The Accident

He took pride in his work. He believed in giving 110 percent. He felt that if you treated others with respect, you’d get it in return. He didn’t cut corners. If he bid twenty grand to remodel someone’s kitchen, it was because he believed that’s what the job was worth. For that money, he’d provide quality materials and excellent workmanship. If someone told him they could get someone to do it for fourteen, Dad would say, “If you want a fourteen-thousand-dollar job, then that’s the guy you should go with, and God bless you.” And when those people called him later, wanting him to fix everything the other contractor did wrong, Dad would find a nice way to tell them they’d made their choice, and now they had to live with it.

You couldn’t do an under-the-table job with Dad. People were always taken aback by that. They thought, if they paid in cash, Dad could cut them some slack on the price because he wouldn’t have to declare the income.

“I pay my taxes,” Dad used to say. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m always thrilled about it, but it’s the right thing to do, goddamn it. When I call the cops at one in the morning because someone’s trying to break in to my house, I want them to show up. I don’t want to hear I’m on my own because they’ve had to lay off cops because there’s not enough money in the budget to pay ’em. People not paying their taxes, that hurts all of us. It’s bad for the community.”

It was not a commonly held opinion. Not back then, and not now. But I respected him for it. My father was a principled individual, sometimes to the point of driving my mother and me crazy. But he held to his beliefs. He was no hypocrite.

He would have had a dim view of some of the things I’d done.

I consider myself a pretty law-abiding individual. I don’t rob banks. When I find a lost wallet, I don’t empty it of cash and then pitch it into the garbage. I make sure it gets returned to its rightful owner. I try, within reason, to keep to the speed limit. I signal my turns.

I’ve never killed anyone, or even hurt anyone. A couple of bar fights in my youth, sure. I gave as good as I got, and afterward, we all had a few more drinks and forgot about it.

I’ve never gotten behind the wheel drunk.

And, every year, I’ve filed my return and paid my taxes. Just not all of them.

But, I admit, there have been times over the years when things were slow, when I have participated in the so-called “underground economy.” A few hundred here, a couple of grand there. Usually jobs that did not go through the company. Jobs I did on weekends, on my own time-when I was still working for my father, and since I took over running the company. A deck for someone down the street. Finishing off a basement for the neighbors. A new roof for a buddy’s garage. Jobs that might be too small for the company, but were perfect for me.

Or, if I needed a bit of help, I’d bring in my good friend Doug. And I’d pay him out of the cash I got.

While I’d had to tap into it during lean times, I’d managed to sock most of it away. I didn’t want a record of the money, so I didn’t bank it. I kept it at home, concealed behind a removable strip of wood paneling in my downstairs office. Sheila and I were the only ones who knew the cash-just under seventeen thousand dollars-was hidden there.

Although Doug didn’t know how much I’d managed to save, or where I kept it, he knew I’d made money that was never reported. So had he, for that matter. But when he made his threat, he knew I had more at stake. I owned the company.

I hadn’t ripped off the government for millions. I wasn’t Enron or Wall Street. But I’d hung on to a few thousand the IRS would have been quite happy to pocket for themselves. If they found out, and could prove I owed them money, I’d find a way, over time, to pay them back.

But not before they’d turned my life inside out. They’d audit me, and when they were done doing that, they’d audit Garber Contracting. I knew those books were clean as a whistle, but it’d probably cost me several grand in accountants’ fees to prove it.

I knew what my father would say, if he were alive today. He’d sing me a few of the old standards. “You reap what you sow,” he’d have said. “If you’d kept your nose clean, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

And he’d be right.

Later on Saturday, I grabbed my tools and rang Joan Mueller’s doorbell. She looked delighted to see me. She was in a pair of jean shorts and a man’s white dress shirt, the tails knotted at the front.

“I almost forgot,” I said. “About the tap.”

“Come in, come in. Don’t worry about your shoes, keep them on, it’s okay, God knows if I was worried about the carpets I wouldn’t be taking in half a dozen kids every day, would I?” She laughed.

“No, I guess not,” I said. I’d been in this house before and knew my way to the kitchen. There was half a bottle of Pinot Grigio on the kitchen table, and a nearly empty wineglass not far from it. Between the two, an issue of Cosmopolitan.

“Can I get you a beer?” Joan asked.

“I’m fine.”