Frank Abagnale - Catch Me If You Can

A jailer took me upstairs and placed me in a dingy, rusty cell adjoining the drunk tank. “If you need anything, just holler,” he said sympathetically.

I nodded, not replying, and slumped on the cot. I was suddenly depressed, miserable and scared. The game was over, I had to admit. The FBI would pick me up in the morning, I knew, and then it would be just one courtroom after another, I figured. I looked around the jail cell and hoped that prison cells were more tenable. Jesus, this was a rat hole. And I didn’t have a prayer of getting out. But then no man has a prayer, I thought regretfully, when he worships a hustler’s god.

Even a hustler’s god, however, has a legion of angels. And one appeared to me now, preceded by a thin, wavering whistle, like a kid bolstering his courage in a graveyard. He hauled up in front of my cell, an apparition in a hideous, green-checked suit topped by a face that might have come out of a lobster pot, questioning lips punctuated by an odorous cigar and eyes that regarded me as a weasel might look on a mouse.

“Well, now, what the hell might you be doing in there?” he asked around the cigar.

I didn’t know who he was. He didn’t look like anyone who could help me. “Vagrancy,” I said shortly.

“Vagrancy!” he exclaimed, examining me with his shrewd eyes. “You’re a pilot with Pan Am, aren’t you? How the hell can you be a vagrant? Did somebody steal all your planes?”

“Who’re you?” I asked.

He fished in his pocket and thrust a card through the bars. “Aloyius James ‘Bailout’ Bailey, my high-flying friend,” he said. “Bail bondsman par excellence. The cops bring ‘em, I spring ’em. You’re on their turf, now, pal. I can put you on mine. The street.”

Hope didn’t exactly spring eternal in my breast, but it crow-hopped.

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth,” I said cautiously. “There was this guy at the airport. He was getting pretty obnoxious with a girl. I racked his ass. They ran us both in for fighting. I should’ve stayed out of it. I’ll probably lose my job when the skipper finds out I’m in jail.”

He stared at me, unbelieving. “What the hell you sayin‘? You ain’t got nobody to bail you out? Call one of your friends, for Chris’ sakes.”

I shrugged. “I don’t have any friends here. I flew in on a charter cargo job. I’m based in Los Angeles.”

“What about the rest of your crew?” he demanded. “Call one of them.”

“They went on to Istanbul,” I lied. “I got time off due me. I was going to deadhead to Miami to see a chick.”

“Well, goddamned! You have got your ass in a crack, haven’t you?” said Aloyius James “Bailout” Bailey. Then he smiled, and his features suddenly took on the charm of a jolly leprechaun. “Well, my fighter-pilot chum, let’s see if we can’t get your butt out of this Boston bastille.”

He disappeared and was gone for an agonizing length of time, all of ten minutes. Then he hove to in front of my cell again. “Goddamn, your bond is $5,000,” he said in a surprised tone. “Sarge says you must have given the troopers a hard time. How much money you got?”

My hopes came to a standstill again. “Just $200, maybe not that much,” I sighed.

He mulled the reply; his eyes narrowed. “You got any identification?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, passing my ID and pilot’s license through the bars. “You can see how long I’ve been a pilot, and I’ve been with Pan Am seven years.”

He handed back the documents. “You got a personal check?” he asked abruptly.

“Yeah, that is, the sergeant downstairs has it,” I said. “Why?”

“Because I’m gonna take your check, that’s why, Jet Jockey,” he said with a grin. “You can write it out when the sarge lets you loose.”

The sarge let me loose thirty-five minutes later. I wrote Bailey a check for the standard 10 percent, $500, and handed him a hundred in cash. “That’s a bonus, in lieu of a kiss,” I said, laughing with joy. “I’d give you the kiss except for that damned cigar!”

He drove me to the airport after I told him I was taking the first flight to Miami.

This is what happened later. I have it on unimpeachable sources, as the White House reporters are fond of saying. An ecstatic O’Riley, high enough with joy to require a pilot’s license himself, showed up at the jail. “Abagnale, or whatever the hell name you’ve got him booked under, trot him out,” he chortled.

“He made bond at three-thirty this morning,” volunteered a jailer. The sergeant had gone home.

O’Riley flirted with apoplexy. “Bond! Bond! Who the hell bonded him out?” he finally shrieked in strangled tones.

“Bailey, ‘Bailout’ Bailey, who else?” replied the jailer.

O’Riley wrathfully sought out Bailey. “Did you post bond for a Frank Wiliams this morning? he demanded.

Bailey looked at him, astonishd. “The pilot? Sure, I went his bail. Why the hell not?”

“How’d he pay you? How much?” O’Riley grated.

“Why, the regular amount, $500. I’ve got his check right here,” said Bailey, offering the voucher.

O’Riley looked at the check and then dropped it on Bailey’s desk. “Serves your ass right,” he growled, and turned toward the door.

“What do you mean?” Bailey demanded as the FBI agent grasped the door handle.

O’Riley grinned wickedly. “Run it through your bank account, turd, and you’ll find out what I mean.”

Outside, a Massachusetts detective turned to O’Riley. “We can get out an APB on him.”

O’Riley shook his head. “Forget it. That bastard’s five hundred miles away. No Boston cop’s gonna catch him.”

A prudent man would have been five hundred miles away. I wasn’t prudent. When you’re hot, you’re hot, and I had the cajones of a billy goat.

No sooner had Bailey dropped me at the airport, and was gone, than I grabbed a cab and checked in at a nearby motel.

The next morning I called the bank that had a branch at the airport. “Security, please,” I said when the switchboard operator answered.

“Security.”

“Yeah, listen, this is Connors, the new guard. I don’t have a uniform for tonight’s shift. My damned uniform got ripped up in an accident. Where can I get a replacement, lady?” I spoke in outrage.

“Well, we get our uniforms from Beke Brothers,” the woman replied in mollifying tones. “Just go down there, Mr. Connors. They’ll outfit you with a replacement.”

I looked up the address of Beke Brothers. I also had my fingers do some walking through other sections of the Yellow Pages.

I went first to Beke Brothers. No one questioned my status. Within fifteen minutes I walked out with a complete guard’s outfit: shirt, tie, trousers and hat, the name of the bank emblazoned over the breast pocket and on the right shoulder of the shirt. I stopped at a police-supply firm and picked up a Sam Browne belt and holster. I called at a gun shop and picked up a replica of a.38 police special.

It was harmless, but only an idiot would have ignored it were it pointed at him. I then rented a station wagon, and when I left my motel each door sported a sign proclaiming

“SECURITY-BEAN STATE NATIONAL BANK.”

At 11:15 p.m. I was standing at attention in front of the night-deposit box of the Bean State National Bank Airport Branch, and a beautifully lettered sign adorned the safe’s depository: “night deposit vault out of order, please

MAKE DEPOSITS WITH SECURITY OFFICER.“

There was an upright dolly, with a large mail-type bag bulking open, in front of the depository.

At least thirty-five people dropped bags or envelopes into the container.

Not one of them said more than “Good evening” or “Good night.”