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No GUTS, No Glory

Written by Edward M. Lerner

I have a theory about baseball caps and intelligence. Grown men who wear baseball caps move their lips when they read. Grown men who wear baseball caps backwards can’t read. Okay, I’ll make exceptions for actual pro ball players.

And then, in a league of his own, we have Alistair Winkler. The first words I heard from Alistair’s lips, plaintively spoken, were, “Have you seen my baseball cap? I can’t find it.”

Appearances can be deceiving.

****

I had just emerged from my office, too bored for the usual charade. You know: where my secretary keeps a client waiting to show how little I need the business. Right.

Winkler was looking all around, befuddled. He was comfortably middle-aged, average in height and spare-tire size. His eyes, behind Coke-bottle-bottom lenses, were muddy brown. It was windy today; my new client hadn’t bothered to comb his sparse hair since coming inside—maybe not since the Carter administration. For sure, that was when he’d bought his tweed sport coat. Lapels don’t lie.

“Mr. Winkler?” I said. “Come this way, please. My secretary will be happy to look for your cap.” It might even have been true. Phyllis was as bored as I.

My client clutched a shoebox that leaked receipts. If only he had misplaced that. He mumbled something as I settled him at the conference table.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Doctor Winkler.”

“Sorry.” Appearances can be deceiving, I thought, reaching for his box. “When you made your appointment, did Phyllis tell you to bring your last three returns?”

“They’re in the box.”

Meaning they were, at best, folded. Based on the crumbled receipts, I’d have bet on finding the returns wadded up. Too bad I didn’t have any money; I’d have won. Sliding the old 1040s back and forth across a table edge to flatten them, I asked. “So what’s your field?”

Winkler mumbled again, something about guts. That was less disturbing than his old returns, which, it appeared, he had prepared himself. He sure wrote like a doctor.

“Um,” I responded insightfully. “I don’t understand medical specialties. Does that make you a GI doc?” As in: It may be shit to you, but it’s my bread and butter.

Winkler’s hearty laugh surprised me. “I’m a Ph.D. in physics, not a medical doctor. GUT stands for grand unified theory. You’re familiar, of course, with the work aimed at unifying the gravitational, electroweak, and strong nuclear forces.”

Electro-who? I hid behind an old tax form, where an odd entry caught my eye. “What’s this $407,000 in ‘other income’ from two years ago?”

Winkler scratched his head, then brightened. “Oh, that must be my share of the Nobel.”

I did say appearances can be deceiving, didn’t I?

****

We went through Winkler’s old returns, me tsk-tsking at the many missed deductions. Just what I could recover with a corrected last-year return would more than pay my fees.

According to Alistair, Einstein once said the hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. Apparently Einstein had had problems with his grand unified theory, too. I think my client had taken on both GUTs and his returns as a dare.

Alistair read physics journals with one eye as we worked. I’d have needed both eyes, absolute silence, and a brain transplant.

Still, I could read the cover. Okay, a handful of words on the cover. “Black holes?” I commented, making conversation. “Pretty heavy stuff. I bet you could even explain where all the mortgage money is disappearing.”

Not billions. Hundreds of billions. Even the T word was beginning to crop up in the news. I’m an accountant, and still these were numbers beyond meaning. Down a black hole? Sure. Why not.

But look who I was talking to: A man who hadn’t claimed a personal exemption for his youngest child. Maybe that was too much to ask. Alistair, Jr., was only four. The boy hadn’t had long to make an impression.

Winkler smiled uncertainly at my little joke, then frowned. His eyes glazed over. I mean, I knew by then that he marched to a different drummer—but suddenly it seemed like the drummer resided on Pluto. Alistair’s pen started flying over a scrap of paper, which happened to be the back of a receipt. He shushed me when I cleared my throat.

As abruptly as Winkler had left planet Earth, he returned. “Why yes,” Alistair said, “I do have a theory about the mortgage mess.”

****

They make the best piña coladas here in the islands. It must be the fresh coconut milk. Or the lack of extradition. Now, where was I?

Ah, yes. Straight from my chat with Alistair, I began investigating new office space. I sold my car and pawned my office furniture to do it, but—just barely—I signed a lease on a small office only two floors above the main branch of Great Big First American Federal Trust Savings Bank. That isn’t exactly the name. After so many mergers, no bank’s name made sense. The bank with the cute cartoon eagle in