Catch Me If You Can Page 0,55
night clubs and other gambling spots, and in Vegas almost any place you walk into offers some kind of action. There're slot machines in the grocery stores. No cashier showed the slightest hesitation about cashing one of my phony checks. "Would you cash this and give me $50 in chips?" I'd ask, and promptly I'd be handed $50 in markers and the balance in cash. For appearance's sake, I'd usually stay in a casino for twenty or thirty minutes, playing the tables, before hitting the next place, and much to my amusement I whacked out the casinos that way too.
I came out $300 ahead playing the slots. I won $1,600 playing blackjack. Without the slightest inkling of the game, I picked up $900 playing roulette, and I won $2,100 at the dice tables. In all, I murdered Vegas for $39,000! I left Nevada driving a rented Cadillac, although I had to put up a $1,000 deposit when I told the lessor I'd probably be using the car several weeks.
I had it for nearly three months, as a matter of fact. I made a leisurely, meandering tour of the Northwest and Midwest, maintaining the pose of an airline pilot on vacation and alternating in the role of Frank Williams and Frank Adams. Since I didn't want to leave the hounds a trail that could be too easily followed, I didn't exactly scatter my counterfeits like confetti but I did stop to make a score now and then. I picked up $5,000 in Salt Lake City, $2,000 in Billings, $4,000 in Cheyenne and I bilked Kansas City banks for $18,000 before ending up in Chicago, where I simply parked the Cadillac and walked away.
I decided to hole up in Chicago for a while and give some serious thought to the future, or at least where I wanted to spend a great deal of the future. I was again entertaining the idea of fleeing the country. I wasn't too concerned about my immediate security, but I knew that if I continued to operate in the U.S. it would be only a matter of time before I was nabbed. The principal problem I faced in trying to leave the country, of course, was obtaining a passport. I couldn't apply for one in my own name since blabbing to Rosalie, and by now the authorities must have linked Frank Williams and Frank Adams to Frank Abagnale, Jr. I mulled the situation as I went about settling in Chicago, but as things turned out I didn't have too much time for mulling.
I leased a nice apartment on Lakeshore Drive, using the name Frank Williams. I did so primarily because I was out of personalized checks and I always liked to have a supply in my possession. A lot of motels, I had learned, would not cash a company check but would accept a personal check in the amount of the bill or in cash amounts up to $100. I had forsaken personal checks as a means of swindling, but I still used them as a means of paying room rent when necessary. I didn't like to lay out hard cash when I could slide one of my soft checks.
Accordingly, I dropped into a bank a week after alighting in Chicago and opened a checking account for $500. I identified myself as a Pan Am pilot, and gave as my address for the checks that of a mail service firm in New York to which I'd recently subscribed as another means of covering my trail. "But I want my checks and my monthly statements mailed to this address," I instructed the bank officer who handled the transaction, giving him my Lake-shore Drive address.
"You see, the reason I want an account here is because I'm in and out of Chicago all the time on company business and it's much more convenient to have an account in a local bank."
The bank officer agreed. "You'll receive your regular checks in about a week, Mr. Williams. In the meantime, here're some temporary checks you can use," he said.
Observation. A great asset for a con man, I've said. I had observed a very lovely teller when I entered the bank. Her image remained in my mind after I left the bank, and when she persisted in my thoughts over the next few days I determined to meet her. I returned to the bank several days later on the pretext of making a deposit and was filling out a deposit slip I had