10 Catch Me If You Can

An uncomfortable hour passed, more uncomfortable for the officers than for me. One of them left for a short time, returning with coffee, milk and sandwiches, which they shared with me. There was little conversation at first. I acted miffed and they acted like I should have been acting—like they wanted to be somewhere else. Oddly enough, I grew relaxed and confident as time passed, dropped my pose of righteous indignation and tried to ease their obvious discomfiture. I told a couple of airline jokes and they started to relax and ask me questions about my experiences as a pilot and the types of planes I flew.

The queries were casual and general, but of the kind designed to establish if I was a bona-fide airline pilot. One of the officers, it developed, was a private pilot himself, and at the end of thirty minutes he looked at his partner and said, “You know, Bill, I think someone’s made a helluva mistake here.”

It was near midnight when the “someone” arrived. He was in his late twenties, wearing an Ivy League suit and a serious expression. He extended a credentials folder in which nestled a gold shield. “Mr. Williams? FBI. Will you come with me, please?”

I thought we were going to the FBI offices, but instead he led me to an adjoining office and shut the door. He flashed a friendly smile. “Mr. Williams, I was called over here by the Dade County authorities, who, it seems, were contacted by some federal agency in New Orleans. Unfortunately, the officer who took the call didn’t take down the caller’s name or the agency he represented. He thought it was our agency. It wasn’t. We really don’t know what the problem is, but apparently there’s some question as to whether you work for Pan Am.

“Frankly, Mr. Williams, we’re in a bit of a quandary. We’ve been proceeding on the assumption the complaint is legitimate, and we’re trying to clarify the matter one way or the other. The problem is, the employee records are in New York and the Pan Am offices are closed over the weekend.” He paused and grimaced. Like the deputies, he wasn’t certain he was on firm ground.

“I work for Pan Am, as you will learn when the offices open Monday morning,” I said, affecting a calmly indignant attitude. “In the meantime, what do you do? Put me in jail? If you intend to do that, I have a right to call a lawyer. And I intend . . .”

He cut me off with a raised hand, palm outward. “Look, Mr. Williams, I know what the situation is, if you’re for real, and I have no reason to believe you are not. Listen, do you have any local superiors we can contact?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m based in L.A. I just deadheaded in here to see a girl, and I was going to deadhead back to the Coast Monday. I know a lot of pilots here, but they’re with other airlines. I know several stewardesses, too, but again they’re with other carriers.”

“May I see your credentials, please?”

I handed over the ID card and FAA license. He inspected the two documents and returned them with a nod. “Tell you what, Mr. Williams,” he offered. “Why don’t you give me the names of a couple of pilots you know here, and the names of some of the stewardesses, too, who can verify your status. I don’t know what this is about, but it’s obviously a federal situation and I’d like to resolve it.”

I fished out my book of facts and names and gave him the names and telephone numbers of several pilots and stewardesses, hoping all the while some of them were home and remembered me fondly. And as an actual pilot.

I really was a “hot” pilot at the moment, I thought wryly while awaiting the FBI agent’s return, but so far I’d been incredibly lucky concerning the situation. Obviously, the FAA tower operator in New Orleans had questioned my status and had made an effort to pursue his doubts. What had aroused his suspicions? I didn’t have the answer and I wasn’t going to seek one. The sheriffs office had committed a faux pas in bobbling the source of the inquiry, and the FBI agent was apparently compounding the error by ignoring the FAA as a source of information. That puzzled me, too, but I wasn’t going to raise the question. If a check with the FAA did occur to him, I would really be in the grease.

I spent an anxious forty-five minutes in the room alone and then the agent popped through the door. He was smiling. “Mr. Williams, you’re free to go. I have confirmation from several persons as to your status, and I apologize for the inconvenience and embarrassment I know we’ve caused you. I’m really sorry, sir.”

A Dade County sheriff’s sergeant was behind him. “I want to add our apologies, too, Mr. Williams. It wasn’t our fault. Just a damned mix-up. It was an FAA complaint from New Orleans. They asked us to pick you up when you got off the plane and, well, we didn’t know where to go from there, so I contacted the local FBI and, well, I’m just sorry as hell about it, sir.”

I didn’t want the FBI agent to pick up on the FAA bit. The sergeant had obviously corrected his department’s error. I spread my hands in a peace gesture and smiled. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I understand, and I’m glad you guys are doing your job. I wouldn’t want anyone flying around masquerading as a pilot, either.”

“We appreciate your being so nice about it, Mr. Williams,” said the sergeant. “Oh, your bag is over there by my desk.”

Obviously it hadn’t been searched. There was more than $7,000 in currency stashed in the bottom, among my underwear. “I gotta go, gentlemen,” I said, shaking hands with each of them. “I’ve got a girl waiting, and if she doesn’t believe this wild tale, I may be calling one of you.”

The FBI agent grinned and handed me his card. “Call me,” he said. “Especially if she has a beautiful friend.”

I split like a jack rabbit. Outside, I hailed a cab and had the driver take me to the bus station. “The company’s on an economy kick,” I said as I paid him off. A smile replaced the quizzical expression on his face.

I went into the bus station rest room and changed out of my uniform, grabbed another cab and went straight to the airport. The earliest flight leaving Miami, departing within thirty minutes, was a Delta hop to Atlanta. I bought a one-way ticket on the flight under the name Tom Lom-bardi and paid cash for it. But I didn’t totally relax until we were at cruising altitude and flying west. Once, during the short flight, I thought about the young FBI agent and hoped his boss didn’t find out how the kid had goofed. The agent didn’tseem the type who’d enjoy a tour of duty in Tucumcari, New Mexico, or Nogales, Arizona.

There was a girl in Atlanta, an Eastern stewardess. In any city, there was always a girl. I told this one I was on a six-month holiday, accumulated leave and sick time. “I thought I’d spend a couple months in Atlanta,” I said.

“Make that one month, Frank,” she said. “I’m being transferred to New Orleans in thirty days. But you can put up here until then.”

It was a very pleasant and relaxing month, at the end of which I rented a truck and moved her to New Orleans. She wanted me to stay with her there for the remainder of my “vacation,” but I didn’t feel comfortable in New Orleans. My instincts told me to get the hell away from the Crescent City, so I went back to Atlanta, where, for reasons I didn’t attempt to fathom, I felt hidden and secure.

The singles complex was a still-rare innovation in apartment construction at the time. One of the most elegant in the nation was River Bend, located on the outskirts of Atlanta. It was a sprawling, spa-like cluster of apartment units boasting a golf course, an Olympic-sized pool, saunas, tennis courts, a gymnasium, game rooms and its own club. One of its advertisements in the Atlanta Journal caught my eye and I went out to scout the premises.

I don’t smoke. I’ve never had an urge to try tobacco. I didn’t drink at the time, and still don’t save on rare occasions. I didn’t have any quarrel with alcohol or its users. My abstinence was part of the role I was playing. When I first began masquerading as a pilot I had the impression that pilots didn’t drink to any great degree, so I abstained on the premise that it would reinforce my image as a flyer. When I learned that some pilots, like other people, get soused to the follicle pits under permissible circumstances, I’d lost all interest in drinking.

My one sensuous fault was women. I had a Cyprian lust for them. The River Bend ad had touted it as a “scintillating” place to live, and the builder was obviously a firm advocate of truth in advertising. River Bend sparkled with scintillators, most of them young, leggy, lovely, shapely and clad in revealing clothing. I instantly decided that I wanted to be one of the bulls in this Georgia peach orchard.

River Bend was both expensive and selective. I was given a lengthy application to fill out when I told the manager I wanted to lease a one-bedroom unit for one year. The form demanded more information than a prospective mother-in-law. I elected to stay Frank W. Williams since all the phony identification with which I had supplied myself was in that name. I paused at the space for occupation. I wanted to put down “airline pilot,” for I knew that the uniform would attract girls like a buck rub lures a doe. But if I did that I’d have to specify Pan Am as my employer, and that made me wary. Maybe, just maybe, someone in the manager’s office might check with Pan Am.

On impulse, nothing more, I put down “medical doctor” as my occupation. I left the spaces for relatives and references blank and, hopeful it would distract attention from the questions I’d ignored, I said I’d like to pay six months’ rent in advance. I put twenty-four $100 bills on top of the application.

The assistant manager who accepted the application, a woman, was inquisitive. “You’re a doctor?” she asked, as if doctors were as rare as whooping cranes. “What type of doctor are you?”

I thought I’d better be the kind of doctor that would never be needed around River Bend. “I’m a pediatrician,” I lied. “However, I’m not practicing right now. My practice is in California, and I’ve taken a leave of absence for one year to audit some research projects at Emory and to make some investments.”

“That’s very interesting,” she said, and then looked at the pile of $100 bills. She gathered them up briskly and dropped them into a steel cash box in the top drawer of her desk. “It’ll be nice having you with us, Dr. Williams.”

I moved in the same day. The one-bedroom pad wasn’t overly large, but it was elegantly furnished, and there was ample room for the action I had in mind.

Life at River Bend was fascinating, delightful and satisfying, if sometimes frenetic. There was a party in someone’s pad almost every night, and side action all over the place. I was generally invited to be a part of the scene, whatever it was. The other tenants accepted me quickly, and save for casual inquiries, easily handled, made no effort to pry into my personal life or affairs. They called me “Doc,” and of course there were those few who don’t differentiate between doctors. This guy had a complaint about his foot. That one had mysterious pains in his stomach. There was a brunette who had an “odd, tight feeling” around her upper chest.

“I’m a pediatrician, a baby doctor. You want a podiatrist, a foot doctor,” I told the first man.

“I’m not licensed to practice in Georgia. I suggest you talk to your own doctor,” I told the other one.

I examined the brunette. Her brassiere was too small.

No sea offers calm sailing all the time, however, and one Saturday afternoon I encountered a squall that quickly built into a tragicomic hurricane.

I answered a knock on my door to face a tall, distinguished-looking man in his middle fifties, casually attired but still managing to appear impeccably groomed. He had a smile on his pleasant features and a drink in his hand.

“Dr. Williams?” he said, and assuming he was correct, proceeded to the point. “I’m Dr. Willis Granger, chief resident pediatrician of Smithers Pediatric Institute and General Hospital in Marietta.”

I was too stunned to reply and he went on with a grin, “I’m your new neighbor. Just moved in yesterday, right below you. The assistant manager, Mrs. Prell, told me you were a pediatrician. I couldn’t help but come up and introduce myself to a colleague. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Uh, no—no, not at all, Dr. Granger. Come in,” I said, hoping he’d refuse. He didn’t. He walked in and settled on my sofa.

“Where’d you go to school, here?” he asked. It was a normal question for doctors meeting, I suppose.

I knew only one college that had a school of medicine. “Columbia University in New York,” I said, and prayed he wasn’t an alumnus.

He nodded. “A great school. Where’d you serve your internship?”

Internship. That was done in a hospital, I knew. I’d never been in a hospital. I’d passed a lot of them, but the name of only one stuck in my mind. I hoped it was the kind of hospital that had interns. “Harbor Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles,” I said and waited.

“Hey, terrific,” he said, and much to my relief dropped the personal line of probing.

“You know, Smithers is a new facility. I’ve just been appointed to head up the pediatrics staff. It’ll be a seven-story hospital when it’s finished, but we’ve got only six floors open at the moment, and not too much traffic as yet. Why don’t you come up and have lunch with me some afternoon and let me show you around the place. You’ll like it, I think.”

“That sounds great, I’d love it,” I replied, and soon afterward he left. I was suddenly glum and depressed in the wake of his visit, and my first impulse was to pack and get the hell out of River Bend, if not Atlanta. Granger living right below me posed a definite threat to my existence at River Bend.

If I stayed, it would be only a matter of time before he’d know I was a phony, and I doubted he’d let it go at that. He’d probably call in the authorities.

I was tired of running. I’d been on the run for two years, and at the moment I wasn’t recalling the excitement, glamour and fun of it all; I just wanted a place to call home, a place where I could be at peace for a while, a place where I had some friends. River Bend had been that place for two months, and I didn’t want to leave. I was happy at River Bend.

A stubborn anger replaced my depression. To hell with Granger. I wouldn’t let him force me back to the paper-hanger’s circuit. I’d just avoid him. If he came to visit, I’d be busy. When he was in, I’d be out.

It wasn’t that easy. Granger was a likable man and a gregarious one. He started showing up at the parties to which I was invited. If he wasn’t invited, he’d invite himself. And he was soon one of the most popular men in the complex. I couldn’t avoid him. When he’d see me abroad, he’d hail me and stop me for a chat. And when he knew I was at home, he’d call on me.

Granger had a saving grace. He wasn’t one to talk shop. He preferred to talk about the many lovely women he’d met at River Bend, and the fun he was having with them. “You know, I was never really a bachelor, Frank,” he confided. “I got married young, a marriage neither of us should have entered into, and we stayed with it too long. Why, I don’t know. But I’m having a ball, now. I feel like a thirty-year-old man again.” Or he’d talk politics, world affairs, cars, sports, ethics and anything else. He was a learned and articulate man, informed on an amazing range of subjects.

I started to relax around Granger. In fact, I found him enjoyable company and even started seeking him out. Wary that the subject of pediatrics would recur sooner or later, however, I started spending a lot of time in the Atlanta library, reading books by pediatricians, medical journals with articles on children’s medicine and any other available printed matter that dealt with the subject. I quickly acquired a broad general knowledge of pediatrics, enough knowledge, I felt, to cope with any casual conversations concerning pediatrics.

I felt well-enough informed, after several weeks of study, in fact, to accept Granger’s invitation to have lunch with him at the hospital.

He met me in the lobby and promptly introduced me to the receptionist. “This is Dr. Williams, a friend of mine from Los Angeles and, until he returns to California, my neighbor.” I’m not sure why I was introduced to the receptionist, unless Granger thought he was being helpful. She was a lovely young woman.

A similar introduction was made frequently during an exacting tour of the hospital. We visited every department. I met the hospital administrator, the chief radiologist, the head of physical therapy, the head nurse, interns, other doctors and dozens of nurses. We had lunch in the hospital cafeteria, and from the number of doctors and nurses who joined us at the dorm-type table where we sat, it was obvious Dr. Granger was a popular and well-liked man.

I returned to the hospital frequently thereafter, chiefly because of Brenda Strong, a nurse I had met there and started dating, but also because the hospital had a large medical library with up-to-the-minute books, journals and medical magazines dealing with every facet of pediatrics.

I could browse around in the library as long as I wanted, which was sometimes hours, without arousing any suspicions. In fact, I learned my frequent use of the library earned me respect beyond professional recognition from the hospital’s staff doctors. “Most of the doctors think you’re pretty sharp, keeping up in your field even though you’re on a leave of absence,” Brenda told me.

“I think you’re pretty sharp, too.”

She was thirty, a ripe, luscious brunette with a zest for making it. I sometimes wondered what she’d think if she knew her lover was an eighteen-year-old fraud. However, I never thought of myself as a teen-ager anymore, save on rare occasions. When I looked in a mirror, I saw a mature man of twenty-five or thirty and that’s how I felt about myself, too. I’d been just an adventurous boy when I altered my chronological age, but my mental clock, during the past two years, had set itself ahead to correspond.

Still, I’d always had mature tastes in women. There were several tantalizing candy-stripers among the volunteer staff of the hospital, all in their late teens, but I was never attracted to any one of them. I preferred sophisticated, experienced women in their twenties or older. Like Brenda.

After several visits to the hospital, my initial trepidations dissipated, I began to enjoy my spurious role as a medico. I experienced the same vicarious pleasures, the same ego boosts, I’d known as a bogus pilot.

I’d walk down the corridor on one of the hospital floors and a pretty nurse would smile and say, “Good morning, Dr. Williams.”

Or I’d encounter a group of staff interns and they’d nod respectfully and chant in unison, “Good afternoon, Dr. Williams.”

Or I’d encounter one of the senior staff physicians and he’d shake hands and say, “Good to see you again, Dr. Williams.”

And all day long I’d go around feeling like Hippocrates in my hypocrite’s mantle. I even started sporting a tiny gold caduceus in my lapel.

No one tried to put me in a corner. I had no problems at all until one afternoon, following lunch with Granger and Brenda, I was leaving the hospital when John Colter, the administrator, hailed me.

“Dr. Williams! May I see you just a moment, sir.” Without waiting for an answer, he headed straight for his office nearby.

“Oh, shit,” I said, and didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until a passing orderly gave me a grin. I had an impulse to bolt, but suppressed the urge. Colter’s voice had not reflected any irritation or doubt. The request, while brusque, seemed devoid of suspicion. I followed him into his office.

“Doctor, have a seat, please,” said Colter, motioning to a comfortable lounge chair as he settled behind his desk. I relaxed immediately. He was still addressing me as “doctor,” and his manner now was almost ingratiating.

Colter, in fact, seemed embarrassed. He cleared his throat. “Dr. Williams, I’m about to ask you for a very big favor, a favor I have no right to ask,” Colter said with a wry grimace. “I know that what I’m about to propose will be imposing on you, but I’m in a box, and I think you’re the man who can solve my problem. Will you help me?”

I looked at him, perplexed. “Well, I’ll be happy to, if I can, sir,” I replied cautiously.

Colter nodded and his tone became brisk. “Here’s my problem, Doctor. On my midnight-to-eight shift, I have a resident who supervises seven interns and about forty nurses. He had a death in the family this afternoon, a sister in California. He’s left to go out there, and will be gone about ten days. Doctor, I’ve got nobody to cover that shift. Nobody. If you’ve been keeping up with the situation here, and I know from your activities that you have, you know we’ve got a severe shortage of doctors in Atlanta at the moment. I can’t find a doctor to replace Jessup, and I can’t do it myself. I’m not a medical doctor, as you know.

“I can’t use an intern. The law requires a general practitioner or a specialist in one of the medical fields be the supervising resident of a hospital like this. Do you follow me?”

I nodded. I was following him, but in the same manner a jackal follows a tiger. Way back.

Colter plunged on. “Now, Dr. Granger tells me you’re pretty well unencumbered here, that you spend a lot of time around your apartment, just taking it easy and playing with the girls.” He held up a hand and smiled. “No offense, Doctor. I envy you.”

His voice became pleading. “Dr. Williams, could you come up here and just sit around for ten days from midnight to eight? You won’t have to do anything, I assure you. Just be here, so I can meet the state’s requirements. I need you, Doctor. We’ll pay you well, Doctor. Hell, as a bonus, I’ll even put Nurse Strong on the shift for the ten days. I tell you, Doctor, I’m in a bind. If you refuse me, I don’t know what the hell I can do.”

The request astonished me, and I promptly objected. “Mr. Colter, I’d like to help you, but there’s no way I could agree,” I protested.

“Oh, why not?” Colter asked.

“Well, in the first place, I don’t have a license to practice medicine in Georgia,” I began, but Colter silenced me with an emphatic shake of his head.

“Well, you wouldn’t really be doing anything,” said Colter. “I’m not asking that you actually treat patients. I’m just asking that you act in a stand-in capacity. As for a license, you don’t really need one. You have a California license, and California standards are as high as, if not higher than, Georgia standards, and recognized by our medical association. All I have to do, Doctor, is to bring you before a panel of five doctors, licensed by this state and members of this hospital’s staff, for an interview conference, and they have the authority to ask the state for a temporary medical certificate that will allow you to practice in Georgia. Doctor, I’d like to have that conference in the morning. What do you say?”

Reason told me to refuse. There were too many hazards to my posture involved. Any one of the questions that might be asked me on the morrow could strip me of my pretense and expose me for the “doctor” I was in reality. A snake-oil specialist.

But I was challenged. “Well, if there’s not that much difficulty involved, and if it won’t take a lot of my time, I’ll be happy to help you out,” I agreed. “Now, specifically, what will be my duties? Mine has been an office practice

only, you know. Save for calling on patients that I’ve had to admit for one reason or another, I know nothing of hospital routines.“

Colter laughed. He was obviously relieved and happy. “Hot dog! Your duty? Just be here, Doctor. Walk around. Show yourself. Play poker with the interns. Play grab-ass with the nurses. Hell, Frank—I’m gonna call you Frank because you’re a friend of mine, now—do anything you want to do. Just be here!”

I did have misgivings when I walked into the conference room the next morning to face the five doctors. I knew all of them from my frequent visits to the hospital, and Granger headed up the panel. He flashed me a conspiratorial grin as I walked in.

The interview was a farce, much to my delight. I was asked only basic questions. Where’d I go to medical school? Where’d I intern? My age? Where did I practice? How long had I been a practicing pediatrician? Not one of the doctors posed a question that would have tested any medical knowledge I might have possessed. I walked out of the conference with a letter appointing me temporary resident supervisor on the staff of the hospital, and the next day Granger brought me another letter from the state medical board authorizing me to use my California medical certificate to practice in Georgia for a period of one year.

One of my favorite television programs is “M*A*S*H,” the seriocomic story of a fictional Army medical unit on the Korean War front. I never see a “M*A*S*H” segment without recalling my “medical career” at Smithers. I imagine there are several doctors in Georgia today who also can’t view the program without memories of a certain resident supervisor.

My first shift set the tone for all my subsequent “duty tours.” I was aware from the moment I accepted Colter’s plea that there was only one way I could carry out my monumental bluff. If I was going to fake out seven interns, forty nurses and literally dozens of support personnel, I was going to have to give the impression that I was something of a buffoon of the medical profession.

I decided I’d have to project the image of a happy-go-lucky, easygoing, always-joking rascal who couldn’t care less whether the rules learned in medical school were kept or not. I put my act on the road the minute I arrived for duty the first night and was met by Brenda in the R.S.‘s office. Colter had not been jesting, it seemed. She was smiling.

“Here you are, Doctor, your smock and your stethoscope,” she said, handing them to me. “Hey, you don’t have to work this dog shift,” I said, shrugging into the white garment. “When Colter said he’d assign you to this shift, I thought he was kidding. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

She flashed an impish look. “He didn’t assign me,” she said. “I asked the head nurse to put me on this shift for the duration—your duration.”

I promptly donned the earpieces of the stethoscope and reached inside her blouse to apply the disk to her left breast. “I always knew your heart was in the right place, Nurse Strong,” I said. “What’s the first order of business tonight?”

“Not that,” she said, pulling my hand away. “I suggest you make a floor check before you start thinking about a bed check.”

The pediatrics ward took in the entire sixth floor of the hospital. It included the nursery, with about a dozen newborn babies, and three wings for children convalescing from illness, injury or surgery, or children admitted for diagnosis or treatment. There were about twenty children, ranging in age from two to twelve, in my charge. Fortunately, they weren’t technically under my care, since each was in the care of his or her own pediatrician who prescribed all treatment and medication.

Mine was strictly a supervisor’s or observer’s role, although I was expected to be the medical doctor available

for any emergencies. I hoped there wouldn’t be any emergencies, but I had a plan for such a contingency. I spent the first night cultivating the interns, who were actually the guardians of the patients. All of them wanted to be pediatricians, and the sixth floor was an excellent proving ground. They seemed to me, after several hours of watching them, to be as competent and capable as some of the staff doctors, but I wasn’t really in a position to pass judgment. It would have been akin to an illiterate certifying Einstein’s theory of relativity.

But I sensed before morning that the interns, to a man, liked me as a supervisor and weren’t likely to cause a flap.

The first shift was lazy, pleasant and uneventful until about 7 A.M., when the nurse in charge of the sixth-floor station contacted me. “Doctor, don’t forget before you go off duty that you need to write charts for me,” she said.

“Uh, yeah, okay, get them ready for me,” I said. I went up to the station and looked over the stack of charts she had ready for me. There was one for each patient, noting medication given, times, the names of the nurses and interns involved and instructions from the attending physician. “That’s your space,” said the nurse, pointing to a blank area on the chart opposite the heading SUPERVISING

RESIDENT’S COMMENTS.

I noticed the other doctors involved had written in Latin. Or Greek. Or maybe it was just their normal handwriting. I sure couldn’t read it.

I sure as hell didn’t want anyone reading what I wrote, either. So I scribbled some hieroglyphics all over each chart and signed my name in the same indecipherable manner in each instance.

“There you go, Miss Murphy,” I said, handing back the charts. “You’ll note I gave you an A.”

She laughed. I got a lot of laughs during the following shifts with my wisecracking manner, seeming irreverence for serious subjects and zany actions. For example, an obstetrician came in early one morning with one of his patients, a woman in the last throes of labor. “You want to scrub up and look in on this? I think it’s going to be triplets,” he asked.

“No, but I’ll see you have plenty of boiling water and lots of clean rags,” I quipped. Even he thought it was hilarious.

But I knew I was treading on thin ice, and about 2:30 A.M. at the end of my first week, the ice started cracking. “Dr. Williams! To Emergency, please. Dr. Williams! To Emergency, please.”

I had so far avoided the emergency ward, and it was my understanding with Colter that I wouldn’t have to handle emergency cases. There was supposed to be a staff doctor manning the emergency ward. I presumed there was. I hate the sight of blood. I can’t stand the sight of blood. Even a little blood makes me ill. I once passed near the emergency ward and saw them bringing in an accident victim. He was all bloody and moaning, and I hurried to the nearest toilet and vomited.

Now here I was being summoned to the emergency room. I knew I couldn’t say I hadn’t heard the announcement—two nurses were talking to me when the loudspeaker blared the message—but I dawdled as much as possible en route.

I used the toilet first. Then I used the stairs instead of the elevator. I knew my delay might be harmful to whomever needed a doctor, but it would be just as harmful if I rushed to the emergency ward. I wouldn’t know what to do once I got there. Especially if the patient was bleeding.

This one wasn’t, fortunately. It was a kid of about thirteen, white-faced, propped up on his elbows on the table and looking at the three interns grouped around him. The interns looked at me as I stopped inside the door.

“Well, what do we have here?” I asked.

“A simple fracture of the tibia, about five inches below the patella, it looks like,” said the senior intern, Dr. Hollis Carter. “We were just getting ready to take some X rays. Unless we find something more severe, I’d say put him in a walking cast and send him home.”

I looked at Carl Farnsworth and Sam Bice, the other two interns. “Dr. Farnsworth?” He nodded. “I concur, Doctor. It may not even be broken.”

“How about you, Dr. Bice?”

“I think that’s all we’ve got here, if that much,” he said.

“Well, gentlemen, you don’t seem to have much need of me. Carry on,” I said and left. I learned later the kid had a broken shin bone, but at the time he could have needed eyeglasses for all I knew.

I had other emergency-ward calls in ensuing nights, and each time I let the interns handle the situation. I would go in, question one of them as to the nature of the illness or injury and then ask him how he would treat the patient. On being told, I’d confer with one or both of the other interns who were usually present. If he or they concurred, I’d nod authoritatively and say, “All right, Doctor. Have at it.”

I didn’t know how well my attitude set with the interns concerning such incidents, but I soon found out. They loved it. “They think you’re great, Frank,” said Brenda.

“Young Dr. Carter especially thinks you’re terrific. I heard him telling some friends of his visiting from Macon how you let him get real practice, that you just come in, get his comments on the situation and let him proceed. He says you make him feel like a practicing doctor.”

I smiled. “I’m just lazy,” I replied.

But I realized after the first shift that I needed some help. I located a pocket dictionary of medical terms, and thereafter when I’d hear the interns or nurses mention a word or phrase, the meaning of which I didn’t know, I’d slip upstairs to the unfinished seventh floor, go into one of the empty linen closets and look up the word or words. Sometimes I’d spend fifteen or twenty minutes in the closet just leafing through the dictionary.

On what I thought would be my last night in the guise of resident supervisor, Colter sought me out. “Frank, I know I’ve got no right to ask this, but I have to. Dr. Jessup isn’t coming back. He’s decided to stay and practice in California. Now, I’m pretty sure I can find a replacement within a couple of weeks, so could I presume on you to stay that long?” He waited, a pleading look on his face.

He caught me at the right time. I was in love with my role as doctor. I was enjoying it almost as much as my pretense of airline pilot. And it was much more relaxing. I hadn’t written a bad check since assuming the pose of pediatrician. In fact, since taking the temporary position at Smithers, I hadn’t even thought about passing any worthless paper. The hospital was paying me a $125-a-day “consultant’s” fee, payable weekly.

I clapped Colter on the back. “Sure, John,” I agreed. “Why not? I’ve got nothing else I’d rather do at the moment.”

I was confident I could carry the scam for another two weeks, and I did, but then the two weeks became a month and the month became two months, and Colter still hadn’t found a replacement for Jessup. Some of the confidence began to wane, and at times I was nagged by the thought that Colter, or some doctor on the staff, even Granger, maybe, might start checking into my medical credentials, especially if a sticky situation developed on my shift.

I maintained my cocky, to-hell-with-rules-and-regula-tions demeanor with the interns, nurses and others under my nominal command, and the midnight-to-eight shift staff continued to support me loyally. The nurses thought I was a darling kook and appreciated the fact that I never tried to corner them in an unoccupied room. The interns were proud to be on my shift. We’d developed a real camaraderie, and the young doctors respected me. They thought I was wacky, but competent. “You don’t treat us like the other staff doctors, Dr. Williams,” Carter confided. “When they walk in while we’re treating a patient, they say ‘Move aside/ and just take over. You don’t. You let us go ahead and handle the case. You let us be real doctors.”

I sure as hell did. I didn’t know a damned thing about medicine. Those young doctors didn’t know it until years later, but they were the sole reason I was able to keep up my medical masquerade. When things got tough—at least tough for me, and a headache was too stout for my medical knowledge— I’d leave it to the interns and flee to my linen closet on the seventh floor.

Fortunately, during my tenure at Smithers, I was never faced with a life-or-death situation, but there were ticklish positions where only my antic’s mien saved me. Early one morning, for instance, an obstetrics team nurse sought me out. “Dr. Williams, we just delivered a baby, and Dr. Martin was called across the hall to do a Caesarian section while we were still tying the cord. He asks if you’d be kind enough to make a routine examination of the child.”

I couldn’t very well refuse. I was chatting with two nurses on my shift at the time the request was made. “I’ll help you, Dr. Williams,” volunteered the one, Jana Stern, a dedicated RN who was attending medical school herself and hoped to be a pediatrician specializing in newborns.

She led the way to the nursery and I reluctantly followed. I had sometimes paused outside the plate-glass window of the nursery to look at the tiny, wrinkled newborns in their incubators or box-like bassinets, but I’d never gone inside. They reminded me of so many mewling kittens, and I’ve always been slightly leery of cats, even little ones.

I started to shove open the door of the nursery and Nurse Stern grabbed my arm. “Doctor!” she gasped.

“Whaf s wrong?” I asked, looking around desperately for one of my trusty interns.

“You can’t go in like that!” she scolded me. “You have to scrub up and put on a smock and mask. You know that!” She handed me a green jacket and a sterile mask.

I grimaced. “Help me on with these damned things,” I growled. “Why do we need a mask? I’m only gonna look at the kid, not stick him up.” I realized why I needed a mask. I was trying to cover. And I did. She clucked. “Honest, Doctor, you’re too much at times,” she said in exasperated tones.

It was a baby boy, still glistening redly from his rough passage through the narrow channel of life. He regarded me with a lugubrious expression. “Okay, kid, take a deep breath and milk it back,” I commanded in mock military tone, starting to apply my stethoscope to the baby’s chest.

Nurse Stern grabbed my arm again, laughing. “Doctor! You can’t use that stethoscope on a newborn! You use a pediatrics stethoscope.” She busted out and returned with a smaller version of the one I held. I hadn’t known they came in sizes. “Will you quit fooling around, please? We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I stepped back and waved at the baby. “Tell you what, Dr. Stern. You examine the boy. I’d like to check your style.”

She rose to the bait. “Well, I can do it,” she said, as if I’d insulted her, but still visibly pleased. She applied the stethoscope, then draped it around her neck and proceeded to manipulate the baby’s arms, legs and hips, peered into his eyes, ears, mouth and anus and ran her hands over his head and body. She stepped back and stared at me challengingly. “Well?”

I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you, Doctor, you’ve saved my only son,” I said with mock tearfulness.

The baby had lost his doleful look. No one is really certain if newborn infants have thoughts or are aware of what is going on around them. No one but me, that is. That kid knew I was a phony. I could see it in his face.

I examined several newborns after that. I never knew what I was doing, of course, but, thanks to Nurse Stern, I knew how to do it.

But I still spent a lot of time in my seventh-floor linen closet.

There were times, too, I’m sure, when my tomfool demeanor irked people. Like the night, in the eleventh month of my impersonation, when a nurse rushed up to the nursing station where I was writing my undecipherable comments on charts. “Dr. Williams! We’ve got a blue baby in 608! Come quickly.” She was a new nurse, barely a month out of school. And I’d nipped her with one of my practical jokes. Her first night on duty I’d told her to “bring me a bucket of steam to the nursery. I want to sterilize the place.” She’d eagerly rushed off to the boiler room, where a helpful intern had steered her.

Oddly enough, in the eleven months I’d posed as a doctor, I’d never heard the term “blue baby.” I thought she was getting back at me.

“I’ll be right along,” I said, “but first I’ve got to check the green baby in 609.” When I made no move, she rushed off, shouting for one of the interns. I stepped around the corner and consulted my medical dictionary. I learned a blue baby was one suffering from cyanosis, or lack of oxygen in the blood, usually due to a congenital heart defect. I took off for Room 608, and was relieved to find one of my interns had bailed me out again. He was adjusting a portable oxygen tent around the infant. “I’ve called his doctor. He’s on his way. I’ll handle it until he gets here, if it’s all right with you, sir.”

It was all right with me. The incident shook me. I realized I was playing a role that had reached its limits. I’d been lucky so far, but I suddenly knew some child could die as a result of my impersonation. I determined to seek out Colter and resign, and I determined not to be swayed by any entreaties.

He sought me out instead.

“Well, Frank, you can go back to being a playboy,” he said cheerfully. “We’ve got a new resident supervisor. Got him from New York. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

I was relieved. I dropped around the next day to pick up my final paycheck and wasn’t at all disappointed when I didn’t meet my replacement. I was leaving the hospital when I encountered Jason, the elderly janitor on the midnight-to-eight shift.

“You’re coming to work a little early, aren’t you, Jason?” I asked.

“Workin‘ a double shift today, Doctor,” said Jason.

“If you haven’t heard, Jason, I won’t be around anymore,” I said. “They finally found a replacement.”

“Yes, sir, I heard,” said Jason. He looked at me quizzically. “Doctor, can I ask you somethin‘?”

“Sure, Jason. Anything.” I liked him. He was a nice old man.

He drew a deep breath. “Doctor, you never knowed it, but I always spent my relaxin‘ time up there on the seventh floor. And, Doctor, for nearly a year now I been seein’ you go in a linen closet up there. You never go in with anythin‘, and you never come out with anythin’. I know you don’t drink, and, Doctor, there ain’t nothin‘ in that closet, nothin’! I done searched it a dozen times. Doctor, my curiosity’s about to drive me to drink. Just what did you do in that linen closet, Doctor? I won’t tell nobody, I swear!”

I laughed and hugged him. “Jason, I was contemplating my navel in that closet. That’s all. I swear it.”

But I know he never believed me. He’s probably still inspecting that closet.

CHAPTER FIVE

A Law Degree Is Just An Illegal Technicality

A week after I severed my connection with the hospital, my lease at Balmorhea came up for renewal and I decided to leave Atlanta. There was no compulsion for me to go; at least I felt none, but I thought it unwise to stay. The fox who keeps to one den is the easiest caught by the terriers, and I felt I had nested too long in one place. I knew I was still being hunted and I didn’t want to make it easy for the hounds.

I later learned that my decision to leave Atlanta was an astute one. About the same time, in Washington, D.C., FBI Inspector Sean O’Riley was ordered to drop all his other cases and concentrate solely on nabbing me. O’Riley was a tall, dour man with the countenance of an Irish bishop and the tenacity of an Airedale, an outstanding agent dedicated to his job, but an eminently fair man in all respects.

I came to admire O’Riley, even while making every effort to thwart his task and to embarrass him professionally. If O’Riley has any personal feelings concerning me, I am certain animosity is not among such emotions. O’Riley is not a mean man.

Of course, I had no knowledge of O’Riley’s existence, even, at the time I vacated Atlanta. Save for the young special agent in Miami, and the Dade County officers I’d encountered there, the officers on my case were all phantoms to me.

I decided to hole up for a month or so in the capital city of another southern state. As usual, I was prompted in my choice by the fact that I knew an airline stewardess there. I was yet to find a more delightful influence on my actions than a lovely woman.

Her name was Diane and I had known her intermittently for about a year. I had never flown with her, having met her in the Atlanta airport terminal, and she knew me under the alias Robert F. Conrad, a Pan Am first officer, an allonym I used on occasion. I was forced to maintain the nom de plume with her, for we developed a close and pleasing relationship, during the course of which, initially, she had delved into my personal background, including my educational history. Most pilots have a college degree, but not all of them majored in the aeronautical sciences. I told Diane that I had taken a law degree but had never practiced, since a career as an airline pilot had loomed as not only more exciting but also much more lucrative than law. She readily accepted the premise that a man might shun the courtroom for the cockpit.

She also remembered my concocted law degree. A few days after my arrival in her city she took me to a party staged by one of her friends and there introduced me to a pleasant fellow named Jason Wilcox.

“You two ought to get along. Jason is one of our assistant state’s attorneys,” Diane told me. She turned to Wilcox. “And Bob here is a lawyer who never hung out his shingle. He became a pilot instead.”

Wilcox was immediately interested. “Hey, where’d you go to law school?”

“Harvard,” I said. If I was going to have a law degree, I thought I might as well have one from a prestigious source.

“But you never practiced?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I got my Commercial Pilot’s License the same week I took my master’s in law, and Pan Am offered me a job as a flight engineer. Since a pilot makes $30,000 to $40,000, and since I loved flying, I took the job. Maybe someday I’ll go back to law, but right now I fly only eighty hours a month. Not many practicing lawyers have it that good.”

“No, you’re right there,” Wilcox agreed. “Where do you fly to? Rome? Paris? All over the world, I guess.”

I shook my head. “I’m not flying at the moment,” I said. “I’ve been furloughed. The company made a personnel cutback last month and I didn’t have seniority. It may be six months or a year before they call me back. Right now I’m just loafing, drawing unemployment. I like it.”

Wilcox studied me with bemused eyes. “How’d you do at Harvard?” he asked. I felt he was leading up to something.

“Pretty well, I guess,” I replied. “I graduated with a 3.8 average. Why?”

“Well, the attorney general is looking for lawyers for his staff,” Wilcox replied. “In fact, he’s really in a bind. Why don’t you take the bar here and join us? I’ll recommend you. The job doesn’t pay an airline pilot’s salary, of course, but it pays better than unemployment. And you’ll get in some law practice, which sure as hell couldn’t hurt you.”

I almost rejected his proposal outright. But the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me. The challenge again. I shrugged. “What would it entail for me to take the bar examination in this state?” I asked.

“Not much, really,” said Wilcox. “Just take a transcript from Harvard over to the state bar examiner’s office and apply to take the bar. They won’t refuse you. Of course, you’d have to bone up on our civil and criminal statutes, but I’ve got all the books you’d need. Since you’re from another state, you’ll be allowed three cracks at the bar here. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

A transcript from Harvard. That might prove difficult, I mused, since the university and I were strangers. But then I’d never had any pilot’s training, either. And I had a valid-appearing FAA pilot’s license in my pocket stating I was qualified to fly passenger jets, didn’t I? My bumblebee instincts began buzzing.

I wrote to the registrar of the Harvard Law School and asked for a fall schedule and a law school catalogue, and within a few days the requested material was deposited in my mailbox. The catalogue listed all the courses necessary for a doctor of law from Harvard, and it also boasted some lovely logos and letterheads. But I still didn’t have the foggiest notion of what a college transcript looked like.

Diane was an Ohio University graduate, who had majored in business administration. I casually engaged her in a conversation revolving around her student years.

She had been heavily involved in campus activities, it developed, something of a playgirl in college. “You must not have done much studying,” I said jestingly.

“Oh, yes, I did,” she maintained. “I had a 3.8 average. In fact, I was on the dean’s list my senior year. You can have fun and still make good grades, you know.”

“Aw, come on! I don’t believe you had that kind of average. I’d have to see your transcript to believe that,” I protested.

She grinned. “Well, smart-ass, I just happen to have one,” she said, and returned from her bedroom a few minutes later with the document.

The transcript consisted of four legal-sized sheets of. lined paper and was, in fact, a certified photocopy of her four years of college work, attested to and notarized by the registrar. The first page was headed by the name of the university in large, bold letters, beneath which appeared the state seal of Ohio. Then came her name, the year she had graduated, the degree she had received and the college (College of Business Administration) awarding the degree. The remainder of the pages was filled, line by line, with the courses she had taken, the dates, the hours of credit she had accumulated and her grades. A grade average was given at the end of each year and a final entry noted her over-all average, 3.8. In the bottom right-hand corner of the last page was the Ohio University seal, with a notary’s seal superimposed and bearing the signature of the school registrar.

I committed the structure of the transcript to memory, absorbing it as a sponge absorbs water, before handing it back. “Okay, you’re not only sexy, you’re also brainy,” I said in mock apology.

I went shopping the next day at a graphic arts supply house, a stationery store and an office-supply firm, picking up some legal-sized bond paper, some layout material, some press-on letters in several different type faces, some artisf s pens and pencils, an X-Acto knife, some glue and a right-angle ruler, some gold seals and a notary’s press.

I started by simply cutting out the Harvard Law School logo and pasting it at the top of a piece of bond paper. I then affixed the school seal, also filched from the catalogue, beneath the school heading. Next I filled in my name, year of graduation, degree and then, using the right angle and a fine artist’s pen, I carefully lined several pages of the legal-sized bond. Afterward, using block press-on letters, I carefully entered every course required for a law

degree from Harvard, my electives and my fictitious grades. Since Wilcox might see the transcript, I gave myself a three-year over-all grade average of 3.8.

The finished, pasted-up product looked like leavings from a layout artist’s desk, but when I ran the pages through a do-it-yourself copying machine, it came out beautifully. It had all the appearances of something coughed out by a duplicating computer. I finished the six-page counterfeit by attaching a gold seal to the bottom of the last page and impressing over it, in a deliberately blurred manner, the notary stamp, which I filled in by hand, using a heavy pen, and signing with a flourish the name of the Harvard Law School registrar, noting below the forgery that the registrar was also a notary.

Whether or not it resembled an actual Harvard transcript, I didn’t know. The acid test would come when I presented the phony document to the state bar examiner’s office. Wilcox had been practicing law for fifteen years, and had been an assistant state’s attorney for nine years. He also had a wide acquaintance among the state’s lawyers. He said I was the first Harvard graduate he’d ever met.

I spent three weeks poring over the volumes in Wilcox’s office library, finding law a much easier, if somewhat duller, subject than I had assumed, and then with bated breath presented myself at the state bar examiner’s office. A law student acting as a clerk in the office leafed through my fake transcript, nodded approvingly, made a copy of the phony instrument and handed my original counterfeit back to me, along with an application to take the bar examination. While I was filling out the form, he thumbed through a calendar and called someone on the telephone.

“You can take the exam next Wednesday, if you think you’re ready,” he stated, and then grinned encouragingly. “It should be no hill at all for a Harvard stepper.”

His colloquialism might have been true in regard to an actual Ivy League law graduate. For me it was a mountain, eight hours of surmises, I hopes, maybes, confident conjecture and semieducated guesses.

I flunked.

To my astonishment, however, the notification that I had failed was attached to the test I had taken, which reflected the answers I had correctly given and the questions I had missed. Someone in the SBE’s office obviously liked me.

I went back to Wilcox’s office and camped in his library, concentrating on the sections of the test I had missed. Whenever possible Wilcox himself tutored me. After six weeks I felt I was ready to attempt the test a second time.

I blew it again. But again my test papers were returned to me, showing where I had succeeded and where I had failed. I was gaining. In fact, I was delighted at the number of legal questions I had answered correctly and I was determined to pass the examination on my final try.

I took the third examination seven weeks later and passed! Within two weeks I received a handsome certificate attesting to the fact that I had been admitted to the state bar and was licensed to practice law. I cracked up. I hadn’t even finished high school and had yet to step on a college campus, but I was a certified lawyer! However, I regarded my actual lack of academic qualifications merely a technicality, and in my four months of legal cramming I’d learned the law is full of technicalities. Technicalities are what screw up justice.

Wilcox fulfilled his promise. He arranged a job interview for me with the state attorney general, who, on Wilcox’s recommendation, hired me as an assistant. My salary was $12,800 annually.

I was assigned to the corporate law division, one of the AG’s civil departments. The division’s attorneys handled all the small claims made against the state, trespass-to-try-title suits, land-condemnation cases and various other real estate actions.

That is, most of them did. The senior assistant to whom I was assigned as an aide was Phillip Rigby, the haughty scion of an old and established local family. Rigby considered himself a southern aristocrat and I impinged on two of his strongest prejudices. I was a Yankee, but even worse, I was a Catholic Yankee! He relegated me to the role of “gopher”—go for coffee, go for this book or that book, go for anything he could think of for me to fetch. I was the highest-paid errand boy in the state. Rigby was a rednecked coprolite. Mine was an opinion shared by many of the other younger assistants, most of whom were natives themselves but surprisingly liberal in their views.

I was popular with the young bachelors in the division. I still had over $20,000 in my boodle and I spent it freely on the friends I made on the AG’s staff, treating them to dinners in fine restaurants, riverboat outings and evenings in posh night clubs.

I deliberately gave the impression that I was from a wealthy New York family without making any such direct claim. I lived in a swank apartment overlooking a lake, drove a leased Jaguar and accumulated a wardrobe worthy of a British duke. I wore a different suit to work each day of the week, partly because it pleased me but mostly because my extensive wardrobe seemed to irritate Rigby. He had three suits to my knowledge, one of which I was sure was a hand-me-down from his Confederate colonel grandfather. Rigby was also penurious.

If my grooming was resented by Rigby, it was approved by others. One day in court, during a short delay in the case at hand, the judge leaned forward on his bench and addressed me:

“Mr. Conrad, you may not contribute much in the way of legal expertise to the proceedings before this court, but you certainly add style, sir. You are the best-dressed gopher in Dixie, Counselor, and the court commends you.” It was a genuine tribute and I was pleased, but Rigby nearly had an apoplectic seizure.

Actually, I was satisfied with my errand-boy role. I had no real desire to actually try a case. There was too much danger that my basic lack of knowledge of the law would be exposed. And the work Rigby and I did was dull and uninteresting the majority of the time, a boresome task that I was content to let him handle. Occasionally he did throw me a bone, allowing me to present some minor land issue or make the opening argument in a given case, and I did enjoy those incidents and on the whole handled them without detriment to the law profession, I thought. Rigby was a highly competent lawyer, and I learned a lot sitting behind him, much more than I had gleaned from the law-books or the examinations.

Basically, my position was a haven, a lair not likely to be discovered by the hounds. When you’re looking for a criminal, you don’t often think to look for him on the attorney general’s staff of prosecutors, especially if you’re seeking a teen-age high school dropout.

Several weeks after I joined the AG’s staff, Diane was transferred to Dallas. I was only momentarily saddened at losing her. I was soon dating Gloria, the daughter of a high state official. Gloria was a lively, personable, vibrant girl, and if our relationship had a fault, it was that she was not exactly a bosom companion. But I was learning that a woman can also be delightful with her clothes on.

Gloria was a member of a staunch Methodist family and I often squired her to church, with the understanding that I was not a candidate for conversion. It was a gesture of interdenominational respect on my part that was appreciated by her parents, and actually I enjoyed it. In fact, I formed a close friendship with the young pastor of the church and he persuaded me to become involved in the church’s youth programs. I participated actively in building several children’s playgrounds in blighted areas of the city and served on several committees governing other urban youth projects. It was an odd pastime for a con man, but I had no real sense of hypocrisy. For the first time in my life I was giving unselfishly of myself, with no thought of any return, and it made me feel good.

A sinner toiling in the vineyards of the Church, however, no matter how worthy his labors, shouldn’t put in too much overtime. I accepted one too many committee appointments and the grapes began to sour.

There was a real Harvard graduate on this particular panel. Not just a Harvard graduate, but a Harvard Law graduate, and he was delighted to meet me. He was practically delirious with joy. I have since learned something about Harvard men. They’re like badgers. • They like to stick together in their own barrows. A lone badger is going to find another badger. A Harvard man in a strange area is going to find another Harvard man. And they’re going to talk about Harvard.

This one pounced on me immediately, with all the enthusiasm of Stanley encountering Livingstone in darkest Africa. When had I graduated? Who had my instructors been? Who were the girls I knew? To what club had I belonged? What pubs had I frequented? Who had my friends been?

I successfully fended him off that first night, with either inane answers or by ignoring him and concentrating on the committee business at hand. But thereafter he sought me out at every opportunity. He’d call me to have lunch. He’d drop by my office when he chanced to be in the area. He called me to invite me to parties or outings, to play golf or to take in some cultural event. And always he managed to steer the conversation around to Harvard. What buildings had I had classes in? Didn’t I know Professor So-and-So? Had I been acquainted with any of the old families of Cambridge? Harvard men around other Harvard men seem to be rather limited in their conversational topics.

I couldn’t avoid him, and of course I couldn’t answer many of his questions. His suspicions aroused, he began to build a res gestae case against me as a bogus Harvard man if not a phony lawyer. It became res judicata for me when I learned he was making numerous inquiries into my background on several fronts, seriously questioning my honesty and integrity.

Like the proverbial Arab, I folded my tent and silently stole away. Not, however, without drawing a final paycheck. I did say good-bye to Gloria, although she wasn’t aware it was a final farewell. I merely told her I’d had a death in the family and had to return to New York for a couple of weeks.

I turned in my leased Jaguar and purchased a bright orange Barracuda. It wasn’t the most inconspicuous set of wheels for a wanted fugitive to drive, but I liked it and I wanted it, so I bought it. I justified the action by telling myself that since the car, if not the driver, was cool, it would probably prove a wise mvestment. Largely it was an astute move, for in the past I had simply rented cars and then abandoned them at airports when I was through with them, and O’Riley, unknown to me, was making good use of this practice to compile a pattern of my movements.

I had posed as a doctor for nearly a year. I had played the role of lawyer for nine months. While I was hardly leading a straight life during those twenty months, I hadn’t passed any bad checks or done anything else to attract the attention of the authorities. Provided Rigby or the AG himself didn’t press the issue of my sudden departure from my post as assistant attorney general, I felt justified in assuming I was not the object of any pressing manhunt. And I wasn’t, save for O’Riley’s dogged efforts, and despite his persistence he was as yet following a cold trail.

I attempted to keep it that way, since I was still in no bind for funds. My flight from my “Harvard colleague’s” inquisition turned into something of a vacation. I meandered around the western states for several weeks, touring Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho and Montana, dallying wherever the scenery intrigued me. Since the scenery usually included some very lovely and susceptible women, I stayed perpetually intrigued.

Although the image of myself as a criminal gradually blurred and dimmed, I entertained no thoughts of rehabilitation. In fact, looking to the future, I stopped long enough in a large Rocky Mountain metropolis to equip myself with dual identities as a fictitious airline pilot.

Using the same procedures that had enabled me to assume the alias of Frank Williams, a first officer for Pan Am, I created Frank Adams, an alleged co-pilot for Trans World Airways, complete with uniform, sham ID and counterfeit FAA pilot’s license. I also assembled a set of duplicitous credentials that would allow me, in my posture as Frank Williams, to be a pilot for either Pan Am or TWA.

Shortly afterward I was in Utah, a state notable for not only its spectacular geography and Mormon history but also for its proliferation of college campuses. Having purloined a couple of college degrees, I thought it only fair that I at least acquaint myself with a university campus and so I visited several Utah colleges, strolling around the grounds and taking in the academic sights, especially the coeds. There were so many lovely girls on one campus that I was tempted to enroll as a student.

Instead I became a teacher.

While I was lolling around my motel room one afternoon, reading the local newspaper, my attention was drawn to an expected shortage of summer instructors at one university. The news item quoted the faculty dean, one Dr. Amos Grimes, as being most concerned about finding summer replacements for the school’s two sociology professors. “It appears we will have to look out of state for qualified people willing to teach for only three months,” said Dr. Grimes in the story.

A vision of myself ensconced in a classroom with a dozen or so nubile beauties took hold of my imagination, and I couldn’t resist. I rang up Dr. Grimes.

“Dr. Grimes, Frank Adams here,” I said briskly. “I have a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in New York. I’m visiting here, Doctor, and I see by the newspaper that you’re looking for sociology instructors.”

“Yes, we’re definitely interested in finding some people,” Dr. Grimes replied cautiously. “Of course, you understand it would be only a temporary position, just for the summer. I assume you do have some teaching experience?”

“Oh, yes,” I said airily. “But it’s been several years. Let me explain my position, Dr. Grimes. I am a pilot for Trans World Airways, and just recently I was furloughed for six months for medical purposes, an inflammation of the inner ear that bars me at the moment from flying status. I’ve been looking around for something to do in the interim, and when I saw the story it occurred to me that it might be pleasant to get back into a classroom again.

“I was a professor of sociology at City College of New York for two years before I joined TWA.”

“Well, it certainly sounds like you’re a likely candidate for one of our positions, Dr. Adams,” said Dr. Grimes, now enthusiastic. “Why don’t you come by my office tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about it.”

“I’d be delighted to do that, Dr. Grimes,” I replied. “Since I’m a complete stranger in Utah, could you tell me what documents I will need to apply for a faculty position with your college?”

“Oh, just a transcript from Columbia will do, really,” said Dr. Grimes. “Of course, if you can obtain a couple of letters of recommendation from CCNY, it would be desirable.”

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll have to send for both my transcript and the letters of recommendation, of course. I came here unprepared on either score, since I didn’t even contemplate a temporary teaching position until I saw the story.”

“I understand, Dr. Adams,” replied Dr. Grimes. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I wrote Columbia University that afternoon, requesting a complete catalogue and any pertinent brochures on the school. I also dashed off a letter to the registrar of CCNY, stating I was a Utah graduate student seeking a teaching position in New York, preferably in sociology. I arranged to rent a box at the local post office before mailing off the missives.

My meeting with Dean Grimes was a very pleasant one. He seemed immediately impressed with me, and we spent most of the time, including a leisurely luncheon interlude in the faculty club, discussing my “career” as a pilot. Dr. Grimes, like many men with sedentary jobs, had a romantic view of airline pilots and was eager to have his exciting perspective validated. I had more than enough anecdotes to satisfy his vicarious appetite.

“I have no doubt at all that we can use you this summer, Dr. Adams,” he said on my departure. “I’m personally looking forward to your being here on campus.”

The materials I had requested from Columbia and CCNY arrived within the week, and I drove to Salt Lake City to purchase the supplies necessary for my current counterfeiting venture. My finished “transcript” was a beauty, giving me a 3.7 grade average and listing my doctoral thesis as a dissertation on “The Sociological Impact of Aviation on the Rural Populations of North America.” As I had anticipated, the reply from the registrar of CCNY was on official college stationery. I clipped off the letterhead and, using clear white plastic tape and high-quality bond paper, created a fine facsimile of the college’s stationery. I trimmed it to regulation typewriter-paper size and then sat down and wrote myself two letters of recommendation, one from the registrar and one from the head of the sociology department.

I was cautious with both letters. They merely noted that I had been a sociology instructor at CCNY during the years 1961-62, that the faculty rating committee had given me very satisfactory marks and that I had resigned voluntarily to enter the field of commercial aviation as a pilot. I then . took the letters to a Salt Lake City job printer and had him run off a dozen copies of each, telling him I was applying at several universities for a teaching position and thus needed extra copies on fine-grade bond. Apparently mine was not an unusual request, for he did the job perfunctorily.

Dr. Grimes barely glanced at the documents when I presented them to him. He introduced me to Dr. Wilbur Vanderhoff, assistant head of the sociology department, who also gave the instruments only a cursory examination before sending them on to faculty personnel for filing. I was hired within the hour to teach two six-week semesters during the summer at a salary of $1,600 per semester. I was assigned to teach a ninety-minute freshman course in the morning, three days a week, and a ninety-minute sophomore course in the afternoon, twice weekly. Dr. Vanderhoff provided me with the two textbooks to be used in the classes, as well as student attendance ledgers. “Any other supplies you might need, you can probably find in the bookstore. They have standard requisition forms on hand,” said Dr. Vanderhoff. He grinned. “I’m glad to see you’re young and strong. Our summer sociology classes are usually large ones, and you’ll earn your salary.”

I had three weeks before the first summer semester started. On the pretense of refreshing myself, I audited several of Dr. Vanderhoff’s classes, just to get an idea of how a college course was conducted. At night I studied the two textbooks, which I found both interesting and informative.

Vanderhoff was right. Both my classes were large ones. There were seventy-eight students in my freshman class and sixty-three students in my sophomore course, the majority in both instances being female students.

That summer was one of the most enjoyable of my life.

I thoroughly enjoyed my role as a teacher. So did my students, I’m certain. My courses were taught by the book, as required, and I had no difficulty there. I just read one chapter ahead of the students and selected what portions of the text I wanted to emphasize. But almost daily I deviated from the textbook in both classes, lecturing on crime, the problems of young adults from broken homes and the effects on society as a whole. My departures from textbook contents—which were largely drawn from my own experiences, unknown to the students—always sparked lively discussions and debates.

Weekends I relaxed by immersing myself in one or the other of Utah’s scenic wonderlands, usually accompanied by an equally wondrous companion.

The summer was gone as swiftly as the desert spring, and I knew real regret when it ended. Dr. Vanderhoff and Dr. Grimes were delighted with my work. “Keep in touch with us, Frank,” said Dr. Grimes. “If ever we have a permanent opening for a sociology professor, we’d like a chance to lure you down from the skies,” said Dr. Grimes.

At least fifty of my students sought me out to tell me how much they had enjoyed my classes and to wish me good-bye and good luck.

I was reluctant to leave that Utah Utopia, but I could find no valid reason for staying. If I lingered, my past was certain to catch up, and I did not want these people’s image of me to be tarnished.

I headed west to California. There was a storm building in the Sierras when I crossed the mountains, but it was nothing compared to the whirlwind of crime I was soon to create myself.

CHAPTER SIX

Paperhanger in a Rolls-Royce

The former police chief of Houston once said of me: “Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it ‘U.R. Hooked’ and cash it at any bank in town, using a Hong Kong driver’s license for identification.”

There are several bank employees in Eureka, California, who would endorse that statement. In fact, if it were put in the form of a resolution, there are scores of tellers and bank officials around the country who would second the motion.

I was not really that crude. But some of the moves I put on bank personnel were very, very embarrassing, not to mention costly.

Eureka, for me, was my commencement as an expert forger. I was already an advanced student of paperhanging when I arrived, of course, but I took my master’s degree in check swindling in California.

I didn’t purposely pick Eureka as a milestone in my capricious career. It was meant merely as a pit stop en route to San Francisco, but the inevitable girl appeared and I stayed to play house for a few days and to ruminate on my future. I was possessed by an urge to flee the country, vaguely fearful that a posse of FBI agents, sheriffs and detectives was hard on my heels. There was no tangible reason for such trepidation. I hadn’t bilked anyone with a bouncing check in nearly two years, and “Co-pilot Frank Williams” had been in the closet for the same length of time. I should have been feeling reasonably safe, but I wasn’t. I was nervous, fretful and doubtful, and I saw a cop in every man who gave me more than a casual look.

The girl and Eureka, between them, allayed my misgivings somewhat after a couple of days, the girl with her warm and willing ways and Eureka with its potential for elevating me from petty larceny to grand theft. Eureka, in California’s northern redwood forests, perched on the edge of the Pacific, is a delightful little city. It has the picturesque allure of a Basque fishing village, and in fact a large and colorful fishing fleet operates out of Eureka’s harbor.

The most fascinating facet of Eureka, to me, was its banks. It had more money houses for a city its size than any comparable city I’d ever visited. And I needed money, a lot of it, if I were going to be an expatriate paperhanger.

I still had several stacks of worthless personal checks, and I was sure I could scatter a dozen or more of them around town with ease, netting $1,000 or more. But it occurred to me that the personal-check dodge wasn’t really that great. It was the easiest of bum-check capers, but it generated too much heat from too many points, and the penalty for passing a worthless $100 check was the same as that for dropping $5,000 in phony parchment.

I felt I needed a sweeter type of check, one that would yield more honey for the same amount of nectar. Like a payroll check, say. Like a Pan Am payroll check, naturally. No one would ever be able to say I wasn’t a loyal thief.

I went shopping. I obtained a book of blank counter checks from a stationery store. Such checks, still in wide use at the time, were ideal for my purposes, since it was left to the payer to fill in all the pertinent details, including the respondent bank’s name. I then rented an IBM electric typewriter with several different typeface spheres, including script, and some extra ribbon cartridges in various carbon densities. I located a hobby shop that handled models of Pan Am’s jets and bought several kits in the smaller sizes. I made a final stop at an art store and purchased a quantity of press-on magnetic-tape numerals and letters.

Thus provisioned, I retired to my motel room and set to work. I took one of the blank counter checks and across the top affixed a PAN AMERICAN WORLD AIRWAYS decal from one of the kits. Below the legend I typed in the airline’s New York address. In the upper left-hand corner of the check I applied the Pan Am logo, and in the opposite right-hand corner I typed in the words “EXPENSE CHECK,” on the premise that a firm’s expense checks would differ in appearance from its regular payroll checks. It was a precautionary action on my part, since some Eureka bank tellers might have had occasion to handle regular Pan Am vouchers.

I made myself, “Frank Williams,” the payee, of course, in the amount of $568.70, a sum that seemed reasonable to me. In the lower left-hand corner I typed in “CHASE MANHATTAN BANK” and the bank’s address, going over the bank legend with progressively blacker ribbons until the words appeared to have been printed on the counterfeit check.

Below the bank legend, across the bottom left-hand corner of the check, I laid down a series of numbers with magnetic tape. The numbers purportedly represented the Federal Reserve District of which Chase Manhattan was a member, the bank’s FRD identification number and Pan Am’s account number. Such numbers are very important to anyone cashing a check and tenfold as important to a hot-check swindler. A good paperhanger is essentially operating a numbers game and if he doesn’t know the right ones he’s going to end up with an entirely different set stenciled across the front and back of a state-issued shirt.

The fabricating of the check was exacting, arduous work, requiring more than two hours, and I was not at all happy with the finished product. I looked at it and decided it was not a check I would cash were I a teller and someone presented the check for payment.

But a thrift-shop dress is usually taken for high fashion when it’s revealed under a mink coat. So I devised a mink cover for the rabbit-fur check. I took one of the windowed envelopes, hoaxed it up with a Pan Am decal and Pan Am’s New York address, stuck a blank piece of stationery inside and mailed it to myself at my motel. The missive was delivered the following morning, and the local post office had unwittingly assisted me in my scheme. The clerk who had canceled the stamp had done such a botched job with the postmark that it was impossible to tell where the letter had been mailed from. I was delighted with the man’s sloppiness.

I donned my Pan Am pilot’s uniform, placed the check in the envelope and stuck it in the inside pocket of my jacket. I drove to the nearest bank, walked in jauntily and presented myself at a teller’s booth attended by a young woman. “Hi,” I said, smiling. “My name is Frank Williams and I’m vacationing here for a few days before reporting to Los Angeles. Would you please cash this check for me? I think I have sufficient identification.”

I took the envelope from my inside pocket, extracted the check and laid it on the counter, along with my phony Pan Am ID card and my illicit FAA pilot’s license. I purposely dropped the envelope, with its distinctive Pan Am logo and return address, on the counter.

The girl looked at my bogus identification documents and glanced at the check, but she seemed more interested in me. Commercial airline pilots in uniform were obviously a rarity in Eureka. She pushed the check back to me for endorsement, and while she counted out the money she asked chatty questions about my work and the places I’d been, questions I answered in a manner designed to bolster her apparent romantic image of airline pilots.

I was careful to take the envelope with me when I left. I had made certain that she noticed the wrapper, and it had patently enhanced her faith in the check. The transaction also verified a suspicion I had long entertained: it’s not how good a check looks but how good the person behind the check looks that influences tellers and cashiers.

I went back to my motel room and labored late into the night concocting several more of the sham checks, all in the amount of $500 or more, and the following day I successfully passed all of them in different downtown or suburban banks. Based on my knowledge of the check-routing procedures used by banks, I calculated I could spend two more days in Eureka making and dropping the bum expense checks and then have three days lead time for travel before the first one was returned as a counterfeit.

But an identity crisis, which I experienced periodically, forced me to revise my timetable.

I never immersed myself so deeply in an assumed identity that I forgot I was really Frank Abagnale, Jr. In fact, in casual encounters with people, where I felt no compulsion to play-act and nothing was to be gained by affecting a guise, I invariably presented myself as Frank Abagnale, a foot-loose fellow from the Bronx.

It was no different in Eureka. Away from my motel, where I was registered as Frank Williams, or the girl, who had succumbed to a man she believed to be a Pan Am pilot, and out of the pilot’s garb, I was simply Frank Abagnale, Jr. To a degree, my actual identity became a refuge from the pressures and tensions of posing.

In Eureka I met a fisherman off a fishing boat in a seafood restaurant. He stopped at my table to tell me he had personally caught the very fish I was eating, and then sat down to converse with me. He was a car buff, it developed, and I told him about my old Ford and what I had done to dress up the car. “Hey, that’s what I’m trying to fix up now, a 1950 Ford convertible,” he said. “You don’t have any pictures of your heap, do you?”

I shook my head. “I do, but they’re all back in my room at home,” I said.

“Gimme your address in New York and I’ll send you some pictures of my wheels when I’m finished with it,” he said. “Heck, I might even drive to New York and look you up.”

It was very unlikely that he’d either write me or come to New York to see me, and just as unlikely that I’d be there to receive either his letter or him, so I searched my pockets for a piece of paper on which to jot down my name and New York address.

I came up with one of the blank counter checks. I borrowed a pencil from a waiter and was writing my name and New York address on the back of the check when the fisherman was called to the telephone, a pay phone on the wall near the door. He talked for a few minutes and then waved at me. “Hey, listen, Frank, I gotta go back to the boat,” he shouted. “Come by tomorrow, willya?” He bolted out the door before I could reply. I gave the pencil back to the waiter and asked for my tab. “You need a pencil with heavier lead,” I said, indicating what I had written on the back of the counter check. The words were barely discernible.

I put the check back in my pocket instead of tearing it up, an action that was to prove both foolish and fortunate. Back in my room, I dropped it on top of the open book of counter checks, changed clothes and called the girl. We spent a pleasant evening at a fine restaurant in the tall redwoods somewhere outside of Eureka.

It was such a pleasant evening that I was still recalling it early the next morning when I sat down to create three more phony Pan Am checks. There were only three banks left in and around Eureka that didn’t have one of my artistic frauds, and I didn’t want to slight any of the three. I was caught up in my new scheme. All my fears of a posse pounding down my backtrail were forgotten. I had also completely forgotten the young fisherman of the past afternoon.

Finished with the first check, I slipped it into the now well-used envelope. Less than two hours later I completed the other two and was ready for my farewell foray in Eureka, one that went off without a hitch. By mid-afternoon I was back in my motel room, adding nearly $1,500 to the currency-cushioned lining of my two-suiter.

That night I told the girl I would be leaving the following day. “I’ll probably be flying out of Frisco or L.A., I don’t know which,” I lied. “Either way I’ll be back often. I’ll just rent a light plane and come up. We’ll look at those redwoods from the top for a change.”

She believed me. “That’s a deal,” she said, and suggested we go down to the wharves and eat seafood. She seemed more hungry than unhappy, which was agreeable with me. But halfway through the meal I looked out the window, saw a fishing boat coming in to the dock and remembered the young fisherman. I also remembered. I had jotted down my real name and my New York address—my father’s address, at least—on the back of one of the counter checks. I had a puckered feeling in the nether regions at the thought, as if someone had goosed me. What the hell had I done with that check? I couldn’t recall offhand, and trying to remember and carry on an ardent conversation with my companion made my last night with the girl something less than memorable.

Back in my room, I searched for the blank check, but to no avail. I had a lot of blank checks, but they were all still in the binder. I had to conclude that I’d made that particular blank check up as a sham Pan Am expense check and had passed it at one of the three banks. But I couldn’t have, I told myself. I had to endorse each check on its back, and surely I’d have noticed the writing. But would I have? I recalled how light the pencil had been. My writing had been barely legible, even in the bright light of afternoon. I could easily have overlooked the scrawled words when I endorsed the check, especially in view of the operating procedure I’d developed in Eureka. I had found that palming off one of the fake vouchers went much smoother and quicker when I kept the teller’s attention on me rather than the check. And to get a woman’s attention, you have to pay attention to her.

I sat down on the bed and forced a total recall of the events that had resulted in the situation, and soon satisfied myself as to what had happened. I had dropped the loose check on top of the open book of counter checks. I had picked it up first the next morning, my encounter with the fisherman unremembered, when I made up the three counterfeit expense checks. And I had placed it in the phonied-up envelope immediately after finishing it, so therefore it had been the first of the three cashed. And I now recalled the teller who’d cashed the check for me. I’d given her lots of attention. Too much, it seemed.

And a certain bank in Eureka had a counterfeit Pan Am expense check endorsed by a counterfeit co-pilot, but also bearing on the back the signature of Frank Abagnale, Jr., and the address of his father in the Bronx. Once the check was exposed as a fraud, it wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to make the connection. And the case.

I suddenly felt hotter than a blast furnace. I started thinking again of leaving the country, jumping the border into Mexico. Or even more southerly climes. But this time I contemplated the idea reluctantly. In Eureka I’d devised what I considered a grand new theft scheme, one that paid off better than doctored dice in a crap game. And heady with the success of the system, I’d set aside my fears of being closely pursued and had convinced myself that I was as cool as an arctic ice floe. I had intended to work my counterfeit check scam from coast to coast and border to border. It chafed me to have to abandon my plans because I’d stupidly blown my cover.

But did I have to give up the game? Had I blown my cover at this point? If I hadn’t noticed the scribbling on the back of the check, maybe no one else had, either.

There was also a good possibility the check was still in the bank. I’d cashed it early in the afternoon, and it was possible it wouldn’t be routed to New York until the morrow. If it hadn’t left the bank, perhaps I could purchase it back. I could tell them Pan Am had issued the check in error and I shouldn’t have cashed it, or some such concocted tale. I was sure I could come up with a good story if the check was still on hand. I fell asleep mulling feasible excuses to offer.

I packed, stowed my gear in my car and paid my motel bill before calling the bank the next morning. I asked for the head teller and was connected with a woman who identified herself as “Stella Waring” in brisk tones.

“Mrs. Waring, a Pan Am pilot cashed a check in your bank yesterday,” I said. “Can you tell me …” She cut me off before I could say more.

“Yes, a bogus check,” she said, abruptly indignant and without asking my identity or my reason for calling. “We’ve notified the FBI. They’re supposed to be sending an agent for the check.”

I wasn’t challenged. I acted on impulse, an incitement to protect my real identity. “Yes,” I said. “This is the FBI. I wanted to alert you that our agent will be there in about fifteen minutes. Do you have the check, or is there someone else he should contact?”

“Just have him see me, sir, I’ll have the check,” Mrs.

Waring replied. “Of course, we’d like a Xerox of the check for our records. That is all right, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” I assured her. “I will instruct Mr. Davis to provide you with a copy.”

I was at the bank within five minutes, dressed in a blue business suit, but I discreetly cased the interior before entering. The teller who had cashed the check was nowhere in sight.

Had she been, I would not have entered. I didn’t know whether she was on a coffee break or what, and I was uneasy about her appearing while I was in the bank, but I was driven to take the risk. I strode into the lobby and the receptionist directed me to Mrs. Waring’s desk at one side of the floor. She was a trim, handsome woman in her thirties, with the dress and air of the complete businesswoman. She looked up as I stopped in front of her desk.

“Mrs. Waring, I’m Bill Davis of the FBI. I believe my boss called you earlier?” I said.

She nodded with a grimace. “Oh, yes, Mr. Davis,” she said. “I have the check right here.” She did not ask for credentials or seem suspicious of my status at all. She merely produced the check from a drawer and handed it to me. I examined it with a professional air, an attitude easily assumed since I was the manufacturer. On the back, barely perceivable, was my real name and my father’s address.

“It looks pretty junky,” I observed dryly. “I’m surprised anyone would cash it.”

Mrs. Waring smiled sour agreement. “Yes, we have some girls here that, well, they see a handsome pilot or some other man that presents a romantic figure, and they tend to lose their cool. They’re more interested in the man than in what he’s handing them,” she said in disapproving tones. “The girl who took this check, Miss Caster, was so upset she didn’t even come in this morning.”

I relaxed at the information and began to enjoy my pose as a G-man. “Well, we will have to talk to her, but we can do that later,” I said. “Have you made a copy of this yet?”

“No, but there’s a Xerox machine right there in the corner, it’ll only take me a minute,” she said.

“I’ll do it,” I said, and walked quickly to the machine before she could object. I copied only the front of the check, a factor she didn’t notice when I laid it on her desk.

“Let me sign this and date it,” I said, picking up a pen. “This copy is your receipt. You understand we need this original as evidence. It will be in the custody of the U.S. Attorney. I think this is all we need at the moment, Mrs. Waring. We certainly appreciate your, cooperation.” I pocketed the damning original and left.

I learned later that I exited the bank barely five minutes before the actual FBI agent—Eureka’s only G-man, in fact—arrived. I also learned later that Mrs. Waring herself was more than a little upset when she learned she had been duped, but then FBI agents do have a certain romantic aura of their own and a woman doesn’t have to be young to be impressed by a glamorous figure.

Posing as an FBI agent was not the smartest move I made at that point in my criminal career. Federal agents are generally highly efficient officers, but they are even more efficient and determined when someone impersonates an FBI agent. I had circumvented, temporarily, the disclosure that Frank Williams, pilot poseur, was in reality Frank Abagnale, Jr., but unknowingly I furnished O’Riley a fresh trail to follow and thereafter it was hound and hare to the end.

However, I was still in a learning stage as a forger, albeit an advanced student, and I tended to take risks an experienced check thief would shudder to chance. I was an independent actor, writing, producing and directing my own scripts. I did not know any professional criminals, I didn’t seek out criminal expertise and I shunned any place that smacked of being a criminal haunt.

The people who assisted me in my dubious capers were all honest, legitimate, respectable folk whom I duped or conned into lending me help. In reality, my total autonomy was the biggest factor in my success. The usual criminal sources of information for the police were useless to them in their search for me. The underworld grapevine simply had no intelligence on me. While my true identity was established midway in my course, the leads garnered by police were all after-the-fact leads. I was always several days gone by the time my misdeeds were exposed as such, and officers were never able to pick up my trail until I struck again, usually in some far-off city.

Once I embarked on counterfeiting checks, I realized I had reached a point of no return. I had chosen paper-hanging as a profession, my means of surviving, and having chosen a nefarious occupation, I set out to perfect my working skills. In the ensuing weeks and months, I studied check transactions and banking procedures as diligently as any investor studies the markets available to him, and I did my homework in unobtrusive ways. I dated tellers and picked their brains while stroking their bodies. I went to libraries and perused banking magazines, journals and trade books. I read financial publications and created opportunities to converse with bank officials. All my wrongful techniques, in short, were polished with rightful wax.

Of course, as someone once observed, there is no right way to do something wrong, but the most successful check swindlers have three factors in their favor, and any one of the three, or the scantiest combination of the three, can pay off like three bars on a slot machine.

The first is personality, and I look on personal grooming as part of one’s personality. Top con artists, whether they’re pushing hot paper or hawking phony oil leases, are well dressed and exude an air of confidence and authority. They’re usually, too, as charming, courteous and seemingly sincere as a politician seeking reelection, although they can, at times, effect the cool arrogance of a tycoon.

The second is observation. Observation is a skill that can be developed, but I was born blessed (or cursed) with the ability to pick up on details and items the average man overlooks. Observation, as I will illustrate later, is the only necessity for successful innovative larceny. A newsman who did a story on me noted, “A good con man reads sign like an Indian, and Frank Abagnale would have made the best Pawnee scout on the frontier look like a half-blind tenderfoot.”

The third factor is research, the big difference between the hard-nosed criminal and the super con man. A hood planning a bank holdup might case the treasury for rudimentary facts, but in the end he depends on his gun. A con artist’s only weapon is his brain. A con man who decides to hit the same bank with a fictitious check or a sophisticated check swindle researches every facet of the caper. In my heyday as a hawker of hot paper, I knew as much about checks as any teller employed in any bank in the world and more than the majority. I’m not even sure a great many bankers possessed the knowledge I had of checks.

Here are some examples of the things I knew about checks and most tellers didn’t, little things that enabled me to fleece them like sheep. All legitimate checks, for instance, will have at least one perforated (or scalloped) edge. The edge will be at the top if taken from a personal checkbook, on two or three sides if taken from a business check ledger. Some knowledgeable firms even scallop all four sides of their checks. An ingenious check counterfeiter can duplicate such vouchers, of course, but only if he invests $40,000 or more in a perforating press, and if he did that he’d hardly be ingenious. It’s not something one can tote around in a suitcase.

There are worthless checks that have a perforated edge, of course, but the checks aren’t bogus. The account is. In every instance where I passed a personal check, I was actually passing an insufficient check. Whenever I went off on a personal-check-passing tangent, I would first open up a legitimate checking account, using a phony name, in order to get fifty to one hundred personalized checks. And, as mentioned previously, the first one or two I wrote were usually good. After that I was flying kites.

I said earlier that the good check swindler is really operating a numbers game, and he is. All checks, whether personal or business, have a series of numbers in the lower left-hand corners, just above the bottoms. Take a personal check that has the numbers 1130 0119 546 085 across the bottom left-hand corner. During my reign as a rip-off champion, not one out of a hundred tellers or private cashiers paid any attention to such numerals, and I’m convinced that only a handful of the people handling checks knew what the series of numbers signified. I’ll decode it:

The number 11 denotes that the check was printed within the Eleventh Federal Reserve District. There are twelve and only twelve Federal Reserve Districts in the United States. The Eleventh includes Texas, where this check was printed. The 3 after the 11 tells one that the check was printed in Houston specifically, for the Third District Office of the FRD is located in that city. The 0 indicates that immediate credit is available on the check. In the middle series of numbers, the 0 identifies the clearing house (Houston) and the 119 is the bank’s identification number within the district. The 546 085 is the account number assigned the customer by the bank.

How does that knowledge benefit a check counterfeiter? With a bundle in his swag and a running head start, that’s how. Say such a man presents a payroll check to a teller or cashier for payment. It is a fine-looking check, issued by a large and reputable Houston firm, payable at a Houston bank, or so it states on the face of the chit. The series of numbers in the lower left-hand corner, however, starts with the number 12, but the teller or cashier doesn’t notice that, or if she/he does, she/he, is ignorant of the meaning of the numbers.

A computer isn’t. When the check lands in the clearinghouse bank, usually the same night, a computer will kick it out, because, while the face of the check says it’s payable in Houston, the numbers say it’s payable in San Francisco and bank computers read only numbers. The check, therefore, is sorted into a batch of checks going to the Twelfth District, San Francisco in this instance, for collection. In San Francisco another computer will reject the check because the bank identification number doesn’t jibe, and at that point the check lands in the hands of a clearing-house bank clerk. In most instances, the clerk will note only the face of the check, see that it is payable at a Houston bank and hand-mail it back, attributing its arrival in San Francisco to computer error. In any event, five to seven days have passed before the person who cashed the check is aware he or she has been swindled, and the paperhanger has long since hooked ‘em.

I got rich off the ignorance of bank personnel concerning their own numerical codes and the lack of knowledge of checks on the part of people who cashed checks. In San Francisco, where I tarried for several weeks after fleeing Eureka, I manufactured several dozen of the phony Pan Am expense checks and passed them in San Francisco banks, at the airport and in banks or hotels in surrounding communities, coding the checks so they were routed‘ to such distant points as Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Richmond.

No forty-niner ever struck it richer in them thar California hills than I did. My fabricated envelope was still an invaluable aid in cashing the fake vouchers, but I used it so much in the Bay Area that it started to come apart at the seams. I needed a new one.

And why not a real one? I reasoned. San Francisco was one of Pan Am’s bases, and I was a Pan Am pilot, wasn’t I? Hell no, I wasn’t, but who out at Pan Am operations would know that? I went to the airport and boldly sauntered into the Pan Am operations complex. “Say, where can I get some writing paper and envelopes? I’m a stranger here,” I asked the first person I encountered, a radio operator.

“The stockroom, around the corner there,” he said, pointing. “Help yourself.”

I did, since the stockroom was unattended. I grabbed a batch of envelopes, a stack of stationery with Pan Am’s letterhead, stuffed them in my briefcase and was leaving when another stack of forms caught my eye. “CHECK AUTHORIZATION,” said the bold letters across the head of the top form. I picked up a sheaf and examined the top document. The forms were requests for advance expense checks or compensation for expenses incurred, authorizing the company cashier to issue a check to the named bearer when signed by Pan Am’s San Francisco manager. I put a packet of the forms in my briefcase, too. No one spoke to me as I left. I don’t think anyone I encountered paid the slightest heed to me.

The check authorization form was a lovely little helper. I’d fold it around one of my bastard brainchildren before slipping the check into an authentic Pan Am envelope. I always made certain that the authorization form, properly if not legally filled out, and the envelope were prominently in evidence when I cashed one of my check creations.

One day I returned from foraging among Berkeley’s money houses to find there was no room in either my suitcase or my duffel bag for clothes. They were both full of loose bills. I was stealing faster than I could spend. I took $25,000, went to a San Jose bank, rented a safe-deposit box under the name of John Calcagne, paid three years’ rent in advance and stowed the cash in the box. The next day I went to a bank in Oakland and repeated the procedure, using the name Peter Morelli.

Then I went back to San Francisco and fell in love.

Her name was Rosalie and she was a stewardess for American Airlines. She lived in an old house with five roommates, all stews for American, too, and I met her when I encountered the six of them on a bus returning from the airport. They had been to the airport on legitimate business. I had been there perpetrating a little light larceny. We started dating that same night.

Rosalie was one of the loveliest women I’d ever met, and I still think so. She had frosted blond hair and, as I learned quickly, something of a frosted nature. At twenty-four she was still a virgin, and she informed me on our second date that she intended to stay chaste until her wedding day. I told her I admired her attitude, and I did, but it still didn’t stop me from trying to undress her anytime we were alone.

As a companion, Rosalie was delightful. We shared an enjoyment of music, good books, the ocean, skiing, the theater, travel and a score of other pleasures and pursuits. Rosalie was devoutly religious, and like me a Catholic, but she did not insist that I attend mass with her.

“Why don’t you preach to me about my sins?” I asked her in a bantering tone one day after picking her up at church.

She laughed. “I don’t know that you have any, Frank,” she replied. “You sure don’t have any bad habits that I’m aware of. I like you like you are.”

I found myself getting closer to Rosalie each time I was with her. She had so many good qualities. She seemed the epitome of the kind of woman most young bachelors dream of finding for a wife: she was loyal, clean-cut, intelligent, even-tempered, considerate, lovely and she didn’t smoke or drink. She was all apple pie, American flag, mom and sis and spring rolled up in a Girl Scout sash.

“Rosalie, I love you,” I said to her one night.

She nodded. “I love you, too, Frank,” she said quietly.

“Why don’t we go visit my parents and tell them about us?”

Her parents lived in Downey, south of Los Angeles. It was a long drive, and en route we stopped and rented a cabin near Pismo Beach. We had a wonderful evening, and when we resumed our journey the next morning, Rosalie was no longer a virgin. I really felt bad about it, for I thought I should have been more considerate of her virtue, which I knew full well she valued highly. I apologized repeatedly as we drove down the coast in her car, which she had insisted we use.

Rosalie snuggled up to me and smiled. “Stop apologizing, Frank,” she said. “I wanted to do it. Anyway, we’ll just add that one to our wedding night.”

Her parents were nice people. They welcomed me warmly, and when Rosalie told them we were going to be married, they were enthusiastic and congratulated us warmly. For two days all I heard was wedding plans although I hadn’t actually asked Rosalie to marry me. But it seemed taken for granted that I had, and her parents obviously approved of me.

But how could I marry her? She thought I was Frank Williams, a Pan Am co-pilot with a bright future. I knew I couldn’t maintain the pose if we were married. It would be only a matter of time before she learned I was really Frank Abagnale, a teen-aged swindler with a phony front and a dirty past. I couldn’t do that to Rosalie, I told myself.

Or could I? I had $80,000 or $90,000 in cash, ample funds to finance the beginning of a marriage. Maybe Rosalie would believe me if I told her I didn’t want to fly anymore, that I’d always wanted to own and operate a stationery store. I didn’t, really, but it was the one honest trade in which I was versed. I dismissed the idea. I would still be “Frank Williams,” and Frank Williams would still be a hunted outlaw.

What started as a pleasant visit turned into an ordeal for me. I felt I really loved Rosalie, and I felt I really wanted to marry her, but I didn’t see how under the circumstances.

However, Rosalie thought she was going to marry me. And her parents thought she was going to marry me. They happily charged ahead, setting the date for a month hence, making up a list of whom to invite, planning the reception and doing all the things parents and a daughter do when the girl’s about to become a bride. I took part in many of the discussions, outwardly happy and eager for the day, but inwardly I was tortured with guilt, burning with shame and totally miserable. I had told Rosalie and her parents that my parents were on a European vacation, and they agreed they should wait until my parents returned, which I said should be within ten days, before finalizing any plans.

“I’m sure your mother will want to have a hand in this, Frank,” said Rosalie’s mother.

“I’m sure she would,” I lied, although I was sure my mother would like to get her hands on me.

I didn’t know what to do. I was staying in Rosalie’s home, in the guest room, and at night I’d lie in my bed and I could hear the murmur of her parents’ voices in their room across the hall, and I knew they were talking about their daughter’s marriage to such a fine young man. It made me feel rotten.

One afternoon Rosalie and I went bike riding and we ended up in a park, sitting under a giant shade tree, and Rosalie, as usual, was chattering about our future—where we’d live, how many kids we’d have and so on. I looked at her as she talked and suddenly I felt she’d understand, that she loved me enough to not only understand but to forgive. One of the traits I loved most in her was her compassion.

I put my hand gently over her mouth. “Rosalie,” I said, and I was surprised at my calmness and composure. “I need to tell you something, and I want you to try and understand. If I didn’t love you so much, I wouldn’t tell you this at all, for I’ve never told anyone what I’m going to tell you. And I’m telling you, Rosalie, because I love you and I do want us to get married.

“Rosalie, I am not a pilot for Pan American. I’m not twenty-eight, Rosalie. I’m nineteen. My name is not Frank Williams. My name is Frank Abagnale. I’m a crook, Rosalie, an impostor and a check swindler, and I’m wanted by the police all over the country.”

She looked at me, shocked. “Are you serious?” she finally said. “But I met you at the airport. You have a pilot’s license. I’ve seen it! You have a Pan Am ID card. You were in uniform, Frank! Why are you saying these things, Frank? What is the matter with you?”

She laughed nervously. “You’re kidding me, Frank!”

I shook my head. “No, Rosalie, I’m not. Everything I’ve said is true,” I said, and I laid it all out for her, from the Bronx to Downey. I talked for an hour, watching her face as I talked and seeing her eyes mirror in turn horror, disbelief, agony, despair and pity before her emotions were hidden behind a curtain of tears.

She buried her hands in her hair and wept uncontrollably for what seemed an eternity. Then she took my handkerchief, wiped her eyes and face and stood up. “Let’s go back home, Frank,” she said quietly.

“You go on, Rosalie,” I said. “I’ll be there shortly, but I need to be alone for a while. And Rosalie, don’t say anything to anyone until I get there. When your parents learn about this, I want them to hear it from me. Promise me that, Rosalie.”

She nodded. “I promise, Frank. I’ll see you later.”

She pedaled off, a lovely woman reduced to a forlorn figure at the moment. I got on my bike and rode around, thinking. Rosalie hadn’t said a lot, really. She certainly hadn’t told me everything would be all right, that she forgave me and we’d be married anyway. I really didn’t know what she was thinking, or what her reaction would be when I reappeared at her home. Should I even go back? All I had at her house were some sports clothes, a couple of suits, underwear and shaving kit. I’d left my uniform in my motel room in San Francisco, and I had my fake ID and phony pilot’s license in my pocket. I had never told Rosalie where I lived. I’d always called her or gone to her home. When she asked me once, I told her I lived with a couple of kooky pilots in Alameda and they were so weird they wouldn’t have a telephone or television in the apartment.

That had seemed to satisfy her. She wasn’t at all an inquisitive person, tending to take people as they presented themselves. That’s one reason I enjoyed her company and had dated her more than usual. I felt safe around her.

But I didn’t feel safe at the moment and I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of my impromptu confession. I forced myself to brush aside my misgivings. Whatever else she might do, in light of what she now knew, Rosalie wouldn’t betray me, I told myself.

I contemplated phoning her to get a reading on what her feelings were now, but decided to face her and press for a decision. I approached her home from a side street and just before reaching the corner I stopped, laid the bike down and walked along a hedge bordering a neighbor’s yard until I had a view of her house through the foliage.

Parked in front of Rosalie’s home was an L.A. black-and-white, and a second vehicle, which, while not-marked, was plainly a cop car, was parked in the driveway. A uniformed policeman was in the squad car scanning the street.

My lovely Rosalie had finked on me.

I went back to the bike and pedaled off in the opposite direction. When I reached the downtown district, I parked the bike and caught a cab to the Los Angeles airport. Within thirty minutes I was in the air, returning to San Francisco. I was plagued with a feeling I couldn’t identify the entire trip, and the nebulous emotion stayed with me as I packed, paid my motel bill and returned to the airport. I bought a ticket to Las Vegas, using the name James Franklin, and I left the Barracuda in the airport parking lot, the keys in the ignition. It was the first of many cars I purchased and abandoned.

I was still possessed by the odd feeling during the flight to Las Vegas. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t guilt. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I stepped off the plane in Nevada. Then I identified the emotion.

It was relief. I was happy to have Rosalie out of my life! The knowledge astonished me, for not six hours past I’d been desperately seeking a way to make her my wife. Astonished or not, I was still relieved.

It was my first trip to Las Vegas and the city was everything and more than I’d imagined. There was a frantic, electric aura about the whole city, and the people, visitors and residents alike, seemed to be rushing around in a state of frenetic expectation. New York was a city of leisurely calm in comparison. “Gambling fever,” explained a cabbie when I mentioned the dynamic atmosphere.

“Everybody’s got it. Everybody’s out to make a killing, especially the Johns. They fly in on jets or driving big wheels and leave on their thumbs. The only winners in this town are the houses. Everybody else is a loser. Take my advice—if you’re gonna play, play the dolls. A lot of them are hungry.”

I took a suite at a motel and paid two weeks’ rent in advance. The registration clerk wasn’t impressed at all by the wad of $100 bills from which I peeled the hotel charge. A big roll in Vegas is like pocket change in Peoria, I soon learned.

I intended Las Vegas to be just an R & R stop. I followed the cabbie’s advice and played the chicks. He was right about the girls. Most of them were hungry. Actually hungry. Famished, in fact. After a week with some of the more ravenous ones, I felt like Moses feeding the multitudes.

However, as the Good Book sayeth: He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack.

I am feeding a famished gamin poolside. She has been living on casino free lunches for three days while trying to contact a brother in Phoenix to ask for bus fare home. “I blew everything,” she said ruefully while devouring a huge steak with all the trimmings. “All the money I brought with me, all the money in my checking account, all I could raise on my jewelry. I even cashed in my return airline ticket. It’s a good thing my room was paid in advance or I’d be sleeping on lobby couches.”

She grinned cheerfully. “Serves me right. I’ve never gambled before, and I didn’t intend to gamble when I came here. But the damned place gets to you.”

She looked at me quizzically. “I hope you’re just being nice, buying me dinner. I know there’re ways a girl can get things in this burg, but that ain’t my style, man.”

I laughed. “Relax. I like your style. Are you going back to a job in Phoenix?”

She nodded. “I am if I can get hold of Bud. But I may not have a job if I’m not back by Monday.”

“What do you do?” I asked. She looked the secretary type.

“I’m a check designer for a firm that designs and prints checks,” she said. “A commercial artist, really. It’s a small firm, but we do work for a couple of big banks and a lot of business firms.”

I was astonished. “Well, I’ll be darned,” I ventured. “That’s interesting. What do you do when you design and print a check?”

“Oh, it depends on whether we’re making up plain checks or fancy ones; you know, the kind with pictures, landscapes and different colors. It’s a simple operation for just plain checks. I just lay it out on a big paste-up board however the customer wants it, and then we photograph it with an I-Tek camera, reducing it to size, and the camera produces an engraving. We just put the engraving on a little offset press and print up the check in blocks or sheets. Anybody could do it, really, with a little training.”

Her name was Pixie. I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Pixie, how’d you like to go home tonight, by air?” I asked.

“You’re kidding me?” she accused, her eyes wary.

“No, I’m not,” I assured her. “I’m an airline pilot for Pan Am. We don’t fly out of here, but I have deadhead privileges. I can get you a seat to Phoenix on any airline that serves Vegas from there. All it’ll cost is a little white lie. I’ll say you’re my sister. No other strings attached, okay?”

“Hey, all right!” she said delightedly and gave me a big bear hug.

While she packed, I bought her a ticket, paying for it in cash. I took her to the airport and pressed a $100 bill in her hand as she boarded the plane. “No arguments,” I said. “That’s a loan. I’ll be around to collect one of these days.”

I did get to Phoenix, but I made no effort to contact her. If I had, it wouldn’t have been to collect but to pay off, for Pixie let me into the mint.

The next day I sought out a stationery printing supply firm. “I’m thinking of starting a little stationery store and job printing shop,” I told a salesman.

“I’ve been advised that an I-Tek camera and a small offset press would probably meet my initial needs, and that good used equipment might prove just as feasible from an economic standpoint.”

The salesman nodded. “That’s true,” he agreed. “Trouble is, used I-Tek cameras are hard to come by. We don’t have one. We do have a fine little offset press that’s seen very limited service, and I’ll make you a good deal on the press if you take it along with a new I-Tek. Let you have both for $8,000.”

I was somewhat surprised by the price, but after he showed me the machines and demonstrated the operating procedure of both, I felt $8,000 was a paltry sum to invest in such gems. An I-Tek camera is simply a photoelectric engraver. It photographically produces an engraving of the original copy to be reproduced. The lightweight, flexible plate is then wrapped around the cylinder of an offset press, and the plate prints directly on the blanket of the press, which in turn offsets the image onto whatever paper stock is used. As Pixie said, anybody could do it with a little training, and I acquired my training on the spot.

The I-Tek camera and the small press, while not overly heavy, were large and bulky, not objects to be carted around the country as part of one’s luggage. But I planned only a limited ownership of the machines.

I located a warehouse storage firm and rented a well-lighted cubicle for a month, paying in advance. I then obtained a cashier’s check for $8,000 and bought the I-Tek camera and the press and had them delivered to the storage room. The same day I made a round of stationery stores and purchased all the supplies I needed—a drawing board, pens and pencils, rulers, a paper cutter, press-on letters and numerals, a quantity of safety paper in both blue and green card stock of the type used for the real expense checks and other items.

The next day I closeted myself in my makeshift workshop and, using the various materials, created a 16-by-24-inch facsimile of the sham Pan Am expense check I’d been reproducing by hand. Finished, I positioned my artwork under the camera, set the reduction scale for a 2>V2-by-7V2-inch engraving and pushed the button. Within minutes I was fitting the plate around the drum of the press and printing sample copies of my invention.

I was astonished and delighted. The camera reduction had taken away any infractions and discrepancies in lines and lettering as far as the naked eye could discern. Using the paper cutter, I sliced one from the card stock and examined it. Save for the four smooth edges, I might have been holding a genuine check!

I ran off five hundred of the counterfeit checks before shutting down the little press and abandoning both it and the I-Tek camera. I went back to my hotel room, donned my pilot’s uniform, stuck a packet of the checks in my coat and went out to buck the tiger.

The tiger, for me, was a pussy cat. I ironed out Vegas like a bed sheet. That afternoon and night, and the following day, I hit nearly a hundred casinos, bars, hotels, motels, night clubs and other gambling spots, and in Vegas almost any place you walk into offers some kind of action. There’re slot machines in the grocery stores. No cashier showed the slightest hesitation about cashing one of my phony checks. “Would you cash this and give me $50 in chips?” I’d ask, and promptly I’d be handed $50 in markers and the balance in cash. For appearance’s sake, I’d usually stay in a casino for twenty or thirty minutes, playing the tables, before hitting the next place, and much to my amusement I whacked out the casinos that way too.

I came out $300 ahead playing the slots. I won $1,600 playing blackjack. Without the slightest inkling of the game, I picked up $900 playing roulette, and I won $2,100 at the dice tables. In all, I murdered Vegas for $39,000! I left Nevada driving a rented Cadillac, although I had to put up a $1,000 deposit when I told the lessor I’d probably be using the car several weeks.

I had it for nearly three months, as a matter of fact. I made a leisurely, meandering tour of the Northwest and Midwest, maintaining the pose of an airline pilot on vacation and alternating in the role of Frank Williams and Frank Adams. Since I didn’t want to leave the hounds a trail that could be too easily followed, I didn’t exactly scatter my counterfeits like confetti but I did stop to make a score now and then. I picked up $5,000 in Salt Lake City, $2,000 in Billings, $4,000 in Cheyenne and I bilked Kansas City banks for $18,000 before ending up in Chicago, where I simply parked the Cadillac and walked away.

I decided to hole up in Chicago for a while and give some serious thought to the future, or at least where I wanted to spend a great deal of the future. I was again entertaining the idea of fleeing the country. I wasn’t too concerned about my immediate security, but I knew that if I continued to operate in the U.S. it would be only a matter of time before I was nabbed. The principal problem I faced in trying to leave the country, of course, was obtaining a passport. I couldn’t apply for one in my own name since blabbing to Rosalie, and by now the authorities must have linked Frank Williams and Frank Adams to Frank Abagnale, Jr. I mulled the situation as I went about settling in Chicago, but as things turned out I didn’t have too much time for mulling.

I leased a nice apartment on Lakeshore Drive, using the name Frank Williams. I did so primarily because I was out of personalized checks and I always liked to have a supply in my possession. A lot of motels, I had learned, would not cash a company check but would accept a personal check in the amount of the bill or in cash amounts up to $100. I had forsaken personal checks as a means of swindling, but I still used them as a means of paying room rent when necessary. I didn’t like to lay out hard cash when I could slide one of my soft checks.

Accordingly, I dropped into a bank a week after alighting in Chicago and opened a checking account for $500. I identified myself as a Pan Am pilot, and gave as my address for the checks that of a mail service firm in New York to which I’d recently subscribed as another means of covering my trail. “But I want my checks and my monthly statements mailed to this address,” I instructed the bank officer who handled the transaction, giving him my Lake-shore Drive address.

“You see, the reason I want an account here is because I’m in and out of Chicago all the time on company business and it’s much more convenient to have an account in a local bank.”

The bank officer agreed. “You’ll receive your regular checks in about a week, Mr. Williams. In the meantime, here’re some temporary checks you can use,” he said.

Observation. A great asset for a con man, I’ve said. I had observed a very lovely teller when I entered the bank. Her image remained in my mind after I left the bank, and when she persisted in my thoughts over the next few days I determined to meet her. I returned to the bank several days later on the pretext of making a deposit and was filling out a deposit slip I had taken from a counter in the middle of the lobby when an even higher power of observation took command of my mind.

In the lower left-hand corner of the deposit slip was a rectangular box for the depositor’s account number. I never filled in the box, for I knew it wasn’t required. When a teller put a deposit slip in the small machine in his or her cage, in order to furnish you with a stamped receipt, the machine was programed to read the account number first. If the number was there, the amount of the deposit was automatically credited to the account holder. But if the number wasn’t there, the account could still be credited using the name and address, so the number wasn’t necessary.

There was a fellow beside me filling out a deposit slip. I noticed he neglected to give his account number. I dawdled in the bank for nearly an hour and watched those who came in to deposit cash, checks or credit-card vouchers. Not one in twenty, if that many, used the space provided for his or her account number.

I forgot about the girl. I surreptitiously pocketed a sheaf of the deposit slips, returned to my apartment and, using press-on numerals matching the type face on the bank forms, filled in the blank on each slip with my own account number.

The following morning, I returned to the bank and just as stealthily put the sheaf of deposit slips back in a slot atop a stack of others. I didn’t know if my ploy would succeed or not, but it was worth a risk. Four days later I returned to the bank and made a $250 deposit. “By the way, what’s my balance, please?” I asked the teller. “I forgot to enter some checks I wrote this week.”

The teller obligingly called bookkeeping. “Your balance, including this deposit, is $42,876.45, Mr. Williams,” she said.

Just before the bank closed, I returned and drew out $40,000 in a cashier’s check, explaining I was buying a home. I didn’t buy a home, of course, but I sure did feather my nest. The next morning I cashed the check at another bank and that afternoon flew to Honolulu, where a pretty Hawaiian girl greeted me with a kiss and put a lei around my neck.

I was a cad when it came to reciprocating. During the next two weeks I fashioned a $38,000 lei of fraudulent checks, spent three days hanging it around the necks of banks and hotels on the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai, and then jetted to New York.

It was the first time I’d been back in New York since hitting the paperhanger’s trail, and I was tempted to call Mom and Dad and maybe even see them. I decided against any such action, however, as much from shame as anything else. I might return home a financial success beyond either Mom’s or Dad’s comprehension, but mine was not the kind of success either of them would appreciate or condone.

I stayed in New York just long enough to devise a new scam. I opened a checking account in one of the Chase Manhattan branches, and when I received my personalized checks, in the name of Frank Adams, with the address of an East Side flat I’d rented, I flew to Philadelphia and scouted the city’s banks. I selected one with an all-glass front, enabling prospective depositors to see all the action inside and providing the bank officers, whose desks lined the glass wall, with a* good view of the cash inflow.

I wanted them to have a very pleasant view of me, so I arrived the next morning in a Rolls-Royce driven by a chauffeur I had hired for the occasion.

As the chauffeur opened the door for me, I saw one of the bank officers had indeed noticed my arrival. When I entered the bank, I walked directly to him. I had dressed befitting a man with a chauffeured Rolls-Royce—custom-tailored three-piece suit in pearl gray, a $100 homburg and alligator Ballys—and the look in his eyes told me the young banker recognized my grooming as another indication of wealth and power.

“Good morning,” I said briskly, taking a seat in front of his desk. “My name is Frank Adams, Adams Construction Company of New York. We’ll be doing three construction projects here during the year and I want to transfer some funds here from my New York bank. I want to open a checking account with you people.”

“Yes, sir!” he replied enthusiastically, reaching for some forms. “Will you be transferring all your funds here, Mr. Adams?”