Frank Abagnale - Catch Me If You Can

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 amp; 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.”