Confessions of a Tax Collector (25 page)

They revert to childhood: eternity is a day. And if they’re able to turn the open sign on the door, it’s a victory. It’s Normandy stormed. The future becomes tomorrow, next week. Next month, next year, next five years, that’s science fiction. Get through the day. This order needs to be filled. This check needs to be covered. Pull it from the savings. Cash the bonds. That IRA, who did we think we were kidding? Cash it. Cash, cash, cash. Gotta have cash. Gotta have cash in the drawer. Is that new kid I hired dipping in the drawer? Gotta call the bank, maybe they’ll give me an extension on that line of credit. Just need a little time. A little breathing room. Need a new widget for the thingamabob. Maybe that widget salesman will give me credit. Gotta have credit. Can’t survive without credit. These rates eat the small guy alive. Get through the day. Maybe the bank would like my receivables. Buddy of mine says you can get eighty cents on the dollar for your receivables. Cash! Gotta have the cash. Gotta get that credit. Payroll next week
—
dear Jesus, if only that bastard would pay me for that work I did six months ago! That would keep me through the month. The whole damn month! Heard about that home-equity line of credit. Up to 120 percent of your equity. That would carry me another month, maybe two. Gotta have the cash. Can’t make payroll without cash. Cash, cash, cash. Credit, credit, credit. Bastards wait till you’re down and have to have it, then slap it to you with the interest. And the deeper you get, the more credit cards come in the mail. Must have six of ‘em now, at 21 percent. Must be twenty, thirty grand deep in credit card debt. Jesus, can’t even think about that. Get through this day, and it’s Thursday, then Friday, and you can work it out this weekend, sit down and work it all out. Think the payment on the forklift is due. What’s today’s date? Maybe Mom and Dad can help. Wouldn’t hurt to ask. Gotta have the cash. Cash in the drawer. Can’t keep the doors open without cash in the drawer.

“Well, I can’t believe it,” Allison said. “Rick is actually going to seize something.”

She was leaning in the doorway to Cindy’s office. I could easily have reached over and slammed the door into her smug little grin. Cindy and I were in the middle of an argument about whether to call the taxpayer before we paid our visit. As a disciple of Culpepper, I was adamantly opposed. Cindy thought it was the professional thing to do.

“It also makes the most sense from a time-management perspective. It‘ a waste of time to drive all the way out there if he won’t sign the consent.”

“He’ll sign the consent.” What makes you so sure?“

“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Cindy frowned. “This isn’t a movie, Rick.”

“Oh, right.”

“And it isn’t a game. You’re about to put this man out of business.”

It was at that moment that Allison appeared.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked.

“I thought maybe you’d want me to come with you. I could help with the inventory.”

“There isn’t that much,” I said.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, and disappeared before I could slam the door and break her little nose.

Cindy said, “I strongly suggest you call him first.”

“Call him first so he can clean out the shop? Call him first so he can run to bankruptcy court?”

“Your case closes regardless,” she said calmly. Her soft tone called attention to the fact that mine was not. I was practically shouting. “I know you’re anxious to make a seizure, Rick.”

“No. I was just under the impression that’s what the government was paying me to do. This is a really interesting discussion, Cindy, but if you’re not willing to assist me on this seizure, I’ll find someone who is. I’ll see if Beth’s here.”

“I never said that. I’m just your OJI. I can’t tell you what to do.”

“Right. Gina is the manager, and she signed the paperwork. Let’s go.”

The rain had slackened to a swirling gray mist by the time we were on the road to the cabinetmaker’s. The seizure kit rattled in the backseat. Cindy grabbed hold of the
Oh, Jesus!
handle and said, “You never forget your first seizure. It’s like your first kiss.” She told a long, uninteresting story of her first in-business seizure involving a worm-farmer, someone who actually raised earthworms for a living. “A good revenue officer never seizes anything alive,” she finished. “I didn’t know that then. Never seize anyone with livestock. Never seize a pet store. Because you’ll have to feed the damn things.” She asked if I had called Andy McNeil. I told her Andy was on standby. Andy McNeil was the towing company owner who assisted us with the seizure of vehicles in the county. Andy loved repo work. Culpepper said he was at heart a frustrated revenue officer. I found it hard to believe that anyone, in their heart, was a frustrated revenue officer. Cindy asked if I had remembered my cash receipt book. She asked if I had checked the seizure kit for plenty of Scotch tape. I listened to the odd squeaky sound beneath my hood and gave her one-syllable answers. What was that vibration in the rear? A tire about to blow? We had a good laugh when Allison blew out the rear tires on her brand-new BMW driving down the interstate; she had run over a two-by-four that had fallen from the bed of a pickup she was tailgating. She was currently wading through the Atlantic Ocean of red tape required for reimbursement for the damage. Why was I thinking of Allison? I was hyped, light-headed from the pot of coffee at Denny’s, the cigarettes, and the adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream. Culpepper:
The thing about seizures is you never know what’s going to happen. Things shift in an instant. I seized this gun shop owner once. He was a Vietnam vet, an ex-marine, but a pussycat through the whole process. He went through the inventory with us and the ATF, and nobody noticed that he had left the room until we heard the shot go off in the back office. So ATF goes running back there, guns drawn, and there’s the guy sitting behind his desk with the
.557
on the blotter in front of him, and there’s a hole in the wall behind him. “Missed,” he said.

Culpepper’s theory, borne of years of experience, was that the most dangerous type of seizure was the mom-and-pop store, the sole proprietorship into which the taxpayer had invested much more than cash.
You’re taking something bigger than the water cooler and typewriter, Yancey. You’re crushing something precious. You’re that crazy Indian bastard tearing open the chest and ripping out the heart still beating, from that
Indiana Jones
movie
—
not the first one, the second one, the one that sucked.

Cindy said, “Another good reason to call is he might not be here. You have to serve the levy on him.”

“The manual says I can serve it on the person in possession of his property.”

“You should serve it on him.”

‘That’s not what the manual says.“

“We’ll call Gina if he’s not there.” Cindy, there isn’t any reason to call Gina.“

“I don’t think we should serve the B on an employee. I never have.”

You haven’t served many on anyone, I thought. Cindy was a Grade 12, the highest rank a revenue officer can achieve, but she wasn’t going anywhere.

Like Henry, she always found a reason to forgo a seizure. Her inventory languished; cases dragged on for years. “Baby-sitting,” it was called. I did not intend to become a baby-sitter. If I was going to stick with this damn job, I was going to be the best revenue officer who ever carried a bag.

A Chevy cargo van was parked by the front door. I swung through the lot and drove to the nearest pay phone. I called Andy and told him to meet us at the business. Now, even if the cabinetmaker refused consent, I would not come away empty-handed. I drove back to the shop. The large bay doors were open. Someone on the forklift was moving pallets of material from one shelf to another. The taxpayer had valued the lift at $15,000. After taking a forced-sale reduction, that was $9,000 in my pocket. The government’s pocket. The van was worth about $4,000. That was another $2,400. I was already over ten grand. We got out of the car. The mist was cold, hard-driven, icy pins pricking my cheeks. The pavement was slick, glimmering; I could feel the heat rising from the hood of my car as I walked past. Every sensation was heightened, as in the most vivid of dreams. I opened the door for Cindy and we stepped inside.

“I had my first kiss today,” I told Pam after she slipped into bed beside me.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“My first seizure.”

“
Grand
or
petit mal
?” she asked.

“You wanna hear what happened?”

“Not really. It bores the shit out of me.”

She rolled onto her side and opened her book. I had come to bed at 9:00, my usual time, but couldn’t sleep.

“I’ve decided something,” I said.

“What have you decided?”

“I’ve decided that since it looks like I’m going to stick with this thing for a while, I might as well be… well, brilliant at it.”

“Is that possible?”

“In general or for just me personally?”

“‘I don’t care if you decided to be a ditchdigger when you grow up, as long as you’re the very best ditchdigger you can be.’” She was being snide ‘ My mother had said this to me when I was a child, and I had made the mistake of telling Pam the story.

“I could do it, you know. Be brilliant at it. I swear I’ve never felt the things I’ve felt today.”

She yawned. “Sounds like you’re falling in love.”

“I think I’m… attaining enlightenment.”

I began to tell her about the cabinetmaker seizure. Telling the story helped me to relive it and feel that odd tingling in my scalp and the sense that the room was shrinking, or I expanding to fill it. I stopped after five minutes. She had fallen asleep.

He was not, in the words of the manual, a “repeater.” Nor was he one, as Gina called them, of the “hardy perennials.” He had never been in business before. If he had, he might have learned some tricks to keep us at bay—at least for a while. He did not understand accounting, billing, budgeting. He understood his craft. He understood how to take a plain piece of wood and transform it into something beautiful. He understood his dream. He did not understand why we had come.

“Mr. Yancey! I was just going to call you.” A common refrain when we walk in unannounced. “Hi,” he said to Cindy. He led us to the little back room that was the epicenter of the dream. Sawdust crunched beneath our feet. The work area vibrated with the din of the saws. An elderly man looked up from his task as we passed. He wore blue overalls, earplugs, plastic goggles. The cabinetmaker did not introduce us. I saw two other men working in the far corner. They seemed to be having an argument. Three inside, one outside on the forklift. Four employees, plus my taxpayer. Today they would go home unemployed. He shut the door behind us, but the sound of steel teeth chewing wood still reached us as he found the stools, throwing long sheets of drafting paper onto his desk.

“Sorry for the mess,” he said. “I’ve been working on something. Big job. Well, I don’t actually have the job yet; I’m bidding on it today. That’s why I was going to call you. I think I’m going to be able to…”

I pulled Form 668-B from the case file. I addressed him formally. My v°ice sounded faint in my own ears. “We’re here today for $28,915.22.”

“You said I could have forty days.”

“I said you could have ten days—”

‘Plus thirty. That makes forty.“

“Ten days to make your tax deposit for this quarter. That was the first part. The most important part. Did you make that deposit?”

“That’s one of the things I needed to talk to you about, Mr. Yancey.”

“Did you make that deposit?”

“See, these plans here, it’s for a whole subdivision. Thirty-six units. If I can land this contract, I could pay—”

“Did you make that deposit?”

His shoulders dipped slightly. In either hand he held the plans. They rattled against his thighs. He turned to Cindy.

“I’m almost there. I just need a little extra time.”

“Do you have $28,915.22 to pay today?” I asked.

He sank into his broken chair. The plans fluttered to the floor. “No.”

I pulled out the consent-to-enter. I dropped the case file on the stool and walked over to him. He looked up. Sawdust clung to his hair, his eyebrows. He needed a haircut. I held out the consent.

“What’s this?”

“We’ve come to seize the assets of the business for nonpayment of—”

He waved his hand at me, then let it drop in his lap. A small sound escaped from the back of his throat, not quite a sob; his eyes remained dry. I placed the consent on his desk, next to the picture of his wife and son. He barely glanced at it. I explained what it was.

“By signing this, you’re giving us permission to come in here and inventory the assets.”

“Inventory my assets? You mean, take ‘em. And if I don’t sign it?”

“We’ll go to court and—”

“You’re taking me to court?”

“No. What I was going to say, we’ll get what’s called a writ-of-entry. Sort of like a warrant.”

He nodded. He was holding up well. Better than I was. I felt as if my knees were about to give out. I focused on the mechanics; I followed the flowchart inside my head.

“You sign right here, above your name. And the date goes right here. I handed him my pen. I was leaning over the desk,
willing
him to sign. He whispered, ”Mr. Yancey, I know I can pull this out. I know I screwed up. I screwed up big time.“

“It’s really out of my hands now,” I said. In other words, we might as well argue about the rain.

He nodded. The pen turned slowly in his fingers. His palms were rough, calloused, scarred by old wounds, where splinters had bitten deep.

“I’ve known those men out there over fifteen years. That old fella you saw when you came in… he was my fifth-grade shop teacher. He helped me set the whole thing up.”

“We really don’t have a choice.”

“Doesn’t look like I got much of one either.”

He signed the consent. I peeled off the carbon. “This is your copy.” I turned and Cindy, as if we had rehearsed it, handed me the B.

“This is Form 668-B. It is our formal, written demand for payment. I have to read you this section.” I read the paragraph aloud. He did not look at me. He was looking at some point over my right shoulder.