“But this man—”
Jackson spoke impatiently. “That’s taken care of. You certainly won’t be giving any money to him.”
She stared into the darkness, amazement again spreading across her face. “But how could you have done that?”
“People are always saying that about me: How could I have done that?” Jackson looked amused and said in a slightly hushed voice, “I can do anything, LuAnn, don’t you know that by now? Anything. Does that frighten you? If it doesn’t, it should. It even frightens me sometimes.”
“The man said he was sent to kill me.”
“Indeed.”
“But then he got called off.”
“How terribly peculiar.”
“Timewise, I figure he got called off right after I called you and said I’d do it.”
“Life is chock full of coincidence, isn’t it?” Jackson’s tone had become mocking.
Now LuAnn’s features took on their own glint of ferocity. “I get bit, I bite back, real hard. Just so we understand each other, Mr. Jackson.”
“I think we understand each other perfectly, LuAnn.” In the darkness, she heard papers rustling. “However, this certainly complicates matters. When you wanted your name changed, I thought we could still do everything aboveboard.”
“What do you mean?”
“Taxes, LuAnn. We do have the issue of taxes.”
“But I thought all that money was mine to keep. The government couldn’t touch it. That’s what all the ads say.”
“That’s not exactly true. In fact the advertising is very misleading. Funny how the government can do that. The principal is not tax-free, it’s tax-deferred. But only for the first year.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that for the first year the winner pays no federal or state taxes, but the amount of that tax is simply deferred until the next year. The underlying tax is still owed, it’s just the timing that’s affected. No penalties or interest will accrue of course, so long as payment is made on a timely basis during the next tax year. The law states that the tax must be paid over ten years in equal installments. On one hundred million dollars, for example, you will owe roughly fifty million dollars in state and federal income tax, or one half the total amount. You’re obviously in the highest tax bracket now. Divided by ten years the tax payment comes to five million dollars per year. In addition to that, generally speaking, any money you earn from the principal amount is taxable without any type of tax-deferred status.
“And I must tell you, LuAnn. I have plans for that principal, rather grand plans. You will make a great deal more money in the coming years; however, it will almost all be taxable income, dividends, capital gains, interest from taxable bonds, that sort of thing. That ordinarily would not present a problem, since law-abiding citizens who are not on the run from the police under an assumed name can file their tax returns, pay their fair share of tax, and live quite nicely. You can no longer do that. If my people filed your tax return under the name LuAnn Tyler with your current address and other personal information, don’t you think the police might come knocking on your door?”
“Well, can’t I pay tax under my new name?”
“Ah, potentially a brilliant solution; however, the IRS tends to get quite curious when the very first tax return filed by someone barely out of her teens has so many zeros on it. They might wonder what you were doing before and why all of a sudden you’re richer than a Rockefeller. Again, the result would probably be the police, or even more likely the FBI, knocking on your door. No, that won’t really do.”
“So what do we do?”
When Jackson next spoke, the tone that reached LuAnn’s ears made her tighten her grip on Lisa.
“You will do exactly as I tell you, LuAnn. You are ticketed on a flight that will take you out of the country. You will never return to the United States. This little mess in Georgia has bestowed upon you a life on the move. Forever, I’m afraid.”
“But—”
“There’s no but to it, LuAnn, that is the way it will be. Do you understand?”