I shrugged. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll pay whatever the call costs.”
I hadn’t anticipated such a precaution on the bank’s part, but neither was I alarmed. And I had inadvertently chosen a time to cash the check when its worth as a counterfeit could be tested. It was 3:15 p.m. in Paris. The banks in New York had been open for fifteen minutes. It required about the same length of time for the teller to be connected with the bookkeeping department of the Chase Manhattan Bank. The French teller was proficient in English, although with an accent. “I have a check here, presented by a Pan American pilot, drawn on your bank in the amount of $781.45, American dollars,” said the teller, and proceeded to give the account number across the bottom left-hand corner of the sham check.
“I see, yes, thank you very much… Oh, the weather here is fine, thank you.” He hung up and smiled. “Every time I talk to America, they want to know about the weather.” He handed me the check to endorse and commenced counting out the amount of the check, less $8.92 for the telephone call. All things considered, it was not an unreasonable service charge.
I showered Paris and its suburban environs with the bogus checks, and rented a safe-deposit box, for a five-year period paid in advance, in which to store my loot. Very rarely was a check questioned, and then it was only a matter of verification, and if the banks in New York were closed, I would return to the bank when they were open. Only once did I experience a tense moment. Instead of calling Chase Manhattan, one teller called Pan Am’s business office in New York! Not once was my assumed name mentioned, but I heard the teller give the name of the bank, the account number and the name of the Pan Am comptroller.
Pan Am must have verified the check, for the teller paid it.
I was astonished myself at the ease and smoothness of my new operation. My God, I was now having my fictitious checks cleared by telephone and by Pan Am itself. I rented a car and while Monique was flying I drove around France, cashing the checks in every village bank and big-city treasury that loomed in sight. I have never verified the suspicion, but I often thought in later months and years that the reason I was so successful with those particular Pan Am checks was because Pan Am was paying them!
Papa Lavalier received a lot of business from me. I had him make me up a new Pan Am ID card, much more impressive than my own fraudulent one, after a real Pan Am pilot carelessly left his IE) card on the bar in the Windsor. “I’ll give it to him,” I told the bartender. I did mail it to him, in care of Pan Am’s New York offices, but only after I’d had Papa Lavalier copy it and substitute my own phony name, fake rank and photograph.
I had told the Lavaliers that I was in Paris as a special representative of Pan Am, doing public relations for the firm. A month after meeting Monique, however, I told her I had to return to flying status as a standby pilot, and caught a plane to New York. I arrived shortly before noon on a Tuesday and went immediately to the nearest branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank, where I purchased a $1,200 cashier’s check, with “Roger D. Williams” as remittor and “Frank W. Williams” as payee.
I took a plane back to Paris that same day, checked into the King George V this time, and once in my room altered the Federal Reserve District number on the check so that, when cashed, it would be routed to San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Then I took the check to Papa Lavalier. “I need three hundred of these,” I said.
I thought surely he would question the duplication of what was obviously a money order, but he didn’t. I learned later that he never really understood what he was printing when he did jobs for me, but performed with a blind faith in my integrity.
I flew back to New York the day after receiving the three hundred duplicates, each an image of the original. There are 112 branches of Chase Manhattan in the New York metropolitan area alone. Over a period of three days I called at sixty of the branches, presenting one of the replicas in each bank. Only once in the sixty instances were there more than perfunctory words passed.
“Sir, I know this is one of Chase’s checks, but it wasn’t issued from this branch,” she said apologetically. “I will have to call the issuing bank. Can you wait a minute?”
“Certainly, go ahead,” I said easily.
She made her call within earshot of me. No part of the conversation surprised me. “Yes, this is Janice in Queens. Cashier’s check 023685, can you tell me whom it was issued to, how much, when and what’s the current status on it?” She waited, then apparently repeated what she’d been told. “Frank W. Williams, $1,200, January 5, currently outstanding. I must have it right here. Thank you very much.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, smiling as she counted out the cash.
“That’s all right,” I said. “And you should never apologize for doing your job well.” I meant it, too. That girl got stung, but she’s still the kind banks should hire. And she saved Chase a bundle. I had intended to hit at least 100 Chase branches, but after she made her call, I pulled up on that particular caper.
I figured I couldn’t afford another call to the bank that had issued the original check. I knew the odds favored me, but I couldn’t chance the same bookkeeping clerk answering the phone if some other teller decided to go behind the check.
New York made me nervous. I felt I should head for a foreign clime again, but I couldn’t decide whether to return to Paris and Monique or visit some new and exciting place.
While I was debating with myself, I flew to Boston, where I got myself flung into jail and robbed a bank. The former was a shock, like an unplanned pregnancy. The latter was the result of an irresistible impulse.
I went to Boston simply to get out of New York. I thought it would be as good as any place along the eastern seaboard as a point of embarkation, and it also had a lot of banks. On arrival, I stowed my bags in an airport rental locker, put the key in my ID folder and called at several of the banks, exchanging some of my Pan Am check facsimiles for genuine currency. I returned to the airport early in the evening, intending to catch an overseas flight as soon as possible. I had garnered over $5,000 in my felonious foray through Bean Town, and I stowed $4,800 of it in my bags before checking on what foreign flights were available that night.
I didn’t have a chance to make my inquiries until late that night. Turning away from the locker, I encountered a pretty Allegheny Airlines stewardess from my embryo days as a pilot without portfolio.
“Frank! What a neat surprise!” she exclaimed. Naturally, we had to have a reunion. I didn’t get back to the airport until after 11 p.m., and by then I’d decided to go to Miami and make an overseas connection from there.
I walked up to the Allegheny Airlines counter. “When’s your next connecting flight to Miami?” I asked the ticket agent on duty, a man. I had changed into my pilot’s uniform.
“You just missed it.” He grimaced.
“Who’s got the next flight, National, American, who?” I inquired.
“No one,” he said. “You’ve missed any flight to Miami until tomorrow. Nothing flies out of here after midnight. Boston ’s got a noise-control ordinance, now, and no outgoing traffic is allowed after midnight. No airline can put a plane in the air until 6:30 a.m., and the first flight to Miami is National’s at 10:15 a.m.”
“But it’s only 11:40 now,” I said.
He grinned. “Okay. You want to go to Burlington, Vermont? That’s the last flight out tonight.”
All things considered, I declined. I walked over and sat down in one of the lobby chairs, mulling the situation. The lobby, like most large airport vestibules, was ringed with gift shops, newsstands, coffee shops, bars and various other shops, and I noted idly, while cogitating, that most of them were closing. I also noted, suddenly interested, that many of them were stopping at the night depository of a large Boston bank, situated near the middle of one exit corridor, and dropping bags or bulky envelopes-obviously their day’s receipts-into the steel-faced receptacle.