The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 18)

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version The Professor looked up from the newspaper he had been reading. “If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I would think this was our man Piffy, but that couldn’t be. It would be ludicrous to even think so.” “Piffy?” said Joe. “Our man in London?” Joe was proprietor of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. “What’s he up to now? Wasn’t he supposed to have been back in the States weeks ago?” Piffy was Bernard Piffy, the low-key private detective the boys at the bar had hired to track down the notorious Dallas taxi driver, Yaser Abdel Said, who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage and then fled the country. “Piffy?” said Cowsnofsky. He put away his cell-phone. “He hasn’t been arrested again, has he?” “Well, that depends,” said the Professor. He laid the newspaper on the bar. “According to the Daily Mail, a Bernard Piffy, age ten, was arrested for assaulting a Madrassas school owner, a customer at a McDonalds, a pole-dancer named Yasmin in an apartment over a topless bar and for stealing a car belonging to a certain Algernon A. Algernon and crashing it into a tree. The Daily Mail says he embarked on his crime spree dressed as a preteen girl.” “And it says that in the Daily Mail?” said Cowsnofsky. He shook his head. “You got to stop reading that newspaper, Professor. Why don’t you watch Countdown With Keith Olbermann or Family Guy. It’ll take your mind off things.” “Here’s the weird part,” said the Professor. “When they fingerprinted this ten-year-old ‘Bernard Piffy’ they found his prints were already on file. And get this—they belonged to, believe it or not, to a middle-aged tourist named Bernard Piffy! Now that is a coincidence!” “Not our Piffy?” said Cowsnofsky. “It’s Yogi Berra all over again,” said Joe. “M 15 says there might have been a mix-up at the fingerprint office,” explained the Professor. “In the meantime, they are trying to locate the adult Bernard Piffy but he seems to have disappeared.” “I don’t like this,” said Joe. “We should never have hired that guy.” “There’s something weird here,” admitted Cowsnofsky. “I’ve got a half a notion to go to England and straighten this thing out.” “I’ll go with you,” said Henrietta. Joe glared at his nephew. “Oh, no, you won’t!” he said. “I promised my sister on her death bed that I would take care of you and you’re not going anywhere—not while I’m paying the bills!” “Oh, let them go, Joe,” said the Professor. “What could it hurt?” Yes, what could it hurt? Piffy stared at the wall. He had to think this thing out. He couldn’t be as bad off as it seemed. A Juvenile Detention Home was better than the lockup at Gun Blast, Texas; better than the brig on the H.M.S. Bounty—maybe not quite as good as a room over the stable at the O.K. Corral but it was adequate and the food wasn’t bad and at least he had some proper clothes to wear. But—dag-nab-it—he was still stuck in the body of a ten-year-old boy and he wanted the old bag of bones back. They might be a bit used and the covering might be wrinkled here and there but they were his and they still had some muscle attached to them with which he could defend himself. Sure, he could live an extra thirty or forty years if he stayed in Opie Taylor’s slim body but the mind would decay long before he reached the big 5-O. No, he much preferred the way he had been than to what he had become. It was exasperating, that’s what it was. He paced back and forth in the room—back and forth. He seemed to be growing angrier by the minute. Where was his Mommy? Where was Asma bint Marwan? She was supposed to come and get him, wasn’t she? That’s what Mommies do. Where was she? He would get her for this! Not that he hadn’t had plenty of guests to keep him company in his short stay at the Detention Home—he had talked to a child psychologist, to the police, to M15, to a Baptist minister, to an Episcopal priest, to a half-dozen social workers, to the Daily Mail, but not to Asma bint Marwan. When he asked to see James Bond, they laughed at him. They thought he was being a stupid kid. Maybe he should have made a clean breast of it, confessed to everything. So far the only thing he had told his interrogators was what he and bint Marwan had rehearsed over and over again for the ‘Madrassas operation.’ He was from Aden, his father was a metallurgist and he had a can named Poobah. Oh, what a fool he had been to trust bint Marwan! There came a tapping on Piffy’s chamber door. He stopped pacing. “What do you want?” he said truculently. Oh, yeah, he was beginning to sound like Slip Mahoney of the Bowery Boys—okay, make that like Jackie Cooper imitating Slip Mahoney. “Get your gear, son,” said the Detention Home manager. “You’ve been upgraded. We’re taking you to Belmarsh.” Wow! Belmarsh! Belmarsh was big time! That’s where they kept Abu Hamza al-Masri—where they would have kept Jack the Ripper. Of course, Abu Hamza was the nut that had pronounced the fatwa on the adult version of Bernard Piffy. But what did that matter? Abu Hamza would never recognize the little twirp trapped forever in Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer’s emaciated body as Bernard Piffy. HE had scarcely settled into a holding cell at Belmarsh when he was told he had a visitor. A guard escorted him to the visitor’s center. Except for the surveillance cameras and a handful of patrol officers the hall was deserted. The visitor was bint Marwan. One look at Mommy was enough. All those angry things he had been going to say were forgotten and he started bawling! Yes, bawling! It was difficult at times to tell where the ten-year-old child left off and where the adult began. Nor was it the beauteous, mini-skirted, divinely curvaceous bint Marwan that had brought forth the deluge of tears—far from it, it was the old crone, the wart-on-the-nose bint Marwan with the sagging stockings and the shopping bag that had released the floodgates. Try to figure that out. “Get a-hold of yourself!” hissed the old crone. It was easier said than done but a sharp elbow to the ribs brought Piffy to his senses. He stopped crying, sniffled; he eyed the shopping bag—his escape hatch from the mess he was in; bint Marwan’s Time Machine, her hole in the universe, the magic carpet to where the deer and the antelope played. He grabbed for the shopping bag—he was getting out of here—but bint Marwan jerked away from him. A patrol officer hurried toward them. “Is this little bloke getting fresh with you, Ma’m?” he asked. He was an ugly, beetle-browed specimen “No,” said bint Marwan. “He thinks I’ve got candy in my shopping bag.” “Well, ‘e better behave,” warned the officer and with that he retreated to what was considered a respectable but observable distance. “A bloke?” said Piffy? “A bloke? What in the heck was a bloke?” “Listen—“ bint Marwan said urgently. “I don’t have much time. I have to be in Cairo in ten minutes. The Keepers of the Fleas are meeting in the casbah. Your friend from the Madrasses school—Ahmad—will be there. We must stop them. Ka'b is waiting for me.” Piffy had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Take me with you!” he begged. He reached for the shopping bag. “There’s room for me in there!” “No!” hissed bint Marwan—the tough, ugly, old crone bint Marwan. “Ka’b doesn’t want anything to do with you after what happened in Dallas.” “I won’t take up much space!” wailed Piffy. “I’ll scrunch myself into a little ball. I’ll be as quiet as a June bug in a frozen food locker. Start it up and let’s get out of here!” He had his hand on the shopping bag. He could feel a surge of kinetic energy. “Are you crazy!” said bint Marwan. “Starting a portable time warp in an enclosed space could cause an explosion! It could collapse the building! And even it if didn’t, it would suck all the oxygen out of the air and asphyxiate everybody!” “What am I going to do?” he wailed. Bint Marwan reached inside the voluminous folds of her shapeless granny dress for a baby’s bottle. Piffy watched suspiciously. What now, he thought? Bint Marwan removed the nipple from the bottle and like David Copperfield, drew the clothes Piffy had been wearing the night she had changed him into a ten-year-old boy from inside the container. “Put these on,” she whispered. “They won’t fit,” he said. “You’ll grow into them!” she hissed. It took a moment for the idea to sink in. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s right!” And then he jumped the gun. He reached for bint Marwan’s breasts. The patrol office hurried over. “Is the little bloke trying to cop a feel, lady?” he demanded. “Oh, no,” said bint Marwan. “He was admiring my locket.” The officer scowled. “Okay,” he said “But if he gets fresh, let me know.” And once again the John Law retreated to a respectful distance. “Put the clothes on!” hissed bint Marwan. She was getting annoyed. Piffy did as he was ordered. When he was done he looked like Opie Taylor in Sheriff Andy’s uniform. Bint Marwan turned so her back was to the patrol officer and Piffy put his hand on her breast. “And don’t forget to count to ten,” she said. He would have preferred the younger, more nubile version of bint Marwan but once he made contact the tingling sensation that shot through his fingertips and up his arm and through his body cleansed his mind of all rational thought. An incredible wave of euphoria swept over him. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing out like porcupine quills and his toenails were curling. Something was burning. Then he remembered he was supposed to count to ten. He wondered if it would make any difference if he started late. It shouldn’t. One…Two…He felt himself expanding…expanding…growing larger… larger…and then he was drifting…drifting… Then it was over and he was alone in the visitor’s center except for the patrol officers. Bint Marwan was gone and he was Bernard Piffy again, the real Bernard Piffy—a little achy perhaps, but that should not have been surprising, his hip hurt and he was having some difficulty focusing his eyes but that was understandable with all he had been through. That’s what he thought, anyway. He walked right past the patrol officers and out the door. He stopped at the coffee bar and that’s when he glanced in the mirror—and was stunned by what he saw! Jumping Jehosaphat—that face looking back at him couldn’t be his! It was hideous! It was the face of an old man, a broken-down old man! It was lined, wrinkled. There was enough sagging skin there for two faces! He put his hand to his chin—an old, wrinkled, heavily veined hand—and the creature in the mirror did the same thing. A waitress helped Piffy to a chair. What had bint Marwan done to him now? (To be continued)