Confessions of a Tax Collector (26 page)

“‘The amounts shown above are now due, owing, and unpaid to the United States from the above taxpayer for internal revenue taxes. Notice and demand have been made for payment. Chapter 64 of the Internal Revenue Code provides a lien for the above tax and statutory additions. Section 6631 of the Code authorizes collection of taxes by levy on all property or rights to property of a taxpayer…’”

He paid no attention. I could have been reading to him in ancient Sanskrit. I finished strong, with some measure of authority, I hoped: “‘Therefore, under the provisions of the Code section 6331, so much of the property or rights to property, either real or personal, as may be necessary to pay the unpaid balance of assessment shown, with additions provided by law, including fees, costs, and expenses of this levy, are levied upon to pay the taxes and additions.’”

I separated Part 3 from the four-page form and handed it to him.

“Your assets are now under seizure,” I said. I walked back to the stool and slid the consent and the B back into the case file. “Ms. Sandifer and I have to take an inventory and secure the assets.”

“What about my men?”

“You’re going to tell them to go home.”

“Just like that? Go home?”

“We can start here in the office if you’d like,” Cindy offered.

“He should stay with us,” I said to her. The Service preferred it that way: there was less chance for accusations of impropriety.

“I’d like that,” he said to Cindy. He walked past me. He was still holding the seizure form. He paused at the door, turned to me. “Mr. Yancey, I…” He gave up, turned back to the door, and squared his shoulders. He walked out. The door hung halfway open. The air was thick with wood dust and the smell of machine oil. He gestured for the men to shut off their machines by drawing his index finger across his throat. Cindy and I watched as the men stood before him, looking over his shoulder at us. The old man’s face darkened. He said something to the cabinetmaker, who began to shake his head vigorously. The old man put a hand on his forearm. The cabinetmaker said something else and the old man removed his hand and dropped his head. The old man ripped off his goggles, yanked out his earplugs. He threw them into a tool kit and slammed it closed. He picked up the kit and headed for the outer door.

I moved. “Just a second.”

The old man stopped. He stared at me. I turned to the cabinetmaker.

“Is that his personal property?”

“These are my tools,” the old man said.

A voice in the back of my head (Culpepper’s?) prodded me:
Ask for proof. Assume it’s a business asset unless he can prove otherwise.

“Okay,” I said.

“Come on, guys,” the cabinetmaker said. “Get your stuff out of here. I’ll call you later.”

“What about my check?” one of them, the youngest, asked.

“You’re gonna get paid, Kenny. Don’t you always get paid? Come on. I’ll work this out. Just get your things outta here for now. It’s gonna be okay.”

When they had gone, he turned back to me.

“My personal stuff.”

“You better take it now.”

I followed him back to the office. Cindy stood by her stool, hands folded in front of her. He found a cardboard box beside the desk. It was filled with old magazines. He dumped the magazines onto the floor and began to clean off his desk.

“So you take an inventory and then what?”

“We sell it.”

“When?”

“In a couple of weeks. First, we have to advertise the sale.”

“Wait a minute. You advertise?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The newspaper. We send fliers.”

“Fliers?”

“And post notices.”

“Where?”

“Here. And the post office. The county courthouse.”

“Everybody’s gonna know?”

“It’s a public auction.”

He dropped his head. He raised it. He grabbed the family picture from his desk and dumped it unceremoniously into the box. He was not going to indulge in self-pity. As for me, I had pity’s neck in both hands and was choking the life out of the little son of a bitch.

“You know, I really was going to call you. If I had called you today, Mr. Yancey, would you still have come?”

“Yes.”

Andy arrived with the flatbed while we were tagging the machines. I called out the model and serial numbers while Cindy recorded everything on the Form 2433. We heard the rumble of the big diesel engine through the open front door.

“What’s that?” the cabinetmaker asked.

“The tow truck,” I said. “We’re seizing the van.”

“You’re taking my van?”

“It’s a business asset.”

“It’s also my ride home.”

“I thought your wife had a car.”

I left Cindy to take care of the cabinetmaker while I talked to Andy.

“Rick!” he cried. Andy wasn’t tall, but he was compact, like an Olympic wrestler. In fact, he had won a high school state championship in his weight class in wrestling. He wore a tight blue shirt with the sleeves rolled to his shoulders, no matter the weather. His reddish-blond hair was cut an inch from his scalp. He always reminded me, for some reason, of a Boy Scout.

He clapped me on the shoulder. Andy was one of those rare people who took an immediate liking to me. “Whadda we got?”

“This,” I pointed at the van.

He laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Allison’s first set of wheels was a Beemer.”

“She was just lucky.”

“Better to be lucky than smart.”

The taxpayer appeared in the doorway. I could see Cindy standing behind him.

“I’ve got some personal stuff in there,” he said.

Andy looked at me. “Go ahead,” I nodded to the cabinetmaker.

He opened the passenger door and began to rummage around the cluttered interior. Andy walked back to the truck and hit the switch to lower the bed. The cabinetmaker emerged from the truck holding a battered teddy bear. He stood for a moment, cradling the bear, staring at it. He turned to me. “Where are you taking it?”

“To McNeil Towing. We’ll store it there until the sale.”

“Can I pick up the rest of my stuff later?”

“Sure.”

We heard the sound of an engine revving. It was coming from the open storage bay. The forklift.

“Oh, I forgot about Tony,” the cabinetmaker said.

He walked past me and disappeared into the bay. I looked at Cindy, who was standing in the doorway.

“I’ll go,” I said. “Give me a tag and another 2433.”

I placed a warning sticker on the van window, “warning: united states government seizure… Persons tampering with this property, in any manner, are subject to severe penalty of the law.” I scribbled down the van make and model and vehicle identification number. A man walked out of the storage bay, carrying a paper sack, probably containing his lunch-muttered something under his breath as he passed me. He climbed into a beat-up El Camino and roared out of the parking lot, the rear bumper slapping the pavement as he whipped onto the street. Cindy was taping a warning sticker on the office door when the forklift rumbled to life. Andy turned to me, an eyebrow raised. We trotted toward the storage bay.

The cabinetmaker was on the forklift, maneuvering it between two steel support beams. It took me a moment to realize what he was attempting. Behind me, Andy laughed. The cabinetmaker jockeyed between the two beams, experimenting with raising and lowering the long metal arms of the forklift. He was trying to wedge it between the metal columns to make it impossible for us to remove from the bay. He had placed the teddy bear between his legs. He had been holding up okay, until he found the bear in his truck. The teddy bear had broken him. I walked into the bay and shouted over the roar of the lift’s engine: “Sir! Sir, what you’re doing is illegal!” He spun the wheel around, cutting the front of the lift with its heavy metal arms toward me. I backed up. Andy appeared at my elbow and said, “Let me throw a chain around it. I can
drag
that son of a bitch out of there.”

I kept shouting at the taxpayer, Andy kept laughing, and the taxpayer kept edging the forklift up, back, side to side, banging into the beams with such force that for a second I was afraid he’d knock one of them over and the entire structure would come crashing down on our heads. Finally, thanks to nothing I shouted, but in answer to some interior voice, the cabinetmaker gave up. He slammed on the brake, cut off the engine, and dropped his chin to his chest in a gesture of surrender.

He climbed off the seat, clutching the teddy bear by the top of the head.

“Take the damn thing,” he said as he walked past.

We completed the seizure without further incident. Andy left with the forklift and truck chained up on his flatbed. Cindy and I signed the three forms 2433 we had completed and handed the cabinetmaker his copies. He still held the bear. He called his wife at work—she was a third-grade teacher—and, after a heated conversation, walked outside with us. He locked the office door and handed me the keys. I placed a knuckle-buster over the door handle and slipped that key into my pocket.

I’ll send you our minimum bid worksheet and a notice of sale as soon as they’re ready,“ I told him.

“Take your time,” he said.

There was nothing left to say, but I was reluctant to leave him. He might try to break back into the building. Then it occurred to me he could do that at any point up to the sale: the IRS did not post guards. I felt the need to say something, perhaps not to comfort him, but to help him understand that there really had been no choice in the matter. I looked at him. His gaze had turned inward. Already he was working something out. He was formulating a plan. He would redeem the dream. I could understand that. It is the universal blessing—and curse—of those who dare.

The rush from this first seizure lasted for days. What had seemed impossible just a few months before was now easy—as Culpepper promised it would be. I had crossed some threshold; I had passed through a membrane.
Enforcement
—
and sometimes just the
threat
of enforcement
—
will resolve your case.
In the month that followed, as the year wound to a close, I conducted six more seizures. Two cars. Three businesses. A piece of rental property. The only pressure I felt was from the impending holidays. It was the Service’s policy not to take enforcement during the Christmas season. Some revenue officers argued this policy violated the First Amendment. I accepted it as a condition of war and planned accordingly. However, when I discovered a bank account that had not been disclosed on a financial statement, I hand-delivered a levy on the day after Thanksgiving. Gina was pleased. Allison was not. She felt I was already vying for the first choice to be the next Grade Eleven in the group.

I was walking from the parking lot to the federal building one morning when I spotted a woman standing behind a new Mercury Sable, massaging her forehead. She raised her head as I approached.

She was about my age, I judged, perhaps one or two years younger. She was wearing a red business suit and her dark, curly hair was pulled back from her face and hung in a ponytail that terminated at the small of her back. Her eyes were large and very dark, almost black. Full, perfectly shaped lips, olive-complected, about five foot eight, with long, athletic legs, she did resemble Geena Davis.

“You’re Annie DeFlorio,” I said.

She smiled and took my hand.

“I’m Rick Yancey.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“We haven’t met, but I see you sometimes wandering around the alley.”

“That’s my thinking spot.”

“Really?” She hardly seemed to be listening. “I’m sorry. I’m running late this morning and I did a really stupid thing.”

“You locked your keys in the car.”

“In my trunk. How did you know?”

“I do it all the time.”

She nodded as if she knew that about me. “My husband has the other set of keys but he’s in Orlando.”

“Tell you what, I have AAA. I’ll call them and have them pop the trunk for you.”

Her dark eyes widened. “Will you? That would be terrific.”

“It’s no problem.”

“I’ve got a meeting in five minutes.”

“Go on, I’ll call and wait with the car.”

“I really appreciate it.”

She squeezed my forearm briefly before trotting away, her heels clicking on the pavement. I watched her.

A week into December, and six weeks until our training year ended, the new branch chief came calling. We trainees were summoned into the conference room to meet her. It was Jenny Duncan, who was a group manager in Orlando and who was feared throughout the district as the toughest, smartest, most aggressive employee Collection had ever produced, with the possible exception of William Culpepper. Jenny Duncan had been Annie DeFlorio’s manager and the first to recognize Annie’s potential.

Jenny’s appearance belied her reputation. She was about Gina’s height, but small-boned, almost fragile-looking. She was wearing a powder-blue business suit and badly scuffed heels. She shook our hands as we sat down, one by one, making eye contact with each of us and calling us by name.

“Rick,” she said to me. “Gina tells me you’re a man on fire.”

Allison sat next to me, smoldering. She had been greeted with, “So, you’re little Allison.”

“My name is Jenny Duncan and I’m going to be the acting branch chief here until a new one is selected,” she opened. “I wanted to take this opportunity to get acquainted and give you guys a heads-up on our expectations from now until the end of your training.”

She turned to Caroline.

“Why do we seize?”

“Seize what?”

“Seize anything.”

Caroline frowned. “Because people owe taxes?”

“For every dollar we collect from enforcement we write off three,” Jenny said. She turned to Rachel. “Do you think it’s right for us to put people out of business? Aren’t we just adding to the unemployment lines? How does what we do help the economy? In other words, aren’t we defeating the purpose?”

Rachel said nothing. She looked at the tabletop. Allison tilted her chin upward, a signal she was bold and assertive. “It’s an issue of fairness.”

“Fairness,” Jenny said. “Is it fair when one revenue officer will seize and another will fifty-three under the same set of facts? None of you has been here very long, but I’m sure you’ve seen it happen. You all must know ROs who never seize.”