The Dark Side

by Damon Knight (ed. )

  Every week or so I’d drop down to the bank and deposit what seemed to be a reasonable figure. And what a pleasant feeling it was to be able to walk into a bank with a bankbook and a fistful of money to put in! It was really the first time in my life that I had ever used a bank for anything else but a place to get money orders, or to cash in a savings bond that my boss had insisted I pay for with the payroll deduction plan.

  It even got so the clerks in the bank would give me a big smile and say, “Business must be doing all right, Mr. McNally.” I’d give them a pontifical frown and complain that the country was going to the dogs with high taxes. I knew that was what I was expected to say. Anyone who deposits every week, just as regular as clockwork, better than a hundred dollars is bound to complain about taxes. The more deposit, the louder the bellow.

  And we bought a new car. Well, not exactly new, but it was only a year old. These big cars depreciate a lot the first year. The salesman who sold it to me must have thought he was pulling a fast one when he got rid of that gas-eater, but that didn’t worry me any. The more gas it used, the more chances I got to get into a gas station where I could get rid of another bill. I always had wanted a big car anyway. My old car I sold to the junkman, with a twinge of regret when he hauled it away with the fenders throbbing gently in the wind.

  My wife, who all this time never did find out about the mess I had almost gotten into with the original setup, had for the first time in her life all the clothes, all the household appliances, all the little luxuries she wanted. But she wanted to buy a house.

  “Mike,” she said, “there’s a lot of houses around Twelve Mile Road. Let’s get some place where the kids can play.”

  I told her no dice, and managed to make it stick. After all, I had just a little bit better than a down payment in the bank, and I didn’t want to take any chances until I had the ability to take care of all the expenses that would be bound to arise with the purchase of a new home.

  So we just stayed where we were, with the landlady’s eyes popping every time we came home with something new. She tried to pump, but we don’t pump very well with people we don’t like.

  There was one place where I had trouble, and it was the one place I didn’t want it. Naturally, I couldn’t stop going to Art’s Bar. I had been going in there for years, and the last thing I wanted was to have someone think I was going high hat. On top of that, I enjoy playing cards, and I like to drink beer. So I dropped in there just as often as I always did, and tried to think of answers for all the questions that were shot at me. When someone who’s always been on the verge of bankruptcy—and most of Art’s customers are that way; it was a family bar—suddenly shows up with good clothes and a new car and the ability to buy a friend a beer once in a while, then questions are bound to arise. I told them I was doing this and doing that, and still didn’t satisfy their curiosity.

  Finally I called the man who’d been trying to sell me some more insurance for years. He came out to the house and gave me one of his high-pressure sales talks. I pretended to be taking notes of his figures, but I wasn’t. I was checking his sales pitch.

  I bought some more insurance and memorised a lot of the words and phrases he used. The next time at Art’s when someone asked me what I was doing for a living I told them I was selling insurance, and went into the sales talk I’d memorised. They let me alone after that, apparently convinced.

  Late in 1951 we bought our house. (We still live there, if you’re curious. Drop in and see us some time, if you’re ever around the Utica Road, neat Rochester. It’s the big one on the fat corner, neat the golf course.) We paid spot cash for the whole thing, on a seventy-by-two-hundred-foot lot. The kids fell in love with it at first sight, naturally, and I think it was the slide and the swings in the back yard that did it. It didn’t take long before they were just as brown as Polynesians, and it didn’t take long before Jean was the same. She spent—and spends—more time digging in the yard planting flowers than I do sleeping.

  It was really a wonderful life. We’d get up when we felt like it—in the summer, when the kids weren’t in school—and sit around until we felt like doing something. When we found something to do we did it without counting out in advance what we could afford to spend. If we wanted to stay overnight in town we did it, and we stayed at whatever hotel we wanted to. And when we registered at the hotel we didn’t have to ask first how much the room was, and Jean could go right into the lobby with me without feeling self-conscious about the clothes she happened to be wearing. It amused me a little when I figured that out; before we’d had enough money we used to feel self-conscious no matter what we were wearing, no matter how well we were dressed. Now we didn’t care how we looked.

  Once we registered at the Statler when we came back from a little ride to Tilbury, Ontario, and Jean and I and the kids were wearing shorts. We just went to our room, had a good night’s sleep, had breakfast, and were home before we even thought of how many states we’d collected in the glittering lobby. We thought that over, analyzed it, and began to laugh.

  When the kids got out of school in the summer of 1953, we went for a long trip, this time to Wisconsin Dells, and then to the Black Hills. When we got back, in the middle of August, the mailbox was full of the usual advertising, and after a cursory glance at the collection, I threw it all into the incinerator, which was a mistake. That was in August. In September we had a caller.

  It was one of these Indian summer days, with the breeze and the warm sun, and the overtones of the children playing in the yard.

  “My name,” he said, “is Morton. Frank Morton. I’m with the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”

  Jean almost collapsed.

  “Nice place you have here, Mr. McNally,” he said. “I’ve always admired it.”

  I thanked him for that. “We like it, Mr. Morton. The kids like it here away from the traffic.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He agreed. “As a matter of fact, my boy comes over to play here quite often.”

  I was surprised at that.

  “You must have seen him,” Morton went on. “Fat little fellow!”

  I knew who he meant. “Little Frankie? Why, sure! He likes my wife’s cookies. Doesn’t he, Jean?”

  Jean said that reminded her of what she had in the oven, and excused herself to let me face the music alone. I didn’t mind; I’d always told her that all this was my idea, and I’d take care of whatever happened. I knew she’d be right out in the kitchen with her ear right up against the door.

  “That isn’t what I was after, Mr. McNally. This is just what you might call a friendly call, in a way.”

  I liked that. “Always glad to have you, Mr. Morton. You must live in that house across from the grocery store.”

  Yes, he did. “I say a ‘friendly call,’ but it’s partly business. As I told you. I’m with Internal Revenue.”

  Into my throat again with my heart. “Internal Revenue. Oh, yes.”

  “You see, Mr. McNally, little Frankie has had so much fun playing with your children I thought I’d save you a little trouble. Since I live right down the street, I think the least I could do is to be a good neighbor.”

  I couldn’t make out what he was driving at. All I could do was be polite, and ask him to keep talking. And he did.

  “You see, since I work in the Bureau, a lot of forms and things pass over my desk. The other day the name and address on one looked familiar. I took a second look and knew it must be you. You’re the only McNally on the street that I know of, so I thought I’d stop by on the way home from work and tip you off.”

  Tip me off to what?

  “Well,” he said, “this was one of the regular forms the Bureau sends out. Apparently someone who has charge of your file sent you a letter asking you to come down and talk about a discrepancy in your tax return. And you apparently ignored the letter.”

  I opened my mouth to say something and thought better of it. Morton hurriedly went on.

  “Now, Mr. McNally
, I know you were gone most of the summer, and, since this is my department, and since we’re neighbors, I know that things get lost in the mail, and I thought I should drop by and tell you you must have never gotten any notice to appear. It might be a good idea for you to call in person, and explain what must have happened. It’d save you a lot of trouble, in the long run. Just tell them I stopped by on a friendly call.”

  He had more to say about that, but I think the situation really was that he didn’t like the man who was in charge of my file, and wanted to warn me to get out from under before this someone really dropped the boom.

  We talked for a little longer about his boy and mine and the things people talk about when they’ve met for the first time, and he left with an apologetic smile. He already felt he’d gone out of his way to mind someone else’s business, and he felt guilty. I did my best to ease things, and Jean came out of the kitchen just before he left with a plate of cookies for Morton’s wife.

  We watched him go down the curving flagstone walk that had cost me two hundred duplicate dollars; we watched him walk briskly to his own house half a block away. I asked Jean if she wanted a cigarette. She shook her head.

  “No. Not right now.” She sat limply in the nearest chair.

  “Now what’s going to happen to us?”

  I told her I didn’t know. But I’d take care of it.

  She gave that short sarcastic laugh she saves for special occasions. “Yes, you’ll take care of it. Like you take care of a lot of things. I knew you’d get in trouble sooner or later.” I didn’t know whether to get mad or to act sympathetic. When a woman cries, I don’t think either one works. After I tossed a few words around I realised nothing was going to do much good, so I picked up my hat and went for a ride. I got into a card game at Art’S, twenty miles away, where I hadn’t been for some time. Art was so glad to see me he bought the house and me a beer, which, for Art, is exceptional. When I got home Jean was in bed pretending to be asleep. I let her keep up the pretense, und went to sleep myself.

  The next morning, bright and early, with my heart in my mouth. and lead in my shoes, I was standing in line at the counter in Federal Building. I told them what I was there for, and they passed me through three different hands and two different desks until I got to the man with my file.

  The man had big ears and a bad disposition. His name was Johnson, and he made it quite clear that to me it was Mr. Johnson. He got right down to cases.

  “You’re lucky, McNally, that Frank Morton went out of his way to be neighborly, as he calls it. But that’s neither here nor there. You haven’t filed any income tax return for 1951, 1952, and for 1950. Why?”

  I wasn’t going to let him get me mad, but I knew I could make him blow his top. I detest public servants with an inferiority complex.

  “Well, Johnson,” I said, “for a good reason. For 1952, 1951, and 1950, I had no income.”

  That was just the answer he was looking for, and wasn’t expecting. He shuffled papers like mad, unable to believe his luck.

  “Well, now, McNally,” he said triumphantly, “that’s a rather peculiar statement. You have a house that is assessed at eight thousand dollars, and worth three times that. Right?”

  Of course he was right. Taxes are low where I live, with the jet-engine plant paying most of the bills.

  “And you have no income for three years, McNally, none at all?”

  “Johnson,” I told him sorrowfully. “I am a very law-abiding individual. I am quite familiar with the income tax rules”— which I wasn’t—“and I am also a very thrifty person. My wife makes all my suits and raises all our food. I don’t need income, but to overcome boredom I am thinking of applying for a government job, in the customer-relations department. Anything else, Mr. Johnson?”

  No, there was nothing else. But “you’ll quite possibly hear from us a little later, McNally.” When I left he was frantically scribbling away with a red pencil. I certainly wish I didn’t have such a lousy temper, but in for a lamb, in for a sheep. All I could do was to wait for the wheels to roll over me, with Johnson pressing the starting button.

  The wheels rolled, and apparently missed me. We didn’t hear from the Bureau of Internal Revenue all the rest of the year, and when next May came around Jean and I had almost forgotten. We decided it would be nice if we took a little trip, and found out that to go to Europe it would be necessary to get a passport. We applied for one. That must have been the trigger that made someone think we were trying to get out of Federal jurisdiction. We got no passports, but I got a summons.

  It really wasn’t a trial. There was no judge there, and I had no lawyer. We just sat down in uncomfortable chairs and faced each other. There isn’t much use mentioning any names, so I won’t. It was just a meeting to see if things could be settled without a trial; most likely because trials take up time and money. They were fairly decent, but it boiled down to this:

  “Mr. McNally, you have a house, a car, and a bank account.”

  The bank account wasn’t big, and I mentioned that.

  “Big enough for someone with no income. And we can prove—actually prove—Mr. McNally, that in the past three years you have spent for tangibles almost twenty thousand dollars. Your scale of living is and has been running at a hundred dollars every week—or better.”

  I could do nothing but admit it, and compliment their thoroughness. They were not impressed.

  “So, Mr. McNally, that is why you are here now. We see no use in subjecting you to the inconvenience of a trial, with all the attendant publicity.”

  They waited for me to agree with them, so I did.

  “What we are primarily interested in, Mr. McNally, is not the exact amount of your income—although that is an extremely serious question, which must be adjusted to our satisfaction before this is all over.”

  That made me sit straight in the chair.

  “Not so much in the amount, Mr. McNally, but the source. Just who are you working for, and how do you do it?”

  Do what?

  They were very patient, elaborately so. “How do you take the bets, Mr. McNally? How do they get the bets to you, and how do you payoff when you win or lose?”

  “What bets?” I asked blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  If you’ve never seen a collective lip being curled, you don’t know what you’ve missed.

  “Come now, Mr. McNally. Come now! We’re all men of the world, if you want to put it that way. We know that you have a source of income. What we want to know—and we are very curious—is how you manage to run your business without using any means of communication we have been able to find.”

  They paused to let me consider; then: “We’ll be frank with you, sir—we’re puzzled. Puzzled so much that perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement allowing you to pay your past-due taxes without penalty.”

  I began to laugh. First I laughed, and then I roared.

  “I suppose,” I said, “that you’re the source of all the clicks and static we’ve been hearing on the telephone lately. And I imagine you’re the source of all these cars and trucks that have been breaking down within a block of my house.” They admitted it with their faces. “And you can’t find out how I take bets, and how I pay off. And I’ll bet that you’re our new milkmnu, and our new baker!”

  They let me laugh myself out, and they didn’t like it. One of the government men stood up and towered over me.

  “Mr. McNally, this is no laughing matter for you. You came here under your own power, and you may leave the same way if you so choose. But there is one thing I can definitely assure you; that you will be back here under less comfortable, more formal circumstances just as soon as we have presented the evidence we have against you to a Federal grand jury.”

  That didn’t sound so good to me, and they all saw it.

  “Did you, sir, ever stop to think what would happen to your wife and children if a true bill were presented against you? Are you prepared to face the penalty for deliberatel
y neglecting to file an income tax return for three consecutive years? You cannot, regardless of how you are communicating with your runners, conduct a gambling business from a jail cell. Had you thought of that, Mr. McNally?”

  The government men kept hammering at me and I kept thinking. A slim chance was better than no chance at all. Then they gave me my cue. Someone was saying: “… And you can’t sit there and tell us you got all that income out of thin air!”

  I broke in. “What did you say?”

  “We were talking about the impossibility of your proving—”

  “No. Go back a little. What you said about money out of thin air.”

  The collective smirk. “Let’s not be too literal, Mr. McNally. We know you got the money; we want to know where and how you got it.”

  I told them. “Out of thin air, like you said.” I slid out my billfold. “You might compare the numbers on these bills,” and I passed out a handful. “The best place in the world to get money is right out of the air—no germs on it that way.”

  So they checked the serial numbers, and they compared the bills, and they began to scream like a herd of frustrated stallions.

  They were still screaming when I left, under my own power.

  Probably the only reason they let me go was because I was so completely frank about everything.

  “Never mind where I got the money,” I said. “You admit you couldn’t tell one from the other. If you’ll come out to my house tomorrow I’ll show you where they came from; keep me here and you’ll be no further ahead than you are now.”

  One of them suggested they could follow other leads and nail me in the end—even if it took a couple years.

  “But wouldn’t you rather clean this up all in one shot? You know I wouldn’t get far if I tried to skip, and I have no intention of doing that. Give me a chance to get things lined up—no, I have no one working with or for me, if that’s what you’re thinking—and tomorrow you get everything out in the open.”