The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 7)

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Piffy clambered to his feet. “Hi, fellas,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.” What else could he have said? He wasn’t Mike Hammer; he wasn’t Travis McGee, he wasn’t Sam Spade; his peashooter was back in the remains of his flat and his vocabulary of cuss words began with “Good Grief!” and ended with “Gee Whiz!” He was Bernard Piffy. He was closer to being a Keystone Kop than a Junior G-Man. Besides, there were two of them—at least that was how many he counted, Mohammed Atta on his left and Hani Hanjour on his right. Yeah, that made two.

If they had seen Asma bint Marwan they gave no evidence of it—perhaps, they hadn’t. She could make herself scarce in one heck of a hurry.

Atta said something in Arabic and Hanjour nodded. If only Hulk Hogan were here…or Bob Hope or Bing Crosby—they could play patty-cake, patty-cake. Yeah, patty-cake, patty-cake. But Hope and Crosby had never made A Road to the Birmingham Central Mosque movie. A pity.

Hanjour reached inside his shirt. Atta had shifted to one side to block the view of anyone down the length of the bar who might have been watching. A voice buzzed in Piffy’s ear. “Run! Run!” it said. And Piffy ran. He didn’t get far—two steps, three steps and Atta had him by the arm and Hanjour was pressing the muzzle of a field howitzer into his ribs. Ouch!

The Deobandis hustled Piffy out the back door and into a deserted alley. “Now wait just a minute—“ he protested.

POW! The sucker punch caught him alongside the head and drove him to his knees. Gee Whiz, that hurt! He took a hurried look down the alleyway. He was expecting to see something green and oscillating. He was hoping for bint Marwan and her magic bra. But no soap! Where the hell was she?

He should have been paying attention to the business at hand. Atta drove his foot into Piffy’s ribs and the gumshoe went sprawling.

Atta nudged Piffy with his foot, glared down at him. His face was as ugly as last year’s sin. “Where are the toenail clippings?” he screamed.

“Toenail clippings?” gasped Piffy. “What toenail clippings?”

Hanjour pressed the muzzle of his field howitzer to the side of Piffy’s head. “Don’t play dumb!” he barked.

“Hold it!” hissed Atta. His head was cocked to one side. “Did you hear something?”

Hanjour had heard it too. Something was coming down the alley—a very large something, something large enough to set the trash cans stacked along the pub’s back door to trembling. A loud screeching sound like an off-key air-raid siren was beating against the buildings on either side of the alley. Or maybe it was a chorus of banshees mourning someone’s death. Piffy’s? He had heard the sound before. And from the way they acted, so had Atta and Hanjour. They exchanged anxious glances. A strong wind had come up. Debris was flying about the alley like chaff in a monsoon making it difficult to see.

“Let’s get out of here!” cried Atta. And without further ado, he took to his heels and disappeared down the alley. Honjour started after Atta, then stopped, turned around and pointed his gun at Piffy

“Jesus Christ!” gasped Piffy.

A violent gust of wind seized Hanjour. The wretch was swept off his feet and tumbled end for end down the alley. He picked himself up, and as if nothing untoward had happened, hurried after Atta.

As suddenly as the wind had come up it ceased and the banshees stopped their dirge. In the eerie silence that followed, the massive Umyar appeared. He stalked over to Piffy, glared down at the decumbent private eye.

Okay—now it was one on one. The odds had been reduced. Still he didn’t like playing Fay Wray opposite King Kong. He preferred Bernard Piffy against Gomer and Goober. He glanced at Honjour’s gun. It was lying within easy reach—right where Hanjour had dropped it before galloping after the fleet-footed Atta. Should he make a try for it? It was only two steps, maybe three steps distant. All he had to do was scoop it up and turn it on Umyar. How long could that take? A second? Two seconds? If he could distract the lout for a moment…He grinned, stepped toward the gun. “Boy, was that a close call,” he said. “Those guys were gonna rob me. It’s a lucky thing you came along.”

Umyar blinked. “Rob you? Of what?” The words were like thunderclaps rolling across The Planet of the Apes. They came from above, from below, from inside Piffy’s head; they set his fingertips to tingling.

“Ah…” Piffy began. He stopped, waited for the reverberations inside his head to subside. Then he tried again. “They were gonna rob me of my money.”

Umyar looked Piffy straight in the eye. “You have no money!” he thundered.

Once again the words seemed to come from everywhere. They ran up Piffy’s legs; they set his knees to trembling, clawed at the insides of his skull.

“Where is bint Marwaq?” roared Umyar.

“Bint who?” echoed Piffy

It was the wrong answer. Umyar grabbed Piffy by the front of his shirt, raised him off the ground. “Do not play games with me!” he warned.

“I’m not playing games,” said Piffy. Smoke was coming from the Assassin’s eyes. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said. Okay, that wasn’t very bright.

“What did the Deobandis want?” demanded Umyar.

Piffy licked his lips. The buttons were popping from his shirt like fleas leaping from an Imam’s beard. “They wanted the Prophet’s toenails clippings,” he said.

Umyar frowned. He set Piffy down. He picked up Hanjour’s gun, crunched it into a compact mass; tossed it aside. He was thinking. The frown changed to a scowl. His eyes had come to a boil. ‘You’re the man in the mosque,” he said. “You’re the Kuffar who threw his shoe at ul-Haq. You are a bad man, a very bad man.”

It was too late to run. Not to late to die, but too late to run. The phantasm was at Piffy with lighting speed. The enormous hands encircled the private eye’s throat. It was too easy. It was like wringing the neck of a halal chicken. Piffy never had a chance. He landed one punch before a red haze swam before his eyes. In a moment he was gasping for breath. Then everything went black and suddenly he was on the ground but, miraculously, he was still alive! And there, as impossible as it seemed, was Umyar. The giant was backed up against a trash barrel, cowering, whimpering, his hands crossed protectively in front of his face! An itty-bitty wisp of a man, scarcely four-and-a-half feet tall, was whaling away at the giant with a cat-o’-nine-tails, the whip popping and cracking and showering sparks while the imp shrieked and laughed with a gusto that would have done justice to the seventh son of the Marquis de Sade!

What the hell was going on? Piffy lurched to his feet and the thing came at him, the whip popping and showering the private eye with sparks. The cat-o’-nine-tails tore the last buttons from his shirt, burned his flesh in a dozen places!

(To be continued)