Catch Me If You Can (27 page)

I really didn’t care whether this pilot was of that school or not. We had landed at night. When the huge jet slowed almost to a stop, I released my hold on the combing and lit running.

I fled straight across the runway in the darkness, later learning that I had escaped unnoticed, the method of my escape unknown until an irate O’Riley and other FBI agents searched the plane and found the lifted-out toilet.

On the Van Wyck Expressway side of the airport, I scaled a cyclone fence and hailed a passing cab. “Grand Central Station,” I said. On arrival at the station, I paid the cabbie out of the $20 bill I had and took a train to the Bronx.

I didn’t go home. I felt both my mother’s apartment and my father’s home would be under surveillance, but I did call Mom and then Dad. It was the first time in more than five years that I had heard their voices, and in each instance, both Mom and I and Dad and I ended up blubbering with tears. I resisted their entreaties to come to one of their homes and surrender myself to officers. Although I felt ashamed of myself for breaking my promise to the Malmo judge, I felt I’d had enough of prison life.

Actually, I went to the Bronx to see a girl with whom I’d stashed some money and some clothing, one suit of which contained a set of keys to a Montreal bank safe-deposit box. She was surprised to see me. “Good lord, Frank!” she exclaimed. “I thought you had disappeared for good. A few more days and I was going to spend your money and give your clothes to the Salvation Army.”

I did not stop to dally. I wasn’t sure how many of my girl friends and acquaintances the FBI had been able to identify, or which ones, but I knew some had been ferreted out. I grabbed my clothes, gave her all but $50 of the money and grabbed a train for Montreal.

I had $20,000 stashed in a Montreal safe-deposit box. It was my intention to pick up the money and take the soonest flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I intended to go to earth. You pick up some interesting information in prison, and in the ward I had learned that Brazil and the United States had no extradition treaty. Since I hadn’t committed any crimes in Brazil, I felt I would be safe there and that Brazilian authorities would refuse extradition even if I were caught in that country.

I picked up the money. I never made the flight. I was waiting in line at the Montreal airport to purchase a ticket when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to face a tall, muscular man with pleasant features, in the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

“Frank Abagnale, I am Constable James Hastings, and you are under arrest,” said the Mountie with a friendly smile.

The next day I was driven to the New York-Canada border and handed over to the U.S. Border Patrol, who turned me over to FBI agents, who took me to New York City and lodged me in the federal detention facility there.

I was arraigned before a U.S. commissioner who bound me over for trial under a $250,000 bond and remanded me to the detention house pending a decision on the part of prosecutors as to where to bring me to trial.

Two months later the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgia prevailed, and U.S. marshals took me to the Fulton County, Georgia, jail to await my trial.

The Fulton County Jail was a pest hole, a real roach pit. “It’s bad news, man,” said another prisoner I met in the day room of our cruddy cellblock. “The only decent facility in the joint is the hospital, and you have to be dying to get in there.”

The only decent facility in the day room was a pay telephone. I plopped a dime in and dialed the desk sergeant. “This is Dr. John Petsky,” I said in authoritative tones.

“You have a patient of mine as a prisoner, one Frank Abagnale. Mr. Abagnale is a severe diabetic, subject to frequent comas, and I would appreciate it, Sergeant, if you could confine him in your medical ward where I can visit him and administer proper treatment.”

Within thirty minutes a jailer appeared to escort me to the hospital ward, leaving the other inmates who had heard my conversation grinning in admiration.

A week later a U.S. marshal appeared, took me into custody and transferred me to the Federal Detention Center in Atlanta to await trial. It was from this prison that I perpetrated what has to be one of the most hilarious escapes in the annals of prison history. At least I thought it was funny, and I’m still amused by the episode, although there’re several others who still hold an opposite view.

Actually, mine wasn’t so much an escape as it was a cooperative eviction, made possible by the time and the circumstances. I was ensconced in the detention facility during a period when U.S. prisons were being condemned by civil rights groups, scrutinized by congressional committees and investigated by Justice Department agents. Prison inspectors were working overtime, and undercover, and earning the enmity and hostility of prison administrators and guards.

I was brought into this atmosphere under exactly the right circumstances. The U.S. marshal who. delivered me to the facility had no commitment papers for me, but did have a short temper.

The admissions officer to whom I was offered had a lot of questions for the U.S. marshal. Who was I? Why was I being lodged here? And why didn’t the marshal have the proper papers?

The marshal blew his cool. “He’s here under a court order,” he snapped. “Just put him in a damned cell and feed him until we come after him.”

The admissions officer reluctantly accepted custody of me. He really had no choice. The marshal had stormed out. I think I could have followed him without anyone’s stopping me, in light of what I learned. “Another damned prison inspector, eh?” murmured the guard who escorted me to my cell.

“Not me, I’m here awaiting trial,” I replied truthfully.

“Sure you are,” he scoffed, slamming the cell door. “You bastards think you’re slick, don’t you? You people got two of our guys fired last month. We’ve learned how to spot you.”

I wasn’t issued the white cotton uniform the other inmates sported. I was allowed to keep my regular clothing. I noted, too, that the cell in which I was placed, while not posh, was exceedingly livable. The food was good and the Atlanta papers were brought to me daily, usually with a sarcastic remark. I was never called by name, but was addressed as “fink,” “stoolie,” “ 007” or some other derisive term meant to connote my assumed status as a prison inspector. Reading the Atlanta papers, which twice the first week contained stories relating to conditions in federal penal institutions, I realized the personnel of this facility really did suspect I was an undercover federal agent.

Had I been, they would have had no worries, and I v as puzzled as to why large numbers of influential people thought American prisons were a disgrace to the nation. I thought this one was great. Not quite up to the standards of the Malmo ward, but much better than some motels in which I’d stayed.

However, if the guards here wanted me to be a prison inspector, that’s what I’d be. I contacted a still loyal girl friend in Atlanta. The prison rules were not overly lenient, but once a week we were allowed to use the telephone in privacy. I got her on the phone when it was my turn.

“Look, I know what it usually takes to get out of here,” I told her. “See what you have to do to get in, will you?”

Her name was Jean Sebring, and she didn’t have to do much to get in to see me. She merely identified herself as my girl friend, my fiancee, in fact, and she was allowed to visit me. We met across a table in one of the large visiting rooms. We were separated by a three-foot-high pane of glass perforated by a wire-mesh aperture through which we could talk. A guard was at either end of the room, but out of earshot. “If you want to give him something, hold it up and we’ll nod if it’s permissible,” one guard instructed her.

I had concocted a plan before Jean arrived. It might prove to be merely an intellectual exercise, I knew, but I thought it was worth a try. However, I first had to persuade Jean to help me, for outside assistance was vital to my plot. She was not difficult to persuade. “Sure, why not?” she agreed, smiling. “I think it would be funny as hell if you pulled it off.”

“Have you met an FBI agent named Sean O’Riley or talked to him?” I asked.

She nodded. “In fact, he gave me one of his cards when he came around asking about you,” she said.

“Great!” I enthused. “I think we’re in business, baby.”

We really were. That week, Jean, posing as a free-lance magazine writer, called at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C., and finagled an interview with Inspector C. W. Dunlap, purportedly on fire safety measures in federal detention centers. She pulled it off beautifully, but then Jean is not only talented, she is also chic, sophisticated and lovely, a woman to whom any man would readily talk.

She turned at the door as she left. “Oh, may I have one of your cards, Inspector, in case some other question comes to mind and I have to call you?” she asked.

Dunlap promptly handed over his card.

She laughingly detailed her success during her next visit, in the course of which she held up Dunlap’s card, and when the one guard nodded, she passed it over the barrier to me.

Her visits only bolstered the guards’ belief that I was a Bureau of Prisons prober. “Who is she, your secretary, or is she a prison inspector, too?” one guard asked me as he returned me to my cell.

“That’s the girl I’m going to marry,” I replied cheerfully.

Jean visited a stationery print shop that week. “My father just moved into a new apartment and has a new telephone number,” she told the printer. “I want to present him with five hundred new personal cards as a house-warming gift. I want them to look exactly like this, but with his new home telephone number and his new office number inserted.” She gave the printer O’Riley’s card.

O’Riley’s new telephone numbers were the numbers of side-by-side pay telephones in an Atlanta shopping mall.

The printer had Jean’s order ready in three days. She passed me one of the cards on her next visit, and we finalized our plans. Jean said she’d enlisted the aid of a male friend just in case. “I didn’t fill him in on anything, of course; I just told him we were pulling a practical joke,” she said.

“Okay, we’ll try it tomorrow night,” I said. “Let’s hope no one wants to use those phones around 9 p.m.”

Shortly before 9 p.m. the following day, I hailed the cellblock guard, whom I had cultivated into a friendly adversary. “Listen, Rick, something’s come up and I need to see the lieutenant on duty. You were right about me. I am a prison inspector. Here’s my card.” I handed him Dunlap’s card, which bore only his Washington office number. If anyone decided to call the Bureau of Prisons, they’d be told the offices were closed.

Rick scanned the card and laughed. “By God, we knew we were right about you,” he chortled. “Combs is gonna like this. Come on.” He opened the cell door and led me to Lieutenant Combs’ office.

The lieutenant was equally pleased to learn, as he also had suspected, that I was a prison inspector. “We had you figured all along,” he growled amiably, tossing Dunlap’s card on his desk after looking at it.

I grinned. “Well, it would have all come out Tuesday anyway,” I said. “And I’ll tell you now that you people don’t have anything to worry about. You’re now running a clean, tight ship, the kind the bureau likes to brag about. You’ll like my report.”

A pleased look began to spread across Combs’ face and I plunged ahead with my gamble. “But right now I’ve got some urgent business to take care of,” I said. “I need to get hold of this FBI agent. Can you get him on the horn for me? He’ll still be at his office, I’m sure.” I handed over the doctored card bearing O’Riley’s name, his position with the FBI and the two phony telephone numbers.

Combs didn’t hesitate. He picked up his telephone and dialed the “office” number. “I’ve read about this guy O’Riley,” he remarked as he dialed. “He’s supposed to be hell on wheels for nabbing bank robbers.”

The “office” phone started ringing. Jean answered on the second ring. “Good evening, Federal Bureau of Investigation. May I help you?”

“Yes, is Inspector O’Riley in?” Combs said. “This is Combs at the detention center. We’ve got a man here who wants to talk to him.”

He didn’t even wait for “O’Riley” to answer. He just passed the phone to me. “She said she’ll get him for you,” Combs told me.

I waited an appropriate few seconds and then launched into my act. “Yes, Inspector O’Riley? My name is Dunlap, C. W. Dunlap, with the Bureau of Prisons. If you’ve got your list handy, my authorized code number is 16295-A… Yes, that’s right… I’m here now, but I’ve told these people who I am… I had to… Yes…

“Listen, Inspector O’Riley, I’ve come up with some information on that Philly case you’re working, and I need to get it to you tonight… No, sir, I can’t give it to you over the telephone… it’s too sensitive… I have to see you, and I have to see you within the hour… Time is important… Oh, you are… Well, look these guys won’t blow your cover… No, it’ll only take ten minutes.

… Wait a minute, let me talk to the lieutenant, I’m sure he’ll go along.“

I covered the mouthpiece of the telephone and looked at Combs. “Boy, these J. Edgar Hoovers are really way out. He’s working undercover on something and doesn’t want to come inside… some kind of Mustache Pete job or something,” I told Combs. “If he parks out front, can I go out and talk to him in his car for about ten minutes?”

Combs grimaced. “Hell, why don’t you call your people and spring yourself right now?” he asked. “You ain’t needed here anymore, are you?”

“No,” I said. “But we have to do these things by the book. A U.S. marshal will come for me Tuesday. That’s the way my boss wanted it done, and that’s the way it’ll be done. And I’d appreciate it if you people wouldn’t let on that I blew my own cover. But I had to. This is too big.”

Combs shrugged. “Sure, we’ll let you meet O’Riley. Hell, spend an hour with him, if you like.”

I went back to the telephone. “O’Riley, it’s okay… Yeah, out front… a red-over-white Buick… Got it… No, no problem. These guys are okay. I really don’t know why you’re being so damned cautious. They’re on our team, too, you know.”

Rick brought me a cup of coffee and stood by the window while I sipped the brew and chatted with Combs. “Here’s your Buick,” Rick said fifteen minutes later. Combs rose and picked up a large ring of keys. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll let you out myself.”