Two Days Before Christmas
Prince Glorb-O’s Saucer in High Orbit
Julie, Claire, and Heidi studied Van Varkens on the large screen across the room with bad intent.
“Why were so many women out there attracted to this guy?” Julie asked herself while Heidi and Claire listened. “Was it money? Power? Because he has a face like a weasel, and the character of a…well, weasel. I bet he opens every conversation with a woman by telling her he has some sort of a luxury car.”
As mothers, the trois femmes despised Van Varkens. But Julie knew that if they were going to get what they wanted from him, they would have to reign in their emotions, and efficiently let loose the female dogs of war.
Turning to Heidi, and then Claire, Julie straightened their blouse collars and smoothed their skirts. Meanwhile, Gretchen sat at the side of the round table reading information on her iPad. Her blonde hair had been tied in a neat bun and she wore a dark black pant suit that looked almost like a uniform. She wanted to appear as threatening to his male ego as possible. Gretchen turned to her fellow wives.
“Shall we get started?” she asked.
With deadly seriousness, Julie, Heidi, and Claire all grimly nodded.
Van Varkens ecstatically studied the printouts he had just received. The overnight rating for his show had doubled thanks to the interview with the Holy Teddy Bear. Visions of Christmas sugarplums danced in his head as he imagined riding that fool into his contract negotiations the following month. The lines of data on the paper in front of him inspired all sorts of possibilities, and perhaps…
“Yes…” he whispered, “…a new red Mercedes convertible. Young chicks dig Mercedes, especially red—makes them hot!”
>Blue Light<
As the momentary blur faded from his eyes, Van Varkens felt something furry and sharp gripping each of his shoulders. Looking over his shoulder, terror raced through him when he saw Private Paws and Corporal Springer with teeth bared, snarling at him. On the other side of the round table Julie, Heidi, and Claire stared with contempt so intense that the plastic walls in the non-descript room should have been melting. Meanwhile, Gretchen sat at the side studying her iPad hardly paying attention to Van Varkens, treating him as if he were an annoying little bug interrupting her from more important work that she’d rather be doing.
Van Varkens looked around the room and wondered if he were dreaming. Claire reached into her purse and pulled out Wyatt’s 9mm Glock. Sliding in a magazine she set the weapon in front of her on the table. For further emphasis, Heidi laid Wyatt’s machete next to the Glock.
Gretchen didn’t look up and continued studying the data pad in front of her.
“Varkens,” said Gretchen without emotion as she waved with her hand, “sit!”
Van Varkens suddenly recovered from the shock of his new environment and became defiant. “Do you know who I am?” he shouted at the women. “You can’t just kidnap me! I am an important person. What the fuck do you four bitches want?”
Heidi stood and marched around the table. With her fist balled up as tight as possible, Heidi punched Van Varkens hard in the stomach and knocked the air out of him. Holding his stomach Van Varkens tried to breathe, while Heidi, beaming, proudly strutted back to her seat next to Julie and Claire.
“Varkens,” said Gretchen calmly. “Please watch your language. Use of the B-word demeans and devalues females…of all species.”
Gretchen looked directly at Corporal Springer and Private Paws. “Doesn’t it, ladies?”
Private Paws and Corporal Springer dug their claws into his shoulder and forcibly set a grimacing Van Varkens into a chair facing the trois belle femmes.
“What have I done?” pleaded Van Varkens as he regained his breath. “I don’t deserve to be treated this way. I haven’t done anything directly to any of you!”
Picking up the Glock, Julie waved it wildly in Van Varkens direction. “Gretchen, can I just shoot him? Are all people at POX News this stupid?”
Claire put her hand on Julie’s hand and gently guided the gun to the table.
“Julie,” said Gretchen, “they are not stupid, but they are evil. They know exactly what they are doing. They know what they do is wrong, and that they can con their viewers under the guise of free speech. They’d do anything to get ratings. Like televangelists, they are entertainers disguised as reality, because rating gets them power and in-turn, money. It doesn’t matter to them how many people suffer or get hurt so long as they drive a luxury vehicle and get to the front of the line in the restaurant ahead of everyone else.”
Gretchen looked at Claire. “Claire, I believe, at one time your country guillotined lots of people like that.”
“He let people threaten our kids for that. Please, Gretchen,” begged Julie. “Let me shoot this scumbag now!”
Gretchen walked to Julie and rubbed her tense shoulders. “Ok, Julie,” said Gretchen, “if he refuses to cooperate I’ll let you shoot him, maybe in the hand or foot, before we let Claire play with him.”
Gretchen turned towards Claire. “I have a surprise present for you, Claire.”
She signaled with her hand to Commander Pinky and Prince Glorb-O, who watched in a nearby room.
>Blue Light<
A guillotine, with the blade locked in the up position, appeared at the side of the room.
“Thank you, mon amie,” said Claire sweetly as she kissed Gretchen’s cheek. “You are such a good friend!”
Claire turned towards the soldiers. “Tie him and load him!” she ordered.
Corporal Springer and Private Paws saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”
Van Varkens, realizing what they were about to do, stood and frantically backed towards the wall looking for an escape. As he screamed the two soldiers stunned him, tied him up and strapped him to the bed of the guillotine looking up so that he could see the blade shining sharply above him ready to chop off his head. As they secured his neck in the wooden restraining collar, Van Varkens pissed his pants.
“Hey, Claire,” asked an excited Heidi, “can I pull the blade lever? I’m tired of seeing that stupid, ‘oh, I’m so innocent’ look on his face!”
Julie jumped in. “I should get the privilege of chopping off his head!”
Claire embraced Julie and Heidi. “He’s endangered all our kids. How about we play rock, paper, scissors for the privilege?”
The three agreed and held out their fists while Claire counted.
“Ladies, ladies, please,” begged Van Varkens as his eyes screamed upward at the looming blade. “just tell me what you want! Please! I’ll give you anything you want!”
Gretchen walked to the guillotine and ran her finger gently down the length of the beckoning drop lever.
“Varkens, I’ll be honest,” stated Gretchen gravely, “I’m leaning towards helping the three of them pull the lever. You allowed Teddy Bear a platform from which to threaten our children, and in all the universe there is nothing more vengeful, and full of wrath than a mother when her children are threatened!”
Van Varkens sobbed. “Anything! I’ll tell you anything!”
“Who put you up to interview with the Teddy Weddy Bear!” asked Heidi.
“I don’t know,” sobbed Van Varkens.
“Gretchen, can we shoot him in the foot?” shouted Julie. “He doesn’t have to have both feet for us to guillotine him.”
Gretchen nodded.
Claire picked up the Glock from the table and handed it to Julie.
Van Varkens squirmed in terror. “No, no, I’m telling the truth. I swear I don’t know!”
Julie aimed the gun at his foot. “Explain!”
“I received an e-mail,” sobbed Van Varkens. “It said that if I did an interview with Teddy, it would probably get me big ratings and that there was a Cézanne in it for me. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, but when I returned from lunch, the painting was on the couch in my office. So, I decided to send my producer to the prison to scout out how worthwhile the interview would be. When I decided to go ahead with the interview a Picasso arrived.”
“And the e-mail?” asked Gretchen. “Who was it from?”
“It didn’t say, and it disappeared off the server as soon as I read it.”
“Did anybody see who delivered the paintings?” snarled Heidi.
“No one,” answered Van Varkens quickly. “We couldn’t even see anything on the security cameras. The recorders were blank.”
The quatre belle femmes conferred.
“It’s not enough for what he’s done,” shouted Heidi. “I say off with his head! Who’s with me?”
“I agree,” said Claire loudly.” I want to see his head dropping into le panier.”1
“Please, please ladies,” begged Van Varkens staring in terror at the blade looming above him while loudly sobbing. “What else do you want to know? Anything!”
“Anything?” responded Gretchen.
“Anything!”
Gretchen waved her hand. A 3-D hologram appeared instantly in the middle of the table. Wyatt stood next to a large metal door in his black tactical gear. Lights flashed in the background.
“Hi, honey,” bubbled Gretchen. “How’s it going?”
Julie turned to the other three. “Doesn’t he look soooo handsome in black?”
Four mouths sighed while four heads dreamily nodded.
“Romeo and Juliet are cutting the last lock now,” answered Wyatt.
“Oh, my God,” exclaimed Van Varkens as he watched the hologram. “That’s my house!”
“Yes,” replied Gretchen sternly. “And that’s the private gallery that you have hidden in the basement of your country house. As you already know, the twenty-three paintings in your private gallery are all on the international registry of stolen and missing artwork. It also follows that you know those paintings were all stolen by the Nazis during World War II from French, Belgium and Dutch Jewish citizens?”
Van Varkens gulped.
“Now you will tell us who sold them to you!” said Gretchen
Van Varkens hesitated until Claire staring murderously at him made a chopping motion with her hand.
Munich, Germany
It had been a long and tiring day of police work for Klaus. But before heading home to his wife and children, he decided to do a little Christmas shopping. Afterwards he stopped off at a local Hofbräuhaus. As he drank a stein of his favorite beer, a tall blond man with bright blue eyes walked to his table with a grinning less-tall Asian lady with colorful hair.
“Herr Police Inspector,” said the man in German. “How would like you to get a promotion?”
POX News Headquarters, New York
>Blue Light<
Van Varkens, shaking, rose from his chair. Slowly he realized that he sat in his office at POX News Headquarters in New York.
“Did I fall asleep?” he asked himself. “Was it all just a dream?”
“Yes, it must have been!” He convinced himself. “What a crazy nightmare!”
Van Varkens heard loud laughter. Leaving his office, he noticed that half the POX News staff on the floor had clustered around a large case on the far wall where publicity posters for POX News personalities were displayed. Van Varkens strode quickly across the room to see what they were laughing about. When the staff saw him coming, they scattered. Inside the case, instead of a poster for the Van Varkens Conundrum, hung a black velvet painting of Le Bugs Bunny eating a carrot with a caption next to it. “Ehhh, what’s up, doc?”
Paris
Camille, the Paris Channel 99 news anchor, started the broadcast. “Sensational news in the art world today. Thanks to the brilliant detective work of Munich Police Inspector Klaus Gutmacher, over five thousand pieces of stolen artwork have been recovered with more on the way. During World War II, many works of art were looted by the Nazis from private collections in Western Europe. One such theft was carried out by Waffen SS soldiers in August 1944 under orders from Herman Goering and the art was hidden in a mine in southern Bavaria. All the soldiers involved in the operation except for Reinhardt Schlechtmann were later killed in an Allied bombing raid. On his deathbed in 1990, Schlechtmann revealed the hidden artwork’s location to his son Manfred. Since the death of his father, Manfred Schlechtmann has been systematically selling off the stolen artwork piece by piece, using art dealers from around the world. Today German police raided Manfred Schlechtmann’s home, recovering over 100 pieces of art. After Schlechtmann confessed, the police were able to recover another 4900 pieces from the original Nazi hiding place in an abandoned salt mine. The contents of the mine and the household are currently being inventoried, and arrests warrants are being issued for all art dealers knowingly involved in the illegal sales.”
“In a closely related story,” began Dandre, her co news-anchor, “across Western Europe and Israel twenty-three pieces of artwork were recovered today by the decedents of the original Jewish owners. Unable to locate the paintings since they were stolen by the Nazis during World War II the art literally appeared on doorsteps. One happy recipient in Brussels reported that when he responded to the doorbell he found two Van Gogh paintings bought by his grandfather worth millions of Euros wrapped in brown paper with a note on it saying Happy Hanukah.”
Camille finished. “On behalf of myself, Camille Merlot, my co-anchor Dandre Pinot and the Paris TV Channel 99 News Station, we commend and thank Klaus Gutmacher for his outstanding detective work on behalf of the culture of the world. And to the mystery Père Noël2 whoever you are, thank you! We wish you and all your elves a very Joyeux Noël.”3