Catch Me If You Can (6 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It will be,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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