Where in the world is Rick

Accounting is boring, deadly boring. Boring on a level that makes one want to self destruct on a cellular level. As a practioner, I do find amusing and macabre situations to liven my days and weeks, and writing a few of them down always makes for some fun. I hope you all enjoy.

My clients stop at little to achieve their greedy goals, and, although I become accustomed to their avaricious ways every now and then one still surprises me.

Its was a quiet-ish morning, I was lounging in my chair assuming a pose of reflective vacuous-ness, hoping it was enough to deter would be antagonists, when, to my dismay, my phone buzzed.

“yes”, I grumped.
“Mr Cohen and his party are here to see you”, came the unflappable voice of my long suffering secretary, Beryl.

“Ummm, Beryl, who in the world is Mr Cohen, and why would he be here, with a party?”

“I believe he is client of yours, I could be mistaken, but that is usually the case when people come to see you. I believe he said he is from Acme Import and Export Ltd”, she muttered, already losing much interest in me. This suspicion was confirmed by the dulcet dialling tone which echoed in my ears effectively cutting short any further discussion of the matter.

I sighed, racking my brain for some hint of who Mr Cohen may be, whilst wearily rising and making my way towards the boardroom.

Aaah the boardroom. A room aptly named for the absolute monotony of the conversation that dwells within it. The boardroom used to be just an ordinary room until we plonked a monstrous 18 seater ostentatious table in its centre in both a half-hearted attempt to justify our ludicrous fees coupled with the more important reason of diverting people away from my office, with usually resembles a nuclear fall out shelter. The finishing touches were of course walls of bookshelves containing dusty tomes in impressive red jackets. I say dusty as, in the age of computers, they were probably last accessed when the majority of mankind realised that the world was not flat. The soundproofing of the room makes it eerily quiet, an illusion only shattered by the hum of a huge air conditioner which I set ridiculously low, both to keep me awake and discourage people from spending inordinate amounts of time regaling me with their tales of woe.

I eased the door open, replacing my naturally dreary expression, with one of good humour and delight. My public face, so to speak, and one the brings both warmth and fuzziness to my faithful well healed clients (Debbie says it is only slightly less murderous than my normal face, and bears a slight look of constipation to it, a comment I take to mean she is jealous of my wonderful interpersonal skills).

As I enter the room I am almost bowled over by a boisterous individual radiating an irritating excess of good cheer, especially irritating as I had yet to forage my third cup of coffee for the morning.

“Chris, awesome to see you again mate”, the individual I could only assume to be Mr Cohen bellowed whilst heartily whacking me on my shoulder.

“Let me introduce you to my very good colleagues, Ishmail, Brenda and Bongani” he gestured to the three rather furtive and sweaty individuals who had made themselves at home at my table.

I was having a very vague recollection of someone I had met about 2 years ago, very briefly, about an import company, and not having heard from again. Martin? Mike? Mack? Mick? I silently ticked off names in my head. Hang on, Mike, that was it, phew, I sigh inwardly with relief at this major intellectual accomplishment.

I gestured for him to sit whilst securing my favourite seat, the one with the view of the surrounding countryside and one where I can go into my happy place when the conversation exceeds the surgeon generals recommended levels of tedium.

“What can I do for you good folk today”, I start, with a cheerfulness that belied my desire to be rather dominating the world of Solitaire.

“Well, you will be pleased to know that we have over the last few years built the credibility and functionality of Acme into one of the countries leading importers of the basic chemical components of glue based products, far surpassing our budgets and effectively securing our position as a player to be reckoned with”, he crowed whilst attracting the synchronised nodding of his companions.

“ I am delighted to report that over the past 12 months we have exceeded R100 000 000 in turnover and have shown profits in excess of R20 000 000.” In more conventional currency this is roughly about $14 000 000 and $3 000 000 respectively.

These opening lines had exceeded my usual 15 second attention span, and I drifted into a blissful dream which involved shooting him in the forehead with a big green paintball from a paintball gun.

After what appeared to be an eternity I could see he was starting to wind down just to pick up a line which seemed to signify the possible start of the reasoning for their visit.

“Ahem, this unsurpassed growth has put some strain upon the companies cashflow, and we have found ourselves in the position of not being able to meet some of our payment obligations”, he finally muttered.

Figuring it was time for my input I say, “If your figures are as good as you say, that comment makes little sense to me.”

A hushed fidgety and sweaty silence descended upon the room. For additional impact I pointedly glared at each of them.

And that’s when the stuttering started…….

“As you well know Chris, its my brother Rick which is the company shareholder, we , ummm, never quite got around to finalising our shares from, ummm, him…”, Mike stammered.

“Ok then, well where is he, shouldn’t he be here”, I ask quietly.

“Yes, well that’s the thing, he is sort of responsible for the companies bad times, you see he has a small gambling problem”, Mike said as the furtive glancing once again started.

“How small exactly?”

“Well, Durban Casino say R20 000 000”, Mike mumbles.

“Whaaaat”, I splutter becoming animated with shock.

“Well again, where is he, have you put him in hiding?”

“Ummm, well that leads me onto his substance abuse problem”, Mike once again mumbles.
“It appears as if Rick had a Cocaine abuse problem, led on by the stress of the gambling of course”

I sigh, “Ok, go on then”

“Well it appears as if he has spent some R2 000 000 on excessive living over the past year or so, the stress of it all has led him to a breakdown, as his Wife left him when she both found out the money was running out coupled with the fact that a few girlfriends had come to light”

“I have a feeling that there is more Mike”

“Well you see he has been put a top secret facility for his addictions and no one can see him for 6 weeks, which leads us on to why we are here”
“You see there is R5 000 000 or so in cash, which is earmarked for creditors, but even with this, liquidation will be unavoidable. We were thinking that we are all long serving employees of the company, and it would not be right for the company to go bankrupt without us getting our long service awards.”
“We managed to get Rick to sign some blank cheques before he ‘went in’, and were wondering if it would be untoward for us to pay the cash to ourselves before applying for Liquidation of the company”

Sudden animation amongst the merry entourage as 4 pairs of greedy little piggy eyes focussed intently on me, waiting for my life changing verdict. I try to keep my face serious as I consider how ridiculous a request this actually was.

As I was about to unceremoniously dump them from my boardroom I thought of my good friend and company lawyer Andrew Kochhead. Andrew is adamant that his surname is pronounced “Kohead”, and that somehow the ‘c’ has become silent due to some inexplicable loophole in the Dutch language, from which he vehemently claims he name to have originated. I personally believe that it is this name that led him into a life of Law as a defence mechanism against 20 years of persecution by cruel schoolchildren. I also believe it could largely contribute to his general strangeness.

Andrew is a strange man, when he was thinner I think the correct description would have been gangly, but now, at 6 foot four inches the gangly arms and legs are at odds to his expanding waist and rapidly fattening face. He sports a mop of hair which is generally unkempt, and if it wasn’t for the nose he broke and never straightened and the badly chipped front tooth he would have his looks generally described as ‘boyish’. He is also the clumsiest individual I have ever met, if there is a glass around it will be broken, a mug of coffee it will be spilt and I even witnessed him spraying a fountain pens ink all over a client when he was demonstrating something with a rather elaborate flourish.

Despite all of this, he has a wicked sense of humour, and I think it is this that has made us firm friends over the past few years. As Andrew is also in Public Practice, we often swap war stories, and we have been known to refer clients to each other. The game we started a while back was however, referring clients with the penchant for the strange to each other, purely as a way of breaking the drudgery of what we each do. Sort of like a ‘Hah, you think that was weird, check out these people, type of thing”

Bearing that in mind, I rephrased my response to be, “ Hmmm, I certainly don’t believe that to be an option due to the fact, well, not to put to finer point to it, its potentially criminal”, and that was watered down from my preferred statement of “You are all liars and cheats, what you are proposing to do is steal from the company and from creditors to justify your own selfish means, the resultant fraud and theft which you propose will probably end up with you all being incarcerated.”

I continued to say,” As this is a legal matter I believe you should consult a lawyer, and I could recommend a Mr Andrew Kochhead, who is an expert in matters such as this. My receptionist will give you his details on your way out.”

With disappointed looks on their faces they rose, Mike and his furtive fraudsters , and silently shook my hand, took their dejected airs and wondered off down the stairs.

I chuckled to myself, shook my head, still in disbelief, and ambled back to my office to resume my previous pursuit of doing, well largely, nothing.

It was a few weeks later when I was chatting about the latest Rugby scores with Andrew on the telephone that he thanked me for the referral of the Cohen clan. He claims a similar experience with them traipsing into his boardroom, this time clutching a piece of paper between their sweaty hands. It was a general power of Attorney on behalf of the indisposed brother which they wanted Andrew to sign. He rightly told them that he would have to see the brother , or at least speak to him on the phone, in order to verify his existence.

This apparently led to some sort of minor eruption, accusations of mistrust thrown at him, and a combined about turn and stalking out by the outraged group. He says he has had occasion to speak to no less than 3 other lawyers over the past week who have been attacked by the same contingent with the same result.

So he delivered what we had all been thinking, in classic Andrew prose, “Im telling you Chris, they have murdered the poor bastard, buried his Cocaine riddled, gambling ass in their back garden, mark my words, there is a plot of Geraniums growing wildly, where there was before, bare earth.”

“My friend, the Rickster has pulled he last Ace/Ten, Life has spun him a double zero and hes finally dealing his cards at the great white casino in the sky.”, Andrew delivered with a note of finality.

I cant say what ever happened to Rick, Ill guess I will never know. I resigned my position as auditor of their companies as shit has a tendency to splat. I saw their premises the other day, boarded up with Sheriffs tape across the doors.

As much as I don’t know what ever happened to Rick, what I do know is human greed knows no bounds, and I do know that when money is involved morals are traded against alternate realities. To long dealing with this manner of people has encouraged the cynic in me to bloom, and what fuels my cynicism is that I am,unfortunately, seldom wrong.