Confessions of a Tax Collector (38 page)

“It would have been better if you had fallen down.”

“I’ll remember that next time.”

“Doesn’t sound like he punched you. Did he ball up his fist? Did he hit you with a fist?”

“He sort of lunged at me and hit me with the heel of his hands.”

“So it wasn’t a fist.”

“Halfway to a fist.”

“Halfway to a fist? You’re gonna get up on the stand and say that? ‘He punched me with his hand halfway to a fist?’”

“I heard there was a gun in the truck.”

“There was. Did he take it out while you were there?”

“No. He left with his sister.”

“He left?”

“Yes.”

“And you stayed.”

“Yes.”

“Ah. So the threat was gone. That’s why you stayed.”

“He hung around for about thirty minutes.”

“The threat was gone. That’s why you stayed to complete the seizure.”

“Right.”

“Where the hell is Inspection? Where the hell is my ice? Okay. So, you complete the seizure. Why didn’t you call the cops?”

“He seemed calm.”

“What about the gun?”

“I didn’t know about the gun.”

“Forget about the gun. The gun has nothing to do with it. He has a license.”

“Okay.”

“What were you doing when he busted through the gate?”

“Stickering one of the trucks.”

“Putting a warning sticker on it?”

“Right.”

“Where did you put the stickers?”

“I had just placed one on the passenger-side window.”

“Did he see it?”

“The sticker?”

“Was the door open? Was it open, like, facing toward him as he came toward you?”

“No.”

“He came from your right, though. He could have seen the sticker.”

“Why does it matter if he saw the sticker?”

“Because if he saw the sticker he could assume you were the IRS. It helps if he knows you’re the IRS. Why didn’t you identify yourself?”

“I did.”

“After he hit you.”

“Right.”

“Always identify yourself before they hit you.”

“I will.”

“He tested positive for dope, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

“Found some in the truck, too. We can’t introduce any of that unless he gave some kind of indication to you at the time of the assault.”

“He wasn’t smoking anything when he came at me.”

“But his demeanor? Drooling, eyes rolling in his head, slurred speech? Anything to indicate to you he was high?”

“He just seemed pissed as hell.”

“That’s it. That’s their defense in a nutshell. He gets this frantic call from Mommy, ‘They’re takin’ Daddy’s trucks!‘ and here he comes. He claims she didn’t tell him it was the IRS. Says all he knows is he was defending his property from trespassers. Lost his head. Big misunderstanding. You’re going to hate to hear this, Rick, but we’re gonna plea this one out to a lesser charge. I can’t go to a jury with this one. They’ll roll it into a hard little ball and stick it up my ass.”

“So let me understand you,” I said, my temperature rising. “You’re saying, first, I should have shouted ‘Halt! IRS!’ at him when he jumped out of the truck. Second, he should have smacked me with a fist. Third, I should have fallen down. Fourth, once I got up I was supposed to jump into the car and haul ass out of there. And fifth, I should have examined him carefully during the assault for any clues that he might be stoned. And sixth, none of the above makes any difference, because no one likes the IRS. But number six aside, if I had done all that, then you’d have a perfect case?”

“No, I’d have a perfect case if he had pulled out the gun and shot you.”

At that moment there was a knock on the door.

“Christ,” he said. “My ice. About goddamned time.”

He opened the door and growled, “You’re late. And you better have some goddamned ice with you.”

“I’ve got the ice if you’ve got the bourbon,” William Culpepper said.

“Look, Yancey, you made the paper.”

After the meeting, Culpepper had invited me down to the cafeteria for some coffee and doughnuts. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the coffee was thick as maple syrup. He ate one glazed doughnut and was now working on an apple, “for balance,” he said.

It was the lead story in the local section of the Lakeside paper. The headline read, IRS agent assaulted during seizure.

“Don’t look so glum, Yancey. There’s no such thing as bad press. When he cuts the deal they’ll put it on page six. What matters is the arrest. Your taxpayers will read this and think twice before they take a swipe at you.”

“I’m heartened.”

“I just wish I could have been there.”

“You miss being a RO?”

“No. But if I was there, I’d have this.”

He pulled back his jacket to reveal the shoulder holster. All Inspectors were authorized the carry firearms.
Great,
I thought.
Culpepper with a gun. I can sleep tonight.

“They told me you’d changed,” he said.

“Who told you?”

“New haircut. New beard. New wardrobe. Blue eyes. Why blue?” His own blue eyes sparkled. Culpepper was feeling his oats. “Now if only you could gain thirty-five pounds. You want to join my gym?”

I tried to imagine myself as Culpepper’s workout buddy, and failed.

“And Rachel quit,” he went on. “I knew she wouldn’t make it.”

“You didn’t think I’d make it.”

“You haven’t made it.”

“You can’t provoke me, Culpepper.”

“Okay.” He laughed. “Heard about the group’s grievance. Too bad.”

We had lost. Gina was still our boss. Her victory had emboldened her; she was nastier than ever, in her own cheerful way. Toby had fallen into a deep depression. When he came to work, he sat at his desk and played reggae on his Walkman, listening through earphones so we had to shout at the top of our lungs at him, “Toby! You have a phone call! YOU HAVE A PHONE CALL!”

“What a bunch of fuckups,” Culpepper said. “You went about everything ass-backward.”

“What do you mean?”

He was glowing. He lived for such pontifical moments.

“Look, they hate her. Upper management, I mean. They’ve always hated her. But she’s too smart for them. Always had the goods on somebody, always covered her tracks, always outsmarted them at every turn. Two division chiefs, two district directors, and four branch chiefs, she’s outlasted them all. They would love to get rid of her, but they have no leverage.”

“That’s why we filed the grievance.”

He shook his head. “Tell me something. Did you get blue contacts because of the statistic that blue-eyed people are smarter than the general population?”

“Reading
Mein Kampf again
, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “No.
The Prince.
See, you broke the rules. You don’t tell management what to do with one of their own. You stepped onto their territory and they blasted you back over the DMZ. Because when it comes right down to it, incompetent and lazy as she is, she’s still one of them, and you’re still one of
you.
”

“I guess the only alternative then is to kill her.”

“You need to listen to me. I’m telling you how to do this. To get rid of Gina, you have to wank the dog.”

He told the story of the dog breeder he had worked as a Grade 11 revenue officer. On his first field call, she revealed her secret for keeping her males in top breeding condition.

“She jacked them off. You know, gave them a hand job. So I asked her, ‘How often do you have to masturbate these animals?’ And she says, ‘Oh, about once or twice a day.’ That seemed a bit excessive to me. I mean, these must be some incredibly horny dogs. I say, ‘What kind of dogs do you breed?’ And she goes, ‘Chihuahuas.’ And I said, ‘Well, that must be a very delicate operation. I can see how someone in your position might find it difficult to keep on top of the taxes.’”

When I finished laughing, I said, “I don’t see what wanking a Chihuahua has to do with getting rid of Gina.”

He ignored me. “She took me out back to the kennel and those were some of the happiest goddamned dogs I’d ever seen in my life. There was this one that could jump five feet straight up into the air, I’m not kidding.” He finished his coffee and said, “Management is the lonely dog-breeder. You are the horny Chihuahua. You don’t relieve yourself, you come to Mamma for relief. Employees don’t tell management what to do with management. Employees tell management what do with
them.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“You’re smart, Yancey. You radiate intelligence. You’re the fucking Rasputin of the IRS. Think about it on your drive home. You’ll get it. Only you didn’t get it from me.”

He comes at me, his shoulder lowered like a running back busting through the line, and the early afternoon sun casts his face in shadow. He -wears a dirty T-shirt and cutoff jeans; his legs are tanned and muscular, his body toned from years of hard physical labor in the brutal Florida heat. Motherfuckingsonofbitch! And his hands come up, dirt packed tight beneath his chewed-up fingernails, my face his target: he will claw out my eyes; he will jab his fingers into my eye sockets, hook his knuckles inside the ocular cavity, and rip off my face. I spread my legs wide, planting myself to absorb the impact. At the last possible second, I duck beneath his flailing arms and smash an uppercut into his solar plexus. Stepping to one side, I bring up my left fist and let it fall against the side of his head. I hear a voice behind me say, “Holy Jesus, Yancey,
”
as the nurseryman’s son collapses face-first into the gravel driveway, out cold before he hits the ground. I turn. It is Andy, looking at me with newfound admiration.

“My God, you’re skinny,” Toby said one day at lunch. “How can you eat a big fat burger like that and still stay so skinny?”

“Metabolism,” I answered.

“Metabolism?”

“And I’m an ectomorph.”

“What the hell is an ectomorph? Sounds like some kind of worm.”

Henry laughed. “Rick’s a worm.”

“Somebody with a lean body-type,” I said. “Hard as hell to put on weight.”

“If you’re an ectomorph, what am I?”

“You’re an endomorph. Someone with, uh, a lot of tissue.”

He gave one of his deep belly laughs. “Gotta helluva lot of that.” He placed both hands on his stomach and jiggled it up and down.

“I’ve tried everything,” I said. “Milkshakes three times a day, weight-gain supplements.”

“That don’t mean shit,” Toby said. “You gotta stop smokin‘ so much and guzzlin’ the coffee. It’s the caffeine and nicotine doin‘ you in, my man.

“Need to pump,” Henry said.

“Listen to you,” Toby said. “‘Need to pump.’”

“Pump iron. You know, lift weights, like Arnold Schwarts-a-whatever.

“The only thing Rick do liftin‘ weights is break his skinny little arms.

“Still, rather be skinny than a fat-ass like you, Toby.”

“You watch it, Henry, or I’ll take my straw and ram it up your nose.

“When I was seventeen, I enrolled in that Charles Atlas course,” I admitted. “You ever see that in magazines? Ninety-eight-pound weakling gets sand kicked in his face and he takes Charles Atlas’s course and just six weeks later he comes back and beats the shit out of the guy who stole his girl?”

They both stared at me, expressionless.

“It used to be in all the comic books.”

Nothing. I sighed. “Anyway, I ordered this thing and it comes in these tiny pamphlets, about this big with real tiny writing and these little diagrams, and it all works on the principle of resistance—you don’t lift weights, you just kind of push on different parts of your body.”

“Well, that’s the biggest load of bullshit I ever heard in my life,” Toby said.

“It didn’t work,” I conceded.

“Join a gym and pump some iron,” Henry said.

But I couldn’t picture myself strolling around in a gym, my chicken legs exposed for all the world to see.

“You cut out the cigarettes, you’ll gain ten pounds at least.”

“I need to gain about thirty.”

“We never satisfied,” Henry said, growing philosophical. “Toby wants to be skinny; you want to be big.”

“And you want to be smart,” Toby finished.

“And I want to be
single.”
Henry was the only one laughing. It didn’t bother him, he usually was.

Headquarters in Jacksonville dispatched Fred Newberry to Lakeside in response to our complaint. Fred was something called an Occupational Development (OD) Specialist. Fred had a handlebar mustache and a hound-dog face. He wore the unofficial uniform of headquarters, clip-on ties and short-sleeve dress shirts, complete with pocket protector. He loved flipcharts and buzz words like
group dynamics
and
team building.
Fred was like one of those overly enthusiast people regularly seen on infomercials and at used-car lots. He was interminably upbeat. He also enjoyed full-body hugs, especially from every woman he met.

Gina was gracious, apologetic, kind, and optimistic. It was a show for Fred’s benefit: he would be making a full report directly to Byron White and she had no intention of giving him any ammunition. For our part, the day was spent in glum recalcitrance. Toby barely spoke, wallowing in his despair. At one point, Fred asked Gina to leave the room so we could openly discuss our concerns. Fred got nowhere with us. He decided to leave the room, too. “Just write down what you got. Nobody has to put their name on anything. If this is going to work, we’ve got to have full and honest communication.”

No one said anything for a while. I was looking at Beth and thinking,
Wank the dog. Go on, Beth. Wank the dog.
I hadn’t felt proud when I figured out Culpepper’s riddle, just relieved. “Wanking the dog” was the only hope left.

“You know,” Beth said quietly. “I’ve been thinking about this, and I think maybe we’ve been going about it all wrong.”

Still no one said anything. She went on. “You don’t tell management what to do with one of their own, even if one of their own is Gina Tate.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Toby said. “We lost. End of story.”

“I say we file another grievance.”

“I ain’t filin‘ another grievance. I ain’t sittin’ another day in a room with that man.” He was referring to Fred.