37. I've Got You under My Skin

There's no justice in earth nor hell.
——Titus Andronicus, IV.iii

The other day my longsuffering wife, Sarah, remarked that she's never seen anyone get under my skin the way Q. has. Now that I've told the entire tale of what happened in Greece, Sarah wanted to know why I haven't just dropped the whole thing and gotten on with my life, the way other ex-Loudmouths have (e.g., Brian and Holly).

Good question.

I wish I could sit here and say with a straight face that there's nothing personal about this — no element of revenge, of wanting to see justice done on somebody else, as Bruce Cockburn put it. Well, I can't. There probably is such an element. But that's not all there is to it. First, as I've stated earlier, I think it would be a good idea to try to prevent other musicians from suffering under Q.'s abuse and mismanagement — or at least to warn them.

Second, my original motive for investigating Q.'s nonprofit status was not to get him in trouble but to see whether I could learn the identities of his board members. If Q. didn't want me sniffing around, he could have just put me in touch with his board, as he promised to do in November 2005.

Third, when you see someone breaking the law, you have a civic duty to report him or her to the authorities, do you not?

Fourth, there are some people who, like the Super Bowl streaker, just don't belong on the playing field. Between us, Sarah and I have years of experience with performing arts, missions, music ministry, and nonprofits. Those are difficult lines of work with high standards of fairness and integrity. And, like all professions, they are answerable in some degree to laws and government statutes. We've been involved with legitimate organizations that are actually achieving something in these fields, and we've seen how hard they work and how much they sacrifice. So it really shouldn't be a surprise that I get angry when someone comes along claiming to operate a nonprofit organization involved in performing arts, music ministry, and missions — and acts as though the rules don't apply to him. (Which, as we'll soon see, is exactly what Q. thinks.) In any profession — but especially in the ones we're talking about — if you don't run an ethical, aboveboard operation, you're not only getting in the way, you're giving the profession a bad name and making things more difficult for everyone else.

That, then, is the rationale for my continued pursuit of justice for Q. I hope it's sufficient.

After e-mailing the Secretary of State's Charities Division, I followed up with a phone call and spoke with one of the employees there, Ms. Makenice. I patiently walked her through Q.'s Web site to make sure she understood the exact nature of my complaint and saw the evidence for it. She explained my options, which I'll classify as follows:

Softball. I could follow the Charities Division's process for dealing with unregistered nonprofits. Ms. Makenice would send a letter notifying Q. of the problem, and he'd have 30 days to respond. If he didn't, she'd send another letter — and if he was still out of compliance after 15 days, she'd refer the matter to the state Attorney General's office.

Hardball. I could file a complaint directly with the state Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division.

I chose softball. As I've admitted earlier, I'm a conflict avoider, and softball seemed less confrontational. It also kept my name out of the proceedings, which was not an option with hardball. I kept an eye on Q.'s Web site (the tax-deductible claim stayed right where it was) and patiently waited 30 days. When I called the Charities Division I learned that Ms. Makenice was out sick. It was a couple more weeks before I got in touch with her. Here's what I learned:

According to Ms. Makenice, her office received no response to the first letter, so she sent a second one, per the procedure she'd described to me. Following the second letter, she had a phone conversation with E. — who told her, "We don't solicit funds." Upon hearing that, Ms. Makenice closed her case file.

I could hardly believe it, but that's what she told me. Apparently all you have to do to get the Charities Division off your back is tell them a lie. All I can say is that I hope other branches of Washington state government have similar attitudes toward law enforcement. If the Highway Patrol ever pulls me over for speeding, perhaps I'll just say, "But officer, this isn't my car."

Ms. Makenice also said it wasn't clear whether Q. would have to register with her office in order to raise funds. It would depend, she said, on how much he collected and whether he had any kind of church affiliation. So not only had she accepted a statement from E. that directly contradicted the evidence, she'd also failed to keep her eye on the ball: My complaint concerned Q.'s false claim that donations to his organization were tax deductible, not whether he was registered with the Charities Division.

I redirected Ms. Makenice to the pages on Q.'s Web site that contained the solicitation and the tax-deductible claim — at which point she suggested that she'd have her colleague get in touch with Q. And so ended that conversation.

I called Ms. Makenice again a few days later. She said her colleague had spoken with Q. and E., and it now sounded as though Q. planned to register with her office after all — even though he and E. were going to move to Taiwan in a few months to begin preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Furthermore, they now claimed that the artists whose CDs they were selling — B. and Six Steps to Heaven — were responsible for handling tax-deduction issues, since they were the ones receiving the money. Finally, she said, Q. and E. had told her they had a pretty good idea who'd reported them to her office, since they knew a particular person was "out to get them."

"I guess that'd be big bad me," I replied. Then as politely as I could, I reminded her that the illegal solicitations were still on Q.'s Web site, despite E.'s previous denial, and that Q. and E. were obviously the ones collecting the funds. The first thing I did after hanging up the phone was to jump on Q.'s Web site and order another copy of B.'s CD. The one I ordered two months earlier had not arrived — but, on the other hand, the transaction was never processed on my credit card. This time I used PayPal to send the money, and when I printed out the receipt, E.'s name and e-mail address were on it. Here was proof in black and white. Within a few minutes, however, I received the following e-mail from E.:

We do not accept and / or take the paypal money. We will be sending back this money, as neither the artist nor ourselves prefer to do any business of any nature with you. Now you are being like a stalker and if need be we will seek advice to deal with you in the appropriate manner.

That E., such a charming lass. So ordering CDs was equivalent to stalking? Hey, whatever happened to "We forgive you, we forgive you, and we forgive you!"? At least she did follow through and refund my payment. I faxed the receipt and the unpleasant e-mail to Ms. Makenice and followed up with one last phone call to her, although I was beginning to sense that it wouldn't do any good.

And I was right. Nasty e-mail and proof that she'd been had were not enough to motivate Ms. Makenice. "There's nothing else we can do for you," she said. "I'd advise you to call the Attorney General's office."

Frustrated, I expressed to Ms. Makenice my profound disappointment that the rules of softball seemed to have changed after I started playing it. The 45-day compliance period had long since expired, and Q. was still out of compliance — so why the heck hadn't Ms. Makenice herself kicked the matter upstairs to the Attorney General's office, as she had said she would do? In reply I got a rather long-winded sob story about how overworked Ms. Makenice and her colleague were. This didn't make any sense to me and still doesn't. If she was so overworked, wouldn't that be all the more reason to send the case to the Attorney General? That would be one less case on Ms. Makenice's desk, by my reckoning.

Afer saying goodbye to Ms. Makenice, I considered my options. I'd resisted hardball because I couldn't do it anonymously, but that no longer seemed like an issue. My cover was pretty well blown with the latest CD order, and if I didn't contact the Attorney General's office, no one else would. So I might as well take that step. What harm could it do?

Well, that's a tale for another entry.