person, and got away with it. I didn't need to be a chameleon because the counterfeiters bought me. Eventually, I developed a theory regarding why. Since they knew how we operated, merchants were suspicious of every potential customer, scrutinized each for tells that he or she might be a spy. I noticed them paying special attention to certain people while ignoring others, whomever they could quickly disregard as guileless. I never needed to become a different person, as long as the original was consistently overlooked. And as I've come to understand, people -- from, apparently, either hemisphere -- assume Southerners are innocent. It was a wondrous thing to witness. Salesmen eyed me warily until the moment I purred, "Y'all got Gucci?" when they'd instantly drop their guards and either lift a sheet, pull a trash bag from a desk, or open a concealed door in a false wall. It's not as if we were suddenly pals; there were no smiles or secret handshakes. What happened was a dismissal. They dismissed me, shifted mentally from looking at me to looking beyond me, over my shoulder for the next potential threat. Astute readers would argue that any accent could have put them at ease. And for the most part that's true. Counterfeiters trust tourists. But I'm telling you, there's something foolproof about the drawl. Unlike some of the other spotters, I was almost never denied access. I can only posit that Barney Fife and Elly Mae Clampett exist in the collective unconscious,