by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Crime Writer
It was like a scene out of a Roald Dahl story, but without the Oompa-Loompas to give it a strangled poignancy.
Jimmy Pfiz was arrested Thursday night on charges of murdering his father, billionaire military aircraft armrest tycoon Ernestine Pfiz. It was the perfect crime...until it wasn't.
"Why I oughta...!" Pfiz told reporters as he was perp-waddled (what? - the kid weighs over 451 pounds - how would you describe it?) to the waiting police cruiser.
When it became clear that he wasn't going to say anything further, the gathered journalists started shouting, "Ought to what, Jimmy? What ought you to do?" I'm not ashamed to admit that I was one of them - the journalistic herd instinct is strong in this one.
"I dunno," Pfiz exclaimed. "Dat's just what people in my predicate says!"
"Predicament?" we shouted.
"Dat, too!" Pfiz responded as his head disappeared into the back of the police cruiser.
Pfiz programmed the family's Home Object GeneratorTM (a 3-d printer created for civilian use) to produce a pistol using designs he found on the - well, isn't it obvious where he found them? Do I really have to spell it out for you? Fiiiiine! It starts with an "i," ends with a "t" and thymes with "winter schmett."
He made the pistol from melted plastic construction bricks that we cannot name for patent reasons, but they rhyme with Eggo - dough! According to the police, the plan nearly fell apart at this stage because the melting plastic set off a smoke alarm in the Pfiz kitchen. Thinking quickly, Pfiz explained to his father that he was smoking a joint and boldly asked his dad to join him. Pfiz the elder declined.
Pfiz shot his father in the library (a very sensitive area just above the spleen), then melted the gun down and used the Home Object GeneratorTM to create a sculpture of Mona Lisa crossing the Delaware out of the plastic. He placed the sculpture on the mantle of the library's fireplace next to his father's yacht bowling trophies, in full view of everybody who walked through the scene of the murder. Then, he threw books around the room, making it look like thieves were looking for the wall safe that every rich guy has on the wall of his library.
Every rich guy except Ernestine Pfiz, that is. Clearly, somebody had seen one too many episodes of Murder, She Wrote.
At a press conference the day after his arrest, Pfiz tried to proclaim his innocence by playing the stupid card. "Dis whole ting's disfusing me a little," he stated.
"Do you mean 'confusing?'" a journalist who was not me asked.
"I stand...sitting by what I said," Pfiz insisted.
"Jimmy, Jimmy," another journalist who was not me, asked, "Don't you think you're carrying this Leo Gorcey schtick too far?"
"On the device of my lawyer, I pleads da fifth," Pfiz, who had never set foot in the Bowery, stuck to his vocal affectation.
Pfiz may have gotten away with the killing if he hadn't invited the lead investigators to have some fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads (eat them up, yum!) and tea with him while he showed them photos from the family album. In between photos of the family vacationing in the Black Hole of Disneyland and kittens exposing their bellies (which had to have been taken off of the hinter schwett because of the elder Pfiz' allergy to cuteness), there was a photo of the old man showing off his trophies. Pfiz the younger's plan began to unravel when one of the officers noticed that the sculpture was not among them.
"It was my Columbo moment," said Jenny Macrummmmmmboom, lead investigator on the case. "Some police go their whole career without having one! I...I think the only option for me now is early retirement. Policing is all downhill from here!"
When asked what Pfiz' motive for the shooting was, Macrummmmmmboom stifled a scowl and replied, "Rich kids - pfft! They're not like you or me. Maybe Jumbalaya from Reuters, but not you or me." Then, her face brightened and she added: "Now, if all of you journalists are done trying to spoil my Columbo Moment, I've got a celebratory cake to cut into!"
Krapp's Last Industries (a wholly owned subsidiary of (MultiNatCorp - "We do innovative technological - without the slightest legal liability for the consequences of our products - stuff"), creators of the Home Object GeneratorTM, refused to comment on the case. "This is not what Gene Roddenberry envisioned," KLI said in a press release.
Arraignment is scheduled for Saint Michaelmaus Day.