Tax Day | Leslie Wolfe
- Kim Hunter
- Apr 24, 2017
- 15 min read
Approximate reading time: 30 minutes
I love receiving short stories from authors. They bridge the long gap between novel releases and remind me that the author is still around and busy writing! Here is the latest from Leslie Wolfe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Tax Day
When Jason approached his home, it was already dark. The day had been unbearably long, although not at all unusual for the last day of tax season, April 18. What was unusual was to see all the lights on in the house. His wife liked to spend the evening hours curled up on the sofa with a book, or bingeing on the latest HBO series. Then she’d put on her fuzzy slippers and tie her bathrobe to warm up his dinner, then keep him company as he savored it in the peace of their suburban home.
Judging by appearances, that wasn’t the case this day. The ceiling lights were on in the living room, the dining room, and the main hallway. He could see a flickering shadow moving rapidly from room to room, not too clearly because of the curtains covering the large windows. He groaned loudly and, with a furrowed brow and a silent prayer for some well-deserved rest, he clicked open the garage door. By the time he cut the engine, Lynn was waiting for him in the doorway.
“Ah, thank goodness, you’re home, Jase. We’ve got a problem.”
He loosened his tie, as he climbed out of his BMW 6 Series, and followed Lynn inside the house, without knowing what to expect. He ran his hand over his forehead a couple of times, massaging the tiredness away and arming himself with patience for whatever challenges awaited behind that threshold.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, in a low voice riddled with undertones of exasperation.
“It’s the shower faucet, Jase. The damn thing broke inside the wall. The bathroom’s flooded; the wall’s wet. Even the bedroom wall’s soaked, the carpet too.”
“Okay,” he let out a long sigh. A broken faucet he could handle. He felt an ache through his entire body, knowing it would be a while until he’d be able to enjoy a long, relaxing shower, but at the same time he was relieved it wasn’t something worse. “Let’s just cut the main water shut-off valve, clean up the flood, and go to bed. I’ll get the shop vac.”
“Um, that’s not going to work,” Lynn replied between clenched jaws, showing him a piece of metal tucked in the palm of her hand.
“What’s that?”
“Half of the water shut-off valve,” she replied. “I don’t know why it broke; the house isn’t that old, and the thing doesn’t seem that frail. As for the main valve outside, it’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“As in not there. Someone stole the handle.”
“Let me see that,” he said, then grabbed the piece of metal from her hands. The break lines were clean of rust, the thick metal broken, as if it were made of glass. “What did you do, take a hammer to it?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“Oh, so now that’s my fault?” she reacted, putting her hands promptly on her hips in a belligerent stance. “Really?”
“No, I didn’t say that,” he withdrew, then bit his lip. “Okay, let’s call someone.”
She pulled a folded piece of junk mail from her pocket and handed it to him. It read, “Victory Plumbing, 24/7 Emergency Service,” in red, bold lettering, then, below that headline, the coupon offered 25 percent off for after-hours jobs, satisfaction guaranteed, a large supply of available parts, and immediate response.
“Huh, what do you know?” he muttered, while reading the ad. Then he loosened his tie some more and pulled it over the top of his head; as soon as it landed on the armchair, his suit jacket followed. Then Jason made the call.
“They’ll be here in ten minutes,” he said, attempting a smile toward Lynn. “We got lucky. It’s almost eleven; you can’t normally get plumbers this time of night.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied, not sharing his enthusiasm. “Let’s hope he’s not some drunk moron who can’t tell his head from his rear end.”
He didn’t dare respond; instead, he let himself drop onto the sofa and closed his eyes just briefly, hoping for ten minutes of shuteye.
“What are you doing?” Lynn asked, standing right in front of him.
He opened his eyes and looked at her sheepishly.
“You think that flood’s waiting for that plumber to come? Sorry, Jase, but I need your help. I’ve been cleaning up for hours now. I can’t anymore.”
He’d been using the shop vac for what seemed like forever, when the doorbell finally rang. Water was seeping from the wall, at the base of the wall and above the tub tiles, and, by all appearances, the tiles seemed ready to give and start popping out.
He turned off the machine, wiped his hands, and opened the door. The plumber stood there with a toolkit in his hand. Jason gave him a quick look and almost shook his head. The man couldn’t have been older than thirty, maybe not even that. He didn’t stink of booze, but he stank all right—that stale, sour odor of perspiration mixed with grime and cigarette smoke. His eyes were red and puffy, surrounded by black circles, and his face was drawn. His shoulders were hunched forward, and his head hung low. He seemed barely alive, but Jason didn’t have much choice.
“Someone called for a plumber?” he said, and his voice didn’t sound any healthier.
“Yeah,” Jason replied. “It’s the shower pipe, in the wall somewhere. Come, I’ll show you.”
The plumber took off his shoes, and Jason felt appreciative for an instant, just until the smell of the man’s socks hit his nasal cavities. He turned his head away and swallowed hard; it was revolting.
The plumber entered the flooded bathroom and whistled. He walked in his socks on the wet floor, and Jason almost chuckled bitterly at the thought that he was finally washing his feet.
“You got yourselves a nasty one here,” the plumber said. “Where’s your main?”
“Here,” Lynn replied, crinkling her nose and extending the broken valve piece. The plumber whistled again.
“Wow… we need to take that wall apart, to get to the leak.”
“Can you fix it?” Jason asked.
“It’s just a pipe; sure, I can. I need a few things from the van.”
He went into the bedroom and stopped in front of the corresponding wall, all wet. The puddle of water on the carpet was expanding and had almost reached the other wall.
“We need to take this wall out of the way. I’ll cut out a piece of it, but it’s wet, so it might break. If you don’t want me to—”
“No, no, go ahead,” Jason said quickly, afraid the plumber might leave them hanging. “Tell me what you need.”
“I got what I need,” the plumber replied sadly. “Router, drill, some copper, solder, torch… nothing unheard of. All in the van.”
He walked toward the door, leaving wet footprints on all the carpets. Lynn and Jason exchanged an eye-roll discreetly, behind the man’s back.
The plumber hauled all the necessary tools from the driveway in what seemed like hours. Then he finally cut through the wall, moving expertly, without hesitation, and without breaking the drywall, now worthy of being called wet wall.
“You let this dry really well, and you might be able to reuse it,” he muttered. Then, examining the gushing pipe, he whistled once more.
Water was coming out through a crack that had almost sectioned the entire pipe a few inches above the faucet. He touched it gently, assessed the pressure of the leaking water by covering the leak with his finger, then went through his tool box and extracted a copper sleeve. He slid it over the leak and measured to see if it would hold.
“How did this happen? How does something like this even happen?” Jason asked, staring at the leaky pipe from behind the man’s shoulder.
“It happens,” the plumber replied. “It’s pipes; they leak. It’s going to cost you a bit, discount and all. This is major work, you know. You can’t solder wet pipes, because the water turns to steam and the pipe stays cold. Won’t heat enough to solder. I have to cut—”
“How much?” Jason reacted impatiently.
“A grand,” the man replied tentatively. “With the 25 percent discount, maybe I can drop it to eight hundred.”
Jason pressed his lips and clenched his fists, exasperated. That rip-off was just the beginning. Then the wall, the carpets, the bathroom tiles... it was a damned mess. “All right, just go ahead and do this already. I’ve got to work tomorrow.”
“I feel you, brother,” the man replied, grinning for the first time since he’d arrived. “You and me both.”
He crouched on the wet carpet and examined the pipe in the beam of his flashlight, then decided he needed to take another piece of wall off. “Since this cracked just like that, in the middle, I’m thinking maybe it leaks someplace else, because see here?” He rubbed his index against his thumb. “This is water, coming from above somewhere. We might need to replace the entire thing, to be sure.”
He cut through yet another piece of drywall and placed it carefully aside, then he scooched down lower, examining the point where the pipes went into the foundation. He grunted and groaned a couple of times, then, without warning, he just turned and sat on the floor, leaning against the doorsill next to the opening he’d carved. He stretched his legs in front of him and closed his eyes. Much to Jason’s surprise, tears started rolling down his grimy cheeks.
“Can’t do this shit anymore, man,” he whimpered. “I just can’t…”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” Jason said, feeling the blood drain from his face. This wasn’t happening; not to him, not at midnight on the longest day of the year.
He scoffed angrily and towered over the man. “You’d better get this job done, mate, because if you don’t, this won’t end well for you. If you fix this, we’re all good and you get paid, all forgotten. If you leave it like this, I’ll have you arrested for destruction of property.”
Hearing those words, the man hugged himself and started sobbing with his mouth open. Jason felt Lynn’s hand squeeze his arm. He took a step back, hoping that she’d be able to save the day that had started like a typical endless, overworked tax Tuesday, but was turning into one of Kafka’s nightmares.
“Can I get you something?” Lynn said in a gentle voice. “A warm cup of tea? Coffee, maybe?”
The man shook his head, keeping his flooded eyes firmly shut.
“What happened to you?” she asked gently, crouching next to him. “I can see you’re terribly upset.”
“She… left me,” the man replied between heart-wrenching sobs. “My fiancée, she just left.”
“Aww, so sorry to hear that,” Lynn replied. “What happened?”
“This… happened,” he replied, gesturing with open arms. “This, what I do. She didn’t like the smell of my hands when I came home from work. She said she can’t think of where my hands have been all day, and she won’t let me touch her anymore. And she’s right. My hands go into people’s toilets and their nasty drains. I touch and smell the filthiest that people have to give, all of their waste, unfiltered. You should see some of the things I pull out of clogged toilets, man…”
“Why don’t you do something else?” Lynn interrupted softly, probably not at all curious to hear more.
“That’s what she said, but what could I do? I’ve done this all my life,” he added, rubbing his eyes with his dirt-covered hands and leaving dark streaks on his cheeks. “Now I can’t even look at pipes, man. I can’t. I just want to grab them out of the damn walls and tear them to shreds,” he added, clenching his fists in front of him and making a twisting movement so abrupt and unexpected that Lynn pulled back a few inches, still crouching.
“What, you’re afraid of me?” he laughed bitterly, seeing her reaction. “I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. But that doesn’t matter, not to her.”
“You could do landscaping,” Lynn offered, “and work with flowers instead of toilets. Maybe she’d like that. What do you say?”
“The money’s worse, but I thought of that. I can’t get the equipment though. My credit’s shot.”
“Oh…” she replied. “How about selling this?” she pointed to his scattered tools.
“They won’t bring much; just a few hundred, maybe a grand. The van’s junk. And I can’t do landscaping at night.”
Lynn frowned, seemingly confused. “Why work only at night? What do you do during the day?”
“It’s the cops… My license’s been suspended. Legally, I can’t drive. I’m finished,” he added, burying his face in his hands and letting out a few more sobs. His shoulders heaved with each sob, and Lynn touched his arm with a comforting gesture.
Jason frowned and grabbed Lynn’s other hand. She looked at him and he shook his head, then mouthed, “No.”
She nodded and stopped touching the plumber, but then shrugged, and mouthed back, “What do we do?”
He didn’t have an answer for that.
“What happened to your license?” Lynn asked. “What if we helped you a little, give you a little more money and the name of a good lawyer to help you get it back?”
The man took his hands from his face and opened his red, swollen eyes. “You’d do that for me?”
“Absolutely,” she replied with an angelic smile. “We help each other, right? That’s what people do. As soon as the flood’s over and done with, we’ll both help you.” She looked up at Jason and he managed a forced smile, but the anger he felt was swelling his chest and started flashing in his eyes. Where the hell was Lynn going with this damn soap opera? The man needed to know he was about to leave the house in handcuffs, if he didn’t get his act together.
As if she’d read his mind, Lynn looked at him and mouthed, “Please. Let me do this.”
He shrugged and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling his tired bones ache. The plumber had closed his eyes again and new tears ran down his cheeks. He shook his head slowly, then muttered, “Thanks, but I’m beyond that kind of help. I’m finished. There’s a warrant out for my arrest, or something.”
Lynn’s eyebrows shot up, and she looked at Jason, just as he took his hand to his head. What? He was a wanted fugitive? In their bedroom? That changed things, a lot. He reached for his cell phone.
“What for?” Lynn asked impassibly, her gentleness unchanged.
“Taxes. They took my business license and froze my accounts. I can’t do anything anymore; I’m finished. Do you think she’ll take me back like this?”
Lynn looked at Jason again, asking for his help. There was no way he was going to do it. None. For this man? He deserved to be in jail, although the IRS never put anyone in jail just for owing taxes. The man was lying about something, but he didn’t care to learn more. He felt Lynn squeeze his hand, and averted his eyes. She squeezed tighter, and he shook his head and pressed his lips firmly together.
“Please,” she mouthed, while the plumber had resumed his endless sobs.
“No,” he replied just as quietly, and deeply furrowed his brow. He couldn’t believe she was asking him to do that.
Lynn stood and whispered in his ear, “Come on, Jason, you do this all day long. Why not now?”
“There are no grounds for an appeal here. Just because some woman was smart enough to leave him doesn’t qualify him for any leniency from the IRS.”
“How about this? Our house? The carpets are soaked, the water’s gushing with no end in sight, the floorboards will be soaked by morning. It’s 2 AM, Jason, please.” He gave the man a disgusted look, then he glanced at his wife again. That plumber didn’t deserve it, but she did, and so did their home. Reluctantly, and hating himself for every move he made, he brought his laptop in from the living room, and sat on the side of the bed, firing it up.
“What’s your name?” he asked coldly.
“Why? You want to sic the cops on me?” he replied, wiping his hose on his sleeve.
“For crying out loud, I don’t need your name for that. How stupid can you get?”
“Jason!” Lynn whispered, and he sighed, swelling his bitter anger.
“I’m the deputy commissioner for the small business division of the IRS,” Jason explained reluctantly. “I want to look at your account, and see what we can do.”
“You’d do that for me?” he said, looking him straight in the eye with unspeakable hope. He folded his legs under him and shifted forward, closing the small distance to Jason on his knees. “Jeremy Ackerman, that’s my name.”
“Social?”
The plumber hesitated a little, then blurted out the numbers. He then repeated them, and Jason found his account. Yes, he was in deep trouble. Several issues popped up on the screen: one to close his business, another to seize and sell his assets, and the third to levy his bank account. He’d never replied to recent attempts to communicate, and he didn’t negotiate terms of payment. There were services that helped people like him get back on track, but this man…
He gave the plumber another look. He’d crouched at his feet on the soaked carpet and didn’t even dare to blink. He didn’t seem too smart, and probably, sooner rather than later, there would be an end to his business and a huge payment due to the IRS. But maybe this one time, he could make an exception.
“If I fix this for you, will you finish the damn pipe?”
“Are you kidding me? For free!”
Jason scoffed. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You owe $121,345.37 in back taxes. I will mark the record that we discussed it, agreed on a payment plan, and void all your pending issues.”
“Oh, my God… thank you,” the man said, with fresh tears in his eyes.
“This is not a hundred and twenty-thousand dollar gift; don’t get any ideas. You hereby make a solemn commitment that you will repay this amount in $5,000 installments per month, until all debt is settled.”
“I swear,” he replied, taking his hand to his chest.
“And you’ll stay current on all taxes owed going forward, understood? Otherwise, I will come after you. Personally.”
He nodded vigorously, then added, “I swear on the light of my eyes. You won’t be sorry.” Jason typed a few notes on the case file, and closed all the open issues. Then he sent a quick email to the enforcement division requesting all of Jeremy’s rights be reinstated.
“There,” he said, then slammed the lid shut on his laptop.
The plumber tilted his head and the look of hope in his eyes turned to anxiety.
“No offense, man, but how do I know you’re not tricking me?”
Jason’s eyes shot toward the ceiling in silent imploration. Then he opened the laptop again and turned it toward the plumber, so he could see.
“This is your record, marked with today’s date and notes. Read them.”
A few seconds later, the man said, “Uh-huh, that’s awesome.”
“This is the email I sent to the people who enforce the IRS rules. There, happy?”
“More than I’ve ever been. I can’t think of words, man.”
“Now fix the damn pipe. I need to sleep.”
“Consider it done, with my compliments.”
The plumber hopped to his feet and trotted to his ratty van and came back, bringing a new water shut-off valve. “Where’s the main?” he asked, sounding almost cheerful.
“Over here,” Jason replied, leading him to the laundry room, while a deepening frown furrowed his brow. Why hadn’t he done that before, changed the valve to stop the water? Tired and resigned, he pushed his concern to the side, glad to see some progress was finally being made.
“There,” the plumber said, while squeezing the newly replaced valve shut-off. “The flood’s over. Now we can solder that pipe.”
It took him fewer than thirty minutes to be done with everything, then he turned the water back on and checked the soldered pipe for leaks. There were none. He grabbed his tools and made for the door, while Jason wrote him a check for eight hundred dollars, wondering why he felt he’d been taken for a long, long ride.
“Here you go,” he said, handing the plumber his check. “Remember what we discussed. Don’t miss a single tax payment, or else I promise you—”
“Cross my heart,” he replied. “I’d be happy to call us even, and not charge you for the repairs.”
“Nope, not acceptable,” Jason said, holding on to every last bit of ethics he still had. “Take it, and use the money to pay some of the back taxes you owe.”
Finally, he closed the door and sat on the nearest armchair. He rubbed the nape of his neck, and checked the time. It was almost four in the morning; in two hours, he had to be up and ready for another long day in the office.
The thought of that seemed unbearable. He picked up the phone and made a call, announcing to the office he was going to take a sick day. Then he left a voicemail for himself, on his office line, to dig deeper and find out everything there was to know about one Jeremy Ackerman. Something about the entire issue was off and, if he’d been taken for a fool, he’d get to the bottom of it. Still unsettled after leaving that message to himself, he stared at the phone for a long minute, then dialed 911.
Outside, the van’s engine started noisily, then the noise faded away, as the van turned the corner. Behind the wheel, Jeremy ran his hands over his face then retrieved a number from his phone’s memory. He initiated the call, and a man’s voice picked right up.
“So? How did it go?”
“Like magic, bro! You were spot on! Can’t believe it worked!”
“Told you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did, and I was Hollywood material too. You should’ve seen me. They better line up them Oscars, baby, no kidding. Tell Marcy thanks for the makeup job. I owe her one.”
“You better, and you got to make good for this number, bro.”
“Just name it.”
“How’s a couple of eight balls of pure coke, all good stuff?”
“You got it. But you got to tell me, how did you pull that number on them pipes, man? They were broken like they were glass.”
The man on the other end of the call laughed, a raspy, well-smoked laugh that resonated loudly in Jeremy’s van.
“Liquid nitrogen, bro. Sprayed a little, then hit them with a hammer, enough to crack them. Then left the coupon in the mail. Easy-peasy.”
“We should be in business together, you know. I cleared eight Benjamins tonight.”
“Jeremy, baby, you’re not thinking straight. I don’t deal in taxable revenues. If I’m breaking into houses, I’m leaving with way more than that. Otherwise, it ain’t worth it. You need to be in my line of business, not the other way around.”
“You stole from the IRS guy? Are you high, or something?”
“No, dumbass, you’re paying me for this job. But the money you’re making, if it’s that good, why not pay the damn taxes, huh?”
“Just didn’t feel like it, bro, that’s all there is to it.”
“That’s a load of crap. Come work with me, and you’ll be clearing eight grand a night, not eight Benjis, all tax free.”
As soon as Jeremy arrived at the local hardware store and pulled into the parking lot, he turned off the ratty van’s engine. Then he unlocked the black Cadillac Escalade that was waiting nearby and rolled off.
“Nah, I’m good, man. I make a decent buck the way it is. At least I don’t risk going to jail.” “Ha, ha,” the man laughed again, “that’s what they all say.” The sun was beginning to light the sky when the flashing, red-and-blue lights of a police cruiser appeared in his rearview mirror.
Copyright © 2017 Leslie Wolfe. All Rights Reserved.
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