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"The fellow who's handling your case at the moment, he is the boss. He's the one who wrote the Famous rule."
I looked at Leslie.
"What can we do now?" she said to Marquart. "Richard's got all this money to give them, we've sold nearly everything he owns to make the down payment! He could write them a check for nearly half of it today, if they'd accept it without seizing what's left. I think he could pay the balance in a year, especially if he could get back to work. But he can't go ahead on the film, he can't even write if these people are going to swoop down and seize the work off his desk. ..."
An idea lifted out of my resentment.
"Another agent," I said. "Surely there is some way to have this case transferred to another agent?"
He ruffled papers on his desk. "Let's see. You've had seven already: agents Bulleigh, Paroseit, Ghoone, Saydyst,
Blutzucker, Fradequat and Beeste. None of them wants to take responsibility, none of them wants to deal with it."
Leslie's patience broke. "Are they crazy? Don't they want the money? Do they understand this man is trying to pay them, he isn't trying to run away or make a deal for thirty, cents on the dollar, he's trying to pay them in full! WHAT KIND OF STUPID GODDAMN IDIOTS ARE THEY?" She was yelling, tears of frustration in her eyes.
Marquart remained as calm as though he had played this scene many times.
"Leslie. Leslie? Leslie! Listen. This is important for you to understand. The Internal Revenue Service is staffed by some of the least intelligent, some of the most frightened, vicious, vindictive people ever to hide behind a government office. I know. Three years, I worked there. Every young tax attorney works for the government first, to learn the enemy. If you haven't worked for the IRS, you can't function very well in tax law; you can't believe what you're dealing with."
I felt myself going pale, as he went on.
"Unless IRS thinks you're going to skip the country, it doesn't answer letters, it doesn't return telephone calls, we can't get through for months at a time. Nobody there wants to be responsible for dealing with a matter of this kind, this amount. A mistake, and they're criticized in the press: 'You evict little old ladies from their shacks, but you let Richard Bach get off with time payments'!"
"Then why don't they seize, right now? Take everything I've got?"
"That could be a mistake, too: 'Richard Bach offered to pay in full if you'd let him, but you seized, and his property wasn't worth half of what you could have gotten. . . .'
Don't you see? How much better no decision than a wrong decision?
"That's why we've gone through so many agents," he said. "Every new agent throws the hot potato in the air, hoping for a transfer or a still newer agent to come along before they have to catch the thing and deal with it."
"But certainly at the top," said Leslie, "the area director, if we went to him. . . ?"
Marquart nodded. "I used to work with him. I called him first thing, finally got through. He says no exceptions, you have to move through the ranks in an orderly fashion. He says we have to deal with the agent who's assigned, and then with the next one, and the next."
Leslie attacked the problem like a chess-position. "They won't accept his offer, yet he can't pay a million dollars at once. If they seize, he can't work. If they won't decide, he still can't work, because they might seize tomorrow and the work is lost. If he can't work, he can't earn the money to pay them the rest. We've been in limbo for almost a year, now! Does this drag on till the end of the world?"
For the first time in the meeting, the attorney brightened. "In a way, time is on Richard's side. If his case drags on for three years with no resolution, he'll be eligible to dissolve the debt in bankruptcy."
I felt as if we were having tea with the Mad Hatter. "But if I go broke, they won't get paid! Don't they know that?"
"Of course they do. But I think they want to wait the time, I think they want you to go bankrupt."
"WHY?" I said. "What kind of insane . . . they'd get a million dollars if they'd let me make the payments."
He looked at me sadly. "You keep forgetting, Richard. If you go bankrupt it will not be an IRS decision, it will be
your decision-there will be no blame for the government! No one has to take responsibility. No one can be criticized. The debt will be legally discharged. Till then, it's not all bad. Unless they make a decision on your case, you're free to spend the money. Why don't you take a world tour, stay in the finest hotels, give me a call once in a while from Paris, Rome, Tokyo?"
"Three years?" said Leslie. "Bankruptcy?" She looked to me, pity for us both in her eyes, and then resolve. "No! That is not going to happen! We are going to settle this!" Her eyes blazed. "Famous or not, up the ante and try another offer. Make this one so good they can't turn it down. And for God's sake, find somebody there with the guts to take it!"
Marquart sighed that it was not a matter of offers, but he agreed to try.
An accountant was called in, other lawyers for consultation. More columns marched through calculators, more papers shushed across the desk, plans proposed and plans trashed, new appointments set for tomorrow as we searched for an offer so risk-free that the government couldn't turn it down.
I stared out the window into the sky as they worked. Like the pilot of a crippled plane, I was certain of the crash but not frightened of it. We'd walk away from it; we'd start over. It would be a relief to have it done.
"Remember the Mojave Rattlesnake?" Leslie said, after the meeting adjourned and we rode the elevator to the parking lot.
