Catch Me If You Can

prefecture de police
jail in Paris and turned over to the 
prefet de
police,
a plump, balding man with sleek jowls and cold, remorseless eyes. Nonetheless,
those eyes registered shock and disgust at my appearance, and he set about promptly
remedying my image. An officer escorted me to a shower, and after I had washed myself
clean of my accumulated filth an inmate barber was summoned to snave my beard and
shear my mane. I was then escorted to a cell, a small and austere little cubicle in reality,
but sheer luxury compared to my previous prison accommodations. amp;‹‹•
There was a narrow iron cot with a wafer of a mattress and coarse, clean sheets, a
tiny wash basin and an honest-to-john toilet. There was also a light, controlled from the
outside. “You may read until nine o’clock. The light goes out then,” the guard informed

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me.
I didn’t have anything to read. “Look, I’m sick,” I said. “Can I see a doctor, please?”
“I will ask,” he said. He returned an hour later bearing a tray on which reposed a
bowl of thin stew, a loaf of bread and a container of coffee. “No doctor,” he said. “I am
sorry.” I think he meant it.
The stew had meat in it and was a veritable feast for me. In fact the meager meal was
too rich for my stomach, which was unaccustomed to such hearty fare. I vomited the food
within an hour after dining.
I was still unaware of my circumstances. I didn’t know whether I would be brought
to trial again in Paris, whether I was to complete my term here or be handed over to some
other government. All my queries were rebuffed.
I was not to stay in Paris, however. The following morning, after a breakfast of
coffee, bread and cheese which I managed to keep inside me, I was taken from my cell
and again shackled like a wild animal. A pair of gendarmes placed me in a windowed van,
my feet secured by a chain to a bolt in the floor, and started on a route that I soon
recognized. I was being driven to Orly Airport.
At the airport I was taken from the van and escorted through the terminal to the
Scandanavian Airlines Service counter. My progress through the terminal attracted a
maximum of attention and people even left cafes and bars to gawk at me as I shuffled
along, my chains clinking and rattling.
I recognized the one clerk behind the SAS counter. She’d once cashed a phony check
for me. I couldn’t now remember the amount. If she recognized me, she gave no indication
of it. However, the man she’d cashed a check for had been a robust two-hundred-pounder,
tanned and healthy. The chained prisoner before her now was a sick, pallid-faced skeleton
of a man, stooped and hollow-eyed. In fact, after one look at me, she kept her eyes
averted.
“Look, it won’t hurt for you to tell me what’s going on,” I pleaded with the
gendarmes, who were scanning the human traffic in the vicinity of the ticket counter.
“We are waiting for the Swedish police,” one said in abrupt tones. “Now, shut up.
Don’t speak to us again.”
He was suddenly confronted by a petite and shapely young woman with long blond
hair and brilliant blue eyes, smartly dressed in a tailored blue suit over which she wore a
fashionably cut trench coat. She carried a thin leather case under one arm. Behind her
loomed a younger, taller Valkyrie, similarly attired, also holding an attache case tucked
under an arm.
“Is this Frank Abagnale?” the smaller one asked of the gendarme on my left. He
stepped in front of me, holding up his hand.
“That is none of your business,” he snapped. “At any rate, he is not allowed visitors.
If this man is a friend of yours, you will not be allowed to talk to him.”
The blue eyes flashed and the small shoulders squared. “I will talk to him, Officer,

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and you will take those chains off him, at once!” Her tone was imperiously demanding.
Then she smiled at me and the eyes were warm, the features gentle.
“You are Frank Abagnale, are you not?” she asked in perfect English. “May I call you
Frank?”

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