Bomber's Law (32 page)

“Ernie's Ten-forty-EZ tax return—I assume it's the short form he files—says he's a gamblin' man.
Gambler's
his stated occupation, what he says he does for a living. It's fairly hard, of course, for anyone to make a real good living off of gambling unless he not only works very hard at it but becomes very good at it, and also's as lucky as hell. Certain kinds of gambling, I guess, lend themselves better'n most others do to being someone's principal means of support, because if
they didn't the casino operators wouldn't worry so much about blackballing card-counters from the blackjack tables. And high-stakes poker and bridge, I guess; skillful players with steel nerves can do pretty well. But pari-mutuel betting? For most people, a real sometime thing. They lose a lot more than they win.

“Now,” he said, “the law says you can deduct what you lose from what you win, but only to the extent of your winnings. So if you lose ten thousand bucks during the year but win five grand in bets taxed at the track, you can deduct only half of your losses. Which means that if you earned the other five grand you lost, by digging ditches or something, well, tough shit; even though it's gone, you blew it at the track, you still owe the income tax on it.”

“Doesn't seem quite fair, somehow,” she had said.

“It's a tax law, Gayle,” he had said. “If it were fair it'd be a contradiction in terms. And to the Ernies of this world? Unfair, yeah, but they can live with it. They don't play fair themselves. They're used to the cracks and the crevices, you know? That's where they spend their whole lives.

“What the Ernies do for the Chicos is bamboozle Uncle Sam into taxing the fat tickets at the low rates that apply to the Ernies' tax brackets. They're not going to come in below the poverty line, practically dare the lawmen to say: ‘What's this, then? No net income at all?' And then run a net-worth on them, come after them for tax-evasion? That's how they hooked Al Capone, for Christ sake, back when the earth was still flat. Uh-uh, nothing showy and stupid like that. But you can be damned sure they're not going to top out, either, thirty-one-percent marginal bracket. Their adjusted taxable incomes, after deducting their losses, 're going to come out, oh, between twenty-three and twenty-seven thousand dollars, if a person could live their lifestyle on that, as they make damned sure some straight-shooter they know actually could, 'Cause he does.

“And that's really all that they need. The federal hit they're gonna take, depending on whether they're single or married, it's going to be somewhere between thirty-six-hundred, forty-eight-hundred bucks a year, all of which of course they more'n likely will've paid when they cashed the bets at the tracks. Which means the Big Uncle in Washington there will've collected somewhere between sixteen- and eighteen-percent in taxes on those bets, that otherwise would've gotten
whacked almost double that, if the rich guy who really placed them'd collected them himself.

“It's a really sweet deal all around. Ernie looks like he paid that seventeen percent. But it really didn't come out of him; it got creamed off the top of the fat-ticket payoffs, and those payoffs weren't his. Far as Ernie's concerned, the only effects on him of cashing, say, fifty-thousand in tickets were first he could deduct twenty-five thousand of his own gambling losses, and then second pay no taxes himself on his fees for cashing the tickets. Which'll usually run anywhere from two to five of Chico's ten percentage points and are always under the table.”

She had looked uncertain. “Pete Rose, Cincinnati,” he said. “Remember that case, Charlie Hustle, Reds local hero goes down? Sure you do. Guy had a street named after him, the boulevard goes to the ballpark. So then he got himself sent to the can and barred from baseball for life, the can for breaking the law and the game for breaking the rules. What started him down the long slippery slope wasn't betting on baseball; it was when he had some buddies cash a couple Pik-Six tickets at a racetrack to cut the taxes down, and he got caught at it.”

“Ahh,” she had said.

“Well,” he said, “that's the kind of goodies Chico's fat-cat customers get from buying that service from him. Guy with a winning ticket for, say ten-thousand dollars, it costs him ten percent of what Ernie nets, say nine-hundred bucks, so his own net is eighty-one hundred. If he'd cashed the ticket himself, in his thirty-one-percent bracket, doing everything upright and kosher, his net would've dressed out at sixty-nine hundred. By going off the books with Chico, paying Ernie to take his place on them, he's pulled half of the teeth out of the jaws of the tax-bite.

“Now what the feds'd had in mind when they went after Ernie was not to take a piece off of him; he's small-time stuff. No, what the feds had was a strong desire to put
Chico
away for a long rest. They thought Ernie might be helpful to them in this enterprise by providing sworn testimony about certain illegal gambling transactions that he'd carried out on orders from Chico. They invited him to come in and have a nice chat with the grand jury present, first taking the precaution of assuring his attention by obtaining an indictment
charging him, not Chico, with using interstate telecommunications facilities to violate a State law, to wit: setting up and promoting a lottery. Ernie was registering a few purely local bets himself, sort of on the side, but that's a federal offense if you use a phone to do it. But he hasn't been tried for it yet.

“Well, Ernie was shy. He said he understood they most likely've got him pretty good on this pisspot charge that'll get him thirty days, max, as a first-offender, probably not even that, but if that's how they wanna spend their time and the taxpayers' money, bringing guys in and convicting them on diddly-shit like that, well, he'd take it like the good sport he's always tried to be. But as far as telling anybody any stories about this guy Chico they kept asking him about, that he didn't recall knowing and really wasn't even sure he'd ever heard of, he said in the first place he'd never been much of a storyteller anyway, and in the second place, even if he had been a well-known raconteur, he didn't know any stories about any guy named Chico. So, if it was all the same to them, the feds, he thought he'd just as soon not do it and would like to be excused.

“The feds said apologetically that in fact it
wasn't
all the same to them, that their feelings would be hurt if he took that attitude, and that he would not be excused. That while they'd
so
hoped it wouldn't be necessary for them to insist, resort to stronger measures, and not just begging and pleading, either, if he didn't change his mind and voluntarily avail himself of their kind hospitality pretty damned quick, they'd jolly-right-well feel compelled to. And then in short order, he'd feel some compulsion himself.

“Well, he didn't, avail, and they did, feel compelled, compelled to have him compelled. They went into court and got a grant of immunity for him, guaranteeing that nothing that he said in the grand-jury room could be used in evidence against
him
, unless he took to perjuring himself, and then they hauled him in there and started asking him for all sorts of stuff about Chico that would've been more than just terribly embarrassing for Mister Pell to've had come
out
; it would've put Mister Pell
in.
Which would probably annoy him very much.

“Ernie reminded them that in the first place he wasn't sure he'd even ever heard of this Mister Pell who seemed to fascinate them so, but that even if he was sure, if he recalled knowing this guy, some
stories about him and some things he might've done, he still wouldn't like to talk about them—because if he discussed Mister Pell he might inadvertently waive his
own
constitutional right not to incriminate
himself
, which was very precious to him. And the feds said: ‘No yah won't, ya shit, you've been immunized, so ya
can't.
Now
talk
,' and he became terribly distraught and burst into tears, or something, so they took him down before the judge and she patiently admonished him that if he persisted in what she viewed as real impudence, she was going to take it as meaning that he didn't take her wishes seriously, behavior she would be inclined to deem contemptuous. She therefore ordered him to return to the nice ladies and gentlemen of the grand jury and have a pleasant conversation with them, answer all their questions, and sent him back to do that.

“Well, he went, there being a sizable U.S. Marshal on each side of him with a good grip on one of his elbows, but he took the Fifth Amendment again and once more didn't converse, so they drug him back out and in before the judge again and this time she was
pissed.
‘Okay for you, Ernie, you little turd,' she said, or words to that effect, ‘I'm gonna hold you in civil contempt now, and you're goin' off to the hoosegow, my friend, until you decide to start talking or this here grand jury expires.' And that's where he's been ever since.”

“He's afraid of this Chico,” she had said, “pain and pleasure, is it? Chico'll hurt him if he talks, and reward him if he doesn't. Have someone like this Mossi character shoot him, or beat him up or something.”

“Well,” he said, “that's what it'd look like to the average person, and the result's the same as if that was the explanation—he won't talk about Chico—but that's probably not exactly it. These guys, Chico could get him hurt if he got Chico in the shit, but most likely if he did Chico'd be so busy trying not to get the guy
he
works for in the shit that if anybody did something to Ernie, it'd be to frighten Chico. Bolster his resolve if it developed a sag. No, the real reason that Ernie's so quiet's most likely that the feds didn't give him a big enough problem. Theoretically they can keep calling him back every time one grand jury expires and a new one's impaneled, getting him cited again when he won't talk. But as a practical matter, they won't. They'll lose interest in tormenting him, light on someone else to pester, and in time he'll get out. And he knows this.

“When and if they do try him on the racketeering charge, which they have to do within six months of when they got the indictment or he can get it dismissed for lack of speedy trial, and he duly gets convicted, the judge isn't going to send him back to jail for another month or so—he'll get time served, or a suspended, and they'll have to let him out. He knows that, too.

“Ernie's in the can because someone either lost his temper and got such a hard-on for Chico that his judgment was impaired, or else got so distracted by some other case or overwork he just didn't use any judgment at all, never thought the thing through. A good fierce lawyer'd see this, hit the USA with a barrage of motions, get Ernie habed up into court and begin to eat the rug that his client's in the can either by reason of prosecutorial mistake or by abuse of prosecutorial discretion—misconduct, really. Using the contempt process to hit the guy with a heavier punishment than the one for the crime he's charged with. Either way, Ernie in the can's no cosier, and what the government's doing to him doesn't look any prettier; so, a lawyer who could get the court see it either way'd get Ernie either tried and then released, or just plain released.”

“So he's basically wasting his time, then,” she said.

“Basically,” he said. “He'll make a few brownie points with da bigga-boys dere, but the principal result of what he's doing's to get him six months for not talking in lieu of two months, max, for bookin'. He's doing four months more'n he needs to.”

“So he's being a fool,” she said. “He's making a fool out of himself. Has he thought about it this way? Does he also know that?”

He did not say anything for a moment. “Probably not,” he said, “I would say: most likely he hasn't seen it that way yet. I've never fine-tuned this particular bozo, but extended sequential reasoning, beyond the first convolution? Isn't generally one of the breed's major skills. And subtlety almost never is.”

“Well then,” she said, “if you want him to tell you something that at first he's going to resist telling you, you might be able to discombobulate him a little by helping him to see what's actually going on. That he's making a fool out of himself, at considerable discomfort, without real hope of gaining anything from it. Get him mad at the people he works for—who, after all, got him into this fix and don't seem to've helped him much to get out of it so far, get him this
lawyer he really needs. Who knows? If he won't talk to become a good citizen, well, maybe he will for revenge.”

“You know,” he said, “I think I will do just that.”

“You, uh, you like it in here then, do you, pal?” Dell'Appa said. “Food isn't bad, and so forth, you got a nice room with a view, a comfortable bed, entertainment's okay? They put in the new wine-cellar yet? Or still makin' do with the old one?”

Ernie regarded him the way a large and ordinarily-confident cat registers the presence of an indolent bull-mastiff resting nearby just out of paw-slugging reach. He shrugged and said: “It's all right.”

“You like it here, then,” Dell'Appa said. “Nothin' special, but basically okay.”

Ernie raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, basically okay,” he said.

“So you're in no hurry, get out then,” Dell'Appa said. “Don't miss gettin' laid and all that shit? Goin' out with the guys for a few?”

Ernie sighed. He shifted in the chair. He shook his head once. “You jerkin' my chain for?” he said.

“I'm not jerkin' your chain,” Dell'Appa said. “Hey, for all I know you're gettin' laid more inside here'n you're used to gettin' laid, you're onna street. How should I know what flavor you like? Could be why, you don't wanna leave.”

“You're jerkin' my chain,” Ernie said. He exhaled heavily. He steepled his fingers and stared at them, frowning. “I dunno why I get all this shit,” he said. He looked up. “I really don't. Been here fifty-three days now, nothin' to do, can't go out and do nothin', and also got no end in sight. What am I, for Christ sake, Hitler or somethin', you're bustin' my stones alla time? I'm really worth all you guys' time here, am I, fuckin' with my life like this? Christ, I didn't
kill
no one, did I? Least nobody that I can remember.”