The press declared a scandal loud:
“A Picasso stolen!” cried the crowd.
From Madrid’s vault to van en route,
A painting gone, no sign, no loot.
Steel strings embedded in a desk,
Now vanished in a tale grotesque.
But truth, as ever, wore pink boots,
And danced between dimension roots.
For Pink the Flamingo, suave and sly,
Had wagered once beneath moon’s eye.
A debt unpaid, a canvas owed,
A Cubist chord in steel bestowed.
No lock could hold what fate had signed.
Pink blinked, and space itself aligned.
Inside the van, mid autopista glide,
He shimmered in and slipped inside.
No crowbar, glove, or getaway,
Just feathers, flair, and quantum sway.
The driver swore he saw a flash,
A velvet blur, a cosmic dash.
The painting gone, the van still sealed,
No fingerprints, no clues revealed.
The tabloids screamed of art theft bold,
But Pink just laughed in realms untold.
In his domain of jazz and mist,
Where flamingos play and time gets kissed,
The steel guitar now sings anew,
A debt repaid in shades of blue.
Picasso’s brush, though famed and grand,
Could never match Pink’s sleight of hand.
So next you hear of stolen art,
Consider this: it may depart
Not by deceit or mortal scheme,
But flamingo flash and gambler’s dream.
For debts in velvet never fade—
They teleport when truth gets played.
Picasso painting stolen fron The Guardian
The Investigation
“The Flamingo Ledger”
A Barry Noir Case File
Barry didn’t believe in coincidences. Not since that damn bear and the Missing Maharaja incident and the realisation that his own existence was a manifestation of a joke created by Harry Pi's business partner Larry back in the 1930s. So when the Picasso vanished from a locked van on the autopista between Madrid and Granada, he lit a cigarette, adjusted his trench coat, and started asking questions no one wanted answered.
The van was sealed. No signs of forced entry. No tire marks. No witnesses. Just one driver swearing he saw a flash of pink and a swirl of blue light before the painting disappeared. Barry had heard that kind of story before—usually from jazz musicians or ex-Bureau agents who’d seen too much and talked too little.
He checked the manifest. One painting: steel resonator guitar embedded in a desk, signed “P. Picasso, 1919.” The kind of piece that didn’t just walk away. Unless it had wings. Or a debt to settle.
Barry knew Pink. Not the color. The flamingo. Velvet blazer. Cravat. Art critic by day, interdimensional gambler by night. They’d crossed paths in Kathmandu, when Barry was chasing a stolen Rembrandt that turned out to be a bet gone wrong in a poker game involving three marsupials and a sentient saxophone.
This smelled the same. No theft. Just repayment.
Barry found the portal residue behind the van’s rear axle—faint traces of ultraviolet shimmer, like the afterglow of a teleportation device tuned to flamingo frequency. He ran the numbers through his interdimensional ledger. One debt. One painting. One flamingo.
Case closed.
He filed the report under “Unrecoverable Assets – Mythic Settlements.” No need to chase what was never stolen. Just repatriated to a realm where feathers hold more weight than fingerprints.
Barry tossed the cigarette into the gutter and walked off into the Madrid mist. Somewhere, Pink was hanging that Picasso in a gallery that didn’t exist. And Barry? He’d be ready for the next ledger to balance.
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