by Rachel Ford
Mob Bosses & Tax Losses
Time Travelling Taxman, Book 5
By Rachel Ford
Chapter One
Alfred Favero locked eyes with the tiny devil. “You may have fooled Nance,” he hissed, “but I’m on to you, Satan.”
The creature twitched its tail, it’s glimmering golden eyes never leaving his.
A voice from the other room called, “Did you say something, babe?”
It was Nancy Abbot, Alfred’s girlfriend. “Nope,” he called back, wiping the menace from his tone. “Just talking to the kitten. He was on the counters.” Despite himself, he added, “Again.”
He heard the plodding of feet now, and a moment later Nancy appeared in the entryway to the kitchen, a towel wrapped around her wet hair. “On the counters?”
“Yup.”
“Are you sure?”
He fixed Nancy with an annoyed gaze. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this discussion, and the lines were firmly drawn. “Were you gnawing on the bread, Nance? Because the bag is full of teeth marks. It wasn’t me. I don’t think it was you. And that leaves just one culprit.”
She laughed. “Alright, alright.” Now, she turned her attention to the kitten, who sat on a stool watching them both. “Were you being a naughty baby? Were you on the counters, Mister Fluff?”
Alfred grimaced. He loved Nancy to no end, but he couldn’t begin to understand her love for this little varmint. Pets were generally noisy, smelly, and costly, and this one seemed worse than most. He would have been happy to live his entire life pet free.
But Nance had wanted a kitten, and, in some fit of madness, he’d agreed. Now, he was paying the price for it.
One loaf of bread at a time.
After a few moments of baby talk, ostensibly reprimanding the wretched animal, she turned to him. “Let’s grab another loaf on the way home.”
He sighed. “That’s not the point, Nance. The point is, this little brat won’t stop.”
“Fluff’s just a baby,” she shrugged. “He’s going to get into trouble now and then.”
Other than pooping in a box, trouble seemed to be all it did. He kept this thought to himself, though, saying instead, “And he scratched me again this morning.”
She laughed. “That’s because you move your feet.”
“Nance!” He was aghast that she’d take Fluff’s side over his on this one. “Of course I move my feet. That doesn’t give him the right to attack them.”
She wrapped an arm around him, silencing his sputtering protests with a kiss. “Of course not, darling. But he’s a kitten. He sees something move under the blanket, and he’s going to pounce.” He was about to protest further, but she hurried to add, “But, if it’s any consolation, next time I’ll shut the door after I go, so he can’t get in.”
He harrumphed, but, in the face of her twinkling blue eyes, wrapped in her warm embrace, he felt his anger melting away. “Fine.”
“Good. Now come on. You need to get dressed, or we’re going to be late.” Now, she fixed him with a mischievous grin. “You can argue with the kitten later.”
He grinned too, wrapping her in a hug. It wasn’t fair. Somehow, all she had to do was flash her pearly whites, and his annoyance, no matter how justified, vanished. Still, he threw a glare back at Fluff, warning, “I’ve got my eyes on you, Satan.”
“Oh my God,” she laughed as they walked out of the room, “you’ve got to stop calling him that.”
“Nope. He’s a little devil.”
She leaned into his arm. “Come on, you adorable crackpot. Let’s get to work.”
It was awhile before Nance finished her hair, and he dressed. But they were in the car and en route with time to spare for a detour to her favorite coffee shop.
As they marched into work, lattes in hand, Alfred had all but forgotten the little four-legged menace back home.
He had a two-legged menace to deal with now. No sooner than had Nance kissed him goodbye, with a, “See you later, babe,” and he slipped into his office, did he hear Justin Lyon’s voice.
“Freddie. That you?”
He grimaced. Like himself, Justin was a Senior Analyst with the Internal Revenue Service. That was pretty much where any similarities ended, though. He wasn’t even fully convinced they were the same species.
“It’s Alfred. I don’t do nicknames.” They’d had this precise exchange so many times, he wasn’t sure why he bothered. The other man was not going to change his ways. But, then again, the taxman could be every bit as stubborn as the best of them. Or, in Justin’s case, the worst.
“Where’s Nance at?” Lyon glanced around his otherwise empty office.
“Working. Like I’m trying to do.” Nancy was the Information Technology team lead. They worked in the same building, but her office was in the IT wing – colloquially known, among the analysts anyway, as the nerd bunker.
“Cool.” Justin nodded. “Cool, cool. So, hey, I hear the new guy starts today.”
“I heard the same thing,” Alfred said, reminding him, “We do attend the same team meetings. So, not surprising.”
“Right.” Lyon nodded. “You know anything about him?”
“Just his name.” Greg Baker was a network engineer, hired to fill a vacancy left by the previous engineer, Randall Walker. Walker had attempted to murder Alfred and Nance during the MarvelousCon case, so, knowing nothing whatever of the tech, the taxman assumed Baker would be an improvement. Beyond that, he had not given the matter much thought.
“Well, I guess we’ll meet him soon enough.”
Something in the other man’s tone made him frown. “Yes. And?”
“And?” Justin shrugged, laughing nonchalantly. “Nothing. Just…I mean, I know they’re talking budget cuts and hiring freezes. You gotta wonder how they can afford another computer guy when they can’t fill the analyst positions.”
“That’s a question for Director Caspersen. It’s a little above my pay grade.”
“Hell, the director’s got plenty on her plate. She doesn’t need to hear from me.”
Alfred bit down on the urge to point out that he didn’t either.
“But…” Justin smiled, and Alfred felt instinctively that this was the moment of truth, what all of this chitchat had been leading up to. “From what I hear, you’re about to be a dad, eh?”
Alfred felt his heart skip a beat. “What?”
“You and Nance…” Justin shrugged. “I heard her talking with one of the guys in hardware. What’s his name? Jeff? Jake?”
Oh my God. The taxman sat mute for a full thirty seconds. The other man watched, smirking the entire time, but he was too stunned to really notice.
A baby? He was at once thrilled and terrified. He and Nance had talked about kids, someday. He couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather parent with than her. But…now? They hadn’t even been officially dating for a year. Granted, with the time traveling, it had been a little longer.
It’s still too soon, his mind argued. And why would she tell Jeff before she told me? It didn’t make sense.
“You must have misheard,” he said, managing to find his voice.
“No, I know what I heard, Freddie.” He frowned now. “Wait…she did tell you about it, didn’t she?”
Alfred licked his lips. They’d gone very dry all of a sudden. So had his tongue, for that matter. His mind raced, and at last he lied, “Uh. Of course.”
Justin grinned. “So…that’s pretty exciting, then. Your first pet together? I mean, that’s the big leagues, man. Not quite buying a house together. But still…”
“Wait, what?”
“It’s the trial run.” Justin shrugged. “You know, to see if you’re up to the real thing.”
“Did you say, ‘pet’?”
“Yeah. You know, the kitten.” Then, Justin’s eyebrows rose, and he chortled in such a deliberate way that the taxman rather doubted the confusion was accidental. “Oh, you didn’t think I meant…well, that Nance was preggers?”
“Of course not,” he snapped. It was, of course, exactly what he’d thought – and, he thought, exactly what Justin had meant for him to think.
“Oh, good. Didn’t want to give you a heart attack there.”
My apples you didn’t, the taxman thought. He was angry, but not angry enough to allow himself to cuss. Standards must be preserved, even in the face of provocation.
Out loud, he said, “Well, I should probably get back to work.”
“Hmm,” the other man nodded, making no move to leave. “So how’s that going? The fatherhood thing, I mean.”
“It’s a kitten, Justin. Not a baby.”
He shrugged. “Well, yeah, but come on. We all know this is just the trial run.”
Alfred had no idea what he was talking about, and told him as much. “And as for how it’s going, just fine.”
“Great. Kittens can be kind of pains in the asses. Stacey’s cat scratched every damned piece of furniture I owned.” Stacey was Justin’s girlfriend.
Or is she his ex? He couldn’t remember. They’d broken up a few times, and he’d lost track.
Still, Alfred snorted. “Satan doesn’t just scratch. He likes to get on the counters and eat stuff. Like, our food.”
Justin ignored this, though, his eyebrows making a beeline for his hairline. “Wait…did you say, ‘Satan?’”
Alfred felt himself flush. He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Even Nance seemed to think it was a weird nickname for the cat – and she was used to his particular brand of weird. “Uh…yes.”
“Oh.” Justin shook his head. “Oh, Freddie. Tell me you don’t actually call your girlfriend’s cat Satan?”
“It’s just a nickname. You know, kidding around. Because he’s…such a little demon.”
The other man’s expression seemed to indicate that he was doing himself no favors. “Oh Freddie,” he repeated, sighing. “You clearly do not understand how this works.”
“How what works?”
Justin grimaced, as if Alfred’s naïveté physically pained him. “Dude. A pet is never just a pet. Women don’t get kittens and puppies because they want kittens and puppies. It’s a test – and you, my friend, are failing.”
The taxman found himself frowning. “A test? Failing?”
“Yes. And, yes – so hard. I mean, come on. Nance could have got a kitten if she wanted one. But she moves in with you; and all of a sudden it’s adoption time?” He tapped his fingers to his forehead in an exaggerated motion. “Duh. She’s scoping you out, to see what kind of dad you’re going to be.”
Alfred blinked. “No.”
“Yeah, man. The kitten’s a dry run, a test to see how you’d handle the real thing.” He shrugged. “And you just called your baby Satan.”
“That’s crazy,” he snorted. “If Nance wanted a baby, she’d just say so.”
“Right. Because that’s what women do. They just communicate.” He laughed, as if he was dealing with the simplest of neophytes. “Oh Freddie.”
Alfred felt his cheeks burning. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we have actually talked about kids.”
“Uh huh.” Justin was all skepticism. “And let me guess: ‘maybe, someday, we’ll see.’”
Alfred blinked. “Well…yes, actually.”
The other man groaned. “Bro…you fell for the oldest trap in the world: you believed a woman when she equivocated about kids.” Now, he nodded sagely. “They always want kids. Always. It doesn’t matter what they say. They’re built that way. Just like when a man says he doesn’t want – well, you know.” He grinned, and Alfred grimaced. “It’s evolution’s way of preserving the species. They’re built to want babies, and we’re built to want to make them.
“I mean, you’re in the nesting phase right now.”
Despite himself, Alfred ignored his better judgement and asked, “The what?”
“The nesting phase. Once women reach a certain age, they stop going after the alpha males.”
Alfred frowned at all that that statement implied, about himself and Nance. “A certain age? Alpha males?”
Justin just nodded. “It’s just science. They pick a nester: you know, not low-t exactly, but someone they won’t really have to worry about chasing other females. Someone a little more…domesticated. Who they think will help raise their offspring.”
“Okay.” Alfred was definitely sorry he asked. “Look, I’ve got work to do.”
“It’s just science, dude. Just evolutionary biology at work.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s not.”
“All I’m saying is, you’re in the test pilot program. That cat? He’s the fill-in for your baby. And you?” He smirked. “As far as she sees it? You’re calling your kid – her kid – Satan.”
“Yeah, that’s not what’s happening.”
He shrugged. “I mean, you’re living with a healthy, regularly ovulating female, Freddie. It’s just nature.”
Here, it was time to shut Justin down. It was bad enough to hear his theories, but this? “Okay, you know what? I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say any of that, because I have never heard such a load of pseudoscientific babble in my life. And I never – as long as I live – want to hear you talk about Nance…well, ovulating, or anything related.
“And you? You’re going to get the hummus out of my office. So I can get to work.” The other man seemed about to protest, but he lifted a hand to stem the tide of pseudoscience and creepiness. “Now, Justin. I don’t want to have to explain to Caspersen why my projects are running behind…”
He let the threat hang between them, and finally Justin shrugged. “Alright, Freddie. I’m just trying to help.”
Chapter Two
Alfred wasn’t actually at risk of falling behind on his project work. On the contrary, his calendar was mostly empty for the day. Which worked out alright as far as the taxman was concerned. It gave him a chance to work on his presentation.
He was slated to speak that Friday evening at a tax law symposium. The theme of the evening was tax law in the first half of the twentieth century.
For his presentation, Alfred had chosen a topic that was dear to his heart: the role of tax law professionals in bringing down some of the twentieth century’s most infamous mobsters and gangs.
It was his favorite kind of tale – of the often overlooked, ever crucial, work of humble officers of the law like himself, in maintaining order and decency in a world turned chaotic and cruel.
He’d selected three cases for his presentation. He started with ten, but Nance convinced him to pare it down. “You know how you tend to get so excited when you get on a topic. You might not have time for all of them.”
That was, he thought, her diplomatic way of saying that he ran on at the mouth when wound up. And, she was right. What’s more, little wound him up more than a good tale of the derring-do of taxmen.
So he’d selected three stories of intrepid taxmen whose dogged pursuit of justice had taken bad men off the streets.
The first was a riveting recounting of Las Vegas’s brutal Gambini crime family, and the eagle eyes of the junior analyst who brought them down for tax filing irregularities.
The second was the Chicago Irish mobsters known as the Quiet Boys. They were a grisly band, famous for collecting the tongues of those who crossed them. As with the Gambinis, tax fraud put them away for far longer than their trail of murders would have done. The Quiet Boys were silenced once and for all by an indefatigable IRS agent. It was a good story – and a good pun, too. He’d written it into his presentation. The topic was serious, but he felt it didn’t hurt to throw in a little humor now and then. And, though he’d gone back and forth on it, eventually he came down on the side of it being tastef
ul rather than irreverent.
It was the last case that was occupying his mind, though. It had all the right ingredients to be the perfect finish, the coup de grâce of his presentation.
The story of Ray Lorina was the story of a celebrated detective with the NYPD to the eyes of the public – but in private, a dirty cop on the payroll of the Tomassi crime family.
Lorina had a reputation for being a thorn in the mafia’s side. He’d put dozens of operatives away, and even survived a few attempted hits on his life. He was revered by the populace, and, as far as everyone knew, despised by the mob.
But when a curious IRS agent dug a little deeper into the Tomassi family’s financials, he learned the truth: Lorina had been on the take all along. He’d been an enforcer, eliminating enemies of the head of the family, Mario Tomassi, under the color of law.
It had been something of a sensation at the time and played out in newspapers across the nation: the hero cop, who was just another low down gangster.
The trial was an absolute spectacle. Lorina claimed to be innocent, of course, but the jury found him guilty on all counts; and the judge determined to make something of an example of him, and handed down the maximum possible sentence.
Not that Lorina had lived to see it. Eleven months later, he died on a shiv, planted in his ribs by a fellow inmate, Tony Bianchi.
The story should have been perfect. It exemplified to a tee the unsung but critical efforts of that most indispensable branch of law enforcement, the Internal Revenue Service. They were the watcher of the watchers, the last check, the final balance in the scales of justice.
When Alfred had first read it, he loved it. What better way to finish his presentation? But the longer he thought about the case, the more one point stuck out to him. Tony Bianchi was a longtime associate of the Tomassi family, and the murder did nothing to diminish his ties with them. On the contrary, as soon as he was out of prison, he married Mario’s grandniece, Angelina.
And no matter how much he tried to make it feel right in his mind, it just didn’t square. Tony wouldn’t have killed Ray without orders from Mario; and if he had, he would have paid for it. Instead, he’d been welcomed into the family. Which meant only one thing: Mario had called in a hit, and this time, shuttered behind bars, Ray didn’t escape.