Mickelsson's Ghosts (89 page)

It was mid-day, maybe later. Clean golden light streamed through the windows. Mickelsson groaned before he knew why he was groaning, imagining he'd missed some appointment or class, and threw his legs over the side. Then it all came back. He touched his chin and found it grown out like a bum's, and from the feeling of bristles under his fingertips he got a brief, puzzling image of himself as a hobo, maybe the Wandering Jew, walking forever along a highway in a ragged coat.

He dressed in his work clothes—old jeans, tattered shirt—though he had no idea what he intended to work on, more puttering in the wood-shop, perhaps. He noticed that, over on the bedroom wall, the phone was off its hook. He stood thinking a moment, scratching his head, once again touching the bristles on his chin, then replaced the receiver. As he turned again toward the bedroom door he got an image of the fire up at the old people's house—how many days ago now?—black rubble, clouds of steam in the black-branched trees. He saw the firemen moving around slowly in their long black slickers, Owen Thomas among them, John Pearson leaning on Dudak's truck-fender, his mouth cocked back in a grin.

At the foot of the stairs he found the cat waiting, looking up at him. When Mickelsson was five feet away the cat turned quickly and ran toward the kitchen, pausing just once to look back, balanced like a squirrel on a branch, then moving on again, more silent than Mickelsson outside Tillson's office door. Mickelsson got out a can of 9-Lives, fitted the top into the electric canopener, opened it, then dumped the meat into the bowl beside the sink. The misshapen cat hung out of reach, head on one side, one paw lifted, until Mickelsson stepped back; then, after one more careful glance in Mickelsson's direction, the cat lowered his huge, wide head and glided toward the dish as if the meat might be still alive. Mickelsson fixed himself cereal and carried it to the livingroom, where he sat on the couch to eat. On the stand by the door, near the shotgun, he saw the box he'd made, marked
Jessie's Gloves.
She was everywhere. He remembered how she'd sat here on the couch beside him, the back of her head resting gently against his arm; how she'd gazed out the window, the night of the party. He remembered the awkwardness about the mistletoe. While he was down at the hospital, had she and Tillson slipped away from the others? Maybe fucked standing up in the bathroom, or used Mickelsson's bed?

His heart felt swollen; he couldn't eat. He stood up, then stopped, listening for some hint that he might not be alone, but there was nothing; the house was empty except for the cat. The most powerful presence in the room was the shotgun by the door.

He thought again, abstractly, with no flicker of intention, of what it would be like to kill oneself. Would he hear the report, or would the instant, all the time he had left for all Time, be too brief? Almost without meaning to, he went over to the shotgun and touched it, then picked it up by the barrel. He had nothing in mind, simply felt an impulse to look at it. He saw in his mind's eye Ellen's streaked, angry face in the courtroom, then his daughter's face, smiling, a shine of tears in her eyes as she turned from him and ran toward the car. He saw Mark, bearded, standing beside a road somewhere, hitch-hiking. Mickelsson held the shotgun in two hands, looking around and through it, lost in thought. He must
do
something, he whispered to himself. He slipped the shells back in and closed the chamber. He was looking out the window. Snow. Sunlight. He might have been the only living creature in miles.

When the phone rang he jerked, almost pulling the trigger, frightening himself, then carefully set down the gun. He turned, wiping his hands on his pantlegs, trying to remember what it was that, an instant ago, he'd meant to do, then heard the phone again and walked into the kitchen. He lifted the receiver to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Professor Mickelsson?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. I've been trying and trying to get hold of you. This is Lawrence Cook's secretary—”

“Cook?”

“Your lawyer? Dealing with your tax case?”

“Oh, yes.” He leaned against the wall.

“Mr. Cook's a little hard of hearing, so I'm phoning for him; 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 hidden, then sat pondering.

His intention had been to go to his office and, in the Campus Directory, find the addresses he needed, among others those of Jessie's enemies. He had a vague intention of seeking out Jessie and Tillson, too—not to speak of what he'd seen. He wasn't sure he was up to it; in any case he had no real plan. He had simply decided that it was time to act. It was a sign of how open his sea was that he'd brought along the shotgun: no malice was in his mind, no virulence in his heart; the last thing in the world he wanted was more violence. But stepping out through his front door, he had noticed the shotgun and, for no reason, had snatched it up—symbol of his new-found urgency, perhaps. Now everything was changed: the university was ablaze with lights. Mickelsson locked the Jeep doors and got out.

The double door opening onto the hallway leading to his office was open. Like a thief he peeked in. If everything went wrong, he would meet Jessie. But there were only students, none that he knew, one of them bent down, scolding a dog that cowered and wagged its tail. When he glanced at his watch he saw that it was nearly seven. Few professors would be in their offices now, only those who taught nightschool. On impulse he crossed quickly to the stairs and went up, two steps at a time, and in the comparative safety of the upper hallway nonchalantly hurried to the mailroom, getting out his key as he went. The outer door was open, his box more crammed than ever. He sorted through his mail quickly, dropping pieces to the floor and letting them lie there, looking only for one thing—precisely the last thing he'd have read, normally—Philosophy Department and Inter-Office “To/From/Subject” memos. He found one from Blickstein, dated January 30th, and his eyes snatched out of the rest the words “Professor Stark's Review Committee …” He crumpled the paper and pushed it down into his suitcoat pocket. He found several recent memos from Tillson. These too he stuffed into his pocket. Then he closed the box, hurried to the elevator, stepped in when the door opened, and pressed the button that would take him to four, home of the chairman of sociology.

On the fourth floor there were no classrooms, therefore no students in the halls. In fact there was no one at all in the halls up here. Above the water fountain there was a sign, black and red:
DO NOT DRINK! UNSAFE!
Through the window in the door he saw that sociology was closed. Though he'd had no plan, he felt frustrated. He went back to the elevator, rode down to the second floor, and walked to Tillson's office. Here there were students, but only a few, none he recognized. Tillson's office too was closed and dark. Beside the door there was a poster—not the usual cheap poster from University Services but something more professional, no doubt printed in town: in elegant, girlish script the words
Kate Swisson in Concert,
and below the words a cartoon of Kate Swisson, maybe mocking, maybe admiring. Her chin was lifted, her eyes made to seem beautiful; her throat was very long. The poster was of the kind one might see for the Guarneri or the Grateful Dead. It came to him all at once why the concert he'd attended with Jessie and the rest had been so well received, and why his student Alan Blassenheim had been so eager, the night of Mickelsson's party, to do everything in his power to put Kate Swisson at ease. It was the idiocy factor—brainless, all-together-now humanity rising as always to the shapely worm on the invisible promoter's hook. Sham, falsity, cuteness, crap. Surely there was no hope!

In his office he copied down the addresses he wanted from the directory, read the crumpled-up notes from his mailbox, then—forcing himself against his terrible exhaustion—hurried back to his Jeep. Looking up as he backed out of his parking space, he saw that, directly above him, Lawler's light was on. The old man would be meticulously laboring, as always; grading papers, reading, maybe asleep over his book. Guilt flooded in. He saw Donnie Matthews screaming, “It's just a
foetus!”
The image was so vivid he had to hit the brake and close his eyes.