Confessions of a Tax Collector (12 page)

“What made you think that?” Culpepper asked.

“That’s what Melissa—”

“Melissa is no longer working your case,” Culpepper said. “I think I told you that. Mr. Yancey is now working your case.” He was not patronizing; he did not condescend. His voice lacked any inflection whatsoever. He was speaking so softly I could barely hear him. “Mr. Yancey has reviewed your financial statement and perhaps has arrived at a different resolution.”

She looked at me, clearly expecting to hear my resolution. I had no resolution. I had no frigging idea. Where was the 433B? Was it still in my car? Why are they both staring at me like that? Why did I take this job? Why would
anyone
take this job? Why do people become garbage collectors, morticians, nuclear power plant technicians? What was the meaning of all this and what was I doing here? What the hell did I think I was doing here? I was completely immersed, drowning in the moment Culpepper had warned me about.

“I got nothin‘,” Laura Marsh said. “That’s the God-honest truth. You’re welcome to take a look.”

“Who owns the house?” Culpepper asked.

“What house?”

“This house.”

“I do. It’s my house. You can’t take my house.”

“Mr. Yancey,” Culpepper turned to me.

Now what did
he
want? I was busy looking for my form. Like most trainees, I was quickly developing a form-dependency. Forms gave you lots of nice little boxes to check and lines to fill out and columns to add up. Forms were the barrier between you and the banality of despair.

“Actually,” I said, talking to the case file, “we can, under certain circumstances, um, enforce the tax lien against your property.”

“You’re gonna take my house?”

“Well, we—”

“You’re not taking my house.”

“We might,” Culpepper said.

“You’re not,” Laura Marsh said.

“Tell us why we shouldn’t,” Culpepper said.

“Melissa said—”

“Melissa is no longer working your case. I believe we covered this. Mr. Yancey is now working your case.”

“Oh, I get it. This is the IRS version of good cop, bad cop, right?”

She smiled at me, clearly the good cop in this scenario. I had located toe financial statement and had confirmed that the only thing of real value to the business was the house, which had thirty-five thousand dollars in equity.

She addressed me, assuming a warm, maternal tone. “I’ve been to the bank. Didn’t Melissa tell you this? They turned me down flat. I don’t have the income right now. I’m losing money. Plus that tax lien’s screwed up my credit. I thought about selling it, but if you guys take all the money from the sale, how am I supposed to start over?”

“That doesn’t interest us,” Culpepper said. This implied there was something that did, but he did not elaborate. I supposed that was my job.

She ignored him. She had his number. She spoke only to me, Mr. Twitchy-Eye.

“I know I screwed up. But I’m not trying to cheat anyone, least of all you guys. It’s not like I got tax shelters overseas or yachts moored off Key Biscayne. Five years ago, my husband dumped me. After seventeen years. He ran off with my next-door neighbor’s eighteen-year-old daughter and I was left with nothing. Absolutely nothing. I started this business because I had to eat and my kids had to eat and I wasn’t about to go on welfare. It seems to me the government should reward people like me instead of coming after them like this, threatening to take away their house and… and everything. It seems to me the government should be going after those millionaires and celebrities who don’t pay one penny because they can afford to hire big tax attorneys and CPAs who can hide all their money for them.” Her desperation had given way to indignation. She enlightened us with more details on her ex-husband’s philandering. There was a lengthy discussion of her myriad health problems, of the harassment she suffered at the hands of the state of Florida, of the problems with finding and keeping good employees, of the deaths of three relatives in the past two years. She just needed a little time. Things were going to get better. She was a Christian. She loved her country. She wasn’t trying to stiff us. She would pay us back to the last penny. All she needed, all she was asking for, was a little time.

I made notes while Culpepper sat with his hands folded on the table-top. He watched her dispassionately while my native empathy threatened to crush my resolve. What was I supposed to tell this poor woman? I dreaded the ending of her aria. My desperation soon gave way to outrage: How could the Service expect me to pass judgment upon this lost soul? For weeks during Phase One training our instructors had repeated over and over,

“We pay you for your judgment,” but the entire system was designed in such a way as to completely remove our judgment from the process. Our training material was chock-full of flowcharts designed to determine the outcome of a case with the finality of the hand of fate. We were merely agents of the machine. We were the triggermen or, as Culpepper put it, the executioner at the switch.

“Isn’t it still possible for me to get a payment plan?”

The question hung in the air. Culpepper had turned his gaze in my direction. I knew what answer she desired and I knew what answer Culpepper desired. Where did my loyalties lie? I had reached the nub of it. I must choose now, and somehow I knew that this choice was irrevocable. I must step off the cliff or turn aside.

Culpepper said, still looking at me, “Are you current with your deposits, Ms. Marsh?”

“No. No, I told you, I’m losing money. I can’t afford to make any tax deposits right now. But with a little time—”

I spoke up; the flowchart answer: “We can’t grant an installment agreement unless you’re current with deposits.”

“This is an interesting discussion,” Culpepper said. “But academic. Ms. Marsh, you’re asking for a payment plan at the same time you’re telling us you’re losing money and can’t make payments.”

“I’m asking for some time. I’m asking for some compassion.”

“You are a operating a business. Your business is a miserable failure. You’ve taken the government’s money to make up your shortfall and now the government wants it back. So the issue is not one of compassion on our part, but the utter incompetence on yours.”

“I could pay you five hundred dollars a month,” she said abruptly.

Culpepper did not miss a beat. “How?”

“I don’t know. I’ll do something.”

“What?”

“I’ll fire Justine.” A sob caught in her throat. I made the following note:
She will fire Justine.
“I’ll return the jungle gym—that’s a two-hundred-dollar-a-month payment right there.” The list grew and I scribbled it down as she dictated. Culpepper drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He shifted In his chair, clearly restless.

Finally, as she was elaborating on the absolutely necessity of a $300-per-month allowance for diapers, he rose from the chair and said, “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Down the hall to the right,” she told him. He shot me a look that said,
Let’s wrap this up,
before abandoning me.

Laura Marsh was staring at me, waiting for my decision. I was waiting for it, too. My first case, and my OJI had left at the precise moment when I needed him the most. I had no doubt he had done this deliberately.

“So what happens now?” she asked. “Do I get my payment plan?”

I was pretending to study the financial statement. My eye, watering profusely now, was nearly closed. I wiped a tear from my cheek.

She leaned toward me and whispered, “You’re new, aren’t you?”

“If we give you this plan,” I choked out—my throat was closing up— “how do we know you’ll keep it? You’ve defaulted on two or three plans already.”

“That wasn’t my fault.”

“Okay.”

“I just need a little time.”

“Right.”

“That Mr. Culpepper doesn’t understand. But you understand. I can see it in your eyes. You want to give me a payment plan, but he wants to take my house. Is he your boss?”

“Not exactly…” I did not tell her my boss probably wouldn’t give her a payment plan, either.

“He has an attitude.”

“Ms. Marsh, there’s nothing I can do if you don’t get current.”

“I’ll be current by the end of the week.”

“If you can do that,” I said, taking a deep breath, “then maybe there’s something we can do.”

“Oh, good. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.” Her relief was palpable.

I nodded.
My
relief was palpable. Between Laura and myself, the universe had been liberated from all sorrow, all useless anxiety. Something had been decided, although I was not entirely clear what that decision was.

It was time to go, but where was Culpepper? I packed up my briefcase while she prattled about the weather, about summer colds, about unscrupulous repairmen and the untrustworthiness of human beings in general. Thinking of Culpepper wandering through her house, I agreed. I looked to my left as we came out of the kitchen and saw him squatting in the living room, staring intensely at a toddler as the child aimed a orange toy pistol at his forehead, shouting
“Bang-bang! Bang-bang!”
and Culpepper was smiling, his index finger pointing at the child’s distended belly, returning fire.

We made our getaway, and Ms. Marsh was positively giddy. She even gave my hand an extra squeeze as we parted. She waved to us from the front porch. We did not wave back.

I expected a full debriefing on the way to my next case, but Culpepper was silent, quietly humming the song “Bad to the Bone.” Of the many things racing through my fevered brain, the chief thought was: Why did Culpepper leave the room at the climax of the interview? What was he doing in Laura Marsh’s house—was he, like Larry Simon, rifling through Laura Marsh’s drawers, looking for a hidden cache of jewels? I would never know, but suspected it had something to do with the Third Protocol:
Learn what they have.

No one was home at my next call. I checked with some neighbors, verified the taxpayer’s address, and left a calling card. Culpepper told a story about Melissa digging through a taxpayer’s garbage looking for bank statements, then said, “Melissa ever do a courthouse check on the Marsh case?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No. No, she didn’t.”

“Let’s go to Powell.” Powell was the county seat.

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

A court records check was required before reporting a case as uncollectible. It was also required prior to making a seizure. If a taxpayer tried to hide assets by placing them in someone else’s name, we would know. If we were planning to seize assets, encumbrances had to be verified and lien Priority established. I didn’t think Culpepper saw the Marsh case as uncollectible. I also didn’t think he was going to give her a payment plan.

We stopped for lunch at a hamburger joint on the outskirts of Powell, then drove downtown to the courthouse.

Culpepper said, “So what are you going to do with Ms. Marsh?”

I didn’t answer at first. This was due to my verging on a panic attack. It still had not left me, the vertiginous feeling of being someone whom I was not. As if I had been thrust into an improvisational exercise against my will. Culpepper’s questions usually had this effect on me. He not only expected an answer, he expected a particular answer, a perfect answer. My lunch lay like a brick in my gut. How long had it been since I’d seen a doctor? I didn’t even have a regular doctor; the last doctor I’d seen was for that miserable case of the shingles a couple years back. He had laughed at me, when I expressed shock that what I actually had was a form of herpes. What sort of moron took this kind of job without having a regular doctor?

I made up my mind: as soon as I got back to the office, I was writing my resignation letter. I began to compose it in my head, then remembered Culpepper had asked me a question.

“She’s supposed to get current. If she can’t, I guess we don’t have a choice,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

Court records checks are hell. In 1991, before most of the larger counties converted to computer systems, the information was transferred to microfiche cartridges and perused on bulky reading machines. The type was very small. Generally, the more delinquent the taxpayer, the greater the volume of court recordings, with multiple cross-references, judgments, releases, lien filings, foreclosures, financing statements, mortgages. Laura Marsh was no exception. Some filings had significance, some did not. I had no inkling which was which, and so resorted to copying down everything, filling up two history sheets with information. Culpepper sat beside me, silent, restless, tapping his foot. After an hour he told me to meet him outside when I was finished, and I was abandoned.

After another hour, I emerged from the courthouse, feeling utterly overwhelmed, confused, and weary beyond words. I had no idea what I had been looking at, and I was angry with Culpepper for not staying inside to explain it to me. As my OJI, that was his goddamned job.

I found him sitting on a bench under a glowering sky; it was nearly three o’clock and the afternoon rains were due. He was eating an apple, his long legs stretched out before him. The wind pulled at his shock of black hair and I had the impression of a tiny black hand, waving at me. That was all the greeting I got.

I sat beside him on the bench and together we stared across the street at nothing. I wondered if I had a parking ticket. My eyes felt as if someone had been sticking them with a toothpick. My back ached. It was three o’clock and I wanted to get back to the office to write my histories—if I could figure out what to write in them—and my tour ended at four. Now I must wait for Culpepper to finish his apple. Where had he obtained an apple? It was bright red, a Macintosh, I think, and Culpepper had shined it to a mirror finish. Its outline was exquisite against his dark blue suit. The scent of this apple tantalized me. If Culpepper had the slightest sense of the symbolic, he would have offered me a bite.

“Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

“About what?”

“You up for another call?”

Once again, a simple question from Culpepper and I was on the verge of panic. Suddenly, I was bound; I was wrapped tight, writhing in indecision. What did he mean by that? What answer was he looking for? If I said no, that I needed to drive back to Lakeside and write my histories because, after all, my tour ended at four and I did not intend to work credit hours, would he consider me lacking in what he called “the fire”? But if I said yes, would he write me up for improper case management, since a good revenue officer always wrote his histories on the day of contact? He let the silence drag out, not pressing me, as if he had expected this very effect. He rotated the apple a perfect quarter turn and studied the flawless red skin before snapping into it with his teeth. He dabbed his chin with a napkin.