Q: WHAT SORT OF THROPNOODLE DID THE SWAMI CROSS?
A: A. BELTING THROPNOODLE!

Uh oh. A. Belting Thropnoodle was a notoriously dangerous internet pirate, hijacking websites by stealing other business's home pages and modifying the credit card payment code to collect the money himself. He was reputed to live on an impregnable island fortress in the Caribbean and have a retinue of sycophants and myrmidons and a bevy of beauties to indulge his every whim. Amazon.com, Mastercard, Land's End and American Express did not want you to know about people like A. Belting Thropnoodle.
What could the Swami have done to piss off a powerful man like Thropnoodle? What did they have to do to get him back? What did the "A" in A. Belting Thropnoodle’s name stand for, anyway? And why a menorah?
"What are we going to do-oo!?!" Veronique, back to full throttle again.
Suddenly, the door whammed open and a thick-set man in a cheap pinstripe suit lunged in.
"Boss! Boss!" clearly one of Louis B's "boys".
"We caught dis little green guy. He trew a silver tree troo da winder!" Two more goombahs with oft-broken noses and armpit bulges appeared in the doorway, dragging between them a bedraggled leprechaun.
"Put up quite a fight, for a little guy." said one bodyguard.
"Got quite an arm on him, too!" said the other bodyguard.
"Oh, my, look at his aura..." said Claire White Light, "the blues... the purples!"
"Let me read his irises," enthused Lila, "I've never done a leprechaun before!"
"Aaah! Aaah!"
Scott Barton's day seemed to be declining precipitously, like a malfunctioning runaway Jamaican bobsled. He stalked over to the 'chaun through the remaining shards of broken glass and demanded,
"What do you have to do with all this? We can have you killed, you know!" The bodyguards grinned their sharky grins, clearly pleased at the idea of some action.
"Or even worse yet, heh, heh, heh..." Louis B's sibilant hiss cut through the clamor in the room.
"I don't know anything! Some lady promised me a pot o' gold to do it!" Aw shoot, thought Barton, the old pot o' gold trick again. Leprechauns were generally pretty sharp, but they were suckers for that pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow. Must be all the fern gas or something.
"You want we should make him squeal, boss?"
"I could tell from his aura if he's telling the truth...."
"You'll pay for those begonias, boy, one way or another...."
"Alright, alright," Scott on the case, "let's torture him to find out who gave him the menorah."
"It was some lady, I promise. Please don't torture me, I'll tell you anything you want."
"I'm sure you'll tell us anything you can to save yourself," Mr. B's hiss had no accent at all, "but what we want is the truth."
"No, honest! I have to tell you the truth, because leprechauns aren't allowed to tell lies." Everybody knew this. The 'chauns were known for being mischievous as all get out, but their distinctive moral code prevented them from prevaricating on simple questions.
"O.K., so who gave you the menorah and told you to throw it through the window?" Scott trying to stay on-task.
"Some lady, like I said."
"Dat boy's got an arm on him, I'll say dat much."
"O.K., so what did this lady look like? Was she short, tall, fat, skinny, black, white, young, old, what was she wearing?"
"Well, she was tall," of course she was tall, thought Barton irritably, everyone looked tall when you were 4'10", "she looked kind of like Natasha...."
"Natasha?"
"You know, white skin, long black hair, foxy." "Rocky and Bullwinkle" was a very popular show among the leprechauns because Boris and Rocky were so short.
"What was she wearing?"
"Like, overalls, but short, you know? Like shorts with the top attached. And spotted! Animal skin, spotted...."
"Like cheetah spots, giraffe? Snakeskin, leopard skin...."
"Yeah, leopard fur!" O.K., thought Scott, so we had a tall woman, white skin, long black hair, wearing a leopard-skin jumper. The description only fit about half a dozen women that Scott knew from the bar scene alone. Vampire chic was "in" again this year.
Ever since the auto-clone procedure had brought all the endangered species back from the brink, fur was “in” again too. Heck, with the engineering they could do nowadays, you could even order a custom-built leopard-skin housecat. Human cloning, in contrast, had received quite a setback when it was revealed that Mick Jagger had secretly had himself cloned back in 2002 by the same team that did Dolly the sheep. His five duplicates formed a teeny-pop boy band called the Strolling Clones and were currently at the top of the charts. All five were also currently Cher's boyfriend. There were reputedly still some Michael Jackson clones left over from his last attempt to have a normal family, but they had "come out too black" for his tastes and were the subject of a fierce court battle with the laboratory responsible.
"I can tell from his irises that he's telling the truth."
"Boy's got a heck of an arm on him, get dat tree troo da winder."
"We can't torture him! He's telling the truth." Claire the nurturing earth-mother here. Barton could see that the girls found the leprechaun cute.
"We weren't really going to torture him, that was just a threat."
"Eeet vuzz?" Louis B had recovered and was back to being French.
"Be a shame to mess wit dat arm."
All the Italian-Americans were thinking the same thing. In the great tradition of Tommy Lasorda, Joe DiMaggio and Tony LaRusso, Louis B loved baseball. He managed a fast-pitch softball team comprised of some of his restaurant employees, bodyguards, bagmen and enforcers. Due to a woeful lack of good pitching, the Hitmen had never advanced past the second round of the city tournament.
"Hey, boy, you effer play zee bazeball?"
"Please don't call me 'boy.' Or, 'Shorty' or 'Junior' or ask me how the weather is down here. I'm a grown man, and no, I haven't played zee bazeball."
"Where youze get an arm like dat, den?" Bodyguard 1, the wide one.
"We had a lot of practice throwing rocks at goblins in my home country, I guess."
"Maybe now that we're all lovey-dovey friends here, we could shoot the breeze over a few drinks?" Barton offered hopefully. "I'll try to call the graphologist again and see if he'll meet us there."