Confessions of a Tax Collector (17 page)

“Never assume anything,” he said.

A middle-aged, heavyset man sporting a bushy mustache answered the door. His eyes were small, lost in folds of drooping flesh. He reminded me of a hound.

“I’m looking for Clausen Construction,” I said.

“Demolition,” Culpepper said.

“Demolition. Clausen Demolition,” I said.

“Who is?”

“I am.”

“And who are you?”

I held up my commission, holding it by the right edge so he could have a clear view of my picture and the Treasury Building, the collective beast. He grabbed it out of my hand and slammed the door in our face.

“Oh, Jesus!” I whispered. My knees grew weak. Beside me, Culpepper murmured, “That was a major boner, Rick. If you don’t get that commission back it’s—this is not going to look good.”

The door opened and the man handed back the commission. Giddy with relief, I slipped it into my pocket. For the remainder of the interview, I would tap my pocket to reassure myself it was still there.

“So you’re looking for Clausen Demolition,” the man said. He had the deep rasp of a lifelong smoker.

“Yes.”

“All right, then.”

He wasn’t going to offer anything. It occurred to me he had yet to acknowledge he knew anything at all about Clausen Demolition.

“Well,” I said, “we have this as the corporate address.”

“Oh, well, it probably is.”

“Are you Mr. Clausen?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not your business, though?”

“No.”

“Whose business is it?”

“My wife’s.”

“Your wife owns the business?”

“She’s the president. It’s her corporation.”

“Is she here?”

“Yes.”

“Can we talk to her?”

“I’ll have to ask her.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t move. He hung in the doorway, studying me. He turned to Culpepper.

“Who’re you?”

“I’m with him,” Culpepper said.

“Travel in packs, huh? Like wolves.”

“No, in pairs. I think you need more than two to constitute a pack.”

“You think so?”

“I would have to do some research before committing to it.”

“Hang on,” the man said, and shut the door in our face for a second time. Culpepper hummed the theme from
The Godfather.
Sweat rolled down the back of my neck and soaked into my collar.

“This is going to be fun,” Culpepper said.

The door opened and the man stepped back to let us pass. The door opened directly into the family room, which was dim and thick with cigarette smoke. I breathed in deeply, grateful for the secondhand high. On the end of the sofa sat a mousy-looking woman who appeared much younger than the droopy-eyed brute standing at my elbow. Her hands were folded primly in her lap.

“Mrs. Clausen?” I asked. The room was paneled with knotted pine and seemed to devour every sound, except the labored breathing of the man at my elbow.

“Yes, this is Emily, my wife,” the man said. “Honey, this man is called Yancey; he’s with the IRS. Don’t know this other guy’s name, but he’s kind of a smartass.”

“Mr. Culpepper.” Culpepper smiled at her, but his blue eyes were hard. “Are you president of Clausen Demolition?”

“You bet she is,” the man said.

“What’s your name?” Culpepper asked him.

“Clausen, just like my wife’s.”

“Guess I’m not the only smartass in the room,” Culpepper said.

The man laughed. The laugh originated somewhere deep in his throat and only bubbled up reluctantly. I had the by now familiar vertiginous feeling that I was involved in something I had no prayer of understanding.

“Are you an officer of the corporation?” Culpepper asked him.

“Oh, no, it’s my wife’s business. I help out on the jobs occasionally, but it’s all her baby.”

Culpepper turned to Emily Clausen. “Is it all right with you if he stays?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mr. Clausen asked.

“You aren’t an officer. We want to avoid any unauthorized disclosure.”

“She wants me here.”

“We have to hear it from her. She does talk, doesn’t she?”

After a pause, Clausen said, “You know, I don’t think I like you. I don’t appreciate your attitude. It’s very disrespectful.” This hung in the air, with 10 response from Culpepper. He looked at me. “And you don’t even look like someone who’d be working for the IRS. That picture of you, it’s not a very good likeness. It doesn’t capture the real you, if you ask me.”

Speaking barely above a whisper, the woman said, “It’s all right. He can stay.”

“See?” Clausen said. He sat beside me in a straight-back wooden chair. It groaned under his bulk. He was sitting so close I could smell his stale breath and the stench of tobacco floating about him like a fine early-morning mist. The coffee table before us was made from a cypress stump, polished and varnished to a shiny finish, the kind offered for sale along every highway in Florida.

I informed Mrs. Clausen why we had come. She made no reply. I asked her if the corporation still had employees.

Mr. Clausen said, “What do you mean by ‘employees’?”

“People who worked for the corporation.”

“Well, I work, but I don’t take a salary.”

“Does your wife?” Culpepper asked.

“Oh, she takes a draw… occasionally.”

“Well, who gets on the bulldozer and knocks down the walls? Who swings the big metal ball into the building?”

“I think I just said—”

“Where are the corporate records?” Culpepper demanded.

“Some are here. Some are with our accountant,” Clausen answered. He was as calm as a monk in meditation.

“We can check with the state,” Culpepper informed him. “They’ll tell us if you have employees. We’ll check with your insurance carrier.”

“Oh, I know we’ll get this all worked out,” Clausen said soothingly.

I pulled out the financial statement and tried to conduct a structured interview, with mixed results. Clausen answered all the questions while his mousy wife stared at me with that deer-in-the-headlights look of hers.

“Where are the business assets?” I asked.

“The business doesn’t own any assets,” Mr. Clausen said.

“What do you do, knock down the buildings with your head?” Culpepper asked.

Clausen ignored him. “The business leases all the equipment.”

“From whom?”

“From me.”

“From you?”

“Yes.” He explained he had once owned a business called Burt Clausen Demolition. Thus, I discovered his first name. I scribbled it in the margin of the form. Burt Clausen Demolition was defunct and the assets from the business were being leased by Clausen Demolition, Inc., of which Emily Clausen was the president and sole shareholder. I asked for the major accounts receivable. Clausen said he would have to get back to us on that, but he did mention Maroli Construction. At that point, something changed in the atmosphere. Culpepper began to hold forth in a strained voice upon the importance of good record-keeping and proper tracking of accounts. I glanced over at him; I had never seen him like this, and after a moment, I realized that for the first time, I was witnessing fear in the face of the prince of power.

We left ten minutes later, without completing the financial statement, without developing a plan of action, without setting any deadlines whatsoever. Clausen had taken a liking to Culpepper and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder on our way out the door. Back in the car, Culpepper scrunched down in his seat and stared straight ahead at the looming shadow of Burt Clausen in the doorway. He didn’t speak until we were well on our way back to the office. .

“Maroli Construction. You don’t know anything about Maroli Construction, do you, Yancey? I’m going to have to talk to Gina about this. I probably should have this case. This case is too much for you. This case is way over your head.”

I agreed with him, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I wasn’t going to admit weakness. I had learned that much in my brief tenure with the Service. You admitted weakness to no one, either on the outside or the inside. The trick was learning never to admit it to yourself.

“It’s the Mob, isn’t it?” I asked.

Culpepper said nothing. He was staring out the passenger window, his face turned away from me. The morning was cloudless, the light harsh.

“He’s going to call you. Put him off. Tell him you’ll get back to him. If le sends you a letter or… or a package, make sure you find me before you open it.”

I forced myself to laugh. “You’re giving me the creeps, Culpepper.” He didn’t answer. Now I began to hum the theme from
The Godfather.

“Don’t act like a moron, Yancey,” he said.

* * *

On my drive home that day, while I sat in traffic, admiring the golden afternoon light that seemed to flow over the earth in gentle waves, it hit me full force, a fear so tangible I could actually smell it; I could smell the terror rising out of me, and I pulled to the side of the road and burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably while the traffic streamed by, cars filled with normal people on their way home from normal jobs. Jesus, how I envied them and hated them. So, what’s the big deal? my little voice whispered. Quit. Call in tomorrow and tell them you won’t be coming in. It was so easy, and the only answer, really. Stop being such a goddamned baby. Suddenly, I thought of the woman with the metal plate in her head, suffering from “drain bamage.” I could feel her inside me, and the nervous laughter of Laura Marsh and the sound of Mr. Rose the mortician’s shuffling feet on the linoleum and the gurgling laughter of Burt Clausen and the inconsolable sobs of the woman in the trailer and the desperate, secret cry for help in her eyes, and I knew in the profoundest sense that I had seen too much, I was too deep to get out. Just that morning, before leaving to visit Burt Clausen, I had opened my mail to find the check that represented my first levy proceeds. With a stroke of my pen, I had stripped a family of every penny they had in their bank account. I had signed a form, mailed it, and in three weeks had a check in my hands. It was a singular moment. I immediately ran over to Culpepper’s desk and he shook my hand solemnly and said, “Ah, I see it in your eyes, Yancey. You’re starting to get it now.”

I had changed and, like the dirt-farmer’s wife, the change was permanent. I would never be the same.

I drove home, a revenue officer. I returned the next morning as the sun rose, bloated, red, and promising brutal heat, and I was still a revenue officer.

Culpepper enjoyed telling the story of Walter Crenshaw. Walter was a sweet man, a simple beat-cop from New Jersey, retired to Florida but bored after two years off the force. The IRS is fond of hiring ex-military and law enforcement types; they come on board with the right mind-set. According to Culpepper, he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and would often exclaim in moments of procedural panic, “There oughtta be a handbook for this job!” Culpepper decided to oblige him, and typed the words Walter’s handbook on a piece of paper and taped the paper to the front of Walter’s copy of the Internal Revenue Manual. Walter did not last long into his training year. Culpepper was his OJI and saw to that.

“I’m not capricious,” he told Allison and me after someone related a story about the trainee he allegedly browbeat until the poor bastard literally wet his pants. “It’s never personal. One day, when it’s your turn to be OJIs, you’ll understand. The IRS is a fortress, and I am the guardian at the gate. It’s my job to separate the wheat from the chaff. And anyway, that story’s misleading. He did piss himself, but the sick motherfucker
liked
to piss himself. There wasn’t a goddamned thing wrong with his bladder. He wore Depends—you know, those diapers for adults. He told me he liked the feeling of the warm urine spilling into his pants. He dug the idea of talking to the teenage clerk at the checkout, totally fucking oblivious, while he emptied his bladder.”

Allison laughed nervously, feigning shock at Culpepper’s language in the middle of the workplace. Culpepper ignored her. He was having a bad day. That morning he had undergone the first round of interviews for the frontline manager cadre, and the word was it had not gone well. The branch chief did not like Culpepper; saw him as a threat, some said.

“I’m working on your mid-year,” he said abruptly, turning to me. “Conference room. Five minutes.”

He stalked to his cubicle, the scent of his Obsession by Calvin Klein swirling in his wake. Allison gave me the eye.

“Ooooh,” she whispered. “Lucky you.”

Lucky me. As my OJI, Culpepper was required to conduct a complete review of my inventory, all thirty cases, upon my six-month anniversary with the Service. I had known this was coming, of course, but this did nothing to alleviate the distinct feeling in my scrotum that I was about to catch a hard one between the thighs.

“Bring your DIAL,”
[11]
he snapped at me as he passed my desk.

“Good luck, Rick!” Allison called.

I gave her the finger. “You’re next.”

“I don’t anticipate any problems,” she said sweetly. I considered what it would feel like to pick up the typewriter sitting on the small stand beside her and slam it over the top of her round little head. I decided it would feel good. Behind me, Rachel said, with maternal patience, “Oh, children, get along now.” All morning Rachel had been working on a rap song she planned to perform at the Christmas party, which was still over six months away. The chorus went, “With a lien and a levy and a seizure and sale / We’re devoted civil servants / And we hardly ever fail.” Rachel could afford to be cheerful. She had it easy with Cindy Sandifer as her OJI. It occurred to me I could take out the whole office with any number of weapons easily at hand. What I lacked was the necessary willpower. The world would not miss you people, I remember thinking, as I walked down the long corridor to the conference room, where my tormentor awaited. He was sitting with the chair turned from the door, facing the blank wall four feet from his nose, his shoulders rounded, his head slightly bowed. An aura of pathos hung about him, a pall of suffering. In his dark suit, facing that blank wall, he reminded me of Bartleby the scrivener in the Herman Melville story of the same name:
I would prefer not to.
Ah, Culpepper! Ah, humanity!