But Richard Buckley Brull was an ambitious bureaucrat. He didn't want to shuffle papers, make or exceed quotas or do any of those safe bureaucratic things. He wanted to shoot to the top, no matter how many filers he had to gouge.
In an agency where little mercy was shown to transgressors, Dick Brull was ruthless, heartless and a bully. He browbeat his staff into spying on one another. Once he struck the fear of the Almighty into them, he set them on the filers. And got results. When assets were seized, not even the bank accounts of dependent children were spared.
Given his winning personality, it was probably only a matter of time before the nickname "Big Dick" was hung on him.
No one ever called Richard Buckley Brull "Big Dick" to his face. No one even called him Big Dick within the confines of the IRS New York offices. No one dared. They knew that Big Dick Brull would tear them entirely new biologically unnecessary orifices.
For Big Dick Brull did not earn his nickname because he was big or stood tall.
Big Dick had come to the IRS straight out of the Marine Corps. He had never worked for anyone other than the corps. Not even a paper route blemished his employment record. But when the military began to downsize, there was no longer a need for tough drill instructors like Dick Brull. He took early retirement and went in search of a civilian equivalent to the corps.
A job-hunting specialist had pointed him in a natural direction-the Internal Revenue Service.
"You're nuts!" Brull had told the man. "I wouldn't fit in with those paper shufflers."
"You don't know the IRS. It's run by master sergeants. You'd fit in perfectly. Just give it a shot."
Amazingly it turned out to be true.
Brull had come to the IRS for one simple reason, security. But he stayed for an entirely different one: power.
There was no field on earth in which Big Dick Brull could wield such absolute power. Hell, even the President of the United States had checks and balances on him.
The only person Big Dick Brull was answerable to was what he called the Almighty. In this case, he didn't mean the Lord. He meant the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, who in these strange days was a woman.
Right now he was fearlessly chewing a new orifice for the local supervisor of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"You will pull your people out of the Folcroft perimeter. Today. That means I want those flashy boats of yours pulled back beyond the three-mile fucking limit. IRS won't stand for being spied on by DEA."
"You have no jurisdiction over us."
"The IRS has total jurisdiction everywhere. What was your Social Security number again?"
"I didn't give it," the DEA man said flatly.
"Let me see," Brull said slowly, tapping the keys to his desktop Zilog computer. "I have 034-28-4462. From Massachusetts originally. Isn't that right? You know, compliance up there in Mass has always been a problem. We did a sociological study of the citizens in that area, and do you know what we concluded?"
"No, I do not."
"We concluded that New Englanders in general and Massachusetts taxpayers in particular have an independent streak. They think the rules apply to everyone except them. They actually think they're above the rules. Do you think you're above the rules?"
"I play by the rules, same as you."
"I see by your last year's return you made 1,567 dollars in charitable deductions. That's well above the statistical norm, did you know that? Discriminant function formula is the term we use around here. Your numbers slip above the DIF line, and the service's computers kick out your return, red-flagged for an audit. I guess the computer hasn't gotten around to you yet."
"My charitable contributions are my own business."
Brull pounded his desk. Behind him a wall sign reading Seizure Fever-Catch It! shook.
"Wrong! Your charitable contributions are exactly IRS business, and if you want the service to stay out of your back returns, you stay out of the service's seizures."
"We have a legal claim to Folcroft assets."
"Right behind us."
"You vultures will pick that place clean and leave nothing for DEA."
"And you jerks like nothing better than to seize a property and pick it up at government auction three months later. We know your game. We've audited you DEA cowboy types before."
"I'll take your recommendations under advisement," said the DEA supervisor begrudgingly.
"I know you will," Big Dick Brull said in a suddenly unctuous voice. "I know you will."
Big Dick Brull hung up the telephone and just because he was the kind of guy he was, he red-flagged the DEA official's most recent return for a field audit. It would take three to four months for the notification to go out. Let him kick about it then. Not a damn thing he could do about it. And the agents were sure to find something really fishy. That was an ironclad guarantee. The tax code was over ten thousand pages long and so confusing that even the service couldn't make heads or tails of it.
That made it the perfect bureaucratic bludgeon to pound loose cash out of even the most stubborn taxpayer.
As Big Dick Brull finished issuing the electronic instructions, his desk phone rang.
"Who is it?" he asked his secretary via intercom.
"An Agent Philip Phelps."
"There's no Agent Phelps authorized to report directly to me."
"He says he's reporting from a seizure site called Folcroft Sanitarium on behalf of Special Agent Jack Koldstad."
"What's wrong with Koldstad? Scratch that. Put Phelps on. I'll ask him myself."
The trembling voice of Agent Phelps came on the line. "I have bad news, Mr. Brull."
"I hate bad news."
"Jack Koldstad has been injured in the line of duty."
"That careless bastard! He knows we have an insurance problem. Did he die?"
"No, sir."
"His mistake. One he'll rue, I promise you. What happened?"
"We found a hidden room in the basement of the place, Mr. Brull. It was the jackpot."
"What kind of jackpot?"
"Gold bullion."