While the Iron Is Hot
They say you pull a bull's horn while the blood's still running — so the moment Sarah and I had the relevant files organized, we headed straight out into the field.
Bayside Labor's office sat across the Anacostia River, on the second floor of a shuttered building-materials warehouse.
"Looks like this is the place."
"Somehow it's kind of creepy out here..."
Sarah craned her neck from the driver's seat and peered out the window. I felt the same way. Never mind foot traffic — there wasn't even a road line painted on the asphalt.
Either way, we took that road straight to Palmer's office. The only way up to the second floor was an iron staircase bolted to the outside of the building, and when I gripped the handrail, rust flaked off onto my palm.
The office we soon entered held two people.
"Glenn Palmer... which one of you might that be?"
At my question, a man in his fifties seated by the window lifted his head, unhurried.
His shirt was buttoned to the collar, the sleeves folded back above his elbows. And beneath those rolled sleeves, the watch on his wrist caught the fluorescent light and flashed.
That one watch looked pricier than every stick of furniture in the office combined. No — it might well have cost more than the warehouse building itself.
"That'd be me. Who might you be?"
I'd sent notice ahead but gotten no reply, and I'd half worried he'd be out — that was a small weight off my mind. I flipped open my credential wallet.
"Leo Kim, Collections Division, Internal Revenue Service."
Palmer's expression didn't change. That was telling, in its way — a man who doesn't so much as flicker an eyelid in this kind of situation usually belongs to one of two camps. The genuinely innocent, or those who've known a day like this could come and have long since rehearsed their countermeasures.
Given the circumstances, the latter was the smart bet here.
"Ah, the IRS. Here about Keller downstairs? I hear he went bankrupt."
Deflecting first, was he? I smirked inwardly as I answered.
"No. We're here about your own company, Mr. Palmer."
"We're clean. Our accountant handles everything just fine."
He chuckled as though the idea amused him. A prickle of irritation rose in me.
"I doubt that. Your accountant also handled last year's third-quarter headcount correction filing, did he?"
Palmer's fingers flinched for an instant.
"...That was—"
Rattled. I used the opening to pry his composure loose.
"Let's get straight to the point. You falsified your headcount, didn't you? If it sounds like I'm talking out of turn, have a read of this."
I laid the folder I'd been carrying onto his desk.
Now, at last, his expression became worth watching. A face crumpling in the space of a breath. He'd spotted the chain of documentary errors himself.
Go on, try explaining this one away too. Your own signature's on the filings. Think you can manage it?
A little digging had shown that six years ago, when my father died, this man had already been the CEO. He'd sent an employee many ranks below him to the funeral in his place, then tried to bury the whole affair with a few bills. The lowest of the low.
Watching that face go rigid in front of my folder now was, honestly, more than a little satisfying.
How many more people had he fed off in all that time?
Right there, I made a quiet resolution. I would use everything at my disposal to grind this man into the dust.
"...The headcount does keep changing. But, Agent, isn't this sort of thing just common out in the field?"
"It is common. But if the headcount changed, shouldn't the pay statements have changed with it? There was no such follow-up paperwork at all."
I opened the folder, drew out copies of the statements, and handed them across.
"These are the statements issued that quarter. All 112 of them went out — every single one showing tax withheld."
Palmer looked down at the statements. The fluorescent light buzzed and flickered once.
"Hold on — we have an, uh, an accountant, so if you'd take it up with him—"
"Suit yourself. Meanwhile, I'll tidy up just one more item of my own."
I produced another sheet and held it up. Withdrawal records — for the man in front of me, for Palmer himself. His eyes slid from top to bottom in a rush.
The eyes of a man calculating exactly how far the audit had already reached.
"Th-those are private records, though...?"
"Yes, I'm aware. The problem is that the money in them belongs to other people. A word to the wise: we can only pull account records once there's a clear indication of a problem. Do you have any sense of what it means that headquarters authorized access to your accounts, Mr. Palmer?"
Palmer's lips pressed shut, then fell open again.
To give him time to think — and to take stock myself — I stepped back and looked around the office.
Only now did I notice the work rosters plastered across the desk. A company in name at least; it seemed he ran several job sites.
Beneath them, headcounts scrawled by hand. I wondered whether even the sites unconnected to Castlelock were handling their taxes this way, and gave them a closer look.
Add up the other sites and he's got a hundred-plus workers. Huh? Wait...
Pfft. As the saying goes, habits picked up at three carry on till eighty — Palmer was running the very evasion method he'd learned from Castlelock everywhere else, too.
...He never saw anything wrong with it in the first place.
I nearly let the laugh escape. No wonder he kept his violations pinned to the wall so boldly — the man genuinely believed he'd never be caught.
I filed that away to be drained, lawfully, at a later date, and turned back to the matter at hand.
"Mr. Palmer. Of all the taxes a company owes, the one you can never hide is withholding. Because that money belongs to your employees."
I looked up from the rosters and met his eyes dead-on.
"I told Keller the same thing once — on this one, a company is nothing but an errand boy. And yet... somewhere between here and the bank, Mr. Palmer, you appear to have used that money to buy yourself a yacht slip?"
"A yacht? How did you—! No, look here! Those funds went into company operating capital regardless, and as CEO, I—"
For the first time, Palmer raised his voice. Chair legs scraped the floor.
I cut him off.
"The Internal Revenue Code contains a provision like this."
"The-the Internal Revenue Code?"
"It permits the entire unpaid balance to be assessed against the person who held the authority to decide. And you've just told me that authority was yours. I'll be entering those words as evidence of willfulness, exactly as spoken."
I drew a recorder from my jacket and waved it in front of his face. Oh — and for the record: in a situation like this, recording without mutual consent isn't illegal.
"I never dreamed you'd hand me a confession like that. Thank you. That one sentence saves me a great deal of time."
At that moment, the employee seated at the desk on the far side of the office quietly rose and slipped out the door.
The situation plainly looked abnormal to him — apparently he meant to report it to someone up the chain.
I didn't stop him. Let him try, if he liked.
I had a fair idea where that report would land anyway, and no phone call from up there was going to stall the procedure already in motion.
Suddenly, a thoroughly spooked Palmer scooted his chair a little closer toward me. The earlier swagger had vanished entirely. He'd shrunk so far into himself that at some point he'd even unclasped the watch on his wrist.
"All right. Then, then how much... if I paid in installments—"
"You can apply for an installment plan any time."
I checked my wristwatch and went on.
"Unfortunately, the relevant notices already went out this morning at 9:15."
"What?"
"Two accounts in this corporation's name, and one under Palmer Holdings. Third-party levy notices also went to the operator of the Florida marina and two vehicle-leasing companies. The deposits they were planning to refund you will be rerouted straight to the Treasury."
Palmer snatched up his phone.
His fingers shook noticeably over the screen.
One refresh. Two.
Whatever he was checking, he promptly collapsed back into his chair.
"...The boat."
"Sorry?"
"If the boat's mooring contract gets forcibly terminated, the loan payments—"
Ah — yacht troubles, then. A fair chunk of money must have been sunk in it. What had possessed the man to flaunt a luxury that was never his to have? I'd heard somewhere that a single yacht can cost as much as a house.
Don't tell me he truly believed he'd never get caught.
If you launch a boat on money skimmed from other people's paychecks, do you sleep well out on the water? I was genuinely curious about that.
The ones who already have it always grab for more. Bastards, every one.
Just then, Palmer abruptly raised his head. The face of a man who had made up his mind.
"This... this wasn't something I did alone."
"I imagine not. I know."
"What?"
"To put 112 workers on site while filing the taxes for 88, the settlement table coming down from the prime contractor would have had to line up first. That's not the kind of thing one small subcontractor manages on its own."
Palmer's eyes went wide.
"And you already know that—! Then couldn't you at least cut me some—!"
I lowered my voice.
"But what I know and what you say on the record are two different matters. Now — tell me the truth. Who was it? Who taught you that trick?"
"...Ghh!"
"You'd better talk. If you want even a mitigating circumstance on the willfulness finding. Though I doubt a court will buy it."
Palmer held his silence for a long while before finally forcing the words out.
"...Castlelock's finance side sends us a table every quarter. The settlement headcount comes pre-filled. All we do is take their numbers and match them."
Behind me, the scratch of a pen on paper stopped dead.
I turned to find Sarah staring at me, hardly breathing. The tip of her pen hovered just above her notebook. She understood perfectly well what Palmer's words meant.
...There it is. Finally.
My heart began to pound.
For the first time, the identity of the black hand that had erased my father from the roster six years ago had come out of an involved party's own mouth.
Of course, this alone wouldn't let me wring Castlelock's neck. A statement can always be denied after the fact.
But I had already fished a physical copy of a near-identical settlement table out of Keller's front yard. Once the testimony and the paper pointed the same way, the whole game changed.
"Mr. Palmer. I'm entering what you've just said into the statement word for word. Will you sign?"
White-faced, he finished signing shortly after.
I laid a business card on his desk and walked for the door.
"Well then — do pay your taxes faithfully from now on. Let's make sure we never meet again."
Behind me, Sarah swallowed — very softly.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him bow his head deeply at my back.
A total reversal from a few years ago, when he'd flicked a few bills my way with a none-of-your-business look on his face.
Coming down the stairs, we walked into the river wind. The smell of the water hung thicker than it had at midday.
Sarah bounded down the steps two at a time behind me and dropped into the driver's seat. Her hands, buckling the seatbelt, were still a touch giddy.
"Sunbae."
"Yeah?"
"During the whole conversation — did you see Palmer's eyes?"
"I did. A lot going on behind them. Well, he does feel wronged, I suppose."
"Wronged? Wait — so you do consider other people's feelings, Sunbae...?"
I rolled the window halfway down.
"Ha — no. What Palmer feels wronged about is getting caught. Not about spending other people's money."
"Oh — that kind of wronged... I see. Now that you mention it, that does sound like his expression."
Gripping the wheel, Sarah stared blankly for a moment. The look of someone who'd just learned something new.
"Let's move. We need to finish up at the office and clock out."
It was past six by the time we made it back to the office.
Margo Chen, our team leader, set down her receiver and looked over at me.
"Leo. Word came in from Palmer's attorney. Says he'll pay the full amount by the end of the week even if he has to borrow to do it."
"Oh. Good to hear."
"Anyone you so much as lay a finger on swears to pay in good faith. What do you do, stick a revolver in their face?"
"Let's keep the jokes less murderous, please."
"For what it's worth, you've got nerve."
Margo took off her glasses and wiped the lenses — her habit when she was praising someone. I'd been seeing it a lot lately.
Just then, an agent from the neighboring row stuck his head up.
"Leo, is it true you pulled in two point three million on this one alone? Planning to fill the entire Collections Division's quota yourself this quarter?"
The office burst out laughing.
Through the laughter, I caught Sarah squaring her shoulders as she took her seat. Apparently, working alongside me did something for her pride as well.
"Team Leader, today was unbelievable. The second Sunbae opened his mouth, the CEO just melted straight out of his chair!"
"Sarah."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Did you actually accomplish anything today?"
"...I kept excellent notes today! And I dug up the amended-return forms all by myself!"
"Well. Better than hauling around a fire extinguisher, I suppose."
Margo shook her head with a hollow laugh. Sarah covered her face in embarrassment.
For once, the office air felt light.
I soon set to work summarizing the statement.
Castlelock's finance department. Settlement tables descending every quarter. Palmer's signature. Having come this far, the next move was already decided.
Finding the son of a bitch who drew up those tables.
I had absolutely no intention of calling my revenge finished by reeling in subcontractors one at a time like this. I meant to dig down to the roots — to make every last one of the people above them come walking in on their own two feet.
© Okji Kim#1v8mj