The Heist

Art thieves made off Sunday with one hundred and sixty-four million dollars worth of paintings from a Zurich museum. What was the haul? Four paintings, one each form Degas, Cezanne, Monet, and van Gogh. Three men in dark clothing and masks, one of whom spoke German with a Slavic accent, forced their way into the museum and made off with the paintings in a white car, police said.
"Spoke German with a Slavic accent?" Of course he did! He's an international art thief, for goodness sake! No doubt he has a telltale scar on his right cheek, a remembrance from an over enthusiastic young ladyfriend he met somewhere in the south of France. I am sure that one of them, the big one, is mute. Though he was born without the power of speech, he is skilled in both martial arts and high explosives. Then there's "Face", named thus because of his ability to charm both women and men with his easy smile and non-threatening good looks. Certainly these characters can't be that hard to find. The reward of one hundred thousand Swiss francs should be mine, I tell you.
But really, what do the thieves hope to do with their loot? Any reputable dealer or collector would shy away from any lunkhead showing up, waiting to sell these masterpieces. I slept through a good portion of my art history class (it was an early, and I hadn't adjusted my hangover clock to freshman standard time), but I know all four paintings stolen: Cezanne's The Boy in the Red Vest from 1890, Degas' Viscount Lepic and His Daughters from 1871, Monet's Poppies Near Vetheuil from 1880 and Van Gogh's Blossoming Chestnut Branches from 1890. These guys won't just unload them on the closest "Starving Artists" sale, where sofa-sized paintings are only ten dollars a foot.
So what's going to happen with all that art? It will probably sit around some bad guy's warehouse for a few years until it is recovered in some equally daring dawn raid. But come to think of it, they might just end up on somebody's dorm room wall - some really nice, dorm room wall.