Catch Me If You Can (10 page)

Fortunately, during my tenure at Smithers, I was never faced with a life-or-death situation, but there were ticklish positions where only my antic’s mien saved me. Early one morning, for instance, an obstetrics team nurse sought me out. “Dr. Williams, we just delivered a baby, and Dr. Martin was called across the hall to do a Caesarian section while we were still tying the cord. He asks if you’d be kind enough to make a routine examination of the child.”

I couldn’t very well refuse. I was chatting with two nurses on my shift at the time the request was made. “I’ll help you, Dr. Williams,” volunteered the one, Jana Stern, a dedicated RN who was attending medical school herself and hoped to be a pediatrician specializing in newborns.

She led the way to the nursery and I reluctantly followed. I had sometimes paused outside the plate-glass window of the nursery to look at the tiny, wrinkled newborns in their incubators or box-like bassinets, but I’d never gone inside. They reminded me of so many mewling kittens, and I’ve always been slightly leery of cats, even little ones.

I started to shove open the door of the nursery and Nurse Stern grabbed my arm. “Doctor!” she gasped.

“Whaf s wrong?” I asked, looking around desperately for one of my trusty interns.

“You can’t go in like that!” she scolded me. “You have to scrub up and put on a smock and mask. You know that!” She handed me a green jacket and a sterile mask.

I grimaced. “Help me on with these damned things,” I growled. “Why do we need a mask? I’m only gonna look at the kid, not stick him up.” I realized why I needed a mask. I was trying to cover. And I did. She clucked. “Honest, Doctor, you’re too much at times,” she said in exasperated tones.

It was a baby boy, still glistening redly from his rough passage through the narrow channel of life. He regarded me with a lugubrious expression. “Okay, kid, take a deep breath and milk it back,” I commanded in mock military tone, starting to apply my stethoscope to the baby’s chest.

Nurse Stern grabbed my arm again, laughing. “Doctor! You can’t use that stethoscope on a newborn! You use a pediatrics stethoscope.” She busted out and returned with a smaller version of the one I held. I hadn’t known they came in sizes. “Will you quit fooling around, please? We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I stepped back and waved at the baby. “Tell you what, Dr. Stern. You examine the boy. I’d like to check your style.”

She rose to the bait. “Well, I can do it,” she said, as if I’d insulted her, but still visibly pleased. She applied the stethoscope, then draped it around her neck and proceeded to manipulate the baby’s arms, legs and hips, peered into his eyes, ears, mouth and anus and ran her hands over his head and body. She stepped back and stared at me challengingly. “Well?”

I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you, Doctor, you’ve saved my only son,” I said with mock tearfulness.

The baby had lost his doleful look. No one is really certain if newborn infants have thoughts or are aware of what is going on around them. No one but me, that is. That kid knew I was a phony. I could see it in his face.

I examined several newborns after that. I never knew what I was doing, of course, but, thanks to Nurse Stern, I knew how to do it.

But I still spent a lot of time in my seventh-floor linen closet.

There were times, too, I’m sure, when my tomfool demeanor irked people. Like the night, in the eleventh month of my impersonation, when a nurse rushed up to the nursing station where I was writing my undecipherable comments on charts. “Dr. Williams! We’ve got a blue baby in 608! Come quickly.” She was a new nurse, barely a month out of school. And I’d nipped her with one of my practical jokes. Her first night on duty I’d told her to “bring me a bucket of steam to the nursery. I want to sterilize the place.” She’d eagerly rushed off to the boiler room, where a helpful intern had steered her.

Oddly enough, in the eleven months I’d posed as a doctor, I’d never heard the term “blue baby.” I thought she was getting back at me.

“I’ll be right along,” I said, “but first I’ve got to check the green baby in 609.” When I made no move, she rushed off, shouting for one of the interns. I stepped around the corner and consulted my medical dictionary. I learned a blue baby was one suffering from cyanosis, or lack of oxygen in the blood, usually due to a congenital heart defect. I took off for Room 608, and was relieved to find one of my interns had bailed me out again. He was adjusting a portable oxygen tent around the infant. “I’ve called his doctor. He’s on his way. I’ll handle it until he gets here, if it’s all right with you, sir.”

It was all right with me. The incident shook me. I realized I was playing a role that had reached its limits. I’d been lucky so far, but I suddenly knew some child could die as a result of my impersonation. I determined to seek out Colter and resign, and I determined not to be swayed by any entreaties.

He sought me out instead.

“Well, Frank, you can go back to being a playboy,” he said cheerfully. “We’ve got a new resident supervisor. Got him from New York. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

I was relieved. I dropped around the next day to pick up my final paycheck and wasn’t at all disappointed when I didn’t meet my replacement. I was leaving the hospital when I encountered Jason, the elderly janitor on the midnight-to-eight shift.

“You’re coming to work a little early, aren’t you, Jason?” I asked.

“Workin‘ a double shift today, Doctor,” said Jason.

“If you haven’t heard, Jason, I won’t be around anymore,” I said. “They finally found a replacement.”

“Yes, sir, I heard,” said Jason. He looked at me quizzically. “Doctor, can I ask you somethin‘?”

“Sure, Jason. Anything.” I liked him. He was a nice old man.

He drew a deep breath. “Doctor, you never knowed it, but I always spent my relaxin‘ time up there on the seventh floor. And, Doctor, for nearly a year now I been seein’ you go in a linen closet up there. You never go in with anythin‘, and you never come out with anythin’. I know you don’t drink, and, Doctor, there ain’t nothin‘ in that closet, nothin’! I done searched it a dozen times. Doctor, my curiosity’s about to drive me to drink. Just what did you do in that linen closet, Doctor? I won’t tell nobody, I swear!”

I laughed and hugged him. “Jason, I was contemplating my navel in that closet. That’s all. I swear it.”

But I know he never believed me. He’s probably still inspecting that closet.

A week after I severed my connection with the hospital, my lease at Balmorhea came up for renewal and I decided to leave Atlanta. There was no compulsion for me to go; at least I felt none, but I thought it unwise to stay. The fox who keeps to one den is the easiest caught by the terriers, and I felt I had nested too long in one place. I knew I was still being hunted and I didn’t want to make it easy for the hounds.

I later learned that my decision to leave Atlanta was an astute one. About the same time, in Washington, D.C., FBI Inspector Sean O’Riley was ordered to drop all his other cases and concentrate solely on nabbing me. O’Riley was a tall, dour man with the countenance of an Irish bishop and the tenacity of an Airedale, an outstanding agent dedicated to his job, but an eminently fair man in all respects.

I came to admire O’Riley, even while making every effort to thwart his task and to embarrass him professionally. If O’Riley has any personal feelings concerning me, I am certain animosity is not among such emotions. O’Riley is not a mean man.

Of course, I had no knowledge of O’Riley’s existence, even, at the time I vacated Atlanta. Save for the young special agent in Miami, and the Dade County officers I’d encountered there, the officers on my case were all phantoms to me.

I decided to hole up for a month or so in the capital city of another southern state. As usual, I was prompted in my choice by the fact that I knew an airline stewardess there. I was yet to find a more delightful influence on my actions than a lovely woman.

Her name was Diane and I had known her intermittently for about a year. I had never flown with her, having met her in the Atlanta airport terminal, and she knew me under the alias Robert F. Conrad, a Pan Am first officer, an allonym I used on occasion. I was forced to maintain the nom de plume with her, for we developed a close and pleasing relationship, during the course of which, initially, she had delved into my personal background, including my educational history. Most pilots have a college degree, but not all of them majored in the aeronautical sciences. I told Diane that I had taken a law degree but had never practiced, since a career as an airline pilot had loomed as not only more exciting but also much more lucrative than law. She readily accepted the premise that a man might shun the courtroom for the cockpit.

She also remembered my concocted law degree. A few days after my arrival in her city she took me to a party staged by one of her friends and there introduced me to a pleasant fellow named Jason Wilcox.

“You two ought to get along. Jason is one of our assistant state’s attorneys,” Diane told me. She turned to Wilcox. “And Bob here is a lawyer who never hung out his shingle. He became a pilot instead.”

Wilcox was immediately interested. “Hey, where’d you go to law school?”

“Harvard,” I said. If I was going to have a law degree, I thought I might as well have one from a prestigious source.

“But you never practiced?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I got my Commercial Pilot’s License the same week I took my master’s in law, and Pan Am offered me a job as a flight engineer. Since a pilot makes $30,000 to $40,000, and since I loved flying, I took the job. Maybe someday I’ll go back to law, but right now I fly only eighty hours a month. Not many practicing lawyers have it that good.”

“No, you’re right there,” Wilcox agreed. “Where do you fly to? Rome? Paris? All over the world, I guess.”

I shook my head. “I’m not flying at the moment,” I said. “I’ve been furloughed. The company made a personnel cutback last month and I didn’t have seniority. It may be six months or a year before they call me back. Right now I’m just loafing, drawing unemployment. I like it.”

Wilcox studied me with bemused eyes. “How’d you do at Harvard?” he asked. I felt he was leading up to something.

“Pretty well, I guess,” I replied. “I graduated with a 3.8 average. Why?”

“Well, the attorney general is looking for lawyers for his staff,” Wilcox replied. “In fact, he’s really in a bind. Why don’t you take the bar here and join us? I’ll recommend you. The job doesn’t pay an airline pilot’s salary, of course, but it pays better than unemployment. And you’ll get in some law practice, which sure as hell couldn’t hurt you.”

I almost rejected his proposal outright. But the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me. The challenge again. I shrugged. “What would it entail for me to take the bar examination in this state?” I asked.

“Not much, really,” said Wilcox. “Just take a transcript from Harvard over to the state bar examiner’s office and apply to take the bar. They won’t refuse you. Of course, you’d have to bone up on our civil and criminal statutes, but I’ve got all the books you’d need. Since you’re from another state, you’ll be allowed three cracks at the bar here. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

A transcript from Harvard. That might prove difficult, I mused, since the university and I were strangers. But then I’d never had any pilot’s training, either. And I had a valid-appearing FAA pilot’s license in my pocket stating I was qualified to fly passenger jets, didn’t I? My bumblebee instincts began buzzing.

I wrote to the registrar of the Harvard Law School and asked for a fall schedule and a law school catalogue, and within a few days the requested material was deposited in my mailbox. The catalogue listed all the courses necessary for a doctor of law from Harvard, and it also boasted some lovely logos and letterheads. But I still didn’t have the foggiest notion of what a college transcript looked like.

Diane was an Ohio University graduate, who had majored in business administration. I casually engaged her in a conversation revolving around her student years.

She had been heavily involved in campus activities, it developed, something of a playgirl in college. “You must not have done much studying,” I said jestingly.

“Oh, yes, I did,” she maintained. “I had a 3.8 average. In fact, I was on the dean’s list my senior year. You can have fun and still make good grades, you know.”

“Aw, come on! I don’t believe you had that kind of average. I’d have to see your transcript to believe that,” I protested.

She grinned. “Well, smart-ass, I just happen to have one,” she said, and returned from her bedroom a few minutes later with the document.

The transcript consisted of four legal-sized sheets of. lined paper and was, in fact, a certified photocopy of her four years of college work, attested to and notarized by the registrar. The first page was headed by the name of the university in large, bold letters, beneath which appeared the state seal of Ohio. Then came her name, the year she had graduated, the degree she had received and the college (College of Business Administration) awarding the degree. The remainder of the pages was filled, line by line, with the courses she had taken, the dates, the hours of credit she had accumulated and her grades. A grade average was given at the end of each year and a final entry noted her over-all average, 3.8. In the bottom right-hand corner of the last page was the Ohio University seal, with a notary’s seal superimposed and bearing the signature of the school registrar.

I committed the structure of the transcript to memory, absorbing it as a sponge absorbs water, before handing it back. “Okay, you’re not only sexy, you’re also brainy,” I said in mock apology.

I went shopping the next day at a graphic arts supply house, a stationery store and an office-supply firm, picking up some legal-sized bond paper, some layout material, some press-on letters in several different type faces, some artisf s pens and pencils, an X-Acto knife, some glue and a right-angle ruler, some gold seals and a notary’s press.

I started by simply cutting out the Harvard Law School logo and pasting it at the top of a piece of bond paper. I then affixed the school seal, also filched from the catalogue, beneath the school heading. Next I filled in my name, year of graduation, degree and then, using the right angle and a fine artist’s pen, I carefully lined several pages of the legal-sized bond. Afterward, using block press-on letters, I carefully entered every course required for a law degree from Harvard, my electives and my fictitious grades. Since Wilcox might see the transcript, I gave myself a three-year over-all grade average of 3.8.

The finished, pasted-up product looked like leavings from a layout artist’s desk, but when I ran the pages through a do-it-yourself copying machine, it came out beautifully. It had all the appearances of something coughed out by a duplicating computer. I finished the six-page counterfeit by attaching a gold seal to the bottom of the last page and impressing over it, in a deliberately blurred manner, the notary stamp, which I filled in by hand, using a heavy pen, and signing with a flourish the name of the Harvard Law School registrar, noting below the forgery that the registrar was also a notary.

Whether or not it resembled an actual Harvard transcript, I didn’t know. The acid test would come when I presented the phony document to the state bar examiner’s office. Wilcox had been practicing law for fifteen years, and had been an assistant state’s attorney for nine years. He also had a wide acquaintance among the state’s lawyers. He said I was the first Harvard graduate he’d ever met.

I spent three weeks poring over the volumes in Wilcox’s office library, finding law a much easier, if somewhat duller, subject than I had assumed, and then with bated breath presented myself at the state bar examiner’s office. A law student acting as a clerk in the office leafed through my fake transcript, nodded approvingly, made a copy of the phony instrument and handed my original counterfeit back to me, along with an application to take the bar examination. While I was filling out the form, he thumbed through a calendar and called someone on the telephone.

“You can take the exam next Wednesday, if you think you’re ready,” he stated, and then grinned encouragingly. “It should be no hill at all for a Harvard stepper.”

His colloquialism might have been true in regard to an actual Ivy League law graduate. For me it was a mountain, eight hours of surmises, I hopes, maybes, confident conjecture and semieducated guesses.

I flunked.

To my astonishment, however, the notification that I had failed was attached to the test I had taken, which reflected the answers I had correctly given and the questions I had missed. Someone in the SBE’s office obviously liked me.

I went back to Wilcox’s office and camped in his library, concentrating on the sections of the test I had missed. Whenever possible Wilcox himself tutored me. After six weeks I felt I was ready to attempt the test a second time.

I blew it again. But again my test papers were returned to me, showing where I had succeeded and where I had failed. I was gaining. In fact, I was delighted at the number of legal questions I had answered correctly and I was determined to pass the examination on my final try.

I took the third examination seven weeks later and passed! Within two weeks I received a handsome certificate attesting to the fact that I had been admitted to the state bar and was licensed to practice law. I cracked up. I hadn’t even finished high school and had yet to step on a college campus, but I was a certified lawyer! However, I regarded my actual lack of academic qualifications merely a technicality, and in my four months of legal cramming I’d learned the law is full of technicalities. Technicalities are what screw up justice.

Wilcox fulfilled his promise. He arranged a job interview for me with the state attorney general, who, on Wilcox’s recommendation, hired me as an assistant. My salary was $12,800 annually.

I was assigned to the corporate law division, one of the AG’s civil departments. The division’s attorneys handled all the small claims made against the state, trespass-to-try-title suits, land-condemnation cases and various other real estate actions.

That is, most of them did. The senior assistant to whom I was assigned as an aide was Phillip Rigby, the haughty scion of an old and established local family. Rigby considered himself a southern aristocrat and I impinged on two of his strongest prejudices. I was a Yankee, but even worse, I was a Catholic Yankee! He relegated me to the role of “gopher”-go for coffee, go for this book or that book, go for anything he could think of for me to fetch. I was the highest-paid errand boy in the state. Rigby was a rednecked coprolite. Mine was an opinion shared by many of the other younger assistants, most of whom were natives themselves but surprisingly liberal in their views.

I was popular with the young bachelors in the division. I still had over $20,000 in my boodle and I spent it freely on the friends I made on the AG’s staff, treating them to dinners in fine restaurants, riverboat outings and evenings in posh night clubs.

I deliberately gave the impression that I was from a wealthy New York family without making any such direct claim. I lived in a swank apartment overlooking a lake, drove a leased Jaguar and accumulated a wardrobe worthy of a British duke. I wore a different suit to work each day of the week, partly because it pleased me but mostly because my extensive wardrobe seemed to irritate Rigby. He had three suits to my knowledge, one of which I was sure was a hand-me-down from his Confederate colonel grandfather. Rigby was also penurious.

If my grooming was resented by Rigby, it was approved by others. One day in court, during a short delay in the case at hand, the judge leaned forward on his bench and addressed me:

“Mr. Conrad, you may not contribute much in the way of legal expertise to the proceedings before this court, but you certainly add style, sir. You are the best-dressed gopher in Dixie, Counselor, and the court commends you.” It was a genuine tribute and I was pleased, but Rigby nearly had an apoplectic seizure.

Actually, I was satisfied with my errand-boy role. I had no real desire to actually try a case. There was too much danger that my basic lack of knowledge of the law would be exposed. And the work Rigby and I did was dull and uninteresting the majority of the time, a boresome task that I was content to let him handle. Occasionally he did throw me a bone, allowing me to present some minor land issue or make the opening argument in a given case, and I did enjoy those incidents and on the whole handled them without detriment to the law profession, I thought. Rigby was a highly competent lawyer, and I learned a lot sitting behind him, much more than I had gleaned from the law-books or the examinations.