Seeing Red
Sometimes, I saw things in red.
Stare long enough at a page packed tight with numbers, and every so often a red dot would rise up off the printed figures. It would swell slowly, like ink bleeding through water, then thin out into a fine arrow reaching for another number somewhere else on the page.
The first time I saw it, I was eight years old.
What is this? Where's that red glow coming from...?
My parents ran a small Korean restaurant on the outskirts of Washington D.C. The name was Seong-oh House — a humble, honest sign slapped with my own birth name.
That day, my father had closed up shop and sat at a table in the corner of the dining room, punching away at a calculator. The stack of papers the accountant had left behind lay spread across the tablecloth, and beside it I was pretending to do my homework while scooping up scraps of fried food off the floor.
That was when it happened. On the third page of the documents, a red dot popped up above the number next to the line marked Advertising Expenses.
I rubbed my eyes. It didn't disappear. If anything, the dot stretched out long, became an arrow, and jabbed a different number on the bottom line.
"Dad. This one's red."
"Hm?"
"This one and this one — they're connected by a red line."
My father glanced at me for a moment, then chuckled and ruffled my hair. "Seong-oh, if your eyes hurt, you need to sleep. How many of those damn comics have you been reading, anyway?"
That was the end of it. No adult on this earth takes an eight-year-old seriously, so before long I forgot all about it too.
Six months later, word came down that the accountant who'd handled my father's books had been led away in handcuffs. He stood accused of inflating advertising expenses across the ledgers of twelve immigrant-owned shops and sweeping the difference wholesale into his own account.
At the same time, trouble landed on our family too. Once it came out that the books we'd entrusted to him were a shambles, the IRS fired off a notice demanding an amended return. Every expense he'd inflated on his own say-so was disallowed, and back taxes and penalties took their place at the bottom of the ledger. The thief was someone else entirely — but the cleanup fell squarely on us.
My father carried the paperwork to the bank and came home empty-handed. Not a single lender would extend operating funds to a shop whose credit had gone up in smoke.
My mother sank onto the kitchen floor and wept. My father didn't say a word all day.
That night, under my blanket, I thought about the red arrow. I saw it. I saw it, plain as day.
That was where it started. I became afraid of numbers — and mad for them, both at once.
The second time I saw that red thing clearly was in front of my father's coffin. Six years ago.
The restaurant had gone under long before. Three franchises had moved in along the main road, and my mother's wrists were all but wrecked by twenty years of grueling work — it was the natural end.
And so, just shy of sixty, my father had gone out and bought a pair of safety boots. He threw himself into day labor, and the last site he ever worked was a logistics warehouse going up in the Northeast quadrant. The prime contract belonged to a company called Castlelock Construction.
The joke of it was that Castlelock itself hadn't hired my father. A subcontractor — no, a labor agency under the subcontractor — had. His wages came in cash envelopes every Friday, with no pay stubs or anything of the sort. On paper, my father did not exist at that site.
So when he fell from the fourth-floor staircase, nothing applied. Not workers' comp. Not company insurance.
While he was moved from the emergency room to the ICU, the only thing that piled up was the bills. In four days, they blew past two hundred thousand dollars. America's murderous hospital costs — they shoved our family into hell overnight.
My mother poured every dollar left from selling the restaurant into the hospital, and at twenty-six I went on my knees to three different banks. In the end, my father didn't last two months.
Three days after the funeral, an executive from the labor agency showed up at our door with an envelope. Twelve thousand dollars in settlement money and the itemized receipts I'd asked for — along with a written pledge that we would never hold the company responsible for anything.
Are you fucking kidding me...?
But the moment I took that paper in my hands, red dots surged up from the numbers. One. Two. Three. They linked themselves into arrows and drowned the whole page in crimson. An arrow born at the labor-cost line bored straight through outsourced services and stretched out long toward somewhere beyond the paper. It was red enough to sting. My temples throbbed. I glared at that sheet and ground my teeth.
...There's something here.
And in that instant, I knew. What had turned my father into the departed was someone's scheme.
Truthfully, it took only a moment's thought to see it. Cross one man off the roster and the company owes no payroll tax on him — and naturally, it skips his insurance premiums too. So where does all that saved money go? Most likely, it slides straight into somebody's pocket, no detours.
"Go ahead and sign whenever you're ready. We're busy people. Oh — right. Our condolences, of course."
The executive held out a ballpoint pen and yawned.
I choked down my tears and signed. Without that money, I couldn't cover my mother's medication. At twenty-six, I had no power at all.
After the funeral, I walked the rain-slicked streets with nothing in my head. The crowd burning money and hours on whiskey even at the hour before dawn. The necktie brigade who summoned hired drivers at a snap of the fingers and talked down to them like servants. Some people couldn't afford a hospital and watched their lives hang by a thread, while others spent like that and still had money left over.
And do you all pay your taxes on time? Where does that kind of money even come from?
Of course, I didn't hate them out of hand. I knew a baseless grudge when I saw one. And yet, somehow, in that moment I felt as if I'd been born again. People like us — we're the only ones who die.
In that moment, I made up my mind. I would take power — the kind that never has to kneel in front of money again. From that day on, I turned my gift loose and studied like a maniac.
Six years later.
"Senior, you're seriously just going to walk in like this?" Sara asked from the passenger seat, both hands clamped on her seatbelt. Twenty-eight years old, a rookie four months into her posting, and her face had gone so pale that the second she let go of that belt she looked ready to fling the door open and bolt.
"They've got two lawyers over there, they say. One of them's an ex-prosecutor."
"So?"
"Well, I — it's just..."
I cut off the rest of Sara's sentence and stepped out of the car. An upscale import dealership on Virginia Avenue. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, a silver sports car gleamed under the showroom lights, and a sticker reading Local Business of the Year sat proudly on the glass door. I gave that sticker one flat glance, then pushed the door open. A blast of air conditioning hit me full in the face.
"Welcome, sir. Which model can I show you today?"
"Forget the inventory. I'm here to see Rudy Marchetti."
I drew my ID wallet from my inside pocket and flipped it open. "I'm with the IRS Collection Division."
It took exactly half a second for the smile to drain out of the salesman's face.
Rudy Marchetti sat with his legs crossed on the sofa in the reception lounge. Early fifties — he clearly worked out, judging by those thick arms. Two suited lawyers flanked him. He grinned the moment he saw me.
"Young man, I respect the enthusiasm, but this sort of thing goes through legal counsel. Isn't that right, counselor?"
"That's correct. My client has already filed an installment agreement application."
The lawyer on the left set a document on the table, presumably the paperwork to match. Beside me, I heard Sara swallow hard.
I didn't pick the document up. I simply said my piece.
"Mr. Marchetti. From Q3 of last year through Q1 of this year, do you know how much tax you withheld from the wages of your thirty-one employees?"
"That would be my accountant's—"
"Four hundred twenty-seven thousand dollars."
I pulled a file out of my bag and spread it across the table. "It's printed on the statements, clear as day. And the amount that actually reached the Treasury? Zero dollars."
The lounge went silent.
"Do you take the IRS for fools?"
"Hey now, young man. That's a rough way to talk. Do you remember what I told you before?"
"You mean what you said when I phoned in my notice? Let's see... Ah, right. 'If you've got a problem, go through the proper legal process and file your complaint agency to agency.'"
I turned to the next page. "The thing is, that's a hassle. Lawsuits take time."
"What?"
"So instead, at 9:15 this morning, levy notices went out to three accounts held in this company's name. First Capital, Merchants, and one online bank. Go ahead and check your banking app. Withdrawals should be frozen by now."
Marchetti's hand shot to his pocket in a panic. His eyes flicked left and right across the screen — once, twice — and the finger hammering the refresh button was trembling in a way he couldn't hide.
"The same notices also went to the two finance companies that fund this dealership's installment sales. The receivables coming in next month will route straight to the Treasury instead."
"You crazy bas—!"
He shot to his feet. One of the lawyers grabbed his arm in a panic. "Mr-Mr. Marchetti, please calm down!"
"Let go! This son of a bitch is seizing my entire business!"
"And one more thing."
I lowered my voice. "RM Holdings LLC, out of Maryland. The account registered under your wife's name — its notice should be landing right about now."
He turned to stone.
"Last November, two hundred eighty thousand dollars left this dealership for that company under the heading of 'consulting fees.' Only that company has no employees. No office, either. And its registered address is out in the middle of absolute nowhere..."
"Th-that's..."
"If you're going to hide assets, at least have the decency to be subtle about it. It's like you were begging us to come take it."
For the first time, the lawyer on the right looked me dead in the eye. The man who'd done nothing but study his papers finally lifted his head. "How in God's name did you get all of this...?"
"How did I know?"
I closed the file. "I've been quick with numbers since I was a kid. Work hard, dig through the records, and things jump right out at you."
Beside me, Sara let out a quiet gasp.
Marchetti slumped back onto the sofa. "How much... how much would it take? If we can't make our scheduled payments, we're in serious trouble here... A levy, at a time like this."
"Pay the full notified delinquency and penalties by end of day, and I'll submit the paperwork to release the levies. That comes to roughly six hundred eighteen thousand dollars in total."
I rose from my seat and set my business card on the table. Then, walking toward the door, I delivered the line I'd recited hundreds of times since joining the service.
"Then pay your taxes."
We were barely out into the parking lot before Sara came sprinting up behind me.
"S-Senior! What— what even WAS that back there?! Don't tell me you'd already placed the levies before you walked in?!"
"Yep. The grounds were solid. I had sign-off from upstairs and everything."
"Then why didn't you tell ME?! I was dying out there!"
"If I had, it would've been written all over your face. This job is all about the upper hand."
Sara stood there gaping for a moment, then buried her face in both hands. "Unbelievable... no — sorry. But this is genuinely insane. Now I get why the seniors all say 'once Leo's got you, it's over.'"
Instead of answering, I opened the car door. Leo Kim. That was my name. These days, only my mother and a faded passport remembered the name Kim Seong-oh.
Washington D.C. The Internal Revenue Service, under the Department of the Treasury.
The moment I walked back into the office, my team leader, Margo Chen, waved me over. "About Rudy Marchetti — he says he'll have it all paid up before the week's out. Just got the call."
"Good to hear."
Margo took off her glasses and polished them. Her habit, whenever praise was coming.
"The Director was asking about you. In a good way."
I smiled and headed back to my desk. On it sat the file I'd requested that morning, as thick as my own palm.
CASTLELOCK CONSTRUCTION GROUP
Finally... all the pieces have come together.
Over the intervening years, the group had put up a holding company and grown into a sturdy operation running eleven sites in the Washington area alone. It had taken me six years to get my hands on this file. I'd passed the IRS entrance exam, been ground through three years at a local field office, clawed my way up to headquarters, and held on for two more.
Alright. Let's have a look.
I shut the door, clicked on the desk lamp, and opened the file.
It was time to avenge my father.
© Kim Ok-ji#1v8mj