In fact, my cleverness overwhelmed me. If it worked once, why wouldn’t it work twice? It did. It worked so many times in the next several weeks, I lost count. I can’t remember how many sets of tires, how many batteries, how many other automobile accessories I bought with that charge card and then sold back for a fraction of value. I hit every Mobil station in the Bronx. Sometimes I’d just con the guy on the pumps into giving me $10 and sign a ticket for $20 worth of gas and oil. I wore that Mobil card thin with the scam.
I blew it all on the broads, naturally. At first I operated on the premise that Mobil was underwriting my pleasures, so what the hell? Then the first month’s bill landed in the mailbox. The envelope was stuffed fuller than a Christmas goose with charge receipts. I looked at the total due and briefly contemplated entering the priesthood, for I realized Mobil expected Dad to pay the bill. It hadn’t occurred to me that Dad would be the patsy in the game.
I threw the bill into the wastebasket. A second notice mailed two weeks later also went into the trash. I thought about facing up to Dad and confessing, but I didn’t have the courage. I knew he’d find out, sooner or later, but I decided someone other than me would have to tell him.
Amazingly, I didn’t pull up while awaiting a summit session between my father and Mobil. I continued to work the credit-card con and spend the loot on lovely women, even though I was aware I was also diddling my dad. An inflamed sex drive has no conscience.
Eventually, a Mobil investigator sought Dad out in his store. The man was apologetic.
“Mr. Abagnale, you’ve had a card with us for fifteen years and we prize your account. You’ve got a top credit rating, you’ve never been late with a payment and I’m not here to harass you about your bill,” said the agent as Dad listened with a puzzled expression. “We are curious, sir, and would like to know one thing. Just how in the hell can you run up a $3,400 bill for gas, oil, batteries and tires for one 1952 Ford in the space of three months? You’ve put fourteen sets of tires on that car in the past sixty days, bought twenty-two batteries in the past ninety days and you can’t be getting over two miles to the gallon on gas. We figure you don’t even have an oil pan on the damned thing… Have you given any thought to trading that car in on a new one, Mr. Abagnale?”
Dad was stunned. “Why, I don’t even use my Mobil card-my son does,” he said when he recovered. “There must be some mistake.”
The Mobil investigator placed several hundred Mobil charge receipts in front of Dad. Each bore his signature in my handwriting. “How did he do this? And why?” Dad exclaimed.
“I don’t know,” replied the Mobil agent. “Why don’t we ask him?”
They did. I said I didn’t know a thing about the swindle. I didn’t convince either of them. I had expected Dad to be furious. But he was more confused than angry. “Look, son, if you’ll tell us how you did this, and why, we’ll forget it. There’ll be no punishment and I’ll pay the bills,” he offered.
My dad was a great guy in my book. He never lied to me in his life. I promptly copped out. “It’s the girls, Dad,” I sighed. “They do funny things to me. I can’t explain it.”
Dad and the Mobil investigator nodded understanding-ly. Dad laid a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, boy. Einstein couldn’t explain it, either,” he said.
If Dad forgave me, Mom didn’t. She was really upset over the incident and blamed my father for my delinquencies. My mother still had legal custody of me and she decided to remove me from Dad’s influences. Worse still, on the advice of one of the fathers who worked with Catholic Charities, with which my mother has always been affiliated, she popped me into a C.C. private school for problem boys in Port Chester, New York.
As a reformatory, the school wasn’t much. It was more of a posh camp than a remedial institution. I lived in a neat cottage with six other boys, and except for the fact that I was restricted to campus and constantly supervised, I was subjected to no hardships.
The brothers who ran the school were a benevolent lot. They lived in much the same manner as their wards. We all ate in a common dining hall, and the food was good and plentiful. There was a movie theater, a television room, a recreation hall, a swimming pool and a gymnasium. I never did catalogue all the recreational and sports facilities that were available. We attended classes from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, but otherwise our time was our own to do with as we liked. The brothers didn’t harangue us about our misdeeds or bore us with pontifical lectures, and you really had to mess up to be punished, which usually meant being confined to your cottage for a couple of days. I never encountered anything like the school until I landed in a U.S. prison. I have often wondered since if the federal penal system isn’t secretly operated by Catholic Charities.
The monastic lifestyle galled me, however. I endured it, but I looked on my stint in the school as punishment and undeserved punishment at that. After all, Dad had forgiven me and he had been the sole victim of my crimes. So what was I doing in the place? I’d ask myself. What I disliked most about the school, however, was its lack of girls. It was strictly an all-male atmosphere. Even the sight of a nun would have thrilled me.
I would have been even more depressed had I known what was happening to Dad during my stay. He never went into details, but while I was in the school he ran into some severe financial difficulties and lost his business.
He was really wiped out. He was forced to sell the house and his two big Cadillacs and everything else he had of material value. In the space of a few months, Dad went from living like a millionaire to living like a postal clerk.
That’s what he was when he came to get me after I’d spent a year in the school. A postal clerk. Mom had relented and had agreed to my living with Dad again. I was shocked at the reversal of his fortunes, and more than a little guilt-ridden. But Dad would not allow me to blame myself. The $3,400 I’d ripped him off for was not a factor in his business downfall, he assured me. “Don’t even think of it, kid. That was a drop in the bucket,” he said cheerfully.
He did not seem to be bothered by his sudden drop in status and finances, but it bothered me. Not for myself, but for Dad. He’d been so high, a real wheeler-dealer, and now he was working for wages. I tried to pump him for the causes. “What about your friends, Dad?” I asked. “I remember you were always pulling them out of tight spots. Didn’t any of them offer to help you?”
Dad just smiled wryly. “You’ll learn, Frank, that when you’re up there’re hundreds of people who’ll claim you as a friend. When you’re down, you’re lucky if one of them will buy you a cup of coffee. If I had it to do over again, I’d select my friends more carefully. I do have a couple of good friends. They’re not wealthy, but one of them got me my job in the post office.”
He refused to dwell on his misfortunes or to discuss them at length, but it bugged me, especially when I was with him in his car. It wasn’t as good as my Ford, which he’d sold for me and placed the money in an account in my name. His car was a battered old Chevy. “Doesn’t it bother you at all to drive this old car, Dad?” I asked him one day.
“I mean, this is really a comedown from a Cadillac. Right?”
Dad laughed. “That’s the wrong way to look at it, Frank. It’s not what a man has but what a man is that’s important. This car is fine for me. It gets me around. I know who I am and what I am, and that’s what counts, not what other people might think of me. I’m an honest man, I feel, and that’s more important to me than having a big car… As long as a man knows what he is and who he is, he’ll do all right.”
Trouble was, at the time I didn’t know what I was or who I was.