“… but fuck you, Franz. That son of a bitch tried to kill me. He killed two other people, at least, and maybe there’s someone else or something else involved and more people are going to die. So I don’t buy your version and I’ll go over your head or to TV news or whatever if I have to.”
“You know, Rick, I’m a good Catholic. I don’t think you were ever a priest. A big investigation, maybe someone will look at your Irish passport. You’re a nice guy and you got a nice baby and a nice girlfriend and mostly you don’t cause anybody any trouble. But if you are in the middle of trouble, trouble will fall on you.”
“Hey, Franz, don’t push me around. Loosely speaking, what’s good for me is good for you. But for the same reason, I can take you down with me.”
He shook his big head slowly no with an expression more in sorrow than in anger. “What is good for me is everything smooth and quiet. My interest in your Laundromat only makes me your friend when everything is smooth and quiet,” Franz said. Technically, one of his sons is my Austrian partner. He lives in Vienna. I’ve only met him twice. He’s the one who gave Franz his first grandson. Franz’s Frau accepts the son’s share rather than making me ship it all the way to Vienna. “Why don’t you go home?” he asked me, sounding merely curious.
“There are no Alps in Ireland.”
“I think you cannot go home.”
“I have a good business here. A home.”
“What is it? Drugs? The IRS? It isn’t politics—you don’t have politics. Did you kill somebody? Americans are always killing people.”
“Do you really think he killed himself?”
“Yes,” he said, very emphatically. “Maybe somewhere you were a policeman like me. Maybe in America. Are American policemen like they are on television? Do they say things like ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this!’ ‘We’ll get him, no matter what it takes?’ Mike Hammer, bang bang. Hunter, bang bang. Starsky and Hutch, bang, bang, bang.
“Anyway, I think in America there is plenty of murders, ja? Here, in Austria, there is no murders. We have the lowest murder rate in the world, of any developed country. We have the lower murder rate than Japan, even.
“Suicides, ja, we have suicides. So, an American, maybe he automatically thinks, he sees a dead person, a bullet wound, it is murder. Austria, we don’t think this. Here it is important to be correct. We are interested in order. What is important here”—he sort of joked—“is what are we going to do about the Swedes.”
The St. Antonians are distraught over the Swedes. They speak about them in a collective negative that I have never heard one group of white people apply to another group of white people before. The problem is that the social improvers of Sweden have pushed the price of a litre of beer up to $5 and a bottle of Vodka to $30. So it’s worth it for them to come all the way to Austria—thirty-six hours on a discount group bus—to drink. Austrian drinkers, who tend to be slow, steady alcoholics, starting with a beer at breakfast, another at ten, some schnapps and beer at lunch, then some genial conviviality from the end of work until bedtime, claim that the Swedes don’t know how to drink and that’s why they get out of hand. They sing, yell, and curse. They battle in the clubs and in the streets. The Austrians don’t mind the fistfights, but they hate the noise.
“This is for you,” Franz said, handing me a ski bag with ATOMIC written on the side. I opened the bag. “They were Lantz’s,” Franz said. “Much better than French skis.” They were Atomic 733SLs with ESS bindings, top-of-the-line stuff, and they looked brand-new. “You lost yours and he’ll never use them.”
THE SHORT MAN
“HI, TONY,” THE LITTLE guy who walked into my Laundromat said.
“My name’s Rick,” I said. “It’s on the sign over the door.”
“I like the Rick’s American Laundromat thing,” he said, “but you’re Anthony Michael Cassella, from New York City. West End Avenue and 96th Street, as a matter of fact.”
“You got the wrong guy,” I said.
“My name’s Chip Sheen,” he said, holding out his hand and smiling in a sociable way, “and I’m with the IRS.”
FRENCH COOKING
THE SMELLS COMING FROM my apartment were so good and so distinctive that they stopped me in the street. I stood there and simply breathed. It was not sausage in any form, it was not schinken, it was not schnitzel. It was beurre and vin rouge and shallots, it was a slow waltz of sauté, a sense of sauce. It was nothing Teutonic. It was all French.
Marie Laure was finally up and about. Perhaps a miracle had happened and Anna Geneviève was sleeping in five-hour shifts. Or perhaps Marie Laure had finally relented and decided to accept household help. It made me very happy for two reasons. First and most obvious was that I would have a good meal. Second and more important was that it meant she was ready to travel. Chip Sheen knew. No bluff, no denial was going to stop him. All he had to do was ask the Austrians for extradition.
The point was not that the U.S.A. had a tax extradition treaty with Austria, but that my status in St. Anton rested completely on false papers. One phone call to the Irish embassy in Vienna, a cross-reference to my passport number would blow me out of my fictions in a matter of minutes. Franz, the gendarme, was certainly not going to stick his neck out to protect me. Neutrality is written into the Austrian constitution.
Once the gears started to turn, they wouldn’t stop. Once I was caught up in judicial processes my life would turn into a nightmare. A series of indefensible positions that would leach my life away in legal processes, attorney’s fees, holding cells, hearing rooms, courts, and, in all probability, prison.
The only sensible thing to do was get out before they got on to me. I wasn’t happy about having to cut and run, but I was hardly in despair. Most of my assets were liquid. My liabilities were minimal. The actual machines were on a lease deal secured by themselves. That left two property leases—the commercial one for the Laundromat and the apartment lease. The apartment lease was the one dead loss. The season was practically over and subletting it for the spring and summer was an exercise in futility. The lease on the Laundromat space was really an asset. Selling the share of the Laundromat that was in my name would be relatively easy. The place was a cash cow. Paul of Down Under wanted it. Heidigger, who owned the laundry that had charged me that first $52 and inspired me to stay in St. Anton, would be delighted to get his hands on the place. Even if it was just to shut it down. It wasn’t a real possibility because he was involved in a three-generation feud with the family of Franz, the gendarme. But I could use Heidigger to motivate Franz to buy me out. There were others. The only problem would be to make the deal fast, before the IRS put some kind of lock on the property. Once I turned something into cash, one thing I knew how to do was launder it.
So I put a cheerful face on and opened the door. “Hello, Marie, hello, Anna,” I called out.
“Antony!” my mother cried.
She came running out of the kitchen with my daughter in her arms.
“Oh, Antony,” she said, “what a bellisima bambina.”
“Uh, what are you doing here?”
“I didn’t think I would be so moved by seeing her.”
“How did you get here? And why are you speaking Italian?”
“She really is beautiful, Antony. And so strong. What a grip.”
“Mom. Were you followed? By a little guy, about twenty-five, thirty? Gray eyes, sandy hair, slight Midwestern accent, altogether too happy?”
“And I am so happy to meet Marie Laure. What a wonderful girl. You’re very, very lucky. Luckier than you know. This apartment is very nice. Marie Laure showed me how the couch folds out. I can stay. What a nice girl. I really like her, Antony.”
“Did I ever teach you how to spot a tail, Mom? I mean, did you even check to see if anyone was following?”
“What are you talking about, Antony?”
“Why don’t you sit down and tell me what you’re doing here, Mom? Not that I’m not happy to see you …”
“What does it look like I’m doing here …”
“… but it really is an incredibly awkward …”
“… I’m here to see my grandchild.”
“… time. We were just going to …”
“And to help of course. It’s been …”
“… pack.”
“Pack?”
“Yes, Mom. Pack.”
“What are you talking about, Rick?” Marie Laure said, coming out of the kitchen. However nice she had been to my mother, her voice had that sleepless edge when she spoke to me.
“Rick—who’s Rick?” my mother said.
“It’s okay, we can go back to Tony,” I said.
“You didn’t tell me you had to pack,” my mother said to Marie.
“I don’t have to pack,” Marie said to my mother.
“Because if you have to pack, then I certainly can’t stay,” my mother said.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Of course you are staying,” Marie Laure said.
“Umm, Marie, my beloved,” I said.
“Open some wine for dinner,” Marie Laure said. “Something good, something French. Then help your mother unpack.”
“I don’t need any help unpacking,” my mother said. “I thought you were going to pack.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“It will be very nice to have your mother here,” Marie said. “I am looking forward to it.”
“I can help. I want to help,” my mother said. “With the baby, with the shopping, with whatever I can.”
“We’re moving,” I said.
“Ridiculous,” Marie said.
“A man from the IRS showed up at the Laundromat today,” I said.
I shouldn’t even have had to explain what that meant. It was, unfortunately, an open-and-shut matter. Right or wrong, and it was mostly wrong, if the IRS could put their hands on me, they had me. It had been a setup, a very good one. A hatred of prison and a horror of legal fees was what had kept me on the run—if a life as alpine, lucrative, as full of love and sunshine as mine could be called “on the run.” I thought I had made a remarkably good adjustment to fugitivehood. I saw no reason to renounce it. I thought both my mother and the mother of my daughter would agree with me wholeheartedly, without even a discussion.
“I am not moving,” Marie said.
“You shouldn’t,” my mother said to her.
“I have a baby to take care of,” Marie said.
“She’s absolutely right,” my mother said. “It’s about time you dealt with this.”
“How come you’re taking their side?” I asked my mother. “You just met them, both of them.”
“If you are moving, you are moving by yourself,” Marie said.
“Don’t worry—he’s not moving,” my mother said.
“And if you move,” Marie said, “don’t bother to come back.”
“He’s very smart. He’ll figure out a way to deal with them,” my mother said.
“Mom, me and my lawyers have been trying to figure it out for six years.”
“You haven’t tried hard enough,” my mother said. “Fix it, make a deal.”
“Exactement,” Marie said. “You have a family now.”
“Antony,” my mother said, in that tone of command that hadn’t really worked since I was ten, “it is time that you grew up. You must take some responsibility.”
“Exactement,” Marie said.
“Talk to the man,” my mother said.
“The IRS doesn’t deal,” I said wearily. At least, not in my case. I was on somebody’s enemies list. Forever. Or until the Republicans were gone. Which, considering how things looked in 1990, would be longer.
“Nonsense,” Marie said.
“Everybody deals,” my mother said, with a rhythm and a gesture from her Sicilian childhood.
The baby started to cry. My mother rocked her. But the baby kept crying. Marie Laure went to my mother, took Anna, and put her to the breast. It was a big swollen breast, luscious and full of milk. Too bad I wasn’t allowed to play with it. Anna Geneviève became very happy very quickly, in her greedy way.
“I’ll give it a shot,” I said. “But you better be ready to pack.”
“Jamais,” Marie Laure said.
“You’ll fix it,” my mother said as she walked me to the door. Taking my arm and speaking very quietly she added, “She’s a nice girl, Antony—you should marry her.”
The IRS, like the old FBI, possesses several powerful myths. The first is that of incorruptibility. This is not true. Agents have been and continue to be bought. Not with the frequency of Mexican police, but it does happen. It wasn’t going to happen in my case.
Another is that there is a certain degree of fairness. Also not true. The IRS prefers the easy opponent. They will fight the odd tax battle all the way to the Supreme Court, but, like any other government agency, they have limited resources. They do not want to spend 11 percent of their legal budget on any single case. Therefore they fight less vigorously if they expect their opponent to mount a major legal defense. Major does not mean the sort of defense you or I could put up, no matter how inflamed we were. Major refers to the type of legal resources that Fortune 500 corporations routinely employ.
The usual mess with the IRS involves underpayment. It’s an argument over accounting practices. What income is what type of income and what deductions are allowed. They are not saying you failed to mention your income or manufactured false deductions. If they win, as they usually do to some degree, they claim an additional payment, plus interest, plus penalties. While the actual amounts are administered at various levels of pain, the matter can be settled by simply paying money. This was not my problem.
The much more serious mess is tax evasion. You implicitly agree about the amount due. Why else did you avoid payment by failing to report your full income or by falsifying deductions. At their discretion, this can be treated just like underpayment. Then all they want is payments, interest, and penalties. But if they want it to be a criminal offense, it is. With prison sentences as well as fiscal penalties. What determines the difference? That’s an excellent question, as my accountant once said to me. It depends on whether you’re Lockheed, Al Capone, General Electric, or the mayor of New York, who your lawyer is, and if your moon is in Sagittarius. That was not my problem.
I was accused of destroying my records after the IRS had requested an audit. This naturally put me in line to be penalized for underpayment since I could hardly document either my income or expenses. It set me up to be charged with false reporting and nonpayment. The logic is that if I destroyed the records I had a reason. The only reason the IRS can conceive is that I was destroying evidence of tax evasion. Each destroyed document is one count of obstruction of justice.
Obstruction of justice, like perjury or contempt of court, is a crime that sounds innocuous. Compared to rape, armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, murder, kidnapping, fraud, and burglary it sounds like some sort of technicality. But it is a crime against the justice system and, like all systems, its very first duty is to itself. It is more important, in some ways, to punish the perjurer than to catch the murderer, because if society does not believe that there is a certain amount of truth in the witness stand, then the system fails and there is no court to control any murderer. If Admiral Poindexter lies to Congress, if Ollie North destroys records, they are guilty of obstruction of justice. They are guilty of preventing the system from operating. Such crimes are taken very seriously indeed. It takes hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and political clout on a presidential scale to stay out of prison.
Obstruction of justice was not my problem.
My problem was that I had crossed some very powerful people. Some were out of office because of me, some were still in office. All of them still had major political muscle. They had promised to set me up. They succeeded, as I had known they would, though with more success than I had anticipated. They were the sort of people never
to go back on a promise. Unless it was expedient. Then they’d go back on a promise sooner than Ronald Reagan could forget the name of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the likelihood of my making them back off was subminimal. Operating out of Rick’s American Laundromat, it was nil.
My mother did not understand that.
Marie Laure wasn’t prepared to even hear about it. And if she understood it, it didn’t matter. Motherhood had turned her—I hesitate to say unreasonable—less flexible. Leaning toward adamant.
Anna Geneviève would line up on the side of the breast that fed her.
So even though it was an exercise in futility, I went to see the man.
“Sure we can deal,” Chip Sheen said.
“We can?”
“Absolutely, guy.” He had sandy hair, slate-gray eyes, and a quick mechanical grin that snapped on and snapped off. “Would you like a beer? Gee, I love this Austrian beer. And they serve it in such big glasses—not like back in the States.”
“What kind of deal did you have in mind?”
“What kind of deal did you have in mind, guy?”
“Oh, I was thinking about something along the lines of the IRS realizes I was framed, that I paid all my taxes, and the whole thing is dropped.”
“You’d still owe Social Security for the last six years. You haven’t paid in a dime.”
“Hey, I’d be happy to pay my Social Security.”
“Then there’s the income tax you owe the Austrian government. And the Republic of France. You don’t report every schilling and franc that gets dropped in your laundry machines.”
“Bullshit,” I said. Certain that even if he knew it, he couldn’t know how much, or prove it. “And why should you care?”
The grin snapped on. “You mean I don’t know by how much and I can’t prove it,” he said. “I do know that it’s a cash business and that you or your wife …”
“We’re not married,” I said.
“She seems like a really nice girl. And you have the baby now. You should marry her.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries) Page 10
