Confessions of a Tax Collector (18 page)

I closed the door behind me. The latch went
snick.
He did not move. I slipped into a chair at the opposite end of the table, closest to the door, placing the DIAL before me, and waited.

“I have asked Gina to transfer the Clausen case to me,” he said. There was a long silence. “She has refused. I don’t agree with her, but I can understand her reasoning. If Burt Clausen were closely connected to organized crime, he wouldn’t owe taxes.”

I thought of Al Capone and said, “How do you figure?”

“Did I ask you a question, Yancey?” He still had not turned to face me.

“No, you did not.”

“Then shut the fuck up. You aren’t as smart as you think you are. You’re smart, but not in any way that’s significant, not smart in the way smart really matters. Do you have any fucking clue what I’m talking about? Do you?”

He had asked a question, which granted me license to say, “Not really.” The interview must have been worse than we had imagined. He was acting as if he had just received news of a loved one’s premature death. He shifted in his chair. His black hair shone in the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent bulbs above us. I wondered if the story about him losing all his hair was true or something delivered for effect. With a jolt, I realized I was feeling pity for him, this prisoner of his own ambition, this slave to the beast, this thrall to the gods of power. The outline of his dark hair was sharply defined against the blank white wall, and I thought of the apple he consumed before me that day in Powell, which now seemed so long ago. As a would-be dramatist, I was rewriting his part as we sat there, from tormentor to tragic figure, a pint-sized Macbeth, strung up by his own overweening ambition.

“Of course you don’t. I’ll explain. I’ll use small words, nothing over three syllables: nobody truly connected to the Mafia owes federal taxes. They have enough headaches without us on their case. The mob is one of the most compliant sectors of the taxpaying public, at least when it comes to employment taxes.”

“So we go after him?” I asked.

“Of course not. We’re fifty-threeing it.”

“Fifty-threeing” an account refers to Form 53, which is used to report taxes as currently not collectible—calling off all enforced collection.

“On what basis?” I asked.

“On the basis your OJI told you to do it. Gina will sign it.”

“Okay,” I said. “What about levying Maroli Construction?”

He whirled around to face me.

“Have you no conscience?” he snapped. “What do you think would happen to those two pitiful losers if the Marolis found out the taxes weren’t being paid?”

“Is that our problem?”

“Spare me, Yancey.”

“Our job is to feed the beast.”

“You will fifty-three this account.”

“You want to fifty-three Burt Clausen and seize Laura Marsh’s jungle gym. Isn’t that somewhat screwy?”

“We’re not IRS, Inc. We’re not in the business of making a profit. We aren’t a business, period.”

“I don’t care about that. I just want what I do for a living to make sense.”

He laughed. “You want a job that makes sense? Become a carpenter. What a carpenter does makes sense. He takes a few pieces of wood and some tools and at the end of the day he has something to show for it. A table. A chair. A nightstand. Something you can touch, something you can appreciate, use, perhaps something even beautiful. He has created something. What do we create?” He spread his hands apart, palms upward. “We do the opposite. We
nullify.
We confiscate. We obliterate. We take a bunch of numbers and make them go away. That’s all it becomes after a while— just a bunch of numbers. You pick up a TDA
[12]
as a trainee and you think, ‘Dear Jesus! This poor fucker owes five thousand dollars!’ Five years later you’re a Grade Twelve working million-dollar accounts. And if you’re lucky—poof! you make the numbers disappear. And half the time you won’t even know where they go. Your job is the black hole of occupations.

“You’re getting a little too far out there, even for me, Culpepper.”

“Then I must be pretty goddamned far.”

“Why don’t I just call Burt and tell him we’re going to levy Maroli. Won’t that get him to pay?”

“Drop this.”

“Since when did you care what happens to taxpayers?”

“You drop this or I will write you up.”

“Maybe you should.”

“I will write you up for insubordination and you can go back to your paper route and your little faggot theater crowd.”

“You’re a truly pitiful human being, you know that, Culpepper?”

He took a deep breath. He placed his hands on the tabletop, splayed his short fingers, and studied his polished nails. My heart was high in my chest, my cheeks burning hot. My scalp tingled. Don’t lose it, I told myself. If you lose it, he wins.

“Fine,” I said. “I don’t give a shit.”

“You will,” he said quietly. I let it pass. I had always detested confrontation and now I faced it on a daily basis. It had become the defining characteristic of my existence. Again I had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling of being a stranger inside my own skin.

“I have been waiting for the paperwork on the Marsh case,” he said.

“What paperwork would that be?”

“The seizure paperwork, Yancey.” He sounded weary. “Remember your plan-of-action?”

“She sent me a check for a thousand dollars.”

“She did what?”

“Sent me a check for a—”

“Where’d she get a thousand dollars?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I didn’t ask her.”

“It’s your job to ask her.”

“I didn’t think it was apropos.”

“You didn’t think it was—apropos? Is that the word you used,
apropos
?”

“I was just happy she sent it.”

“Oh, yes, I bet you were. At this rate, she’ll have the debt retired by the time you’re ready to. Do you begin to see the pointlessness of your argument, Yancey?”

“I wasn’t aware that I was making an argument.”

“You’re not aware of much, are you?”

“Look,” I said. “Culpepper. You’re obviously upset about something other than the fact that Laura Marsh had the gall the send the IRS a thousand dollars.”

“Listen to me, you little fuck, don’t you ever talk to me that way again.”

I laughed aloud. I didn’t expect it, and clearly Culpepper didn’t expect it, either.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Was that insubordinate? I was going to say that I have revised my plan-of-action in the Marsh case. My new plan-of-action is to grant her an installment agreement, and the first time she misses a payment, I am going to seize—after she signs a consent,
[13]
of course.”

“Gina will never sign it,” he said, meaning the installment agreement.

“I’ve already discussed it with her. She agrees there’s some public policy considerations in seizing a day care in a depressed area of town.”

“Okay,” he said at length, drawing the word out. Then, very softly, so softly I could barely hear him from six feet away: “Why are you doing this, Yancey?”

I knew precisely what he meant. He did not have to explain what “this” was. I did my best Richard Gere imitation, from An Officer and a Gentleman: “Because I got no place else to go!”

Culpepper smiled. It was an altogether pleasant smile, and therefore altogether chilling.

“I thought paperboys always knew where to go,” he said.

“How did you know about the paper route?”

“I’ve seen your file.”

“That’s in my file?”

“Your application is in your file. Remember the section about all the jobs you’ve held over the past ten years?” He laced his fingers together and studied me over his clenched hands. “You know, we investigate all that.”

“The Service investigated my paper route?”

“The Service sends Inspection to former employers, family members, old lovers, present and former neighbors... then Inspection writes a report.”

“Must make for some pretty dull reading.”

“On the contrary,” he said, “I found it fascinating.”

“Can I see the report?”

“You can file a Freedom of Information Act request. Then in about two years you may get a copy, but most of it will be redacted.”

“Redacted?”

“To protect the informants.”

“Informants?”

“The Service must be extremely careful about who it hires. The power available to a revenue officer could be devastating in the wrong hands. We don’t want morons and we don’t want crooks.”

I was hardly listening by this point. He was poised to launch into another of his monologues about the exalted nature of collecting taxes, and I didn’t have the stomach for it. My mind dwelled on the word informant. Had they interviewed Pam? She was, at that time, the person closest to me— had the suits showed up at the house one day, perhaps while I was in Tampa, with their badges and shoulder holsters and dark glasses? Would she have spoken with them? Did she have a choice? And, if they had come, why hadn’t she told me? And, if she did speak to them, what did she say? Culpepper was watching me, a knowing look in his eyes, as if he knew what dark weed he had planted with the word informant.

“You want to know how long we keep your application? For the duration of your career. See, it’s a federal offense to lie on your application. Remember I told you that it practically takes an act of Congress to remove you, once you’re out of the training year? If they really want to get rid of someone, they pull the application, because most people do lie on applications or they forget about a job they had for a couple of months six or seven years back. I’ve known several people they got that way. One was a union steward making management miserable, so they handed his file over to Inspection. Turned out he had been fired from a job, but on his app he said he had left voluntarily. After twenty-five years of distinguished service—he was a goddamned good RO, by the way—they took

him out. Lost his retirement, too. Because he pissed them off. The life lesson here, Rick, is you do not cross them. You do not piss off the Service, they will find out if you’ve crossed them and they will find a way to get you.”

Back at my desk, I dug out my copy of Form SF-171, the standard application for government employment, thinking of the day a thousand years ago when I had filled it out, remembering vividly how sad and small my life seemed once reduced to a seven-page bureaucratic form. How it appeared to me I had lived more places in the past ten years than a migrant farmworker. How my life consisted of big dreams and petty jobs. The paper route. The convenience store. The small print shop. The acting workshops or preschoolers. I had omitted the single day I worked as a telemarketer selling prescription contact lenses. That was over seven years ago. Could they find out about that one? Probably. Would they really fire me over such an insignificant oversight? Of course they would. Above my signature was the statement, in bold print,
UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY, I DECLARE THE
ABOVE STATEMENTS TO BE TRUE, CORRECT AND COMPLETE. Perjury. I Was a perjurer. Had Inspection already pulled my tax records and found I had not been “true, correct, and complete?” Of course they had, and Culpepper was letting me know they had and that he, too, knew they had. All he had to do, at any time, was to tell Gina he didn’t think this Rick Yancey was working out and it would be best if they exiled him back to the world of his little faggot theater crowd. “Don’t cross them,” he had said. What he really meant was, “Don’t cross me.”

There was a note from Pam on the kitchen table when I arrived home that afternoon. “Leftover chicken and some potato salad for dinner. Have to work late. Meet me at The Cellar after rehearsal, about 10:30. Love, P.‘ The Cellar was the hangout of choice for the theater crowd, an intimate beer joint attached to the Howard Johnson’s, with an antique jukebox, stuffed parrots hanging from the ceiling, and a few tired-looking plastic palm trees in the corners. I hadn’t been there in months. I decided to take a quick nap; it was only five o’clock and I wasn’t hungry. I lay on the bed, still in my shirt and tie, and thought of how I hated the soft mattress and how I missed the firm mattress in my old room at my parents’ house. That made me think of my parents, whom I hadn’t seen in months, though they lived only twenty miles away, and the resulting guilt made it impossible to sleep. Had Inspection talked to my parents? I couldn’t recall a line on the form that asked for their names, but surely they could find that out. Perhaps Pam told them. I know I’ve lived with him for four years, but I really don’t know him very well. He’s quiet; keeps to himself mostly. You really should talk to his mom and dad. They live right over in Lakeside. Here, I’ll give you their address and phone number. Dad would tell me if they came—the visit would have disturbed him, even after assurances it was all routine and all I had done was commit a little perjury.

We’ve discovered he left something out on his application. This makes us wonder what else he may have left out. We need to know: What kind of person was he? What is his relationship with this Pam person? Why aren’t they married? Would you say this reflects on his moral character? What are you thoughts on his moral character? We do know he’s a perjurer and a fornicator—has he broken any other laws that you’re aware of? And, if my mother was involved, she might tell them the story of the toy that somehow slipped into my pocket at Grant’s Drug Store when I was ten. How, when she discovered my crime, I was marched back to the store to speak with the manager, a corpulent man with copious nose-hair whose name escaped me, but surely would not escape Inspection once they heard the story. Of course I remember him, the little thief!

A band of golden afternoon sunlight streamed across the foot of the bed, stretched itself upon the floor, and crawled up the pale blue wall on the far side of the room. In the gloaming, I had the sense of time racing toward some inescapable conclusion, to a reckoning I had not foreseen. The why no longer mattered. I had leapt into the river at the point of its swiftest current, and had been swept away. I wanted to reach the end; I wanted to see where the river took me. The Service had awakened something dormant within me, something that had always been there, lacking a language to give it voice, an arena in which it might triumph. Culpepper had seen this, had likely gleaned it from my file, for in my past, he had seen a reflection of his own. He was nurturing the seed through fear and intimidation—and temptation. The Service offered people like us the one thing that we would find irresistible: a world of practically limitless power, nectar of the gods to the ineffectual dreamer, for whom life was not a pursuit of happiness, but a struggle for recognition and control.