Confessions of a Tax Collector (41 page)

“I know you better than that, Rick. I know you don’t believe that. We’ll get through this. We’ll figure out some way to get through this.”

“I am seizing your house, Ms. Marsh.”

She began to shake her head. “Oh, no. No.”

“I’m preparing the paperwork next week.”

“You would take my house? You would take away the only thing of value to me in this world? You would take away the roof over my children’s heads?‘

She went on, but I had stopped listening. It seemed as if she were sitting in another room and I was overhearing a conversation to which I did not belong. I was in Tampa; it was the fall of 1990; and Jim Neyland was saying,
You see, Rick, the kind of people I’m looking for seize houses even if it means they can’t sleep at night.

I looked at Laura Marsh. To Laura Marsh, I mattered. To Laura Marsh, I was everything. I held her fate and the fate of her offspring in the palm of my hand. With a stroke of my pen, I could take away everything she had struggled for in the world. I was more than a human being to Laura Marsh. Laura Marsh rested her elbows on the table, wringing her hands before her face in supplication. If I had ordered her to her knees, I had no doubt she would have knelt before me.

But it was a sham. It was so transparent as to be laughable. I wondered how often this scene had been repeated throughout history. We were playing out a drama older than those of Euripides, a drama as old as civilization itself. And this tired epic was still being played, and would be played, as long as there was civilization, in drab cubicles and musty warehouses and cramped living rooms across the country, and I wondered how often those in my position were seduced into believing they were Olympians, sons and daughters of the gods, dispensing justice. We were not gods. There was only one god in our cubicle and that god Culpepper had called
the beast.
For three years we had allowed it to deceive us, to enthrall us, inspire our imaginations with fear and wonder. It appealed to our common feeling of impotence: offering remedy to me, validation to her.

“I’m taking your house,” I told her.

The next day, after three hours of intense labor, I completed the seizure request package for the Laura Marsh case, including the cover memo to the District Director, explaining why the Service had no choice now but to seize the house and the contents therein. I placed the folder in Annie’s in-box. I had no doubt the seizure would be approved by the District Director. I knew my reputation preceded me.

I met him for drinks in a smoky little bar on the outskirts of town. It did not exist on any map, but I had no trouble finding Culpepperville; I had been there many times in the past four years. To get to Culpepperville, I had only to close my eyes. It existed only in Culpepper’s imagination and, in his benevolence, he had decided to share it with me.

He was waiting for me, as always, sitting at the far end of the bar, nursing a Bud Lite and watching a Bulls game on the TV hanging from the ceiling. The bar had no name and the patrons no faces. Like shades in a dream, they floated, dark shadows amid the swirling cigarette smoke, their voices far away and muffled, as if coming from another room. It was a comfortable place; it reminded me of the neighborhood bars on the north side of Chicago, where I had dwelled a lifetime ago. There was a dart board and a pool table and dark-paneled nooks and crannies where sinister men and desperate women hatched plots, struck deals, pledged their sacred honor
—
only to betray one another at the crucial hour. In other words, his kind of place.

He did not look over as I slid onto the stool beside him. He was transfixed by the basketball game. A drink appeared before me, gin and tonic, my usual. I lit a cigarette.

“Look at that, Yancey,” he said. “Look at him. He isn’t human. He defies the ground rules. Everything about his game says, ‘’Take your physics and stuff them up your ass.‘”

We watched as Jordan seemed to float toward the goal, right arm extended over his head, cupping the ball, his mouth frozen open in an astonished 0. “Son of a bitch,
”
Culpepper said approvingly as Michael acquiesced to gravity and came down. He shook his head and sipped his beer with that same delicacy he employed on the day in Powell when he ate an apple and informed me I had become a demigod.

“I thought I’d see you tonight,
”
he said. “Here,” sliding a bowl of roasted peanuts toward me. “Biggest nuts in town.”

I asked him, “Did you see today’s paper?”

He nodded, eyes still on the flickering blue television screen. I had read somewhere why televisions always seem to shine blue light, but had forgotten the reason.

I slid the newspaper in front of him. He barely glanced at the headline:
LOCAL WOMAN COMMITS SUICIDE; BLAMES IRS IN NOTE.

“
I know,
”
he said. He slapped his open palm on the dark mahogany and yelled, “Come on, goddamnit, defense! Where’s the fucking defense!” He finished his beer and motioned to the featureless bartender for another. “I’ve been following your evolution with great interest, Yancey. I mean, you’re practically unrecognizable. What have you put on, thirty pounds?”

“Thirty-five.”

“And all of it hard muscle. What a stud! Wanna arm wrestle?”

“Not really.”

He shrugged. “It’s your time.”

“Do you remember her?”

“
I remember everything, remember?” He watched the game go to commercial. Michael Jordan for Nike. He shook his head and smiled. “You know what’s wrong with our society, Yancey? We all want to be like Mike but nobody wants to work like Mike. We sit our fat asses in the La-Z-Boy, crack open our Buds, eat the popcorn from bowls balanced on our jiggly bellies, and fantasize about being Michael Jordan. Of course, it’s not just a physical thing; it’s bigger than that. We can’t all be superhuman athletes. But the fat ass on the La-Z-Boy could be the Michael Jordan of bus drivers
—
you see what I’m getting at? I’ll tell you a secret, Yancey. I always knew you had it in you. That’s why I was so hard on you. It was a compliment, really.”

“You talk too much,” I said.

He shrugged. “Thought that’s why you came.”

“That is why, but now I can’t.”

My empty glass was whisked away and a fresh drink placed before me. I lit another cigarette. A clean ashtray appeared at my elbow. I immediately flicked an ash into it, hating the shining purity of the glass.

“Then I will,” Culpepper said. “I’ll pose it as a hypothetical. You have this revenue officer. He’s hired for one reason. He’s smart. He’s a total fuckup in every other department, but he’s got brains. And ambition, despite his ludicrous resume and the way he skims the surface of life, like one of those bugs you see in summertime, sliding along the flat water on a still day. That’s all he needed, really, to become what he was already, that and the line the Service drew for him in the sand. ‘There! And no further!’‘ Only with a wink and a nod, because this is sand we’re talking about, and the line can be moved. Did you know the term we use all the time in our jobs,
deadline,
comes from war, too? That was the line the prisoners of war could not cross or they’d be shot.

“So they show him the line and they say, ‘These are the rules. These are what you may do and may not do, but within these parameters of what is possible,
everything
is possible.
’
Are you with me so far, Rick? I don’t need to give you an example, do I? Sketch a picture on your cocktail napkin? Why do you consume those dainty-assed drinks anyway? You’re a big, beefy piece of man-cake now.

“So little by little, this hypothetical revenue officer of ours discovers that within the protocols the Service has laid out for him resides a force akin to no other in the universe: the power to impose his will upon others, the strong and the weak alike, the willing and the unwilling, the king and the jester, the sage and the fool. This power they have given him, there is no other like it, though there is one power greater than it is. Would you like to know what that greater power is?”

“Yes. I would.”

“I’m not going to tell you what it is.” He was still looking at the television. “Yet. Anyway, one day he is given the opportunity to stretch forth his hand and unleash the full force of his will, the epitome of his power, the ability to force his own misery upon another human being. All his cowardice, his rage, his feelings of insecurity and impotence, he can focus on some poor, helpless soul like sunlight through a magnifying glass
—
did you ever notice when you were a kid the funny way burning ants smelled, like the smell of burning hair?”

“You’re a sick man, Culpepper,” I said.

He laughed. “Sick. But you see where I’m going with this hypothetical, Yancey. You could have posed it yourself. You knew where the road ended that day in the interview booth with her. You knew it the very first day, when you took Jim Neyland’s hand and said, ‘Yes.’ Don’t flatter yourself. Don’t run around with the big, black
MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA!
tattooed on your high forehead. You have an extraordinarily high forehead, by the way. I mean, you could rent out space, like a billboard.
”

“I didn’t know where the road ended. I
—
you said yourself, we can’t be held responsible.”

“You interrupted me. You always interrupt me right when I’m getting to the good part. You think this has never happened before? You run around like a virgin after his first lay, convinced nobody’s ever had sex quite like
that
before. Get over yourself, Yancey. The Service expects from you what you did. And she expected it, too. See, that’s the brilliance of our system: ‘Execute what they fear.’ For if we fail to execute what they fear, the beast will die.” He had lost me and, in his frustration, slapped his open hand on the bar. “Christ, Yancey, it’s what I’ve been trying to teach you from the very beginning. Laura Marsh was waiting for it and your job was to give it to her.”

“I’m going to leave the Service.”

He laughed again. “That’s a nice idea, Yancey. You think about it every day. You take it out every night, like a little toy, and you play with it. ‘Oh, woe is me. What good is this?’ Three years ago you had a decision to make. You made it, and since then you’ve been chasing a ghost, a phantom. You’ve dug yourself a hole halfway to China and, as the sides crumble in on you, you just dig faster. You don’t try to claw and scramble your way to daylight: you just dig the pit deeper. Relax, Yancey. There are no more lines now. You stepped over the last one. You wanted to be perfect and now you are. You are the perfect revenue officer.“

I stubbed out my cigarette. The ashtray vanished and a clean one took its place, compelling me to light a third cigarette.

“You aren’t comforting me, Culpepper.”

“Oh, is that why you came tonight? Look at you,” he said, not looking at me. “All blubbery and squishy. You’re like an insect, Yancey: tough on the outside and just a bunch of mush on the inside.”

At last he turned to face me. His face shown with all the benevolence of his wisdom. In that moment, I might have embraced him. In that moment, as he smiled gently at me, his blue eyes soft and compassionate, I might have loved him.

“Do not suffer yourself, Rick. You are on the other side now.” He patted my hand. “I told you there was something greater, and you know me well enough by now to believe I don’t lie when it comes to the issue of power. I am its prince, you may recall.
”

“What is it?” I was desperate to know.

He was smiling. He looked almost angelic, bathed in the blue glow of the television screen, the smoke twisting and spinning around him like zephyrs bearing him to heaven.

“The ultimate power, Rick, the one thing the Service can neither give you nor take from you, the greatest power in the universe is the power to save the dog.”

“What the hell does that mean? What’s it with the dog metaphors? First it’s wank the dog, now it’s save the dog
—
why are we always talking about dogs?”

He threw back his head and howled with delight. He laughed until tears ran from the corners of his eyes. He clapped me hard on the shoulder.

“You kill me, Yancey! You fucking kill me! Oh, sorry. Poor choice of words. Hey, don’t get up.”

“I’m leaving.”

“
You just got here
.”

“I’ve had enough. Goodbye, Culpepper.”

“Okay. See you later.”

“I’m not coming back.”

“Sure. See you then.”

“
You’re not listening to me, Culpepper. I’m never coming back here
.”

“Said the turtle to his shell.”

My tour was over. I dropped by the pet store before hitting the KFC drive-thru. It was okay: Mr. Riley, the owner, was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and therefore no longer my concern.
[54]
He had filed the day before I arrived at his shop to close it down. When I walked through the doors that day, a tarantula in its ten-gallon aquarium habitat made a lunge for me.

Mr. Riley had expected me on that day. He was not expecting me on this day.

“Mr. Yancey! Is something wrong?”

“Actually, I was thinking about getting a pet.”

“Really?” He seemed surprised that an IRS agent might want something to care for.

“Got any specials going?”

He recovered nicely from the shock of seeing me and said, “Well, let me see… what kind of pets do you like?”

“Dogs—but I can’t have a dog.”

“How about a nice kitten?”

“I’m allergic.”

“Tropical fish… we have a special on guppies.”

“I’m no good with fish. I had an aquarium when I was a kid and the fish always died. What I need is a low-maintenance kind of pet.”

“Ah, turtles.”

“No turtles.”

“No turtles?”

“Definitely not turtles.”

“You know, iguanas are very popular now.”

“Aren’t they poisonous?”

“Now, Mr. Yancey, do you think I’d sell you something poisonous?” His dark eyes twinkled. “Say, how about a guinea pig? Wonderful little creature, very tame.”

“I don’t want a rodent.”

“Well, technically, I’m not sure if—”

“And I can’t have anything that’ll mess all over the apartment.”

I was following him through the store. I stopped by a large raised pen.

“What are these?”

“Ah, now these are top sellers, a perfect pet for a single person. Very low maintenance, sociable, and these happen to be hand-raised. Go on, stick out your finger.”

I slipped my hands into my pockets.

“Do they talk?”

“You can teach them. They’re very intelligent birds.”

“How long do they live?”

“Well, that’s the amazing thing. Some have lived to be a hundred.”

“I’m not comfortable with a pet that’ll outlive me.”

“Have you considered an ant farm?”

I held out my index finger and the bird hopped onto it. I raised my arm slowly, bringing the bird closer, but not too close. I didn’t want to lose an eyeball.

“Scratch under his chin. They love that. But gently. Gently.”

A long feather rose on top of its head, waving in the air. How delicate this creature was! I could snap its neck with my fingers.

“Cockatiels make wonderful pets,” Mr. Riley said, closing in for the kill. “And since it’s you, I’ll take twenty percent off.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Riley.”

“How about a free bag of seed? And you’ll need a cage, of course.”

“I can’t accept any gratuities.”

He rung up my items. He recommended a book on cockatiel care and I bought that, too.

“It likes you,” he said approvingly. “Did you know birds are gender-specific?”

“Aren’t most vertebrates?”

“I mean, they usually like either men or women.”

“What sex is it?”

“Oh, um…well, let’s see.”

“That’s all right. I’ll give it a gender-neutral name.

“We include lifetime clipping on all our birds.”

“You do bird grooming?”

He explained that cockatiels, like all birds, have something called flight-feathers. Once these were clipped, the bird could not fly.

“They grow back,” he said. “Once a month you’ll need to bring it back in.”

I studied my receipt in the car. He had neglected to ring up the book and the bird seed. I looked up and saw him standing just inside the glass doors of the pet store. He gave a little wave.

“Okay, bird,” I said. I would work on its name later. “Let’s go home.”

“You got a what?” Annie asked.

“A bird. A cockatiel.”

“Oh, God.” She shuddered. “I hate birds. My father kept some chickens when I was growing up in Crossville.” Crossville is a tiny village atop the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Tennessee. “And the roosters would chase me and my sisters around the yard.” There were two parakeets in the house, too, which her father would release, and she and her older sister would hide in the bathroom, screaming, until he relented and placed them back into the cage.

“I guess there weren’t too many Italians in Crossville, Tennessee,” I said.

“I’m not Italian,” she said. “I married an Italian. I’m German, Dutch, English, Irish—with some Cherokee thrown in.”

“I don’t know what I am.”

“You don’t know what you are?”

“I’m adopted.”

“Oh.”

“Some have guessed I might have Cherokee blood.”

“Why would they guess that?”

I didn’t know. I couldn’t even remember who told me they thought I was part-Cherokee. I said, “But I’m thinking I’m mostly Croat.”

“Croat?”

“You know, Croatian.” Croatia had recently been in the news. “I see pictures of those people on TV and there’s a resemblance.” She laughed. This encouraged me. It convinced me she was interested and amused. “When I was a kid, I used to fantasize that John Wayne was my biological father.”

“Why John Wayne?”

“Oh, he was, you know, big and tough.”

She laughed again, saying, “I seriously doubt John Wayne was your father,” which discouraged me.

“Allison and Dee have a theory I’m the love child of JFK and Marilyn Monroe.”

“Do you ever wonder about it?” she asked. “Who your birth parents are?”

We had been talking for fifteen minutes. I was still leaning in her doorway. This kept me close to the exit, in case something went awry and I had to make a quick getaway. I slid into the chair opposite her desk and said, “Sometimes.”

“What do your adoptive parents say?”

“That my mother was a student at the University of Florida—they don’t know anything about my father. My dad—the man who raised me— was good friends with this doctor in Miami who placed babies.”

“Placed babies?”

“He treated unwed mothers and found homes for them, the babies, I mean, if he could. If he couldn’t, he would abort them.”

“Have you looked for them? Your birth parents?” She was careful not to say “real parents.”

“I’ve never wanted to.”

“Oh, I would. If I was adopted, I’d have to meet them. I’d have a million questions. Doesn’t it kill you, not knowing where you came from?”

“Sometimes I do feel a little… alone, like I dropped out of the sky.”

“No,” she said. She knew what I was trying to say. “Not alone. Rejected. That’s the first question I would ask, if I found her. ‘Why did you give me away?’”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a gentle tap on the door. Beth stood in the doorway, a case file in her hand. I rose quickly as she said, “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

“No, just chatting with the Croat,” Annie said.

“I gotta get to work,” I said.

“‘Bout time,” Beth muttered under her breath as we passed.

I walked back to my desk. My phone rang. I let it ring. I stared out the window two blocks east toward Mirror Lake. If Blinky were still alive, I might be able to see him, sunning himself on the concrete promenade that ringed half the lake. It’s all politics, I thought. Her background is politics. She applies it to everything. Don’t go overboard. Don’t misinterpret what happens between you. Didn’t
politics
and
politeness
share the same Latin root?
[55]
Why was I spending less and less time in the field? Why were my cases gathering dust? Why did I just spend thirty minutes talking about chickens and parakeets and Croatians and the deep groanings of my rejected soul, when I should be working? And how the hell could she presume to know what I was trying to say? Plenty of people in my life had finished sentences for me; none that I could remember knew what I was thinking. None ever had the temerity to say,
I know you’re saying this, but what you’re really feeling is
this.

“Rick, do you have a minute?”

“Huh?” I turned from the window. Allison was standing in my cubicle. She was smiling pleasantly.

“Let’s go for a walk. I need a break.”

“I just took a break.”

“I know. Take another one with me.”

“I’m expecting a phone call.”

“You just ignored a phone call.”

“That wasn’t the one I was expecting.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t want to take a walk with you, Allison.”

“Let’s take a walk.”

I followed her into the main hallway. We rode in the elevator to the ground floor without speaking. When I was in high school, the elevators in the Wesley were still hand-operated and part of my summer job was running the tenants and their visitors to their floors. It required a light touch, expert timing, and an ironclad stomach. We walked outside into the bright sunlight. I slipped on my Ray-Bans. It was midmorning and about eighty-five degrees. It was July.

“You know what everyone’s talking about,” she said.

I lit a cigarette and said, “I don’t give a shit.”

“You know what they’re talking about and you don’t give a shit, or you don’t know and don’t give a shit?”

“Both.”

“Understand, I’m only bringing this up because we’re friends.”

You’re not my friend
. “Sure.”

“She’s married, Rick.”

“Who?”

“Okay. Let me just add this. She’s got two kids. And the guy who fathered them happens to be Italian.”

“She isn’t.”

“Who cares? He is. And he’s from New York.”

“What are you implying?”

“And I hear he has family connections in the
garment industry
.”

“How do you know so much?”

She sighed. “And one more thing. She happens to be your immediate supervisor. Do you know what the Service does to people who have affairs with their immediate supervisors?”

“I can guess, but I’m not having an affair with my immediate supervisor.”

“How can somebody so fucking naive beat me out of a promotion? That’s the question that keeps me up at night, Rick. Look, it doesn’t matter if you are or not. What matters is what people believe.”

“I can’t control what people believe.”

“You spend hours in her office. Everybody complains about it. Nobody can get in to see her. Everybody sees the way you look at her;
I’ve
seen it.”

“Allison, I appreciate your concern, but we’re not having an affair, and nothing I can say or do will change anyone’s mind about that. They’re gonna think what they’re gonna think.”

She laughed. “My God, you are so self-centered.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about her. You don’t care what a rumor like that would do to her career? They’ll
crucify
her, Rick.”

“They didn’t crucify Alan Randall.” Alan Randall was the District Director accused of sodomizing his secretary.

“Alan Randall had sex, Rick. The Service will always tolerate sex, especially between a male boss and a female subordinate. This is different. The roles are reversed and it’s something a bit more serious than some horny old pervert raping a clerk.”

“Oh, how you go on,” I said, to goad her.

She shook her head. “You live in a fantasy world, Rick. I guess that’s why you’re so good at this job. Why you ripped into protestors and never think twice about seizing. It never feels quite real to you, does it?”

“And it does to you?”

We had completed our circuit around the building and were standing before the front doors.

“Who put you up to this, Allison? Beth or Dee or both of them?” I asked.

“In spite of everything, I always considered you a good friend, Rick.”

“You aren’t my friend,” I said. I left her standing on the sidewalk. I could feel her eyes on my back as I walked to the elevator. I wondered why they chose her to deliver the warning. As I rode up to the sixth floor, I remembered the elements of an effective taxpayer contact.
Make demand. Warn of consequences.
And, if the demand was ignored,
take enforcement action.
Allison had hinted at what form that enforcement might take.

Crucifixion.

· · ·

I had seen him only once, when he dropped by the office one day, not long after my transfer to her group. He barreled past me in the hallway, wearing a yellow Polo shirt, topsider shoes (no socks), and green shorts, the quintessential preppy. He barely glanced at me. He walked straight to Annie’s office and slammed the door behind him. I looked over at Bonny sitting at her desk and said, “What’s it with Mr. Greenjeans?”

“That’s Annie’s husband,” she said. We could hear the shouting, mostly from him, behind the closed door.

I stood by Bonny’s window and watched him exit the building and walk to his car. She had filed for divorce shortly before Gina’s ouster, reconciled, and now was having more trouble.

“He calls here sometimes fifteen, twenty times a day,” Bonny told me. “Screams at me when she’s on another line or in a meeting. You know what he told her once? ‘Sure you’re a superstar at the IRS. It’s full of idiots. You’re just less of an idiot than the rest of them.’”

One day Annie was reaching for a case file and the sleeve of her dress drew up, revealing an ugly bruise on her right shoulder. Later, I took Bonny aside and asked, “Does he hit her?” She knew who I was talking about.

“You saw it, too.”

I nodded. “I oughtta bash his fucking fat hairy face in.”

“Should we say something?”

“What if we’re wrong?”

“It’s the right spot.”

“What is?”

“On the shoulder, where a sleeve will hide it. Batterers know where to hit you so it doesn’t show.”

Annie buzzed me at my desk.

“Hey,” she said. “Do you have a second?”

She asked me to close her door.

“I’m afraid.” She nodded toward the phone. “He just called me. Well, first the bank called me. He went to work for a bank, did I tell you that? Right after we separated. He lied on his resume. Said he could speak Spanish, said he had banking experience, said he graduated cum laude from college—all of it a lie. Rick, the man never even graduated from college. They hired him pending a background check. Well, a few days ago they called me. I’m still not sure why they called me, but I told them the truth. So they confronted him, and he tells them it’s a nasty divorce and he’s got restraining orders against me and I won’t let him see his own children and he swears everything on the application is true and then he must have called the college and had them seal his records, because the bank called the college and the college told them his records had been sealed.”