I still had the actual Pan Am payroll check I’d cashed for the stewardess in Mexico. Studying it, I was struck by the difference between it and my imaginative version of a Pan Am check. My imitations were impressive, certainly, else I wouldn’t have been able to pass so many of them, but one placed next to the real thing fairly shrieked “counterfeit!” I had been lucky to get by with passing them. Obviously the tellers who’d accepted them had never handled a real Pan Am check.
It occurred to me, however, that Pan Am checks might be very familiar to European bank tellers, since the carrier did the bulk of its business outside the continental United States. The thought had crossed my mind in London, even, when the teller in the one bank I’d bilked had seemed overly studious of my artwork.
“It’s an expense check,” I’d said, pointing to the bold black letters so stating.
“Oh, yes, of course,” he’d replied, and had cashed the check, but with a trace of reluctance.
Now I had another thought. Maybe Pan Am had a different-type check, maybe a different-colored check, perhaps, for different continents. I thought it best to check on the theory before proceeding with my plan. The next morning I called Pan Am’s Paris office and asked to speak to someone in the business office. I was connected with a man who sounded very young and very inexperienced, and soon proved he was the latter. I was becoming convinced that Lady Luck was my personal switchboard operator.
“Say, listen, this is Jack Rogers over at Daigle Freight Forwarding,” I said. “I got a check here, and I think your company must have sent it to us by mistake.”
“Uh, well, Mr. Rogers, why do you say that?” he inquired.
“Because I got a check here for $1,900, sent from your New York office, and I don’t have an invoice to match the payment notation,” I replied. “I can’t find any record of having handled anything for you people. You got any idea what this check’s for?”
“Well, not right offhand, Mr. Rogers. Are you sure the check’s from us?”
“Well, it seems to me it is,” I said. “It’s a regular green check with Pan American in big letters across the top and it’s made out to us for $1,900.”
“Mr. Rogers, that doesn’t sound like one of our checks,” the fellow said. “Our checks are blue, and they have Pan Am-Pan Am-Pan Am in faded-out wording all over the face, along with a global map of the world. Does yours have that on it?”
I was holding the stewardess’s check in my hand. He had described it perfectly, but I didn’t tell him that. “You gotta Pan Am check there?” I demanded, in the tone of a man who wanted to remove all doubts.
“Well, yes, I do, but…”
I cut him off. “Who’s it signed by? What’s the comptroller’s name?” I asked.
He told me. It was the same name appearing on the check in my hand. “What’s the string of little numbers across the bottom read?” I pressed.
“Why, 02…” and he rattled them off to me. They matched the numbers on the stew’s check.
“Nah, that’s not the guy who signed this check and the numbers don’t match,” I lied. “But you people do bank with Chase Manhattan, don’t you?”
“Yes, we do, but so do a lot of other companies, and you may have a check from some other firm operating under the name Pan American. I don’t think you have one of our checks, Mr. Rogers. I suggest you return it and establish some sort of correspondence,” he said helpfully.
“Yeah, I’ll do that, and thanks,” I said.
Monique flew the Berlin-Stockholm-Copenhagen run for Air France, a two-day turnaround trip, and then was off for two days. She had a flight that day. She was barely airborne when I appeared in her father’s shop. He was delighted to see me, and we had no trouble conversing between the French I had learned from my mother and the English of his young printer.
I displayed the check I’d gotten from the Pan Am stewardess, but with her name and the amount of the check blocked out. “I talked to our business-office people,” I said. “Now, we’ve been having these checks printed in America, a pretty expensive process. I told them I thought you could do the job as well and at a substantial savings. Do you think you can duplicate this check in payroll-book form?
“If you think you can, I am authorized to give you a trial order of ten thousand, provided you can beat the New York price.”
He was examining the check. “And what is your printer’s cost for these in New York, monsieur?” he asked.
I hadn’t the faintest idea, but I named a figure I felt wouldn’t offend New York printers. “Three hundred and fifty dollars per thousand,” I said.
He nodded. “I can provide your company with a quality product that will exactly duplicate this one, and at $200 per thousand,” he said eagerly. “I think you will find our work most satisfactory.”
He hesitated, seemingly embarrassed. “Monsieur, I know you and my daughter are close friends, and I trust you implicitly, but it is customary that we receive a deposit of fifty percent,” he said apologetically.
I laughed. “You will have your deposit this afternoon,” I said.
I went to a Paris bank, dressed in my Pan Am pilot’s uniform, and placed $1,000 on the counter of one of the tellers’ cages. “I would like a cashier’s check in that amount, please,” I said. “The remittor should be Pan American World Airways, and make the check payable to Maurice Lavalier and Sons, Printers, if you will.”
I delivered the check that afternoon. Papa Lavalier had an inspection sample ready for the following day. I examined the work and had to restrain myself from whooping. The checks were beautiful. No, gorgeous. Real Pan Am checks, four to a page, twenty-five pages to the book, perforated and on IBM card stock! I felt on top of the mountain, and no matter it was a check swindler’s pinnacle.
Papa Lavalier filled the entire order within a week, and I again acquired a legitimate cashier’s check, purportedly issued by Pan Am, for the balance due him.
Papa Lavalier furnished me with invoices and receipts and was pleased that I was pleased. It probably never occurred to him, having never dealt with Americans before, that there was anything strange about our dealings. I was a Pan Am pilot. His daughter vouched for me. And the checks he received were valid checks, issued by Pan Am.
“I hope we can do more work for your company, my friend,” he said.
“Oh, you will, you will,” I assured him. “In fact, we’re so delighted with your work that we may refer others to you.”
There were other referrals, all phony, and all handled personally by me, but Papa Lavalier never questioned anything I asked. From the time he delivered the 10,000 Pan Am checks, he was the printer of any spurious document I needed or desired, an innocent dupe who felt grateful to me for having opened the door of the “American market” to him.
Of course I had no need of 10,000 Pan Am checks. The size of the order was simply to avert any suspicion. Even Papa Lavalier knew Pan Am was a behemoth of the airline industry. An order for a lesser number of checks might have made him wary.
I kept a thousand of the checks and fueled the incinerators of Paris with the remainder. Then I bought an IBM electric typewriter and made out a check to myself for $781.45, which I presented to the nearest bank, garbed as a Pan Am pilot.
It was a small bank. “Monsieur, I am certain this check is a good one, but I would have to verify it before I cash it, and we are not allowed to make transatlantic calls at the bank’s expense,” he said with a wry smile. “If you would care to pay for the call…” He looked at me ques-tioningly.