Confessions of a Tax Collector (23 page)

My final call of the day was a cabinetmaking business. A pleasant-looking man in his mid-forties met us at the door. He wore a green smock. Sawdust clung to his beard. He led us into his office, a tiny area in one corner of the building. He found two wooden bar stools for us to perch on. He sat in an executive chair that was missing a wheel. I handed him Pub One and explained why we had come. He listened politely, smiling often at Gina. The smile hardly wavered when I told him he owed $25,000 in employment taxes. I asked him if he was making tax deposits.

“Jeez, I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Yancey. I haven’t been able to make a deposit in over a year now. Things are just too tight.”

“We can’t work with you unless you can get current with this quarter,” I said. I explained how final notice worked, how a federal tax lien perfected our interest in his property, how we could—and would—levy his accounts receivable and seize his assets to satisfy the debt.

“Why would you do that?” he asked. He seemed incredulous.

“To put you out of business,” Gina said pleasantly. “Do you think it’s fair for you to operate without paying taxes while your competition pays every penny of theirs?”

“I ain’t so sure they are.”

“But they’re not in Mr. Yancey’s inventory. You are.”

“I’m gonna show a profit. I just a need a little time.”

He wasn’t going to get it. Not while my manager sat beside me. Not while Allison was nipping at my heels. Not while I strained toward enlightenment.

“
Tempus fugit”
Gina said.

“You have ten days,” I said.

“Ten days to do what?” he asked.

“Get caught up with your deposits and pay us in full.”

“I can’t do that in ten days.”

“Can you get caught up with your deposits in ten days?”

“I—I don’t know. Maybe.”

“We’ll give you ten days to get caught up with your deposits and thirty days to pay the balance. How’s that?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, that’s not very good.”

Behind him, on his cluttered desk, was a framed photograph of a pretty woman holding a blond, blue-eyed little boy. He noticed I was looking at it.

“That’s my boy,” he said. “He’s three.”

“Cute.”

“You have kids, Mr. Yancey?”

“None that he knows of,” Gina said.

“There’s no way I can pull this out in forty days. You might as well shut my doors now.”

We said nothing. We stared at him. It produced the desired response: he dropped his head and shrugged his broad shoulders. He said, “I got four full-time guys here. They have wives and families, too. You put me out of business and how do they put food on the table?”

“You’re concerned about your employees,” Gina said. I shifted on my bar stool. I knew where she was going with this. She was setting him up.

“Of course I am. This is a small company. We’re—they’re like family.”

“Family. So why did you take money from your family to pay your creditors?”

“I’m not following you.”

“She’s saying payroll taxes are withheld monies. You withheld them from your employee’s paychecks.”

“You took their money,” she said. “To pay
your
bills.”

“I didn’t take nobody’s money. There
is
no money.”

“Then you’re right. We shouldn’t wait the forty days,” she said.

At that moment, as if on cue, the thunderheads exploded open and rain began to pound the corrugated roof. We had to shout to be heard.

“I’ll take the forty days!” He raised his head. Tears were in his eyes. “I’ll do what I have to do. I got a family.” He turned to me and said vehemently, “You don’t know what that’s like.”

I caught South Florida Avenue, the main north-south thoroughfare, to take us back to the federal building. The afternoon had gone prematurely gray beneath the spent thunderheads.

“Turn left up here, Rick. I want to show you something.”

She directed me into a well-appointed neighborhood, not far from where my parents lived. She ordered me to slow down. I crept along at five miles per hour, wondering what was going on. She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. She pointed out the open window.

“There it is. Stop.”

So Henry had been right. She had taken me to her house.

‘That’s your house,“ I said.

Yep. Isn’t it beautiful? I did all the landscaping myself. Look at my azaleas! I fertilize and mow, too. There is not one centimeter of crabgrass in that whole yard. Look at those palm trees in the back. Can you see them?“

“Yes, I can.”

“My bedroom is in the back. I love to listen to the sound of the wind at night, rustling in the palm leaves. I close my eyes and imagine I’m on a tropical island. If I concentrate really hard, I can almost hear the sound of the waves hitting the shore. When I can’t, I have this tape of sounds—you know, a meditation tape. It has Beach At Night, Rain on the Eaves, and other stuff. Whale Song, but listening to that kind of freaks me out. It’s spooky.”

“Why is it spooky?”

“Have you ever seen a whale? I don’t mean on TV. I mean up close, in real life. I took a vacation in Maine once and went on this whale-watching boat, on which I became extremely seasick, but anyway saw a herd of whales, or I think it’s called a pod. Whales are too big to wrap your imagination around. You’ve read
Moby-Dick.
But these were blue whales, I think. Moby Dick was a sperm whale. Would you like to see the inside?”

I tried to make a joke. “Of a whale?”

She trilled at me. “No, of my house, silly.”

She actually called me
silly.
I felt no pressure from her invitation. This was no veiled threat or offer of quid pro quo. She was inviting me inside for the same reason she filled the day with her endless chatter. Gina wasn’t trying to seduce me. Gina was lonely.

She turned from me and looked at her house. She sighed. “Let’s go back, Rick.”

* * *

The office was deserted when we arrived. Only Bonny had remained, like a watcher at the gate. She went directly with Gina to her office and they huddled inside behind a closed door. I sat at my desk and wrote the histories of my day’s labors. I called home and got the answering machine. I hung up without leaving a message. The phone rang. I hesitated, and then picked it up.

“Internal Revenue Service, Rick Yancey.”

“Rick, this is Allison. You’ll never guess who was in the office today.”

“Inspection.”

There was a pause. Her tone changed from breathless to miffed. “How did you know?”

“I have my sources.”

“They were looking for Gina.”

“I know that. Gina was with me.”

“I know she was with you! That’s why I’m calling.”

“Good. I was wondering why.”

“Don’t you want to hear what they wanted?”

“Isn’t that why you called?”

“Well. Maybe now I just won’t tell you.”

“Whatever, Allison,” I said. “I’m hanging up now.”

“You know, Ricky, I get so sick of you and your holier-than-thou act.”

“Bless you, my child. Are they going to fire her?”

“Inspection doesn’t fire people, Rick,” she said. Now condescending. “Management fires people.”

“What’s it about, her tardies and absences?”

“No, Rick. It’s not even
about
her. They wanted to talk to her as a
witness.”

“A witness to what?”

She was drawing it out. She was enjoying herself immensely.

“Rick, they were here because of Culpepper. They’re investigating
Culpepper
.”

I was speechless for a moment. Then I said, “Investigating him for what?”

“I didn’t tell you this.”

“You haven’t told me anything yet.”

“You did not hear this from me, Rick.”

“Allison, do you even know what they’re investigating him for?”

She told me. I made her repeat it. I hung up the phone, shoved everything inside my desk, locked it, slipped out the back door, and walked on the rain-washed pavement to my car. I drove home.
Be proud of what you do. Be proud you’re a revenue officer. Henceforward you will be held to the highest standard.
The sun balanced on the horizon beneath the lingering clouds; the world teetered on the edge between dark and light.

There was a note from Pam on the table, informing me that she would not be home until very late—the production was set to open that week and they were experiencing technical difficulties. I was awake when she slipped into bed beside me at one o’clock the next morning. I tried to remember the last time we had sex, but the memory that gripped me was of the first time I laid eyes on her, sitting on the steps outside the theater, waiting for a ride that never came, and how I pitied her—she seemed so lonely. Pity is the most subversive of all emotions. My job had taught me this. Culpepper said a good revenue officer is as indifferent as God. Pity softened the heart. It made the easy difficult and the difficult impossible. Pity was as corrosive as acid. Pity sucked the juice from your marrow. Pity dissembled, conned, seduced. Pity was a cheap whore, the evil twin of empathy. At least empathy did not blind you to the truth.

The truth. For weeks I had convinced myself that working for the Service had placed a strain on my relationship with Pam, but the truth was that our relationship had been tearing at the seams for at least two years before I entered Byzantium. Being there had only accelerated the rate of entropy. The Service couldn’t suspend the laws of nature; it couldn’t take a lamb and change it into a lion. Enormous pressure will crush ordinary rock but transform coal into diamonds. I had witnessed the passive change into self-confident, assertive people. I had also witnessed people like Gretchen Pope, who fainted regularly at her desk because she starved herself so she could afford designer dresses and her fire-engine red Ferrari. In many ways, what went on in Lakeside during my training year was an anomaly, a fantastic alternative universe, and the truth was that we were often the joke of the district. The branch chief, upon hearing the accusations against Culpepper, was said to exclaim, “Jesus Christ! There must be something in the water down there!”

Pam read for ten minutes, turned off the light, and rolled onto her side, her back to me. Pam always read at night. This night she was reading a book called
Communion,
about a man who overcomes screen memories implanted by aliens in his cerebral cortex.

I waited until her breathing grew heavy, and said, “Inspection came today.”

She said, “Why?” She did not seem surprised I was still awake.

“To investigate William Culpepper.”

“Culpepper? For what?”

I wondered why we never slept with our windows open. It would be nice to lie in bed and listen to the night sounds, to the crickets and cicadas, to the wind moving over the still black waters of the lake. Perhaps Pam preferred the windows closed to deter aliens from abducting her and implanting screen memories in her cerebral cortex. Growing up, I had always slept with my window open, even during the unbearable heat of summer. I had fallen asleep every night to the sound of the crickets’ desperate cries for love.

“For assault.”

“You
motherfucking sonofabitch, if I ever catch you sneaking around on I my property again, I’ll blow your goddamned brains out, you hear me? You are one lucky motherfucking sonofabitch I wasn’t there when you criminally trespassed on my property. You people have been hounding my ass for six years now over a lousy seven thousand bucks. Seven thousand lousy fucking dollars. All I wanted was a fucking payment plan and you people come out one day and take every goddamned penny I have and now how am I gonna make my truck payment? How am I gonna buy my groceries? How am I gonna keep my fucking lights on? You people make me sick. You make me want to puke. This is America. I am an American and I love my country and what you’re doing is
not
the America I know and love. It’s Nazi-fucking-Germany is what it is. You should thank
God
you ain’t here right now. You wanna know what I’d do to you, Mister Rick-fucking-Yancey, if you were in front of me right now? You don’t want to know what I’d do. Now I want you to take that lien off my account today—today, you understand me? I want that lien off so I can pay my nicking bills and not lose my fucking house.”

Cindy Sandifer, my new OJI, who was listening on an extension, placed her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Tell him about Form 911.”

I said into the phone, “I understand you’re upset.”

“Oh, really? Well, you must be a fucking genius!”

‘But I have a receipt from the post office, signed by you, for the letter giving you final demand.“

“So the fuck what?”

“So that letter makes it pretty clear what we were going to—”

“That goddamned letter didn’t say you were gonna sneak onto my property and violate my constitutional rights!”

“We’ve met all the legal requirements,” I said. “We did everything the law requires.”

“I am not a criminal!”

“No
one
said you were.”

Cindy Sandifer cupped her hand around my ear and whispered, “Tell him he can file an ATAO.”
[19]

I said to the taxpayer, “Are you disputing you owe the money?”

“I said I wanted a fucking payment plan!”

“If you bring me certified funds for the full amount, I can release the levy.”

There was a moment of stunned silence. He exploded, “And how the hell can I do that if you have all my money frozen! Jesus Christ, what do you think I do, keep a couple grand under my fucking mattress?!”

“You’d have to bring in more than a couple.”

“Oh, I’m gonna bring in something, all right. You there all day?”

“All day.”

“Good. Because I’m coming to see
you
.”

The line went dead. Cindy hung up and looked sternly at me. “You should have told him about the 911,” she said.

“It’s in the Pub One.”

“He has certain rights, Rick.”

“And which of those did we violate? It’s full payment, Cindy.”

“When he comes in, give him a 911 and ask if he wants to talk to Gina.”

“Okay.”

She patted me on the shoulder and stood up. I said, “I should call Inspection.”

“Why would you call Inspection?”

“He made a threat. He should be coded PDT.”
[20]

“I didn’t hear any threats.”

“He asked what time I was getting off work.”

“How’s that a threat?”

“He also said he was bringing something in.”

“Not specific enough.”

“Jesus, what does he have to do—draw a picture?”

“This happens all the time, Rick. If we coded everyone who blew their stack, everyone would be a PDT.”

She left me alone with my paranoia. It comforted me that the taxpayer didn’t know what I looked like; it would be difficult for him to mount an ambush. I wrote in my history, “TP irate, wants levy rel. Refused to rel. w/out cert, funds. TP stated ‘coming to see me’ and made unspecified threats. OJI advises to ignore, not code PDT. Advised TP of right to GM conf. and to file f. 911.” I slapped the file closed and shoved it across the desk. In the beginning, such calls left me shaking with fear; now, I shook with righteous indignation. Culpepper had said, “When you think about it, it’s hard to understand why so many people are afraid of the IRS. Why are they afraid of us? Say you owe thirty-five thousand dollars—that’s about the average, by the way—what does the big, bad IRS do about it? It sends
…a letter.
If the taxpayer ignores that letter, it sends another one. Then another. Then another. Up to four notices, and they all say the same thing: ‘Extremely Urgent! Life is about to end as you know it!’ Then what does it do?” He hummed the theme from
Jaws.
“The IRS
calls you on the phone.
It tells you, ‘Hey, you owe this money, and if you don’t pay it, something really bad is going to happen to you.’ Then, if you ignore its calls, it sends Mr. Yancey, who scratches his little head, fills out his little forms, and fifty-threes your account so it’s like you never owed it in the first place.” He illustrated his point with the story of the senior RO who enjoyed telling ignorant taxpayers, “Now, if you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll be forced to lnput a TC 530 on you.” Transaction Code 530 was the IDRS shorthand or writing off an account as currently-not-collectible.
Oh, no, please Mr. Taxman, anything but a TC
550!

“That’s why I keep telling you to enforce. Always find a reason to enforce. Not just because it will advance your career—it will—but because it will keep you sane. It’ll give you purpose, and God knows, you need that. Most of all, you’ll have fun—unless pushing paper is your idea of a grand ol‘ time. Seizures
are fun.
Remember the Fourth Protocol. If they’re afraid, do precisely what they fear. If they’re not afraid, do precisely what they
should
fear.“ Taxpayers often mask their fear with anger; therefore, their threats were not to be taken seriously. My policy was to let them vent their anger— interrupting them or arguing only served to escalate the tension. It served no purpose to become angry in turn; I always held the stronger position. I fully expected the irate trucker to call again that afternoon, and beg me for forgiveness, in the form of a levy release. He would not get one. I had full-payment. I had a closure, and closures were everything.

Later that morning, we assembled in the conference room for the monthly group meeting. It began as our group meetings always began, with Gina plowing through a huge stack of TDAs and TDIs, reading each name aloud. If the case was yours, you said, “Mine,” and she would slide the paper across the table to you. Then Bonny distributed the latest district memos and Gina would give brief summaries of their contents. Henry would whip out his highlighter and set to work. Culpepper liked to tell the story of finding Henry in the copier room one morning not long after Henry’s transfer from Miami. He was sitting at the small table with a yellow highlighter, a stack of district memos before him. Culpepper watched in silence as Henry, bent low over the paper, carefully highlighted every single line of the text. Finally, Culpepper said to him, “You know, Henry, you’d probably save time if you just put some yellow paper in the copier and copy those memos onto that.”

Next came the manual updates. Every month, National Office shipped revisions of the Internal Revenue Manual to every field office in the country. The revisions reflected recent Revenue Rulings, changes in the law or tax court decisions. Often they merely reflected stylistic changes deemed imperative by some Grade 15 sitting in his cubicle on Constitution Avenue who had nothing better to do. The bottom line was the rules by which we played changed on a monthly basis. Our procedures were written in water and shifted with the political tide. This often led to professional paralysis for those ROs who did not handle change well, like Henry, who must have found comfort in his yellow highlighter.

Gina said, “I have a couple of announcements regarding the upcoming realignment of the branch, but first Toby has graciously offered to brief us on proper summons procedure.”

All eyes turned to Toby. He was slouched in his chair, his large forearms resting on the table as he fingered the worn edges of his copy of the IRM. He did not acknowledge Gina, who was smiling as if enjoying some private joke. The silence dragged out and we began to shift uncomfortably in our chairs. Something was wrong here. There was bad blood in the air. It was no secret that Gina despised Toby, thought he was lazy and stupid. Behind his back, for reasons known only to Gina, she called him “Lumpy.” Toby had discovered this and had stomped around the office, collaring everyone he met, saying, “You know what she calls me behind my back? Why do you think she calls me that? What’s that mean? ‘Lumpy,’ isn’t that the fat kid in
Leave It to Beaver?
Why’s she callin‘ me a fat white kid?” No one seemed to know. He filed a grievance, asking for a transfer. Gina denied everything. He lost the grievance, but never his loathing for her.

Toby waited until the silence was practically unbearable, and then began to read from the manual. He did not look up. He did not elaborate on the text. He simply read, in a dull monotone, the entire section on issuing a summons to a taxpayer. We glanced at Gina, who was smiling blandly. He finished twenty minutes later. He closed the manual and folded his huge hands on top of it. He raised his eyes, meeting mine. I looked away. The expression in those eyes was too terrible to contemplate.

Gina said gently, “Thank you, Toby.” Later, I would learn she had found an incorrectly prepared summons in one of his files during a routine case review. This had been his punishment. Once she had made Rachel fill an entire history sheet with these words: “I will not eat when I write my case histories.” Gina had been disgusted to find grease stains in Rachel’s files. Rachel explained she had been eating potato chips.

Gina continued, “As those of you who manage to stay awake already know there’s some changes coming to the group. We’re being realigned under the Orlando branch.” This meant Jim Neyland would not longer be her boss. The Service often nipped small PODs from branch to branch, for reasons known only to the Service and rarely communicated to us. “Our new branch chief will be here for a visit next week.” She gave the date. We marked our calendars. “Now, as most of you know, the training group next door got a new manager effective last week. Hopefully, you’ll have some free time to drop by and say hello.”

“Say hello to who?” Henry asked.

“The new manager, Henry,” Toby snapped at him. Toby had been trying to take Henry under his wing, with mixed results. About once a month, Toby would emerge from his office and track Henry down. We would hear him shouting at him, “Dear Jesus, Henry, you want to go anywhere in this organization, you gotta seize! It don’t matter what you seize, just seize somethin‘!” Henry always refused. “You’re a pansy,” Toby would tell him, disgusted. “Man, I seize everything. I seized a phosphate pit once, you know that? There were these guard dogs out there walkin’ around with no goddamned pads on their paws. Phosphate ate ‘em clean down to the bone. Ate up my best pair of shoes, too, but I didn’t give a shit. Jacksonville crapped their pants when they found out I seized a damned phosphate pit. ’How you gonna secure
a pit?‘
Heh, heh, heh. But I got full pay and a manager’s award. Hell, I even seized a strip joint, Henry. Took everything. Took the pole. Took the wigs and the g-strings. I even took the damned tassels the girls stick on their titties.”

“Pasties,” Henry said. “They’re called pasties.” Toby frowned at him. “Don’t tell my wife I know about pasties,” Henry said.

“Her name is Annie DeFlorio,” Gina said.

I watched as Henry wrote down the name. I wondered if he would write it down if I blurted out the word
shit.

“Snow White,” Rachel said softly, but not so softly that we couldn’t hear.

Allison said, “Snow White?”

“That’s what some people call her,” Gina said. She did not add that it was she herself who came up with the name. Gina had nicknames for everyone. Toby she called “Lumpy.” Henry was “Buckwheat.” Allison was “Little Red Riding Hood,” which didn’t seem pithy enough to qualify as a nickname. She never addressed us by our nicknames, so I wasn’t sure what she called me, though I had heard it was “Tin Man,” more a reference to stature than to heartlessness, I hoped.

“She’s one of the chiefs pets,” Beth said.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Gina said. “But she hasn’t been an RO very long.”

“She’s still a Grade Eleven,” Beth said.

Allison literally gasped. As the most ambitious trainee in the room, she received this news like a blow to the solar plexus. “How can they do that?”

“They can do whatever the hell they want,” Henry said.

“She got a temp promotion,” Beth said. She seemed to be taking some grim satisfaction in telling Allison this. Beth had been trying for years to get into management. Once again, she had been passed over, this time by Annie DeFlorio, who had joined the Service just three years before we trainees did.

“In every profession you have your benchwarmers and then you have your Michael Jordans,” Toby intoned.

“I didn’t think you could be a manager until you were a Twelve for at least a year,” Allison said.

“It’s a training group,” Gina said. “So they can have a Grade Twelve manager.”
[21]

“She must be something else,” Dee said.

Toby said, “She’s very sharp, very on the ball. She trained under Jenny Duncan.” Jenny Duncan had the reputation as the toughest—and brightest—manager in the state.

“She looks like Geena Davis,” Rachel said.

“That’s not fair!” Caroline said. She turned to our manager. “You’re the one named Gina.”

“How do you know what she looks like?” Allison asked Rachel.

“People tell me.”

We looked at Gina, the one person in the room who had actually seen Annie DeFlorio. She said, “Anyway, I wanted to lay to rest some rumors that have been going around about Billy.”