Confessions of a Tax Collector (32 page)

“Deja vu,” I said to Beth as we stepped out of the car. We waited for Howard and Greg to don their blue windbreakers embossed with the words
u.s. treasury special agent
on the backs.

“I’ll take any patients that might be in there,” Beth said. She was all business.

“Did you bring some levies?” I asked. We would serve them on the patients for payment.

“They’re in my briefcase.”

We followed Stevens across the parking lot. Greg broke from the group to take his position by the back door. His coat was unbuttoned. Stevens had hooked his badge on his lapel; the morning sun glinted off its gold surface.

“Have you ever fired your weapon in the line of duty?” I asked.

“Never even drawn it. Came close once.”

“What happened?”

He paused, his hand on the door. He was reading the no trespassing sign.

“I changed my mind.”

There were no patients inside. The receptionist rose from behind her partition as the door came open, her mouth opening soundlessly as Stevens heartily wished her a good morning. I set the seizure kit down and flashed my commission at her. I asked her if the doctor was in.

“He’s in the back.”

“We need to see him,” Stevens said.

“I’ll get him.”

She disappeared through the door behind her desk. Stevens turned and leaned on the partition, a half-wall separating the receptionist’s work area from the rest of the room. A trickle of sweat ran down the middle of my back. What was the protocol? Do I make introductions? I glanced at Stevens, whose mouth was open in a cavernous yawn. He caught me looking and said, “If I push you, you go down.”

“What’s that?” I found myself whispering.

“If I push you, go down. Don’t argue. Don’t ask questions. If I can’t reach you, I’ll shout ‘Down!’”

“Okay.”

“You never know.”

The inner door swung open and my dentist stood in the doorway, the receptionist a couple of steps behind him. His face was dark, his eyes ringed by black circles. We stared at each other for a few seconds, until I heard Stevens’s voice in my ear.

“Rick, you’re on.”

“Hello, Doctor,” I began.

“Cindy!” he yelled at the girl behind him, keeping his eyes on me. “Call the police!” He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him, leaving her inside the examination room. He came around the partition, into the waiting room. His hands were on his hips. His nostrils were flared. His bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows were drawn together. He smelled of alcohol.

“Doctor, I’m here today for $32,415.23.”

“I don’t owe you a penny!”

“Can you pay that today?”

“You’re not listening to me!”

Beth handed me the writ-of-entry.

“Doctor, this is a court order authorizing us as federal agents to enter these premises and seize the contents of your business for nonpayment of internal revenue taxes.” I held it out to him. He took it from me and glanced at it. Then, with exquisite deliberateness, he tore the papers in two and allowed them to fall from his hands. They fluttered to the floor around his feet.

Beth handed me the next document. The routine reminded me of a surgeon and his assisting nurse—or a dentist and his hygienist. I fought the urge to laugh.

“This is Form 668-B. You need to read this paragraph, in the middle of the form.”

He folded his hands over his chest and glared at me.

“I do not recognize your illegal forms.”

“I’ll put it right here,” I said, balancing the paper on the partition. “You can look at it later.”

“I intend to piss on it later.”

“This is another Form 668-B. We are serving this form in order to seize the building. This is Form 2433. It is your formal notice of seizure. This one has the legal description of the real property. We’ll be giving you another Form 2433 once we complete the inventory of the assets.”

“I don’t have any assets. I don’t have any possessions under the definition of the very so-called laws you profess to enforce.”

Beth had left my side to begin listing the assets in the waiting area: the battered sofa, the overstuffed arm chairs, the two end tables.

“I intend to have you arrested and I will sue all of you personally for a writ of trespass and suspension of my habeas corpus. I will file suit against you for violating my civil rights as a sovereign citizen of the state of Florida, under which your so-called revenue statutes have no jurisdiction over my sovereignty.”

“How’s that?” Stevens asked.

The dentist jumped, as if just noticing Stevens’s bulk taking up half the room. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Special Agent-in-Charge Howard Stevens. How are you?”

“Special Agent-in-Charge, huh? Well, la-de-da. Let me ask you something. What is the section of the Internal Revenue Code that requires me to file a tax return?”

“I would have no idea.”

“You have no idea of the law you purport to enforce? You’ve answered my question, Mr. Special Agent-in-Charge. There is no law, because by definition I am a nonperson.”

“I’m sorry, you’re a what?”

“A nonperson. A nonperson, as defined by the Internal Revenue Code.

“Is that so?”

“You’re damn right that’s so! And I got the evidence to prove it!”

“Rick,” Beth said. “I’m done here.”

“Okay,” Stevens said. The bemused look on his face fell away and his dark eyes lost their sparkle. “This is the deal, Doc. These folks have served you with papers that authorize them to take full possession and control of your property. You’re going to let them do that. You’re going to allow them to do their job with no interference. If you chose to interfere in any way with the performance of their official duties, I’ll have no choice but to place you under arrest—in violation of Title 26 of the United States Code, Section 7212(3) and/or Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 111… in case you want the citation.”

The dentist stepped around me and jabbed a thin finger into Stevens’s chest.

“You bastards take one stick of furniture. You touch one piece of equipment. You lay one filthy Nazi paw on my molds, and I’ll have you arrested for breaking and entering, assault and battery, trespassing and grand theft.”

“We’re willing to take our chances,” Stevens said dryly. He nodded to Beth and me. We walked into the reception area. Behind me, I heard Stevens cry out,
“Down!”
And I hit the floor, Beth falling with a thud beside me. I folded my hands over my head and waited for the bullet to tear through my body. So this is how it ends, facedown on a threadbare carpet that smelled mildly of dog urine, and for what? What was my life worth? $32,415.23.I could hear the sounds of a struggle, of someone grunting and someone else shouting. I took a deep breath and rolled to my side. Stevens had taken a position between us and the doctor, blocking his way into the reception area, one hand gripping the partition, the other pressed against the wall. The slight dentist was slamming his body into Stevens, shoulder first. Stevens was grunting with each blow; the doctor was shouting incoherently, nearing a falsetto as he began to sob. Stevens took him by the shoulders and pushed him straight back.

“You’ve got to settle down!” he shouted. “I don’t want to arrest you!”

He released him, and the dentist kept backing up until his knees hit the sofa and he collapsed onto it, burying his head in his hands. Stevens watched him for a moment, one hand inside his jacket. He glanced back at us. His face was flushed and his dark eyes shone brightly. He was pumped. He nodded to us.

“If that girl’s back there, send her out the through the back. Get Greg in first to check out the interior before you get to work. I’ll stay with him.”

“You okay?” I asked Beth.

She nodded. Her lips were wet and her eyes were shining brightly, too.

“Let’s go,” she said. “I’m good.”

“Come on!” the dentist screamed as we went into the back room. “Come on and fucking arrest me, you Nazi fucking bastards!”

“Shut up or I will,” I heard Stevens say, wearily.

We completed the seizure without further incident. I signed the second 2433 and Beth signed directly below me: under the law, two IRS employees must attest to the accuracy of the seizure. I found the dentist sitting in the waiting room, Stevens standing by the door, watching the traffic pass outside. Beth placed a warning sticker on the front door while I handed the taxpayer his copy of the Notice of Seizure. He wadded it into a ball with great deliberateness and threw it at my nose.

“I will see you in court,” he promised me.

Stevens left his post and joined us.

“We all done here, Rick?”

“All done.”

“Oh, you’re done all right,” the dentist said.

“I’ve given you a lot of rope here, Doc,” Stevens said. “Don’t use it to hang yourself.”

There was a rapping on the door. An elderly man leaning on a cane was standing outside, cupping his hand against the glass.

“That’s my eleven o’clock,” the dentist said.

Beth unlocked the door and stepped outside. The dentist watched, open-mouthed, as Beth handed his patient a Notice of Levy. This reminded me of something.

“The patient files.”

Stevens asked, “What about them?”

“We can’t place them under seizure.”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality?”

I nodded. “You’ll have to take them with you,” I said to the dentist.

“I’m not taking them with me because I’m not going anywhere.”

Stevens turned to him and said with exaggerated patience, “You will be leaving, because we are leaving, and you are here with our permission. This is now the property of the United States government.”

“Which has no jurisdiction over me.”

“Whatever. You should consider yourself lucky you’re not under arrest. You’ve committed at least two felonies this morning, so my advice to you is to shut your mouth, pack up your files, and live to fight another day.”

We watched him drive away in his Toyota Camry.

“You know,” Stevens said. “For a nonperson, he packs quite a wallop.”

“Why didn’t you arrest him?” I asked.

Stevens shrugged. His expression was as impenetrable as a Buddha’s. “We all have a role to play, Rick. I might have done the same thing, if some assholes came to take away everything that mattered to me.”

* * *

A week later the dentist called and asked to meet with me in the office. I brought the request to Gina.

“Of course you’ll meet with him,” she said. “But prepare for the worst.”

“I know what my idea of the worst is,” I said, remembering the dive into the carpet. “What’s yours?”

“Video cameras. Tape recorders. Picketers. An army of protestors camped on the steps. Use the booth with the panic button.” One of the interview booths was fitted with an emergency button located under the table. It was linked directly with the police department. In larger posts-of-duty, the panic button rang in the offices of Criminal Investigation, which would send at least one armed agent to the rescue. Our button also rang in Gina’s office, a fact that did not inspire confidence. Toby scoffed that Gina would dive out the window if the panic button ever was hit.

“At the very least, expect him to tape-record the meeting. So we will record as well. There’s an office tape recorder around here somewhere. Ask Bonny. But make sure you check the batteries; I don’t think it’s been used since Billy was here.”

On the morning of our meeting, there was no army at our gates. Just my taxpayer and his stern, thin-lipped wife. Neither of them looked well. I led them into the booth, located in a room just outside Taxpayer Service. I left the door open and slid behind the panic-button side of the table. The tape recorder was loaded with fresh tape and batteries, but the dentist had not brought one, unless he was concealing it beneath his seersucker coat.

“Mr. Yancey,” he began. “This is difficult for me. I have
…we
have made a terrible mistake.”

He wiped his hand over his face. His nails were long, yellow, and broken at the ends. His hand was shaking. I thought,
And this man is a dentist.

“We want to know how we can make this right,” his wife said.

“That depends on your definition of right,” I said. “Can you pay the full amount?”

“We—” the dentist began.

“No,” she said. “We can’t. Not all at once. We would like for you to consider letting us open the doors for a few more months.”

“They’ve cut off our electricity!” the dentist shouted. He began to weep. Following my instincts, I abandoned my native caution and closed the door. When I returned to the table, he had composed himself enough to add, “We were suckered, Mr. Yancey. Five hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars we don’t have. Five hundred dollars.”

“That you could have given to me.”

She said, “Without the business we’ll lose our house. We’ll lose everything. It’s all the income we had.”

“So you know we can’t pay all of it.” He was growing impatient. “Tell us our options.”

“Well, they’re pretty limited right now. We can release the seizure if you pay us the full amount. We can also release it if you give us the minimum amount we expect at sale.”

“How much is that?”

“With the real estate, about five thousand dollars.”

He moaned. She lowered her head. No one said anything for a moment. Then she said, “We don’t have five thousand dollars, Mr. Yancey. Isn’t there some program—doesn’t the IRS have something that can help people like us.

“You can file a Form 911. That’s an appeal to overturn our decision based on the hardship it’s created.”

“Well, it’s certainly created a hardship,” he said bitterly.

“That’s debatable,” I shot back. “We were working on an installment plan before you sent that letter.”

“We were suckered,” he repeated. “We were conned.”

“We made a mistake,” she added. “Can’t you take that into consideration?”

I tapped my pen on the desk. I let the silence drag out.

“You keep saying you were conned. Who conned you?”

They exchanged a glance. He looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and he smelled of alcohol. He knew immediately where I was going and was hesitant to follow me there.