"That's another story I won't get into right now. Anyway, what I was saying was, unless your .38 was a gift from Grace Kelly in appreciation for letting her blow you, I'd kiss it goodbye without a second thought." Ray Johnson found himself grinning in spite of the situation.

"Which brings me to the most important point concerning your problem. I'm going to make a phone call to a guy I know, a Customs official used to be here in Missouri and now works out of New York, see if he can make all this go away. But I think I can tell you right now what he's going to say, and I'll tell you right now that I agree with it: These government guys have to get something, or they look like idiots, and they hate looking like idiots more than anything in the world." Henry went on before his friend could reply.

"IRS audits you and throws out ten Gs in legitimate deductions, doesn't matter you can document each one five ways, doesn't matter you got twenty thousand more you forgot about and could use to prove they owe you money. Forget it. They will spend half a million bucks, if that's what it takes, to get you to agree to throw out a few lunches and write 'em a check for fifty bucks in taxes and a hundred in penalties. When they challenge you, you have to concede something. It's not their money, but it is their pride. So don't stand on principle over a hat and a .38 Special, okay? Let's get your Holland and your FAL and your Winchesters cleared and let's get you on your way and out of there. You got one guy right now that's about to make your life a nightmare. Let's make it stay at one, and fix the problem before we have to deal with the whole fucking Customs Bureau.

"Let the guy steal the hat and the Smith, if that's what it takes to wave you through. The hat he can turn over to his boss. They'll stick it in a glass case with the banjos made out of turtle shells and the fake Rolexes from Bangkok and show everyone what a great job they're doing, and the agent will get a pat on the back. The .38 Smith he can stick in his pocket, sell on 42nd street for tax-free cash. His boss is happy, he's happy, and you're happy 'cause you get to get out of that shithole and back to Colorado with your good stuff. Everybody wins. Are you with me on this, Ray?"

"Yes, but..." His voice trailed off, not knowing what to say.

"You thought things only worked like this in third-world countries, not America?" Henry asked with a laugh, accurately reading his friend's thoughts.

"Exactly."

'Things have changed a lot since you lived here. Lot more stuff is illegal, which means there's a lot more money to be made if you're the one who enforces the law." There was a pause in the conversation before Raymond spoke.

"Do you really think it'll work?" he asked, getting back to the most pressing issue.

"I have to make a call. Maybe more than one."

"At this hour?"

"Ah, Mike keeps weird hours, same as me. He's probably busy with some girls who want to earn Green Cards. Give me your phone number there, but don't hang out by the pay phone. Go back to your stuff, and don't let it out of your sight. You don't want anything else suddenly appearing in your bags or stuffed down the bore of your rifle, okay?"

"Got it." Ray read the number off the telephone and thanked Henry for helping him.

"I'll get on this, and if I can't get hold of Mike, I'll work on some other angles, okay?"

"Okay. And thanks again, Henry."

"Don't thank me 'til you're out of there with your stuff," Henry said as he hung up the phone. "Hello?" the voice said sleepily.

"Mike, Henry Bowman in Missouri. You awake yet, or you want me to wait while you get your head together?"

"Mm, Bowman, geologist from Missouri who's a gun expert and likes fast trucks. I'm awake, what's the story?"

"Got a pencil? Here's my phone number," Henry said, reciting it. "Call me back on your cellular." "What do you mea-"

"Come on, Mike, I know the drill. You think I'm a moron?" Henry repeated the number and hung up. In less than a minute the phone rang.

"Okay, what's the deal?" Mike Garland asked after Henry answered the phone.

"I won't waste your time. Good friend of mine's at LaGuardia, returning to the United States after thirty years in Africa as a professional hunting guide. He's a U.S. citizen. Name's Ray Johnson. One of your guys at Customs won't let three of his guns back in the country because he didn't fill out any registration forms in 1963.

"Number one is an elephant gun, made in England seventy years ago that Ray bought in a Boston sporting goods store in 1959. Customs guy's not asking for duty, he's trying to steal the whole gun because of the front sight. It's a piece of elephant ivory about the size of half a grain of rice. Holland and Holland made the rifle that way and they have good records, so we can prove that one's already been imported, we just can't do it instantaneously since they're in London." Henry was bluffing. If the original purchaser had not been an American, it would be very difficult to prove that the rifle had already been in the country, as thirtyyear-old sales records did not exist.

"Number two's a Belgian Browning FAL he bought in New York in 1962, now subject to the Bush 1989 ban. Browning only brought in a handful of that model thirty years ago, and Fabrique Nationale's records are impeccable, so we can prove that one, too, but again, not this very second since FN's in Belgium." This claim was slightly more accurate than the previous one.

"Number three is a .38 Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special. Gun has a two inch barrel, which is in conflict with the import section of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Serial number will prove that it was made before 1968, and Smith & Wesson records will show that it was not part of any export shipment. Take me a few days to get my contacts at the factory in Massachusetts to copy the documentation." Proof on the S&W would be easiest of the three to obtain.

"Last item is the hat my buddy's worn for-"

"His hat?" Garland broke in.

"Right. Ray's a professional hunter, and it's got a leopardskin hatband. The man's guided maybe two hundred leopard hunts in the last thirty years, and he cut a piece of hide off one of his clients' skins, a tornup section by the exit wound. Been on his hat ten years or so, but he doesn't have any papers, of course.

"So here's the deal: I know the way this works, which is why I had you call me back on a cellular, in case the internal affairs guys had your place wired. I'd like you to call the airport, talk to the agent that's holding my buddy up. Tell your guy he can confiscate the hat, and the .38 revolver, if he'll let Ray through with his other guns. Otherwise, we'll get documentation on all the guns, make your agent go through a bunch of busy work, and leave him with just the hat. Okay?"

"Wait a minute, Henry," Garland said over the mobile phone, "if he can show that all his guns have already been in the United States, then there's no reason he can't get all of them through Cus-"

"Mike," Henry interrupted, speaking slowly, "I know the way this works. I'm trying to save everyone some time here. My friend Ray Johnson is a lawyer. He hasn't practiced in thirty years, but he's still licensed in New York and he still has friends at the silk stocking firm where he used to work. Just think of the .38 as an out-of-court settlement. Or a gesture of goodwill, just like my suggestion about the phone.

"If the guy at the airport wants to be a prick and make Ray miss his plane and have to get a hotel, fine, but he'll eventually get all his guns back. If you tell him to let him go now, your guy can keep Ray's .38 as consideration for expediting his clearance, okay?

"But Mike? As we speak, Ray is watching his guns. There is no way that any drugs are going to miraculously appear inside any of them, as can happen sometimes with vehicles. Particularly expensive, fast, German vehicles. Okay?" There was a long pause, but Henry remained silent.

"I'll see what I can do," Garland finally said. Then he hung up.

"Jesus Christ, what did you do?" Ray demanded over the phone. "The guy at Customs waved me through with everything."

"Some days you win," Henry replied. "What are you going to do now?"

"I left my ticket open, since I wasn't sure how long it would take to get through everything. Got to go find a flight to Denver now, but I wanted to call you back, first."

"Go to the TWA desk and see what they've got for St. Louis-that's their hub. Stay here at my place for a day or two before you head for Colorado," Henry offered.

"You sure that's all right?"

"I live alone, and by the time your plane arrives, I'll have this stuff all done for the driller. Find the next flight, and before it leaves, call here and leave me the flight number. Doesn't matter what time it gets in, just grab the next one out. If I'm sleeping, the recorder will be on and you can leave a message, but I'll be there to pick you up. I'll call the airline to make sure when you're getting in, then meet you at the airport."

"WelL.okay. I'd like that."

"See you tomorrow, then," Henry said, and broke the connection.

June 26,1994 "Better put your seatbelt on, Ray," Henry said as he pulled out of the airport parking lot. "Cops'll write us up if they don't see your shoulder belt across your chest. Which reminds me-how much cash you got on you?" Henry Bowman's serious tone was much different from the delighted welcome he had given his friend when he met him at the baggage claim.

"About eight thousand," Ray replied with a baffled look as he fastened his shoulder belt. "Why do you ask, and what do you mean the cops will 'write us up' ?"

"Lot of states, including this one, it's a crime to drive or ride in a car without wearing a seatbelt." Henry pressed several buttons on a welded steel box bolted to the floor of the GMC and lifted its lid. "Give me your dough so I can put it in here. If we get stopped, they'll have to get a search warrant to cut this open."

"You're welcome to put this in your box," Ray said as he held out the roll of bills, "but why is it necessary?" Henry did not answer the question, but instead glanced at the face of one of the bills and pulled onto the entrance ramp to the highway.

"I hope you don't have a lot more like these. These are the old ones-the ones the banks are destroying. Don't deposit many of these, or they'll write you up, and God knows who'll be at your door next." "What are you talking about?" Ray asked, utterly confused.

"Turn on the overhead," Henry said as he put down Ray's money, reached into his right pocket, and pulled out his own money clip. With one hand he slipped the clip off the folded cash and selected a bill that felt nearly new. He glanced at it, and saw that it was a twenty. "Find one of the freshest-looking bills in your roll," Henry told his friend. "Hold it up next to this twenty, about five inches from your nose."

"Yeah...?"

"All right, the light isn't the greatest, but do you see a thin line around the outside of the oval around the portrait of Jackson? It's on my bill, but not yours." As Ray examined the bills, Henry took the remainder of Ray's large roll of cash, dropped it into the metal box, and closed the lid. The box locked automatically.

"Yeah, I see the line you mean."

"Okay, my eyes are better than normal, and most people need magnification to see it, but that line is actually the words 'THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA' repeating over and over."

"I can't make that out with this weak dome light."

"That's okay. You can see it later. That's the first change. Hold the two bills up to the light and you'll see the second change. Look at a spot about an inch from the left-hand side of each one."

"There's a strip running through yours, about a tenth of an inch wide," Ray said immediately. "Looks like it's actually inside the paper. It says, 'USA TWENTY', both normally and inverted mirror image."

"Right. The official explanation for those changes is that they make the bills much more difficult to counterfeit. And that's absolutely true. It would be a cast-iron bitch to duplicate those changes exactly. Those two changes have received minor mention in the press. Everyone hates counterfeits, and the money doesn't look any different, so nobody cares. It's no more of a change than switching to the current Secretary of the Treasury's signature, like they do with every new series."

"But...?"

"But there's a third change. The supermarkets in Johannesburg have those scanners that read the funny black lines on packaged products, don't they? The ones where the checker just drags the box of laundry soap over a glass plate, or points a plastic gun at it, and the description and price pops up on a screen?"

"Yes, we've had those for several years."

"Those machines mostly work on optical bar code recognition, but it's all the same kind of technology. That strip you found in my twenty is magnetic, and it has a magnetic code embedded in it. That's fact, not rumor," Henry said forcefully.

"If you run a magnetic code reader over any bill, five dollars or larger, Series 1990 or later, you will get a unique reading. If you run the magnetic reading over another bill of the same denomination, you will get another unique reading.

"In 1985, if you wrote a $5000 check for cash, you'd get four or five different series, and generally one or two bills from the 1930s. Do that today, and I guarantee you there won't be a single bill older than 1990 in the pile except ones and twos. Take fifty crisp pre-1990 bills in for deposit, and have a friend behind you in the same line hand the same teller a check for cash in exactly the same amount as the money you just deposited. Your buddy won't get a single one of your bills back. The banks have orders to turn in all pre1990 bills regardless of condition."

"So the United States government is now able to track the actual flow of cash..." Ray thought aloud. "Not only that, but I told you that was a magnetic strip, right? Guess what happens if you have a bunch of bills together."

"They set off magnetometers at airports!" Ray exclaimed.

"Bingo."

"But what does that have to do with storing my money in your lockbox inside your car?"

"Nothing at all. I did that because of the seizure laws," Henry explained as he exited the highway onto a four-lane state road. "Cops are seizing property without bringing charges, and their favorite property to seize is cash. Way it works, cops stop a car-or for that matter, a guy walking on the street. They confiscate his wad, say 'Prove you got this legally if you want it back', and let him go with no arrest."

"That's absurd!" Ray exclaimed, thinking immediately about the $50,000 worth of rifles in the back of the vehicle. "Where's due process? Where's their probable cause?"

"If they see a bulge in a guy's pocket, that's their probable cause for a search. People who pay for things with cash-like us-are now assumed to be criminals. And the car stop doesn't have to be for a seatbelt. All the cops have to do is say the vehicle fit a 'profile', and that was why they pulled it over. This car? Hell, the latest ghetto craze is small trucks and four-wheel-drives with alloy wheels and low-profile tires. That's enough to stop this thing and search it, especially at four in the morning.

"And since the person isn't charged with anything, just the property, the prosecution doesn't have to prove shit. The owner has to prove he didn't get the money or the car by illegal activity. Cops are seizing cars all the time now. They see one they like, they'll pull it over, 'find' a little something in it, and seize the vehicle. Tell you you're lucky they aren't charging you with something serious. Then, if you ever manage to get your car back, you'll discover it's junk because they've used it to haul stuff, left it outside with the windows open, never changed the oil, et cetera."

"You can't be serious! Who would stand for that?"

"Everyone. This isn't some secret I'm telling you about. There was a front-page article a while back in USA Today, which is our national newspaper sold on every street-corner in the country. Big write-up on all the abuses. Gave a bunch of examples. All white guys, by the way.