Chapter 24
On the ride up to the third floor, Big Dick Brull began barking out orders.
"I want a lid clamped down on this place. No press, no outsiders coming in, no personal leave. We're all staying here until someone cracks, and it won't be me."
"I would like to call my wife," said Harold Smith without a trace of the concern he felt.
"Don't bother."
"She must expect me home by now."
"If she didn't miss you yesterday, she won't miss you today."
"I protest this treatment."
"Protest all you want, deadbeat. There isn't fuck-all you can do about it." Brull paused. "Unless you'd like to confess to tax fraud here and now."
"I am guilty of no tax fraud."
"Suit yourself. I'm denying you calling privileges-"
The elevator doors hummed apart, and Harold Smith exited, the lenses of his rimless glasses starting to fog up. No one noticed this as they strode down the corridor in a tight knot, the feet of the IRS agents tattooing in unison.
"By the way," Big Dick Brull added, "we've invoked the one-hundred percent rule in your case."
Smith halted, turned. "I beg your pardon?"
"We're seizing your personal assets, as well as your place of business. That means your car, your house and everything in it. The operation should be getting under way-" he looked at his watch "-right about now."
"You cannot do this."
"I can overrule it if you have something to say to me."
Smith compressed his lips until they all but disappeared. His glasses were completely fogged up now. Still, Smith's cold gray eyes seemed to bore through the condensation like hateful agates.
Big Dick Brull happened to notice the Timex on Smith's thin wrist and said, "Nice watch you have there."
"Thank you," Smith said thinly.
"Looks expensive, too."
"It is not. Merely of excellent quality."
Brull put out his hand saying, "Hand it over."
"You cannot be serious."
"I said, 'Hand it over.' The tie and clasp, too."
"This is a school tie."
"When I said we're seizing your possessions, I meant it. Don't stop with the watch and tie. Take off your coat and shoes."
"This is outrageous. I am a lawful taxpayer."
"No, you are what we like to call the 'screwee.' I am the 'screwer.' Is that your wedding ring?"
"Of course it is."
"Gold?"
Smith said nothing.
Big Dick Brull smiled grimly and said, "Fork it over."
Harold Smith was trembling now. He looked like a man in the autumn of life, gray with age, thin from the spare appetite of his years. His eyes disappeared behind the steam coming from every pore to cloud up his lenses. He made no move to doff his coat, watch or wedding ring.
"You will take my wedding ring over my dead body," he said in a voice as thin as his lank frame.
What Big Dick Brull would have said to that was never known. A drumbeat sounded somewhere close.
Doom doom doom doom...
"There it goes again," Agent Phelps moaned.
"Who's making that?" Brull demanded of Smith.
"If I knew, I would put a stop to it this instant."
The sound seemed to come from around the corner, so Dick Brull said, "Follow me."
They followed the drumming by sound and not sight. Nothing up and down the corridor seemed to be the source of the sound.
The drumbeat led them to a hospital-room door. Two agents pulled out Delta Elite pistols and rammed rounds into the chambers. They took up positions on either side of the door. At a nod from Brull, one flipped open the door while the other went in, pistol held before him in a two-handed grip. The other swept in right behind him.
"Freeze!" they shouted a beat apart.
"Oh, God," one said.
The other began retching.
Dick Brull shouted, "What is it? Did you corner it?"
A voice wavered, "Mr. Brull, you'd better see this yourself."
Brull hesitated. So Harold Smith broke free and barged into the room. Brull mustered up his courage and followed a pace behind him.