The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 32)

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version Asma bint Marwan could be very persuasive when she crossed her legs and looked into Piffy’s eyes. There was far more thigh than miniskirt and that suited Piffy just fine. She was like Marilyn Monroe standing over a heating grate designed by the Marquis de Sade. She would have given Potsie Weber a heart attack. There wasn’t anything in the world Bernard Piffy would have liked better at the present time than a trip in bint Marwan’s magic oscillating traveling bra—her time warp—the magnificent H. G. Wells contraption that carried her back and forth to the netherworld and to the many places she visited past, present and future—some that may have existed for no other reason than her presence. It went orange and green and red by turns. He liked it best when it was orange—orange was more soothing and he needed all the soothing he could get. But he had business to conduct. Yeah, business… “If I go to Gaza,” he said, “do I get to ride in your magic carpet?” It was a business question, wasn’t it? Sure—and he was all business. “No,” she said. “Then I’m not going,” he said for the tenth time. “You must think of Aisha,” she said. He had thought of Aisha; he had thought of Aisha a hundred times. If he didn’t go to Gaza the chances were good, perhaps 100 percent, that Ahmad would enroll his ten-year-old daughter in the bin Laden Madrassas for suicide bombers. And there was Ahmad himself—he was a Keeper of the Fleas from the Prophet’s Beard. He was high on the list of unfinished business. Bint Marwan had learned in Cairo that one of the sacred fleas had escaped its Keeper and had leapt from its container onto the beard of a passing goatherd. The flea had been on its way to poison a Coptic well. It was not the first time that particular flea had aborted an operation. The goatherd—a good-natured boob—had run off before he could be shorn and was now residing somewhere in Gaza. Piffy’s job would be to find the goatherd and Yasser Arafat’s fabled fuhrerbunker where the Keepers kept the homing devices that kept track of the fleas—so it was said. The device would be wrapped in the original copy of Jimmy Carter’s Roadmap for Peace. It was said that Carter, seized by inspiration after kissing Yasser Arafat on the cheek, had drawn the map from memory in less than five minutes. And there was Habib, the Islamic Wizard of Hogwarts. He had fled to Gaza. And there was Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour—all in Gaza. And according to Ka'b, though it could not be verified, the Keepers had recruited Che Guevara to do their dirty work. Piffy would have preferred Mad Dog Coll or Ned Pepper, but Guevara? He could tolerate Coll and he kind of liked Pepper. It seemed the radical left was rushing from the grave to assist Islam in its war on democracy and capitalism. These were trying times. Even Tom Paine would be hard pressed to keep up. With Guevara, Atta, Hanjour, Habib and the usual run of Allah’s Cro-Magnons, Piffy would have his hands full. No wonder he didn’t want to go to Gaza. If only bint Marwan would stop crossing her legs maybe he could find the moral courage to say no once and for all. And there was Chauncey bin Abu Abdul Aziz al-Saud, the aide to the Saudi Arabian ambassador to England, a great nephew of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the pimply-faced wretch the octogenarian Piffy had physically assaulted on the Kharma With Darma Show. Chauncey had returned to Saudi Arabia to recruit a dozen or so volunteers from the Mutaween. They were to assist Chauncey in his efforts to regain his manhood. No one had used the word ‘vendetta’ but a fatwa had been mentioned in connection with the name of a certain dhimmi private detective. Ahmad, Habib, Atta, Honjour, Guevara, Chauncey…throw in ul-Haq and Abu Hamza… Piffy felt like Shane in Grafton’s Saloon. He shook his head. “There’s too many,” he said. “You don’t need to take all of them on at one time,” said bint Marwan. Piffy smiled. “It would be worth a ride in your magic carpet, wouldn’t it?” he said. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “If a serial killer can get a last meal, I ought to get a last ride,” said Piffy. “It would be too risky,” said bint Marwan. “Besides—Ka’b already has your passport and your airline reservations.” ”Can’t we fake it?” suggested Piffy. “We could fly over in your unmentionables and when my flight lands at Yasser Arafat International I could get out of your bra and mingle with the passengers as they disgorge from the plane. Who would know?” “You are beginning to annoy me, Bernard,” warned bint Marwan. “It’s the only enjoyment I have left,” said Piffy. “You would deny me that?” “Be a good boy and catch your plane, Bernie,” she said. “Can’t we take a quick spin around the block?” he said. “Maybe when you get back,” said bint Marwan. Maybe…it was always maybe…Well, there was the repartee, they had that—and at times he did get the best of her, and, who knew, perhaps in a distant millennia in an Elysian field strewn with the bodies of their enemies, a tumble amongst the daffodils awaited them—if he wasn’t shot full of holes first. And then he got to thinking…and he thought and he thought. Damn, why did the strange things always happen to him? They never happened to Mike Hammer or to Shell Scott, or to Travis McGee or Bulldog Drummond. It was always him. A dollar to Johnny Dollar was always a hundred pennies. Piffy never got a hundred pennies back, not even when he was paid. And the convolutions he faced—they were frightening. Fortunately, he seldom understood them until too late. It preserved his sanity. I, the Jury, Nightmare in Pink—they had a start, middle, and an end. He just sort of ambled along. Oh, sure, he knew where he started—it was in Joes’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club where the resident barflies hired him to track down the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas taxi drive who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic Rage. After that it got confusing. He had seen more lineup changes than Casey Stengel had seen with the 1962 New York Mets. Maybe he was where Winston Churchill was when he said the allies weren’t at the beginning of the end, they were merely at the end of the beginning. He wished he had said that. He was in the middle of something…an indefinable, indistinct, blur, a shadow of a reflected image…there was something hovering over him, the Sword of Damocles, perhaps. It was scary. It was some time before he noticed the man in the long brown robe standing on the other side of the room. There was no mistaking the tonsure, the little potbelly; the inoffensive smile, the apple dumpling cheeks. It was St. Anthony! What was he dong here? What did he want? Piffy didn’t remember praying to him—not recently, anyway. St. Anthony cleared his throat; he had a prayer book in one hand and he looked like he had been crying. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he sniffled. Piffy braced himself. Bad news? “Did somebody die?” he croaked. “My God, not Henrietta! Not Cowsnofsky! Not…Not Aisha?” “No,” said St. Anthony. Piffy was soon over his fright. “Not the President, I hope?” he said. “How about Bill Maher? Tell me it was Bill Maher.” “Oh, it’s worse than that…much worse than that,” said St. Anthony. “I’m no longer your guardian angel. I have been exceeding my authority. I’m supposed to be the patron saint of lost items. I’m supposed to be Heaven’s smiley face, not a protecting angel. I’ve been called on the carpet. I am to see Gabe this afternoon.” “Gabe?” said Piffy. “Saint Gabriel,” said Anthony. “He has such a temper! He has threatened to confiscate my aspergillum!” “Your aspergillum?” echoed Piffy. St. Anthony sniffled. “Yes,” he said. “And I just had the handle bronzed! See?’ Piffy knew what an aspergillum looked like but that didn’t deter St. Anthony. The former guardian angel tugged the sacred instrument from his belt and waved it beneath the private detective’s nose. “Nice,” said Piffy. “I like the textured grip.” St. Anthony sprinkled the apartment with Holy Water. It seemed to help. “What has all this got to do with me?” asked Piffy. “I’ve come for the dog,” St. Anthony said matter-of-factly. “For the dog?” said Piffy. “For puppy dog?” He couldn’t believe it! He was stunned. Suddenly he couldn’t think of being without the little mutt. “He wasn’t mine to give!” sobbed the Saint. “I’m so embarrassed!” “Look—“ said Piffy, “can’t we work something out? I’ve grown attached to the mutt.” “I’m afraid not,” said St. Anthony. He looked at the ceiling, rolled his eyes. “Oh, I rue the day that Henrietta prayed to me to take care of you. Oh, what a vain fool I was; I thought I could be somebody…a guardian angel, not a mere finder of lost trinkets. But apparently it is not to be.” He sniffled. “I hope you have married Henrietta, she seems like such a fine young woman.” And then he came down from Cloud Nine. “Now, would you please give me the dog?” “Sure, “ said Piffy. He would get St. Anthony his dog. He would miss the mutt. Puppy dog had been his ace in the hole, the card he kept in the top of his boot when he ventured into Deadwood for a game of chance with Wild Bill and Black Bart but there was no telling what St. Anthony might do to him if he refused to cough up the mutt. “I’ll be right back,” he said. He had left puppy dog in his cage on the roof to get some fresh air. No one would steal him up there—no one in his right mind. Piffy had taken no more than a half-dozen steps down the corridor from his apartment when the ‘Asian’ in the Mujahideen pantaloons came charging at him from out of the shadows screaming, “Allahu akbar” and waving a three-foot sword! Piffy dodged the blow by flinging himself to the floor but before he could get up the Mujahideen was towering over him, the Sword of the Prophet poised to send another unbeliever to his eternal doom! Fortunately, it was not to be! The Mujahideen collapsed like a bar rag in Archie Bunker's Place at three o’clock in the morning. It was a miracle! Piffy stood up, nudged the unconscious man with his foot. St. Anthony stared at his bent aspergillum. “Oh, dear!” he said. “These things do pack a wallop but they are so fragile! I hope I didn’t hurt the blighter!” Piffy rolled the man on his back. “Know him?” he asked. St. Anthony was surprised. “Why, I do!” he said. “It’s Bulrush al-Tamimi of the Mutaween! He is a very bad man! He works for Chauncey.” “Chauncey?” echoed Piffy. “Yes, Chauncey,” said St. Anthony, “the spoiled-brat great nephew of King Abdullah.” Piffy sighed. He hadn’t got out of his apartment building and they were after him. “I think you better let me keep puppy dog,” he said. (To be continued)