Entry 5: The Rendezvous

Louis was standing before his cork board, where he had pinned up every last bit of information he could glean about Kookie. Right now, he was looking at a page ripped from his trusty notebook. It was a list of businesses Kookie had started before they had all failed spectacularly –at least the ones Louis was aware of so far:

·       ‘Pigeon Factory Pencils’

·       ‘Philosophy Tutoring’ (catchline: ‘TRUE learning through ill-advised risk-taking’)

·       ‘Smash-Thru Deliveries’

·       ‘Flying Lessons for Humans’

·       ‘Most Humble Professional Greeting Cards’

·       ‘Lemonade Stand @ Your Front Yard’

·       ‘Gas Pipe Leak Correction’

·       ‘Postal Service by Birds Not Post Office’

Kookie wasn’t aware what the internet was, so Louis was having difficulty finding any online trace of his so-called businesses. None of them were registered. He could only assume Kookie did business purely through cash. But where did he keep all the cash? That is, before he plunged into excruciating debt. And surely, he couldn’t evade creditors forever simply on account of being a bird, not human.

Louis sighed and took down the paper from the board, folded it into his notebook and headed out. It was the day of his scheduled rendezvous with the Duck (see: Entry 3). Naturally he was nervous. The Duck would need more information than Louis had managed to obtain to calculate the exact amount of Kookie’s excruciating debt. And yet, it was the best Louis could do.

Back at the local park, Louis waited near the creek where he had first met the duck skaters. Just as he was about to give up and leave, they showed up – roaring down a footpath on their skateboards, helmets askew.

“Oh look,” the obnoxious one said from afar, “It’s the detective lorikeet!” He hollered at Louis, “Whaddya want, spy?”

“I scheduled a meeting with the Duck, remember?” Louis said. He was irritated that the duck was loudly yelling out his true secret identity for anyone to hear.

“Right,” the main duck replied. He took off his helmet and fished around inside it, producing a piece of paper. “Here, take that and have a read.”

“Yeah, have a read mate!”

Louis took it and frowned upon reading. It simply said: “QUACK” in all capitals and underlined. “I don’t know what that means?” I don’t speak your weirdo language, he added in his head.

The duck skaters groaned and threw each other exasperated looks. “Mate,” the main one said. “That’s clearly an emphatic yes from the Duck to your meeting invitation.”

“Okay, that’s great…”

“So follow us and we’ll head right on over.”

Louis followed the duck skaters into a thicket of trees. After about 10 minutes, they stopped at a giant fig tree. Louis glanced up and looking more carefully, he saw a treehouse. Someone had plastered the walls from the outside with wallpaper that (almost) perfectly camouflaged with the foliage.

“We’re gonna do a confirmation mood check first,” one of the lesser-known duck skaters said to Louis. She was wearing a chequered beanie in fluorescent green and yellow. The hem of the beanie obscured her eyes but instead of pulling it up she craned her neck backwards to make intimidating eye contact with Louis.

“Sure,” Louis said uncertainly.

The duck skaters chucked their skateboards and other gear at the foot of the tree and flew up to the treehouse. The obnoxious one looked down from the window ledge: “You just wait there till we say so mate. Otherwise we’ll throw random objects at your head!”

Unnecessary, Louis thought angrily. He could hear the duck skaters conversing with someone. All he could hear in response were quacks. Not even a series of quacks at any one time, but one “quack” in varying intonations.

Finally, the duck skaters flew back down.

“Alright,” the main duck said, “The Duck is in a bad mood but not in too bad a mood.”

“We rate it a bare pass,” the duck in the beanie agreed, “That is, a 50% grade.”

“So be quick, mate. The good news is the Duck’s genius quadruples with every additional increment of anger.”

“Oh right, that’s good news,” Louis said.

Inside the treehouse, towers of paper took up every corner. There was a path cleared between them from the door to the centre. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling. In the pool of light sat an extremely fat duck. Louis could have sworn it was a gigantic version of one of those plastic ducks intended for bathtubs. But it was the Duck, and he was apparently a mathematical genius.

The Duck peered up from his paperwork. He didn’t say anything but coughed in a surly way.

The main duck explained to Louis: ‘The Duck is very young. He’s almost a baby duck–”

“What’re those called again?” the obnoxious duck cut in.

“Ducklings,” the main duck snapped back, not happy he was interrupted.

“Oh yep that’s right! Ha!”

“Anyway. So you see the Duck can’t speak properly yet. His calculations are impeccable however.”

“Are you sure?” Louis asked.

“Quack,” the Duck chimed in and Louis jumped in surprise.

The duck in the beanie cleared her throat: “The Duck says in reply: ‘With that kind of attitude, you will be swung out of the treehouse at extreme speed.’”

Louis went pale. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Quack.”

“The Duck says in reply: ‘Do not call me sir, call me the Duck. Now what do you want?’”

Louis explained and pulled out the list of businesses Kookie had begun and failed at disastrously:

“All I can say is Kookie failed at this set of businesses and that’s the main source of his excruciating debt – most of all, the pigeon factory. If I can identify the exact amount of his debt that he failed to pay creditors, it’ll assist in incriminating him. Perhaps even be sufficient cause to make an exception to apply human law to a bird, who knows.”

“Quack,” the Duck said as he contemplated the situation.

The duck with a beanie said: “The Duck’s reply is: ‘Intriguing. I shall give you an exact number. But first: let’s discuss payment.’”

“Yes of course,” Louis had forgotten about paying the Duck. It was remiss of him, since the Duck was a professional accountant.

“That’s right, you’ll pay,” the main duck said, “the Duck expects a cut of the final loot when Kookie is incriminated. Any assets he has, the creditors and you must share a chunk with my mate the Duck here.”

“Okay,” Louis said nervously. “And what if we never manage to catch him or get a payout?”

The duck skaters glanced at the Duck. He replied, “Quack.”

“The Duck’s reply is that you will be charged at the current consultation rate of $100 per minute, only he will collect the money when all hope is lost and the investigation collapses – at an interest rate of 60% per month up to the point of time where all hope is lost.”

Louis gulped, then nodded.

“We proceed then,” the main duck said. He snapped the paper from Louis and read off the list and the duck with a beanie typed furiously at a laptop. Louis could see it was a business name register for entrepreneurs who were animals. How could he have missed that?

When the duck skaters had pulled up the necessary search results, the Duck tapped a few keys on the laptop and ran several thousand Excel calculations in a couple minutes. Louis looked at him keenly – the Duck looked bored as the spreadsheet spat out outputs. The laptop was so heated it shook.

The Duck’s eyes scanned the outputs then he said, “Quack.”

The main duck turned to Louis, “The current debt balance is $517 trillion.”

“Quack!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry mate. That would be $517,883,291,043.23, to be precise.”