Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

he’s right here beside me. It seems we’ve run into a small problem. Mr. Cook wants me to tell you that this Ernest diSapio we’re dealing with in Scranton—Mr. Cook wants me to tell you we’ve dealt with him before, and he’s a real s.o.b., for two cents he’d send his own mother to jail—well, he’s making a lot of trouble and—”

“Wait a minute,” Mickelsson said, “I’m not following. What’s the problem?”

He heard talk in the background, the lawyer’s voice, maybe angry; then the secretary said, “This Mr. diSapio’s been over your taxes for the last ten years, and apparently none of the returns you filed suit him. He’s claiming fraud, in fact. Believe me, he’s a lunatic—old Mafia family—but then, I suppose that’s why they hired him, isn’t it!” She laughed, clean bell-tones. “Anyway, with the penalties and fines it could really add up. Mr. Cook wants you to talk to him.”

“Wait a minute! Me?”

“The thing is, you see, these people will push just as hard as they can. They’re the government’s bloodhounds, Mr. Cook says. And he does mean blood! Sometimes if a person just tells them straight out that he can’t pay what they’re asking, they’ll back off. They don’t really want you in jail, they want you in their pocket.”

Mickelsson broke in, “But those returns—most of them—were made out by certified public accountants. How can they be wrong?”

He heard her speak to Cook and heard him answer, then she said, “Any return can be wrong if they want it to be. Mr. Cook says the best thing you can do is just settle with them, try to get the best compromise you can on fines and penalties and such. They’ve got the cards, Mr. Cook says.” There was a pause while Mr. Cook spoke, then she said, “Mr. Cook says, they make the cards.”

“But I don’t owe them anything—aside from those years I missed. At least I shouldn’t.”

“That may be true, and Mr. Cook doesn’t like leaving a client high and dry like this, but he’s just one person, and the I.R.S. has got an army of those young hot-shot lawyers. They’re not human, believe me. Absolutely no conscience. He’ll do whatever you ask, if it’s legal, but his advice is that you compromise and pay them off a little at a time.”

“How much does he expect it to come to?”

“With fines and penalties,” the woman said, then apparently turned from the phone to consult with the lawyer. She said at last, “It could possibly be upwards of three hundred thousand. I know that sounds incredible. …”

Mickelsson was silent. Thirty thousand dollars a year for ten years—his whole earnings. It was so outrageous he was not even shocked, not even tempted to laugh. “They think big,” he said at last.

“Superkill, Mr. Cook calls it,” the secretary said, and chuckled. “But they don’t really want all that. They’ll agree to wipe out some of the fines and penalties, maybe all of them, and you agree to pay what you owe them, which you probably don’t really owe them.”

Mickelsson found he was shaking his head, or rather, his head was moving from side to side on its own. “I won’t do it.”

“Mr. Cook says you ought to think about it. He says to remind you they’ve already got a lien on your house—we understand you’ve fixed it up some—and you do owe for three years.”

He thought about it. At length he said, “They should be shot.”

The secretary laughed again. “That’s the truth!” she said. “But of course there’s nobody to shoot, really—that is, no one who’s responsible. DiSapio’s just awful, but as Mr. Cook always says, take away his style and he’s just one more Doberman pinscher. They all push as hard as they can to get money for the government. They’re like soldiers. They don’t give a darn, really. You might as well be a Vietnamese. I know that diSapio, and a lot of others like him down in Scranton. After work they go sit around in bars and get drunk—ask ’em what they think of what they do, they’ll just laugh at you. But they do it, never think twice. That’s what keeps ’em in their jobs.”

“Interesting,” Mickelsson said, thinking of Wittgenstein—the world as facts, behind the facts nothing visible, traceable, even thinkable. “Interesting,” he said again, more softly. The thought was not new to him, but he’d never before seen it in quite this light: perhaps there really was no government. He said, “All right then, I’ll call him. What do I say?”

“Just tell him how poor you are—make it as sad as possible—and tell him you’re eager to cooperate to the fullest.”

“And that will move him?” Mickelsson asked. “DiSapio will go easy out of pity?”

He saw her shaking her head, smiling. “Silly, isn’t it.”

“All right,” he said, after a moment. He hung up, musing, unaware that he hadn’t said good-bye. Maybe he would call diSapio and maybe he would not.

It was not yet dark when he started in to town, the shotgun on the seat beside him, the stock protruding from under the bear-rug. There had been thaw—cruel false promise of spring—then a cold snap, so that the roads were like glass, but the Jeep, in four-wheel drive, moved safely past abandoned cars in the highway median and precariously tilted tractor trailers. It had been winter now for a lifetime. As he approached the university he sensed that something was wrong and then, finally, as he drove through the gates, understood what it was. The campus was as full of lights as a sky full of snowflakes. There were cars on Campus Drive, and students were moving on the snowy lawns. The term had begun, then. He had lost track of time. For all he knew, school might have been running for a week. He stopped the Jeep, thinking of turning back toward home, then decided to risk it.

He parked in a space reserved for the handicapped, made sure that the shotgun was completely