The first thing I heard was a child screaming. “No! No!” he, or she, yelled. And then, “No,” still a yell but muted as if someone had closed a door on a torture room.
“Mr. Rawlins?” IRS Agent Reginald Lawrence asked.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions and to give you some advice.”
“What questions?”
“What was the deal that Agent Craxton offered you?”
“I don’t know if I can really say, sir. I mean, he said that it was government business and that I had to be quiet on that.”
“We all work for the same government. I’m a government man too.”
“But he’s the FBI. He’s the law.”
“He just represents another branch of the government. And his branch doesn’t have anything to do with mine.”
“Then why you askin’ ’bout what he wants?”
“I want to know what he’s offered you, because he cannot offer anything on behalf of the Internal Revenue. Once our office commits itself we have to see an investigation through. We have no other choice. You see, I have to follow this investigation or my records”-he paused for a moment, looking for the right words”-my records will be incomplete. So you see, no matter what anyone says, I will have to draw up papers for the court case tomorrow morning.”
“What can I do about that?” I asked. “He got me on a federal case an’ I’m doing’ it. If I tell you his business I’ll be in even more trouble than I am already.”
“I cannot speak for the FBI, all I can tell you is that if you attempt to avoid paying your taxes, even by working for the FBI, we will still be there when everything is over. I have spoken to my supervisor and he agrees with me on this point. You will have to submit your tax records to me by Wednesday of next week or we will have to subpoena you.”
“So you talked this over with Wadsworth, huh?” I asked when he’d run out of wind.
“Who told you…” he started to ask, but I guess the answer came to him.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, Mr. Lawrence. I got my cards and you got yours. I guess we’ll just have to play it out.”
“I know that you think you’re helping yourself, Mr. Rawlins, but you’re wrong. You cannot escape your responsibilities to the government.” He sounded like a textbook.
“Mr. Lawrence, I don’t know about you, but I take Sundays off.”
“This problem won’t go away, son.”
“Okay, that’s it. I’m puttin’ the phone down now.”
Before I could Mr. Lawrence hung up in my ear.
I went back to the kitchen and put the vodka away. I got my bottle of thirty-year-old imported Armagnac from behind a loose board in the closet. There was a snifter sitting next to it. I learned how to drink good liquor from a rich white man I worked for once. I found that if you could savor the booze, I mean if you took longer to drink it, then the intoxication was more pleasurable. And I liked drinking alone when I wanted to be drunk. No loud stories or laughing; all I wanted was oblivion.
The tax man wanted to send me to jail, it was personal with him. And Craxton was lying, I was sure about that, so I had no idea what it was he really wanted. I might not find a thing on his communists, and then he’d just throw me back to the dogs, he might have done so anyway. I considered trying to sign my property over to someone in the meanwhile, just to cover my bases. But I didn’t like that idea because I wanted to put my name on the deeds. I wanted EttaMae. I wanted her with all my heart. If she was to be mine then I had to be a man of substance to buy her clothes and make her home.
Of course, that meant that either Mouse or I had to die, I knew that. I knew it but I didn’t want to admit it.
On Monday I went to Mofass’s office. He was sitting behind the desk glowering at a plate of pork chops and eggs. A boy in the neighborhood brought up his breakfast every morning at about eleven. Mofass stared at the food for sometimes up to half an hour before eating. He never told me why, but I always imagined that he was afraid that the boy spat in it. That’s the kind of insult that Mofass always feared.
“Mornin’, Mofass.”
“Mr. Rawlins.”
He picked up a chop by its fatty bone and took a bite out of the eye.
“I ain’t gonna be ’round much for the next three or four weeks. I got business t’take care of.”
“I’m doin’ business ev’ry day, Mr. Rawlins. I cain’t take no vacation or you’d go broke,” he chided through a mass of mashed meat.
“That’s why you get paid, Mofass.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. He scooped a good half of the scrambled egg into his mouth.
“Anything happenin’ that I need to know about?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. The police come and asked about Poinsettia.” A brief shadow worked its way across Mofass’s face. I remember thinking that even a hard man like that could feel pain at a young woman’s demise. “I told’em that I only knew that she was five months behind on the rent. That Negro cop didn’t like my attitude, so I advised him to come back when he had a warrant.”
“I wanted to talk to you about her,” I said.
He looked at me with only mild interest.
“Her boyfriend, Willie Sacks, tried t’knock my head off in front of First African Sunday.”
“How come?” Mofass asked.
“He wanted you, and I didn’t wanna tell’im where you was.”
Mofass took a mouthful of egg and nodded. As soon as he got the mess down to the size of a golf ball he said, “Okay.”
“But he was sayin’ somethin’ like whatever happened to her, I mean like her accident, had sumpin’ t’do with you.”
“That boy’s jes’ grievin’, Mr. Rawlins. He done left’er when she got sick and now he wanna blame somebody else when she up and kills herself.” He shrugged slightly. Harder than diamonds is right.
Mofass was contemptuous but I still felt bad. I knew what it was to be the cause of another human being’s demise. I had felt that guilt myself.
“You want me to hire somebody to take care of the work ’round the places while you on vacation?” Mofass asked.
He knew I didn’t like to be called lazy.
“I’m just doin’ some extra work, man. Somethin’ gotta do with that tax thing.”
“What?”
He stopped eating and picked up a cigar that had been in a glass ashtray on his desk.
“They got me doin’ ’em a li’l favor. I do that right an’ the taxes get easier.”
“What could the IRS need from you?”
“Not them exactly.” I didn’t want to tell him that I was working for the FBI. “Anyway they want me t’ find a guy gotta do with the minister down at First African. Maybe he owes ’em mo’ taxes than me.”
Mofass just shook his head. I could tell he didn’t believe me.
“So you be at church the next couple of weeks?”
“More or less.”
“I guess you gonna be prayin ’ off them taxes instead’a payin’ ’em.”
He made a sound like coughing. At first I thought he was choking but then as it got louder I realized that Mofass was laughing. He put his cigar down and pulled out the whitest pocket handkerchief I’d ever seen. He blew his nose and wiped tears from his eyes and he was still laughing.
“Mofass!” I yelled, but he just kept on laughing.
“Mofass!”
He added a little catch in his throat, sort of like a far-off goose calling her mate. The tears flowed.
