Catch Me If You Can (22 page)

I assured her of my understanding and, in fact, was somewhat relieved. I also affirmed that her father would continue to get “Pan Am business,” although that statement was a lie. I was beginning to feel some guilt concerning my duplicitous use of Papa Lavalier, and had opted to release him as a pawn in my scurrilous game. Anyway, he’d already provided me with enough supplies to drain a dozen bank vaults if I used them all.

The girls and I ended our tour of Europe in Copenhagen, where I put them on a plane for Arizona. I dispatched them back to the States with their arms laden with roses and a flowery speech designed to allay any suspicions that might arise in their minds in coming weeks.

“Keep your uniforms, keep your ID cards and keep your check stubs [I’d always returned a check stub when I cashed a check],” I instructed them. “If the company wants the uniforms and IDs returned, you’ll be contacted. As far as employment goes, just return to school, because we’re not going to hire you on a permanent basis until you graduate, and then you’ll be contacted by a company representative. It probably won’t be me, because I’ve been ordered back to flight duty. But I hope you’ll all end up as part of my crew again, for I’ve had a wonderful time with you this summer.”

I had had a wonderful time, all things considered. If the girls put a lot of gray strands in my hair, they also, unwittingly, put a lot of green stuff in my pockets. Something like $300,000 in all.

The girls did hear from Pan Am, as a matter of fact. After three months of a steady stream of photographs, from dozens of European cities and all showing the same eight girls in Pan Am stewardess costumes, advertising executives of Pan Am launched an investigation. Eventually the entire matter ended up in O’Riley’s hands and he deftly sorted it out and put it into focus for the carrier’s officers and also for the girls.

I understand all eight of them took it gracefully, if with some vivid and descriptive language.

I stayed in Europe for several weeks after parting with the girls, then returned to the States, where I wandered around like a gypsy for several weeks, never staying in one place for more than two or three days. I was becoming moody again, nervous and edgy, and the knowledge that I would probably always be a man on the move, a fox perpetually hunted by the hounds, was beginning to weigh on my conscience, affecting my conscious life.

I virtually ceased my check-swindling activities, fearful the hounds were close enough and reluctant to create additional spoor. Only rarely was I challenged to display my creative criminality.

One such time was in a large midwestern city. I was sitting in the airport restaurant after arrival, enjoying lunch, when I became interested in the conversation in the adjoining booth, an exchange between an elderly, stern-faced man and a very young, servile companion, apparently an employee. I gathered from the conversation that the older man was a banker, en route to a convention in San Francisco, and from the remarks he made to the young man it was clear he expected his bank to make money in his absence. He was cool, crusty, arrogant and obviously proud of his lofty status, and when he was paged on the airport intercom I learned his name. Jasper P. Cashman.

That afternoon I did some discreet digging into Jasper P. Cashman’s background, utilizing a local newspaper’s library. J. P. Cashman was a prominent man in his community, a self-made tycoon. He’d started as a teller in his bank when the financial house had assets of less than $5 million. He was president now and the bank’s assets exceeded $100 million.

I scouted the bank the following day. It was a new building, still boasting its expansion motto on the large front window. The interior was roomy and pleasing. Tellers on one side, junior officers scattered across an opposite wall. Senior officers in airy, glassed-in offices. Cashman’s offices on the third floor. J. P. Cashman didn’t believe in close contact with the underlings.

I rented a car, drove to a modest city 175 miles distant and opened a checking account for $10,000 with a counterfeit cashier’s check. Then I returned to Cashman’s town and the next day called at his bank. I wasn’t really interested in the money involved in my swindle. Cashman’s manner had irked me, and I simply wanted to sting him.

I was the picture of the affluent businessman when I entered the bank. Gray three-piece suit. Alligators, luster-shined. Countess Mara tie. A leather brief-case, slim and elegant.

Cashman’s companion at the airport was one of the junior officers. His desk was neat and tidy. His nameplate sparkled with newness. He obviously was newly promoted. I dropped into the chair in front of his desk.

“Yes, sir, can I help you?” he asked, patently impressed by my dress and bearing.

“Yes, you can, as a matter of fact,” I said easily. “I’m Robert Leeman from Junction, and I need to cash a check, a rather large one. I’ve all the proper identification and you can call my bank for verification, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. J. P. Cashman knows me, and he’ll verify the check. You can call him. No, I’ll do it myself, since I need to talk to him anyway.”

Before he could react, I reached over, picked up his telephone and dialed Cashman’s correct extension. Cash-man’s secretary answered.

“Yes, Mr. Cashman, please… He isn’t… Oh, yes, he mentioned that last week and it slipped my mind. Well, listen, would you tell him when he returns that Bob Leeman dropped by, and tell him Jean and I are looking forward to seeing him and Mildred in Junction for the hunt. He’ll know what I mean… Yes, thank you.”

I replaced the telephone and stood up, grimacing. “Doesn’t look like my day,” I said ruefully. “I needed the cash, too. I can’t get to Junction and back in time for this deal. Well, good day, sir.“

I started to turn and the young officer stopped me. “Uh, how big is the check you wanted to cash, Mr. Leeman?”

“Pretty good sized,” I said. “I need $7,500. Do you think you can take care of it? I can give you the number of my bank in Junction.” Without waiting for a reply, I dropped back into the chair, briskly wrote out a check for $7,500 and handed it to him. As I figured, he didn’t call the bank in Junction. He stood up and turned toward one of the glassed-in offices. “Sir, I’ll have to have Mr. James, the vice president, okay this, which I’m sure he will. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He walked into James’s office and said (as I later learned) exactly what I’d conditioned him to say. “Sir, there’s a Mr. Leeman here from Junction and he needs to cash this rather large check. He’s a personal friend of Mr. Cashman, and he wanted to see Mr. Cashman, but as you know Mr. Cashman’s in San Francisco.”

“A personal friend of the old man’s?”

“Yes, sir, business and social, I understand.”

“Cash it. We sure as hell don’t want to irritate any of the old man’s associates.”

A minute later the young officer was handing the phony check to a teller. “Cash this for the gentleman, please. Mr. Leeman, I’m glad I could help you.”

I wasn’t too well pleased with the Pavlov’s-dog swindle. In fact, I didn’t enjoy it at all. I left town that day and several days later stopped in a remote Vermont village to do some meditating. Mine were gloomy cogitations. I was no longer living, I decided, I was merely surviving. I had accumulated a fortune with my nefarious impersonations, swindles and felonies, but I wasn’t enjoying the fruits of my libidinous labors. I concluded it was time to retire, to go to earth like a fox in a remote and secure lair where I could relax and commence building a new and crime-free life.

I reviewed the places I had been on the atlas of my mind. I was mildly astonished at the extensiveness of my travels, recalling my journeys of the past few years. I had crisscrossed the globe from Singapore to Stockholm, from Tahiti to Trieste, from Baltimore to the Baltics, and to other places I had forgotten I’d visited.

But one place I hadn’t forgotten. And its name kept popping into my thoughts as I sought a safe haven. Montpellier, France.

Montpellier. That was my safe haven, I finally decided. And having made the decision, I didn’t give it a second thought.

I should have.

Quantitatively, the vineyards of Bas Languedoc produce more wine than the other three great French wine departments combined. Qualitatively, with one or two exceptions, the wine of Languedoc has all the bouquet, body and taste of flat root beer. The considerate host serves an ordinary Languedoc wine only with leftover meat loaf, and preferably to guests whom he’d rather not see again.

It is, in the main, really bad juice.

Fortunately for France, the vintners, grape pickers, bottlers and the vast majority of the rest of the population consume the bulk of Languedoc ’s wines. France exports only its great wines from the vineyards of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne, which are justly famous for quality and excellence.

I learned all about viniculture in Montpellier. The first thing I learned was not to drink the local
vins
du pays.

I was probably the only water drinker in town. However, I didn’t go to Montpellier for either the wine or the water. I was there to hide. Permanently, I hoped. I had reached the pinnacle of a criminal mountain and the view wasn’t that great. Now I wanted an honest valley to shelter me in its hollow.

I had passed through Montpellier, driving from Marseille to Barcelona, during one of my first bad-check forays through Europe. Outside of town I had parked beneath a huge olive tree and picnicked on cheese, bread, sausages and soft drinks I’d picked up in the city. Close at hand, pickers swarmed like ants through a vast grape orchard and far away the snow-tipped peaks of the Pyrenees glistened in the sun. I felt comfortable, at ease, almost happy. As if I were home.

In a sense, I was. This part of southern France was my mother’s native land. She had been born here and after she married my father, and following the breakout of guerrilla warfare in Algiers, her parents had returned here with their other children. My maternal grandparents, several uncles and aunts and a covey of cousins still lived within an hour’s drive of the olive tree. I quelled an impulse to turn aside and visit my mother’s people and drove on to Spain.

I had never forgotten that tranquil, enjoyable interlude near Montpellier. And when, at the ripe old age of twenty, I decided to retire from my life as a counterfeit person, dealing in counterfeit wares, I chose Montpellier as my retreat. I was not happy that I had to return there behind yet another counterfeit identity, but I had no choice.

Montpellier, in many ways, was ideal for my purpose. It was not a tourist attraction. It was situated too far inland from the Mediterranean to lure the Riviera set, yet close enough that a seashore outing was available at the end of a short drive.

It was large enough (80,000 population) that an American taking up residence would not excite undue curiosity, yet too small to command a major airport or to entice large hotel operators. There were no Hiltons or Sheratons in Montpellier and its tiny air facility served only light aircraft. The lack of air service or swank hotels weighed in my favor. There was very little chance of my encountering a pilot, a stewardess or a hotel employee who might recognize me.

I presented myself in Montpellier as Robert Monjo, a successful author and screenwriter from Los Angeles, “successful” in order to explain the sizable account I opened in one of the local banks. At that, I didn’t deposit all the moneys I took with me to Montpellier. Had I done so, it might have aroused some curiosity as to my actual livelihood. I retained treble the amount in cash, hidden away in my luggage. As a matter of fact, the people of Montpellier were not prone to pry. I was asked only the necessary and perfunctory questions as I went about the business of becoming an expatriate citizen of the town.

I bought a small cottage, a charming and gracious little house with a tiny back yard shielded by a high board fence, where the previous owner had cultivated a minuscule garden. The operator of the store where I bought furnishings for the house lent me the services of his wife, a skilled interior decorator, in selecting the proper furniture and arranging the decor. I fixed up one room as a study and library, reinforcing my image as a writer engaged in research and literary creation.

I bought a Renault, one of the more comfortable models but not luxurious enough to attract attention. Within two weeks I felt at home, secure and content in my new surroundings.

And if God had shorted the Mediterranean Languedoc on good grapes, He made up for it in the people. They were a sturdy, amiable, courteous and gregarious populace in the main, quick to smile and to offer any assistance. The housewives in my neighborhood were always knocking on my door with gifts of pastry, fresh baked bread or a serving from their dinner pots. My immediate neighbor, Armand Perigueux, was my favorite. He was a huge, gnarled man of seventy-five and he still worked as an overseer in a vineyard, commuting to and from work on a bicycle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hands up!”

“Hands on your head!”

“Up against the shelves, spread-eagle!”

“Face down on the floor!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m Frank Abagnale,” I said.

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