So Long America: Lamenting a Dream

By D. Patrick Georges

Many men dream of living out their James Bond fantasy, the screen version: exotic travel, adventure, hot women, and icy martinis shaken not stirred. Reality proves different as an innocent quest for a simpler, more spiritual life turns into a nightmare as two seekers, ordinary Americans, stumble across the path of the covert operations of two world powers and become unwilling spies.

The story takes the reader through the nether world of the shadow government, all governments in fact, and the ruling classes.
Accused by the woman he loves of using and betraying her, the damned hero of the story finds himself haunted by agents of the shadow government as he runs from Bora Bora seeking sanctuary off the gringo trail in Saudi Arabia. There, under the guidance of a top American lobbyist working for a Saudi billionaire, he assesses his options and composes an apology to his lost love. In the process he discovers the dirty truths of machinations behind the faade of democracy, equality, human rights and other myths.

The cold, hard facts to back up the truths that hold this work together, the lavish descriptions of some of the most beautiful parts of the world, some of the most beautiful people, and the heros experience of the more spectacular aspects of civilization on the planet make for a rich, riveting story that holds ones interest through to the very end.

Though primarily a fruit of extensive research, So Long America is also a novel that leaps off the page to entice and enthrall, and makes for a great deal of just plain enjoyment.

NOTE: So Long America is a condensed version of the book Smarter than Snakes that Patrick wrote in response to requests by readers of his book The Train of the Fifth Era, who found the concepts and practices described in that book useful, but could not put them to good use, because habits are all but impossible to change. In Smarter than Snakes Patrick presented his Noosomatic model that provides some answers in the form of non-psychoanalytic approaches to changing beliefs, habits and expectations. As a result, Smarter than Snakes reached 586 pages covering essentially two different areas of interest: personal growth and sociopolitical issues such as the deep roots of the Enron scandal in the context of recent geopolitical developments.

Though sociopolitical awareness is part of personal growth, a number of readers, despondent about the systematic demolition of social justice in the United States, skimmed over the part on non-psychoanalytic approaches to get to the issues threatening their quality of life. Thus Patrick adapted and transformed the book into a shorter, separate book he called So Long America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 13, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462802753

D. Patrick Georges

D. Patrick Georges is Chairman of La Costa Consultants, Inc., and adjunct professor of management at National University in San Diego. He has authored several books and articles and is co-creator of the Synolic development model.

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Copyright © 2005 by D. Patrick Georges.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MOIPA*

SOLEDAD

PROLOGUE

1 NEVER A DULL MOMENT

2 INSIDE THE SNAKE PIT

3 RUDE AWAKENING

4 DELIVERANCE

5 A RAY OF HOPE

6 ALL IS LIES

7 THORNS IN HUMANITY’S SIDE

8 MAMMON RULES

9 INSTRUMENTS OF DECEIT

10 HALL OF SHAME

11 IN THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE

12 FREEDOM

13 LAND OF THEN PIRAZI AND KANENA PROVLIMA

14 ALI BABA’S CAVE

15 MEDUSA’S GLARE

16 LOLA

EPILOGUE

LOSING LIVES, LIBERTIES AND

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

NOTE ON MOIPA

SOURCES CONSULTED

COPYRIGHT CREDITS

RELATED READING

Dedicated to the victims of the 9/11 attacks,

the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia,

the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan,

the destruction and occupation of Iraq

and all dead and maimed civilian victims

written off as collateral damage

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My book Smarter than Snakes started as a response to readers of The Train of the Fifth Era who found the concepts and practices presented useful but had difficulty applying them, because habits are all but impossible to change. While conducting research I became more conscious of the need for independent writers to address sociopolitical issues. So while I presented some non-psychoanalytic methods in what I called Part I, I added Part II that dealt with problems such as the deep roots of the Enron mega scandal that introduced new demons into what was once a model society.

As a result, Smarter than Snakes reached 586 pages covering essentially two different areas of interest: personal growth and sociopolitical issues. Though sociopolitical awareness is part of personal growth, a number of readers, despondent about the systematic demolition of social justice in the United States, skimmed over Part I to get to the issues threatening their quality of life. My editor then suggested that I adapt and transform Part II into a shorter, separate book that I called So Long America. I wrote my truth in the form of fiction, because fiction can give more tangible form to the truth. My only motive was my truth and I stand on my judgment, as I could not live with myself if I did not.

Writing So Long America, as well as Part II of Smarter than Snakes, was possible thanks to the help my friend, the late John Nicholas Parker, generously gave me. A distinguished expert in corporate law, a humanist and former fighter pilot with the rank of Colonel in the USAF reserves, he explained how the system actually worked in the United States and around the world. His revelations jolted me out of the deep sociopolitical hypnosis induced by the major media. Professor Mustafa Al-Kuti again came to my help, this time to explain the idiosyncrasies of the Arab and the Islamic world that escape the comprehension of most American politicians. My search for viable socioeconomic systems brought me to Uruguay, where Carlos Pazos enumerated the wise laws, practices and mentality that have turned his country into an oasis of good living. And Kathleen Fairchild with her deep sense of fairness helped me rein back my indignation for the crimes perpetrated on the American people by corporate greed abetted by corrupt politicians, and objectively crystallize the findings of my research in the sociopolitical area.

Ghada Alireza and Laila Ageel were kind enough to help me obtain from The Arab News daily of Jeddah cartoons of the late Mahmoud Kahil, who expressed the frustrations and hopes of the Arabs with a few strokes of his brush. I am grateful to Khaled Al-Maeena, Editor-in-Chief of The Arab News, who kindly allowed me complimentary use of these cartoons.

As always, my inspired editor and good friend Kathleen Marusak again came to my help in my effort to turn half of Smarter than Snakes into a separate book.

My heartfelt thanks to you all.

D. P. G.

MOIPA*

CHORUS (Greek women enslaved in the Tauric Chersonese, mod. Crimea)

As by these craggy coastal rocks echo your painful cries,

Your fate’s song, halcyon bird, well-known to the wise,

That you lament the mate you lost with heavy-hearted yowls,

A wingless bird myself, my sorrows are the same as yours.

How for the fetes of Greeks I long, for Artemis I thirst,

Mistress of births, her temple by the Cynthian crest.

I miss the dainty-crowned palms, the verdant laurel groves,

The sacred silver olive branch, Leto’s sweet childbirth throes,

The lake in eddies whirling round the waters like wheels,

Where a divine, melodious swan the Muses’ praises sings.

Oh, many streams of tears that fell upon these cheeks of mine

When I, with towers and ramparts lost, to ships was dragged hostile

Amidst the spears and oars.

Sold at a price rich in gold I reached these foreign bays

To serve the maiden priestess of a goddess that deer slays,

Daughter of Agamemnon, at altars unbeknownst to sheep,

I envy those who struggled always for their keep.

Those who are raised in distress they later suffer not,

But any change for the worse brings misery to one’s lot.

After some years of happiness and very little care

To hit hard times for humans is a heavy load to bear.

Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, ver. 1090-1122

(English translation by the author)

* A Greek concept of a universal force, literally the sharer-out of destiny, lot, mostly ill fortune; pron. moira (Note at end of book).

SOLEDAD

I’m inside of you

And yet an abyss divides us.

We’re one body,

We’re united,

We’re one flesh

And yet we tread on separate paths.

I quest for you all over the Ocean,

In space.

You’re everywhere and nowhere,

An Iberian chimera,

A vision on a diaphanous bride bed,

A nothing,

But again an unparalleled noumenon.

PROLOGUE

English may be the language of the world, but has no equivalent for the Spanish amor correspondido; the chimerical concept of an ideal woman requiting the love of a caballero, a Spanish gentleman.

I too searched in vain for years, then lucked into the love of my life at a cultural event in Bangkok that I attended by a strange set of circumstances. When I narrated my encounter with Kate Martin in the book The Train of the Fifth Era, the last thing I could imagine was plunging from grace in her eyes. And yet that’s exactly what happened one evening a couple of years later at the Los Angeles Airport; my blond, blue-eyed angel, with face contorted and shaking like a jackhammer, cursed me to get out of her sight, out of her life. Afterwards, she wouldn’t give me the time of day. She changed her phone numbers, marked my mailings Return to Sender-Refused and asked her secretary to refuse my calls.

Not knowing what else to do, I am publishing my account of what happened in the hands of the powers that be as an apology hoping, dear readers, that you will find me not guilty. And perhaps my lost love will one day understand and forgive me.

1

NEVER A DULL MOMENT

In our politically correct times you just can’t call a spade, a spade. Garbage collection is waste management now. I was toying with such thoughts one afternoon in March 1995, while tailgating a garbage truck as it crawled uphill, shattering with its unearthly noise the peace of Costa Fina, a once sleepy coastal village about 30 miles north of San Diego that has now become the epitome of suburban sprawl. As if I heard the voice of God, the very words stenciled on the back—WASTE MANAGEMENT—sparked an illumination that led to my own epiphany and 180-degree change of course: If, as they teach in business school, waste management is a key responsibility of every manager, shouldn’t I manage my own waste too? I wondered.

The United States may still be one of the better places to live, but instead of the bed of roses it used to be it’s fast becoming a bed of thorns. Setting aside our social ills, you need to struggle to keep your nose above water. The harder you scrape, the less cash you keep from taxes. Our self-serving politicians gobble up your dough for their pork-barrel projects, be it bombing the Bosnian Serbs, billions—dig this—as farmers subsidies to the likes of Caterpillar, Chevron, Dupont, John Hancock Life Insurance, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner and even TV personality farmer Sam Donaldson. When I looked into the tax dodges granted under the guise of aid to needy farmers to billionaires operating bogus insurance companies, I read an analyst’s assessment of that scandal with dismay. Admitting that the IRS could deny such tax exemption, she added a shocker: But the IRS is not willing to fight it. The IRS’s ire is skewed to nickel-and-dime offenders; it hardly ever touches the big fish.

Then we have export subsidies that go to corporations like Sunkist, Ocean Spray, Gallo Wines and many others. We also pay through the nose for a monstrosity called National Flood Insurance that provides subsidized coverage unavailable through private insurance companies to rich owners of waterfront homes not only in Malibu, but also in Kennebunkport and Hyannis where the Bush and Kennedy clans own vacation estates. As for funding useless research projects and utopian training projects in abandoned ghettos, these are mere icing on the cake.

While we squander billions on foreign aid, people despise America more with each passing day because of our twisted foreign policies. Wouldn’t it make more sense to spend our declining resources on public works at home? Works such as road building that give jobs to Americans and help the economy. The bold interstate road system of the 50’s cannot support the growing traffic and is falling apart. My Third World journeys showed how in the West, especially in the States, the system promotes waste with a vengeance, because waste lines the pockets of special groups. We could live well with less, as most of our needs are actually wants, artificially triggered by relentless straight and subliminal advertising, including the telemarketing menace.

Mounds of trash is half of the problem. Businesses embarked on an unprecedented race of greed, exporting jobs and firing people with a vengeance thinking that this strategy will further inflate the bulging pockets of CEO’s and their cronies. But for every action there’s reaction. Profits soar after a cutback, then go to hell. The reason? A walking encyclopedia, my good friend Pete Jeppson, set the record straight:

Companies are not only firing their employees; they’re also firing their customers.

With fewer paychecks going round, profits hover flat, leading to more layoffs. As the political and corporate system does nothing to stop this vicious circle, perhaps—I thought then—it was time to ignite a revolution. As Che-style revolutions made things worse—it took the Russians 70 years to realize that—perhaps a Gandhi-style revolution was in order. Something like the civil disobedience of our long-forgotten Founding Fathers.

If, as our politicians preach when they try to rustle our vote, one person can make a difference, I alone could stage such a revolution. I began to crave what that crafty Cajun corporate exec-turned-beach bum and bosom buddy Travis Driault told me. A descendant of French Canadians, who moved to Mississippi’s warmer climes long ago, Travis began to get his message out after he survived a 100-ft fall; when his ex declared him a cash cow and his bulging purse went up in smoke.

Like most men who marry women because they’re good in bed, I too tried to hitch up a carriage, Travis explained. I ended up myself being the horse. With my white-picket-fence potential going downhill, I saw divorce as a godsend to escape to greener pastures. To turn into a vagabond I needed to live cheap and out of reach of collectors, government agents and lawyers, who—together with judges and court employees—are the bloodsuckers of a legal system that often prosecutes innocent people while letting criminals walk free. So I bought a small, a bit worn-down RV, a trailer, and moved to Baja California, a few miles south of the border. I found myself on easy street, living well on less than $500 a month. Like thousands of Mexicans, I got a P.O. box a stone’s throw inside California. I didn’t get it to collect the checks that our Federal and state governments hand out to anyone claiming to be a U.S. resident in need or losing money farming; I got it to keep in touch with the world. If you think the U.S. Mail is bad, you ought to try Mexico’s.

Despite the rumors spread by his ex that Travis lived in a chicken coop, I never forgot the rainbow the former Fortune 500 executive painted. I flirted with the idea and looked into ways to adapt his plan to suit my tastes and needs. But Mexico? In a pig’s eye. Perhaps I could have the best of both worlds. Despite my granddad’s warning, don’t you ever try to take on City Hall, boy, I figured that with the right research I had a sporting chance to beat the system, legally.

A month or so after my garbage truck encounter two pieces of mail cast the die: My Federal and California income tax returns, prepared by my tax-cum-financial manager and trusty old friend Brian, ready for signing; and a brochure from my California Assemblyman, who systematically ignored my existence until election time. Brian pinned a taunting note on the returns:

Of your California tax, $1,178 goes to finance legal and illegal immigration. You’d save a bundle if you moved to a state with no income tax. Have a nice day.

The brochure—mailed at taxpayer expense by circumventing the law—rubbed salt into the wound. Ostensibly my Assemblyman wanted to inform me how the state budget was allocated thanks to his ingenious and patriotic interventions. The real purpose? Promising the moon to pocket my vote.

Taxes devoured a huge chunk of my income that I earned by merciless globetrotting, while the California state budget allocated 53% to an educational system that does nothing other than increase illiteracy every year. A booming 31% goes to welfare, much of it to subsidize Mexico’s population boom that spills onto California and a few other states. In 1960, three million Latinos lived in the U.S. legally and illegally. In 30 years that number exploded by 1,000% to 30 million, almost entirely through sneaking across the porous border.

Part of the explosion is fueled by millions of instant Americans, kids born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants, thanks to a judicial distortion of a constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War to give citizenship to freed slaves. That amendment replaced the universally accepted principle of ius sanguinis—nationality following bloodlines—with the novel ius loci, nationality granted by location of birth. Half the children born now in California are Hispanic while 15% of their mothers sneak into the country just to give birth to instant American citizens at taxpayer expense, thus feeding a growing underclass that demands more and more entitlements. The British introduced the birth location privilege in the heady days after the Second World War, but soon as the U.K. became flooded with paper Britons they restored posthaste the bloodline requirement.

Of California’s budget, a mere drop in the bucket, 0.2%, goes to environmental protection and a pittance to a road network now going to pot. And that’s in a state that invented freeways but has now adopted the hated toll roads of the miserly Northeast. The shrinking numbers of hard working people pay for California’s educational fiasco and if—like me—they have no kids, they get nothing back. I would be glad to pay my share for a better educated citizen body, but not for politically motivated bilingual programs whose graduates speak one language only: Spanish.

On the other hand, California’s once world-class universities now offer as many remedial as regular courses. To pay for all these obscene expenses, unlike the Feds who at least give Americans working in foreign deserts and jungles a tax break—since they bring in the dough without taking jobs from Americans—California taxes as imputed income even the bare-bones company housing provided to any workers not wise enough to drop the onerous California residence status before moving overseas. But, like everything else, this applies to the little people. Trumpeting their ignorance of worldly affairs, the country boys in Sacramento tried to tax the worldwide earnings of Barclay’s Bank, simply because it opened a branch in California. Britain threatened to tax the worldwide earnings of every U.S. company operating in the U.K. and our country bumpkins finked out.

To wage a one-man fight against political corruption and corporate greed my strategy was simple: give politicians and greedy CEO’s some of their own medicine. I would do my own re-structuring to reduce my political expenses—taxes—and fire most of my suppliers of overpriced services. Kate, the love of my life, that for socioeconomic reasons—as I narrated in the book The Train of the Fifth Era—still lived in San Francisco, was noncommittal.

I might add here that Kate, a frustrated health care manager, is a jewel. Though she has crossed the 40-year marker she still smells of high school. She’s rather tall with quite attractive vital statistics and divine long legs with no bulging muscles or skin blemishes. Her blond hair frames clear blue eyes that exude kindness and reflect candor; in fact too much candor for my own good I found out later. Though not a dead ringer for Deidre Hall, she brings to mind the honey-dripping star of the Our House TV series. To top it all off, she has a child’s smile and air of innocence that create an aura of hesitancy. As we lived apart, we didn’t get together often, every a couple of months or so, but when we did sparks flew.

With input from Brian and Travis I worked out the details and began what I thought was my flight to freedom. First, I resigned from my job as a consultant and put my condo up for sale. It got sold overnight, pig in a poke. Unimpressed by my decision to escape California, a two-income couple of yuppies—he a systems engineer, she a customer service manager—were itching to move to Punta del Mar, probably Costa Fina’s best managed and best looking housing development with its magnificent ocean views. They had hand-me-down, gloomy East Coast furniture, and offered to buy my pastel furniture that looked good enough even for a coastal resort.

Next, I got rid of my two cars and a time-share week in Palm Springs that made up the balance of my material ball and chain. Brian invested the proceeds in bonds, mostly free from local and state taxes, in a revocable living trust in Delaware, a state still maintaining vestiges of the spirit that made our country great. Brian said the arrangement was as safe as one could get outside Switzerland.

After I handed my condo keys to the starry-eyed buyers I moved into a no-frills motel whose monthly rate was less than my old mortgage payment. I picked up an economy car for a one-way rental with a monthly cost that competed with my old car insurance, inflated as it was by crime and the mushrooming number of uninsured motorists, mostly illegal aliens. I closed my California bank accounts and got about 20 grand in cashier checks. Finally, on May 31, I joined bag and baggage the mass exodus of tax-weary people from what once was the Golden State. California is now golden in name only, with nothing to stop its conversion into a Mexican-style wasteland and its resultant rendezvous with bankruptcy. Blessed by nature and destroyed by politicians, California was losing a quarter million people to other states every year then and yet its population kept growing thanks to the Mexican stampede.

Bright and early I got on Interstate highway 5 through Carlsbad Village Drive that needed renaming to Carlsbad Barracks Drive to describe the former village’s new look created by unbridled development. With the backing of their bedfellows, corrupt politicians, developers even circumvented the law prohibiting building on hillsides. If they couldn’t build on hills, well then they had to level the hills and make more profit by selling the topsoil. So I drove to Laughlin in Nevada and checked into another efficiency motel around noon, legally terminating my California sucker status.

Laughlin is probably the ideal place the way you see things now, was Travis’s advice. It’s in the Mohave Valley tri-state area. The casino strip is a theme park with free admission, while the casinos offer terrific all-you-can-eat buffets for small change. The town, on the Colorado River, is one bridge away from Bullhead City in Arizona and a ten-minute drive from California. You get cheap meals and entertainment in Laughlin and cheap shopping, including gas, in Bullhead. The best of all three worlds, income tax free.

I understand what you said about Nevada and Arizona, but what about the third world, California?

You get to see the ocean for free, quipped the man who had seen the highs and lows of life.

Travis, though a man of epic contradictions, was right again. Nevada, a state with no income tax, is a good refuge for fed-up Californians. The state’s major source of revenue is what some tax specialists fondly call voluntary stupidity tax—gambling. It complies with the fiscal principles of our Founding Fathers, long ignored by politicians in most states, that provided for state revenue through trade tariffs. At the time of writing only six more states still refused to raid their residents’ pocketbooks: Alaska, Florida, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. To put icing on the cake, Nevada passed a law stopping other states, with California leading the charge, from raiding the pensions of Nevada residents earned in other states.

Next I got a mail-drop address and traded my California driver’s license for Nevada’s. I opened an account with the Bank of Nevada and deposited the cashier’s checks I brought from California. Next item: wheels. The salesman’s jaw dropped when I asked to buy a Jeep Cherokee demonstrator with 5,000 miles [8,000 km] on it.

You want to pay cash for it? I’m not sure we can do this. I’ve worked here for five years and every single car I’ve sold was financed.

But the business manager was on the ball and accepted a certified check. I settled on a Jeep for sentimental reasons. It reminded me of the Army days of my youth. That’s why I picked the rakish basic model, not the Grand Cherokee that looks like a Toyota in Jazzercise togs. Despite the havoc wreaked upon the U.S. auto industry by the Japanese, our automakers will never learn. Overall the Jeep was okay, but in the details it left a lot to be desired. An example: the jack and tools were for show. I got the real McCoys from an auto parts store, because if I had a flat in the desert, I’d be up the creek without a paddle. I also picked up a used 21-foot [6.6 m] trailer in top condition, technically joining the millions of former middle-class Americans downgrading from home ownership to gypsy status. For many people losing their benefits, their jobs, their pensions, their savings, a trailer is the last stop before the devastation of homelessness.

Ready to settle in, I saddled up and moved into the Golden Sky campground. It’s actually a fine trailer park with a stone-trimmed clubhouse, two swimming pools with Jacuzzis, tennis courts, health club, mini mart, restaurant, snack bar, pull-through sites, the works. As a full-time trailer user, I opted for an annual rent, 1800 dollars, much less than my erstwhile property taxes, let alone mortgage, homeowners’ association dues, utilities, maintenance and other burdens. A cellular phone, a bare-bones auto liability insurance for the U.S. and another for Mexico tallied up my other fixed costs. Until Medicare kicked in, my former employer would take care of the other perennial American nightmare, health insurance. To jerk off the California leech from my body I drew up a will with a local attorney canceling the one in California.

In short, I got everything down to a tee, or so I thought. At times my granddaddy’s warning reared its Gorgon’s head but I knocked it down. Blessed with leisure, I filled sheaves of paper trying to put down my experiences around the world. I planned to spend winters soaking up sun in the area; summers cooling my heels in Arizona’s White Mountains. I relished a few July evenings with Kate camped by Fools Hollow Lake near Show Low in Arizona and visited friends in San Diego in August.

After a summer’s worth of roving, in early September I set up camp in San Felipe. It’s a sleepy Mexican village on the shores of the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, two-three hours’ drive south of the border. I thought that at last the world was my oyster. But life’s a bitch and won’t let you have much of a good thing. So I couldn’t even dream that despite my Clausewitz-quality plans I was about to stumble into a snake pit. And one Friday, not the 13th of horror movies but the 6th of October, the bubble burst.

Back in Laughlin, I walked to my trailer that early afternoon after an invigorating dip in the resort’s fantasy pool, surrounded by—mostly aging—mermaids. I fled the attentions of a neighbor old enough to be my mother and entered my trailer for a bite and my afternoon beauty nap. While opening the fridge for a beer I saw a light blinking on the answering machine. I went over and pushed the button. The message was a jolt that forever shattered my dreams, in fact my whole life. I was to phone the Internal Revenue Service, the dreaded IRS, at an 800 number, extension 3148. Just thinking about it felt like a scalpel of ice slicing my guts. I dropped the beer and, hyperventilating, punched the number right away.

Hello, was the answer I got from a weary female voice. I asked for that extension and got a recorded message:

You have reached an automated answering system. At the tone, please state your name and the reason for calling, then wait for further instructions.

After what seemed like an eternity, a voice came on sounding like that of a network anchorman.

This is agent Harrison of the Special Investigations Unit. We need to ask you a few questions. We want you to come to San Diego as soon as possible.

We want you to come, just like that. No please, no nothing, just like an officer of an invasion army talking to a hapless citizen of the occupied country. My mind raced. I was not born yesterday.

Do you want me for an audit? In that case I’d like to have my tax specialist, a Certified Public Accountant, represent me. I always had my taxes done by Brian’s major CPA firm. The money invested is well worth the support you get at an audit.

It’s not an audit. We need to talk to you.

Can’t I visit an IRS office near here? San Diego is half a day’s drive.

We need you here for a special investigation. You must come tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Saturday. Are you open?

Yes. This is a special Federal case.

The guy would have made a first-class salesman. He knew how to close a sale. The word Federal is enough to scare the daylights out of anyone in the know. He gave me a downtown address where I had to report at three in the afternoon. A bit relieved it wasn’t an audit, I asked if I had to bring anything.

No need, he said and hung up.

Sick at heart I sank into a lounger. I lost my appetite together with my spirits. I made some coffee and started to think. Our Constitutional rights of habeas corpus and jury trial that shielded us from arbitrary search, property seizure and other abuses of power, do not hold water when the IRS throws the book at you. I could leave early the next morning and be in San Diego on time. But I couldn’t see myself walking straight into a Spanish Inquisition. I had to be rested and refreshed. So I grabbed a sandwich in the snack bar, climbed into the Jeep and headed southwest. I checked into a motel in Escondido, less than an hour’s drive from downtown San Diego.

After a night of tossing and turning I fortified myself at the motel’s breakfast buffet and towards noon I took off for San Diego well ahead of time. I wanted to find the place and a parking spot without pressure. I lingered over coffee at a nearby diner and after a pit stop I pulled myself together and sauntered towards the IRS office. The building—not in the best part of town—could hardly pass for a Federal building. It looked more like a West Bank or Gaza building after its beauty treatment by Israeli tanks and aircraft. I double-checked the number, it clicked. I scanned the directory and, sure enough, unlike other faded entries a Special Investigations Unit was listed in spanking new letters on the second floor, number 212.

Up the grimy stairs I trudged. At the end of a deserted, half-lighted corridor I found a door with a sign: SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT-DKJ 117. Fear gripped me. Was this a scam fraught with doom? A red wall phone was mounted right on the door with instructions: VISITORS, DIAL 7. After I identified myself to the man that answered the phone, he asked me to wait. In a minute the door opened and a man looking like the G-men of the movies—tall, graying at the temples, with a Hawaii-type tan—let me in.

Special agent Harrison, he said and led the way through a dark corridor badly in need of paint. He wore a white shirt and tie, and dark gray trousers over polished black shoes. A gun in his tan leather shoulder holster did nothing to calm me down. The guy was far from your run-of-the-mill IRS agent, but his speech and dress-for-success look hardly belonged to a mobster either.

He showed me into a well-lighted meeting room. The smell of fresh paint and the brand new furnishings contrasted not only with the building, but also the rest of the suite. Around a conference table