Confessions of a Tax Collector (11 page)

“Where do you live, Yancey?” he asked as I pulled out of the parking lot. He slipped on a pair of Ray-Bans. In his dark suit, wearing those dark glasses, he looked every bit the part of quintessential G-man. I tried to imagine him in his hotdog days, wearing a white smock and a foam rubber hotdog hat. I could not.

“Clearview.”

“Where in Clearview?”

“In a house in Clearview.”

“Oh, I thought it might be in this car.”

I glanced over at him. His face was expressionless, as it always was when he was making a joke. His face was also expressionless when he
wasn’t
making a joke. This invariably led to someone getting into trouble for not laughing—or laughing, depending.

“You brought the file home?” he asked, referring to the Marsh case. So much for the small talk. He was forced to raise his voice; my air conditioner had two settings, off and arctic blast: the switch was going bad.

“Yes.” I did not elaborate. One-syllable answers were the best course of action when under questioning at the hands of Culpepper.

“What’s the issue?”

It was, I would learn, his favorite word. Issue. The entire world could be reduced to its myriad issues. Finding the issue was the key to everything. It was the map to the treasure and the treasure itself. The issue was the quest
and
the Holy Grail.

I had no idea how to begin, so I just began.

“Well, Laura Marsh is the owner-operator of Marsh’s Playland. She’s been in business four years.”

“Fascinating,” he said. “What’s the issue?”

“She owes fifty-four grand and some change, and when Melissa—”

“You don’t say! And what’s the issue?”

My face was growing hot. I said, “And she can’t pay it.”

“
Really
? Tell me the issue.”

“I—I thought I was.”

“Okay. Let me help. Would you like my help?”

My knuckles had gone bone white against the dark steering wheel. I took a deep breath and didn’t say anything.

“Why are we going out there today?” Culpepper asked.

“To talk to Ms. Marsh.”

“No. Come on. Aren’t you some kind of genius or something? That’s what Gina says. Gina says you are some kind of genius, correcting Mel’s grammar in your interview and acing Phase One and writing Pulitzer Prize-winning plays and all that. So come on, tell me, what’s the reason we’re going to see this taxpayer?”

“Because she owes taxes?”

“Jesus Christ,” he said softly. “You
are
a genius.” He was awestruck. “And so what’s the issue? What’s our problem?”

“Our problem is we have to figure out a way to get her to—”

“We don’t have a problem.”

“We don’t?”

“No. Lesson one, Yancey: we do not have problems.”

“I have quite a few.”

He was staring straight ahead. Sitting this close to him I was struck by how smooth his skin was, how pink and baby-soft. This was the incongruity of Culpepper. Outside, he was boyishly cute; inside, he was a serpent-haired monster. He used this to his full advantage, but Culpepper tended to use
everything
to his full advantage.

“We do not have problems,” he repeated. “The taxpayer has the problems.”

“And we have the solutions?” It sounded like a advertising slogan.

He ignored me. “I’m familiar with this case. Melissa fucked around with it and fucked around with it, mostly because she felt sorry for this person, sort of like the way you’d feel about a stupid dog that runs in front of buses. There was always something going on, some tragedy striking or about to strike or that had struck ten years ago but fucked her up for life. Always a reason, always a need for another piece of paper, another extension. When

Mel got this case, this person owed ten thousand dollars. Now she owes fifty-four. This is what happens when we go with the angle that it’s
our
problem. Do you blame the vet for putting down the stupid bus-running dog? Do you blame the executioner for pulling the switch on the serial killer?“

“I don’t think Ms. Marsh is a serial killer,” I said. “At least, I didn’t get that from reading the case file.”

Again I was ignored. He was in that space inside his head that Gina called Culpepperville. “Like Gotham City,” she told me. “Only creepier.”

“‘Pull the trigger on this one,’ I told her. ‘You’re not doing her any favors.’ But she makes up this cock-and-bull story to Gina about how vital this service is to the community and Gina backs off the seizure. If it were my case, I would have seized on first contact.”

I was about to suggest that, if he wanted the case, he could have it, but we were getting close to the day care and my mind was beginning to cloud with panic. How could I possibly remember everything? Had I put my checklist in the case file, or left it at home on the kitchen table? Was there a Pub One in the file? Did I double-check to make sure she didn’t have a power-of-attorney? Was she coded PDT
[8]
? One bad review from Culpepper and I was dead. My career would be over before it had begun. I was so nervous it completely escaped me that I was fretting over losing a job I professed to despise.

I patted my breast pocket, checking for my pocket commission, pen, and calculator. I ran over the three Cs
[9]
of an effective first contact. I men-ally rehearsed my opening lines and imagined various scenarios—none pleasant—and how I would react to each. I was two or three blocks away when I realized that I had made a terrible mistake, I wasn’t cut out for this kind of work. I was a squishy-hearted theater person, an artist type. What the hell was I doing driving around with a license to collect taxes? Dear Jesus, how did I become a tax collector? I remembered Gina’s words during my second interview, after she had taken my measure: “You do know his job is in collection.” At every turn of the stair, someone had warned me, pointed the way to the exit, and I had nodded and continued to climb—right up to the scaffold. What was I thinking? Culpepper broke the silence, if he knew precisely what I was thinking.

“One day the Moment will hit you,” he said.

“What?”

“The Moment. It happens to everyone. I was on my way to work and suddenly I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ I had this sort of panic attack. ‘What the fuck am I
doing
here?’ I was on the interstate and I pulled into this truck stop. I parked by a bank of pay phones and thought about calling the office and quitting right there, on the spot. I was totally disoriented. I was
going
into a fugue state.”

I waited for the denouement. His face was turned from me; he was staring out his window. I said, “So what happened?”

“The answer came to me.”

“Which was?”

“You just passed it,” he said, pointing out his window.

I drove around the block. We were in a working-class section of town, where some garages and back rooms had been converted into little businesses: a small-engine repair here, a beauty parlor there, and right before me, in the little white house with the torn screening on the porch, a day care. Gravel had replaced grass in the small front yard, transforming it into a makeshift parking lot, overgrown with dandelions and crabgrass and sandspurs. A plastic toy lawn mower lay on its side in the tall grass under a stately oak tree on the northwest corner of the house. Other toys lay scattered along the front walkway and discarded in the overgrown flower bed against the front of the house. A small hand-painted sign that read play land announced that I had arrived at the first field contact of my career. Despite the arctic chill inside my little car, I had developed a serious case of the flop sweat. My fear was unreasonable and nearly overwhelming. I reached into the backseat for the case file and, as I was bringing it toward me, the thing fell open and the papers went everywhere. Culpepper sat impassively while I hurriedly stuffed the pages, organized so meticulously the night before, willy-nilly, back into the folder. I can’t say why I felt so rushed. After all, it wasn’t as if Ms. Marsh was expecting us.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, I’m ready.”

I stepped out of my car and closed the door. I did not feel steady on my feet. The brooding heat of late spring pressed down upon my shoulders with all the weight of impending doom. Culpepper got out and said, “You left your car running.” I yanked open the door, leaned in, switched off the engine, and jammed the keys into my pocket. We cut through the yard toward the front door. The sandspurs tugged at my pants leg. Culpepper said, “You’re an actor, right? So pretend this is a movie and you’re Mr. RO, IRS Man, defender of justice, champion of the oppressed government. Relax and ask yourself, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“I’m ahead of you there,” I told him, as we mounted the concrete steps. “But there were so many choices, I finally gave up.”

I pressed my thumb on the doorbell. Culpepper said, “It doesn’t work. Knock.”

I knocked. I could hear the raucous shouts of children coming from the other side of the door. From the sound of it, they numbered in the thousands. I knocked again. The door flew open. A heavyset woman in her middle forties stood in the doorway, balancing a two-year-old boy on her hip. Two other, slightly older children were on either side of her, pulling on the hem of her cutoff jeans. The children were barefoot. So was Laura Marsh.

“Yes?” she asked impatiently. It was a yes reserved for solicitors and bill collectors.

“Good morning,” I replied. “We’re looking for Laura Marsh.”

“Well, you’ve found her.”

I reached into my breast pocket and fumbled for my commission. I held up my sleek, brand-new pocket calculator. Laura Marsh frowned. Culpepper cleared his throat. I dropped the calculator into my pants pocket, reached into my breast pocket again, and nipped open my commission.

“My name is Rick Yancey, and this is William—Mr. Culpepper. We’re with the Internal Revenue Service.”

“Where’s Melissa?” she asked. “I thought Melissa was handling my case.”

“Melissa is gone,” Culpepper said. “Mr. Yancey will be handling your case now.”

She eyed me, sizing me up. I slipped the commission back in my pocket.

Culpepper said, “We need just a few minutes of your time.”

“Can you come back this afternoon? Around one would be good. That’s nap time.”

“That wouldn’t be possible,” he said.

“Oh.”

“That’s our nap time, too,” I said. She laughed. Some of the tension dissipated. My tension anyway. I wasn’t sure about hers. Culpepper had none.

“You people never call first,” she said. She stepped back and we followed her inside. She was relaxed; she believed there was nothing to fear. After all, she had been working with Melissa about two years now and nothing too terribly bad had happened to her. The children attached to her hip stared at us with the same shocked expressions as the starving urchins featured in those commercials for famine relief. She raised her voice over the thunderous noise, calling for someone named Mary Beth. A harried-looking girl of about eighteen appeared at the end of the hall. Behind her there was a blur of motion where dozens of children cavorted in the living room.

“Take them on back with you, honey,” Laura Marsh said, and Mary Beth pulled the toddler from her hip and motioned for the other two to follow. I heard her shout into the melee, “And now we’re going to read a STORY!” before she disappeared around the corner.

Laura Marsh led us down the narrow hallway, turning left into her kitchen. She closed the door to shut out some of the noise. She waved her hand toward the small table shoved against one wall and offered us a cup of coffee. I wondered where the coffee machine was. The countertop was piled high with Tupperware containers, pots and pans, dirty dishes, stacks of old newspapers, a bag of cat litter, a Styrofoam cooler, roll upon roll of paper towels and toilet tissue, and a partially disemboweled microwave oven.

“I have doughnuts too.”

“No, thanks,” Culpepper said crisply.

“Oh, I figured you guys were like cops. You know, lots of coffee and doughnuts.”

“We’re not like cops,” he said. He removed his sunglasses and slid into one of the rickety wooden chairs. I sat on the other side of the table. Laura Marsh remained standing. There was a heavy silence: I was up, and both were waiting for my opening lines. I had forgotten them.

Ms. Marsh jumped into the breach. “I’ve been meaning to call Melissa. Hadn’t heard from her in a couple weeks, and that’s not like her. She used to call at least once a week. Is she okay? Nothing’s happened to her, has it?”

“Nothing significant,” Culpepper said, and another silence settled in. There was a huge cat perched on the ledge over the kitchen sink, silhouetted against the harsh sunlight. The sight triggered a twitching response just below my right eye; I am allergic to cats. I remembered Melissa’s mantra: make demand, make demand, make demand. Like all mantras, it emboldened me.

I made demand. “Ms. Marsh, we’re here today for fifty-four thousand, six hundred twelve dollars and seventy-two cents.”

She stared at me for a moment, and then burst into laughter, doubling over, her wide, chafed hands pressing on her large thighs. Culpepper rested his cheek against his fist and regarded her, turned his head, regarded me.

“Okay,” she said, straightening, hands on the small of her back. “Will you take a check?”

Inside my head I heard myself say, “Ms. Marsh, this is no laughing matter,” but that sounded so Joe Friday. I opened the case file and began hunting for the CIS
[10]
, face on fire, eye twitching. Culpepper said quietly, “Perhaps you should sit down, Ms. Marsh.” Her smile disappeared. She came to the table and sat with her back to the window, and shadows gathered in the folds around her mouth, the circles beneath her eyes. The case file said she was forty-two, but she looked ten years older.

Sticking to the script, I said, “How much can you pay today?”

“Oh, Jesus, I’m flat broke. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know where my checkbook is. Look, I thought I was working out some kind of payment plan.”