Catch Me If You Can Page 0,10

all seemed complex and danger-ridden to me. I was a successful crook. I wasn't yet a confident crook.

I was still wrestling with the perplexities of my situation several days later while walking along Forty-second Street when the revolving doors of the Commodore Hotel disgorged the solution to my quandary.

As I drew near the hotel entrance, an Eastern Airlines flight crew emerged: a captain, co-pilot, flight engineer and four stewardesses. They were all laughing and animated, caught up in a joie de vivre of their own. The men were all lean and handsome, and their gold-piped uniforms lent them a buccaneerish air. The girls were all trim and lovely, as graceful and colorful as butterflies abroad in a meadow. I stopped and watched as they boarded a crew bus, and I thought I had never seen such a splendid group of people.

I walked on, still enmeshed in the net of their glamour, and suddenly I was seized with an idea so daring in scope, so dazzling in design, that I whelmed myself.

What if I were a pilot? Not an actual pilot, of course. I had no heart for the grueling years of study, training, flight schooling, work and other mundane toils that fit a man for a jet liner's cockpit. But what if I had the uniform and the trappings of an airline pilot? Why, I thought, I could walk into any hotel, bank or business in the country and cash a check. Airline pilots are men to be admired and respected. Men to be trusted. Men of means. And you don't expect an airline pilot to be a local resident. Or a check swindler.

I shook off the spell. The idea was too ludicrous, too ridiculous to consider. Challenging, yes, but foolish.

Then I was at Forty-second and Park Avenue and the Pan American World Airways Building loomed over me. I looked up at the soaring office building, and I didn't see a structure of steel, stone and glass. I saw a mountain to be climbed.

The executives of the famed carrier were unaware of the fact, but then and there Pan Am acquired its most costly jet jockey. And one who couldn't fly, at that. But what the hell. It's a scientific fact that the bumblebee can't fly, either. But he does, and makes a lot of honey on the side.

And that's all I intended to be. A bumblebee in Pan Am's honey hive.

I sat up all night, cogitating, and fell asleep just before dawn with a tentative plan in mind. It was one I'd have to play by ear, I felt, but isn't that the basis of all knowledge? You listen and you learn.

I awoke shortly after 1 p.m., grabbed the Yellow Pages and looked up Pan Am's number. I dialed the main switchboard number and asked to speak to someone in the purchasing department. I was connected promptly.

"This is Johnson, can I help you?"

Like Caesar at the Rubicon, I cast the die. "Yes," I said.

"My name is Robert Black and I'm a co-pilot with Pan American, based in Los Angeles." I paused for his reaction, my heart thumping.

"Yes, what can I do for you, Mr. Black?" He was courteous and matter-of-fact and I plunged ahead.

"We flew a trip in here at eight o'clock this morning, and I'm due out of here this evening at seven," I said. I plucked the flight times from thin air and hoped he wasn't familiar with Pan Am's schedules. I certainly wasn't.

"Now, I don't know how this happened," I continued, trying to sound chagrined. "I've been with the company seven years and never had anything like this happen. The thing is, someone -has stolen my uniform, or at least it's missing, and the only replacement uniform I have is in my home in Los Angeles. Now, I have to fly this trip out tonight and I'm almost sure I can't do it in civilian clothes... Do you know where I can pick up a uniform here, a supplier or whatever, or borrow one, just till we work this trip?"

Johnson chuckled. "Well, it's not that big a problem," he replied. "Have you got a pencil and paper?"

I said I did, and he continued. "Go down to the Weil-Built Uniform Company and ask for Mr. Rosen. He'll fix you up. I'll call him and tell him you're coming down. What's your name again?"

"Robert Black," I replied, and hoped he was asking simply because he'd forgotten. His final words reassured me.

"Don't worry, Mr. Black. Rosen will take good