a jump seat with the same assumption of a Wall Street broker in his seat on the stock exchange.

I even felt a little nostalgic as I stepped into the flight cabin of the DC-8. My first fraudulent flight had been on a National carrier to Miami. Now, two years later, I was returning to Miami, and again on a National jet. I thought it appropriate.

“Hi, Frank Williams. Nice of you to give me a lift,” I said with acquired poise, and shook hands all around. Captain Tom Wright, aircraft commander, forties, slightly rumpled look of competence. First Officer Gary Evans, early thirties, dapper, with amused features. Flight Engineer Bob Hart, late twenties, skinny, serious demeanor, new uniform, a rookie. Nice guys. The kind I liked to soft-con.

A stewardess brought me a cup of coffee as we taxied toward the runway. I sipped the brew and watched the plane traffic on the strip ahead. It was late Saturday night, moonless, and the aircraft, distinguishable only by their interior lights and flickering exhausts, dipped and soared like lightning bugs. I never ceased to be fascinated by air traffic, night or day.

Wright was apparently not one to use the squawk box. All three officers had headsets, and none of the three had offered me a set for monitoring. If you weren’t offered, you didn’t ask. The cockpit of a passenger plane is like the captain’s bridge on a ship. Protocol is rigidly observed, if that’s the tone set by the skipper. Tom Wright operated his jet by the book, it seemed. I didn’t feel slighted. The conversation between the three and the tower was clipped and cursory, rather uninteresting, in fact, as most such one-sided exchanges are.

Suddenly it was real interesting, so interesting that I started to pucker at both ends.

Wright and Evans exchanged arch-browed, quizzical looks, and Hart was suddenly regarding me with solemn-eyed intensity. Then Wright twisted around to face me. “Do you have your Pan Am identification card?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” I said and handed it to him, stomach quaking as Wright studied the artistic fake. “This is National 106 back to tower. . . uh, yes, I have an ID card here . . . Pan Am . . . looks fine. . . . Employee number? Uh, three-five-zero-niner-niner. . . . Uh-huh. . . . Uh, yeah. M-mm, just a moment.”

He turned again to me. “Do you have your FAA license?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, attempting to act puzzled and keep my bladder under control. It was bulging like a Dutch dike at high tide.

Wright examined the forgery closely. He was the first real pilot to inspect the illicit license. He scrutinized it with the intensity of an art expert judging the authenticity of a Gauguin. Then: “Uh, yeah. FAA license, number zero-seven-five-three-six-six-eight-zero-five. . . . Yes . . . mul-tiengine . . . check-out ATR. . . . Looks fine to me … I see nothing wrong with it. … Uh, yes, six foot, brown hair, brown eyes. . . . Okay, you got it.”

He twisted and handed back my ID card and the purported license, his face reflecting a mixture of chagrin and apology. “I don’t know what that was all about,” he said with a shrug, and did not ask me if I had any ideas on the subject.

I did, but I didn’t volunteer any of them. I tried to convince myself that nothing was amiss, that the tower operator in New Orleans was just overly officious, or doing something he thought he should be doing. Maybe, I told myself, there was an FAA regulation requiring such an inquiry and the tower operator was the first to observe the rule in my experiences, but that didn’t wash. It had clearly been an unusual incident for Tom Wright.

The three officers seemed to have dismissed the matter. They asked the usual questions and I gave the usual answers. I took part when the conversation was industry-oriented, listened politely when the three talked of their families. I was nervous all the way to Miami, my insides as tightly coiled as a rattler in a prickly pear patch.

Wright had no sooner touched down in Miami than the sword of Damocles was once more suspended over my head. The ominous one-sided conversation commenced while we were taxiing to the dock.

“Yeah, we can do that. No problem, no problem,” Wright said curtly in answer to some query from the tower. “Take over, I’ll be right back,” he said to Evans, getting out of his seat and leaving the flight cabin.

I knew then with certainty that I was in trouble. No captain ever vacated his seat while taxiing save under extreme circumstances. I managed to peer around the cabin-door combing. Wright was engaged in a whispered conversation with the chief stewardess. There was no doubt in my mind that I was the subject of the conversation.

Wright said nothing when he returned to his seat. I assumed a casual mien, as if nothing was amiss. I sensed that any overt nervousness on my part could prove disastrous, and the situation was already castastrophic.

I was not surprised at all when the jetway door opened and two uniformed Dade County sheriff’s officers stepped aboard. One took up a position blocking the exit of the passengers. The other poked his head in the flight cabin.

“Frank Williams?” he asked, his eyes darting from man to man.

“I’m Frank Williams,” I said, getting out of the jump seat.

“Mr. Williams, would you please come with us?” he said, his tone courteous, his features pleasant.

“Certainly,” I said. “But what’s this all about, anyway?”

It was a question that also intrigued the three flight officers and the stewardesses. All of them were looking on with inquisitive expressions. None of them asked any questions, however, and the officers did not satisfy their curiosity. “Just follow me, please,” he instructed me, and led the way out the exit door. His partner fell in behind me. It was a matter of conjecture on the part of the flight crew as to whether or not I had been arrested. No references had been made to arrest or custody. I was not placed in handcuffs. Neither officer touched me or gave the impression I was being restrained.

I had no illusions. I’d been busted.

The officers escorted me through the terminal and to their patrol car, parked at the front curb. One of the deputies opened the right rear door. “Will you get in, please, Mr. Williams. We have instructions to take you downtown.”

The officers said nothing to me during the ride to the sheriff’s offices. I remained silent myself, assuming an air of puzzled indignation. The deputies were clearly uncomfortable and I had a hunch this was an affair in which they weren’t really sure of their role.

I was taken to a small room in the detective division and seated in front of a desk. One of the deputies seated himself in the desk chair while the other stood in front of the closed door. Neither man made an effort to search me, and both were overly polite.

The one behind the desk cleared his throat nervously. “Mr. Williams, there seems to be some question as to whether you work for Pan Am or not,” he said, more in explanation than accusation.

“What!” I exclaimed. “Why that’s crazy! Here’s my ID and here’s my FAA license. Now you tell me who I work for.” I slapped the phony documents down on the desk, acting as if I’d been accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. He examined the ID card and the pilot’s license with obvious embarrassment and passed them to the second officer, who looked at them and handed them back with a nervous smile. They both gave the impression they’d just arrested the President for jaywalking.

“Well, sir, if you’ll just bear with us, I’m sure we can get this straightened out,” the one behind the desk observed. “This really isn’t our deal, sir. The people who asked us to do this will be along shortly.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “But who are these people?” He didn’t have to tell me. I knew. And he didn’t tell me.