The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 1)

The boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club were confused. Maybe consternated would be a better word to use. They had watched the killing of Sarah and Amina Said on America’s Most Wanted and had read Phyllis Chesler’s article on FrontPageMag. They knew what Yaser Abdel Said looked like—Weak Eyes Yokum had spotted him two or three times in the weeks following the murders but nothing had been done; anyway, not enough to satisfy Weak Eyes. And they had their doubts about the FBI and its ability to catch a bastard like Yaser Abdel Said. FBI head Robert Mueller looked and acted more like Frank Costello than he did Eliot Ness. The FBI hadn’t been engaged in a successful first-class shootout since Melvin Purvis shot Pretty Boy Floyd full of holes in a cornfield back in ’34. They should have nabbed Said months ago.

“It’s a shame the bastard is still on the loose,” growled Alexander Graham Bell Cowsnofsky.

“We ought to do something about it,” said the Professor.

“Do what?” asked Joe

“We could take up a collection,” suggested the Professor.

“For what?”

“We could hire a private detective,” said the Professor.

Absurd? Ridiculous? An ant can’t move a giant saguaro plant. But that is what the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club went and done.

The collection plate didn’t yield enough Grants to hire someone of the caliber of Magnum P.I. or Frank Cannon, and Mike Hammer was in a ‘Retirement Home’ but they got the best that could be expected for their money with the help of an ad in the shopper’s guide and two ten-seconds spots on reruns of The Flintstones.

Cowsnofsky studied the man in the trench coat. “You look wiry enough,” he said. “How much can you bench press?”

“I don’t lift weights,” said Bernard Piffy. “I arm wrestle Mike Hammer and ride alligators when they’re in season.”

“Remember,” said Joe, “you get half your money now and the rest when you catch the bastard.”

“I know how it works,” said Piffy. “I’m not an amateur. I worked with Bulldog Drummond. He called me his apprentice schnauzer. I was a page boy when Nick and Nora Charles got married.” He let that sink in for a while. Then: “Have you got my reservations to Dallas?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Piffy.” said Joe. “Made out just like you said—to a Bernard Piffy. P-i-f-f-y—right?

Cowsnofsky peered at the reservations. “Is that the way you spell Piffy?” he asked.

“Why?” said Piffy. “Do have a better way to spell it? I’m always open to suggestions.”

Joe studied the private detective for a long moment before turning over the reservations.

Ranch House had been studying Piffy since he came through the door. “I think he’s Barney Fife’s cousin,” he mumbled into his beer.

“I don’t know,” said Socrates. “He hasn’t said ‘It’s a jungle out there.’”

Oh, yes, the caper was off to a great start! It wasn’t Matt Helm; it wasn’t Shell Scott; it was Bernard Piffy and the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club were having second thoughts about Robert Mueller

At least that was the way Alexander Graham Bell Cowsnofsky remembered it.

Special investigator Bernard Piffy arrived in Dallas without fanfare. He checked into a Best Western, spent a few days reconnoitering the lay of the land, bought a Dennis Weaver Stetson; ate his fill of tacos and beans. He shelled out a hundred dollars for a ride in Yaser Abdel Said’s taxi. Wouldn’t that be something to tell the old gang back in Mayberry County—the real Mayberry, the last hellhole of the old frontier, not the slumbering tree-lined Mayberry of Andy and Opie and Aunt Bea, the real Mayberry where he had served as Deputy to Sheriff Wild Bill Bascomb, the last law officer to shoot two bank robbers dead on the same day, where he had won three straight Junior Calf-Roping Championships, at least twenty Sate Skeet-Shooting Championships before the age of ten, was starting fullback on the Junior High Football team while still in the sixth grade and busted broncos for the Bar X ranch before his wisdom teeth came in. He was one tough kid. He also won the Mayberry County Tobacco Spitting Championship against contestants as much as ten times as old as he was. He was an honorary member of Mayberry County’s George Gabby Hayes Society. Grandma Piffy took him to the woodshed over the tobacco-chewing episode. He ran the decathlon before he knew how to spell it. He entered a scorpion-eating contest, went over Little Niagara Falls in a barrel. He joined the Marines and became a close combat instructor. He once beat Mike Hammer in arm wrestling. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t try at least once. The boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club could have done a lot worse.

He talked to the police, to the firemen, to street people, to members of the Said family. “This was an honor killing,” said the dead girls’ aunt. That bothered Piffy. There was no honor in killing—not even in killing a bastard like Yaser Abdel Said. Had he said bastard? Yes, he had. He was beginning to sound like the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club.

Islam Said, the brother of the dead girls, said his father was not the killer. He blamed Sarah and Amina’s boyfriends. “They pulled the trigger, not my father,” said Islam. A classmate of one of the girls was more informative. “Even at school,” she said, “if a teacher joked around like, ‘I’m gonna tell your parents about this,’ she would like totally flip out and start crying like, ‘please don’t tell.’”

It wasn’t long before Piffy learned a new word—dhimmi. It would creep in when he least expected. Dhimmi…dhimmi…dhimmi…And Wahhabi and honor killings—no one had used words like those in Mayberry County. Out there it was still hellfire and damnation and an occasional ‘Jesus saves.’ But special investigator Piffy was running out of money. If something didn’t turn up soon he would have to go back to Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club empty-handed. He would rather spend a week in a jail cell with Otis or Ernest T. Bass than face defeat. Otis and Ernest T. Bass? Oh, yes, he knew his Andy Griffith.

He finished his cup of joe, left the waitress a quarter tip and stepped outside. It was a dark and stormy night. That’s how he would remember it. He had never heard of Bulwer-Lytton. He wasn’t much on Walden Pond. He liked his fiction to read like a Coroner’s Report. So it was a dark and stormy night.

“’Ey, bud,’ a voice sliced at him from the darkness. “I hear you’re looking for Yaser Abdel Said.”

Piffy peered into the gloom. A wretched waste of a man, clothed in the frightening shadows of the night, lurked in a doorway. Piffy took a step backward. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“I am Ka'b” said the wretch.

Piffy swallowed. “Where did you come from?” he said. “Who sent you? Mike Hammer?’

“I know no Hammer,” said Ka’b, “but if you are looking for Said, I can take you to him.”

Piffy was elated. Things were looking up. This was going to be easier than he thought! Said…Ka’b…it would curl some toes on the boys back at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. He turned up his collar against the chill in the night air, cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “if you’re game, so am I.”

Follow me,” said Ka’b.

When the wretched little fellow moved, the doorway seemed to move with him like some free-floating non-detachable part of an indefinable universe. First to one side and then to the other, back and forth—it was eerie. It must have been the coffee. He had never had a worse cup of joe. Yeah, he shouldn’t have left such a large tip. A quarter! What had be been thinking?

Ka’b slipped into an alleyway, the doorway sliding with him, first to the left, then to the right, like a double-jointed picture frame. It was more than eerie! Piffy followed cautiously. There was a rushing sound in his ears. It was so dark the only thing he could see was the back of Ka’b’s head and the ghostly outlines of the floating doorway. Then somebody—or something screamed. The sound cut through Piffy like a singing sword through the heart of a gorgon. “What was that?” he whispered hoarsely. “A Banshee?”

”Yes,” said Ka’b.

Then all at once he was in a cluttered dimly lit room. He didn’t remember going through any door or gate or opening of any sort but there he was—in a cluttered dimly lit room. A boy, it could have been one of the Little Rascals—Spanky or Alfalfa—was on his knees amidst the clutter, cowering, whimpering: pleading. A man was beating him with a stick. The man’s face was contorted with anger and hatred.

Piffy reached for his gun—but he couldn’t move! He was paralyzed! How could that be—he wasn’t frightened, he was angry. He wanted to do something! Somehow he managed to get Ka’b’s attention. He nodded at the man with the stick. “Is that Said?” he whispered hoarsely.

“No,” said the little fellow. “The boy is Said.”

“Why is the man beating him?” whispered Piffy.

“He has cursed his father,” said Ka’b.

“Oh,” said Piffy as if it made any sense. “Can you tell me why the hell I can’t move?”

“Don’t worry,” said Ka’b. “They can’t see us. We are ephemeral—or maybe they are ephemeral. It’s quite complicated and I have never been able to figure it out. I am a poet, not a scientist.”

“We can’t just stand here!” wailed Piffy. “We have to do something!”

But Ka’b was not listening. “According to Al-Bukhari,” he mused, “Three persons shall not enter the garden: the one who is disobedient to his parents, the pimp and the woman who imitates men.” He paused to see if Piffy was listening, then continued: “Allah defers the punishment of all sins to the Day of Resurrection excepting disobedience to parents, for which Allah punishes the sinner in this life before his death.”

Piffy’s mind was racing. It kind of made sense…punishment…the boy…spare the rod… He was putting two and two together.

But then, suddenly, it was gone, just like that, the boy, the man, the room, everything—gone in a flash and a rushing sound had filled his ears and Ka’b was running, running, running as if the devil were after him, the doorway swinging from one side to the other as if Ike Clanton was pushing his way into the Long Branch Saloon. Piffy chased after the little fellow into a vast unknown darkness.

“Quick! Quick!” urged Ka’b. “We must hurry! The Prophet has unleashed his minions! They will catch us and kill us! He has never forgiven me for what I said about him when he ordered the slaughter of the Banu Quraysh at Badr.”

“The Prophet?” puffed Piffy. “What Prophet?’

“Mohammed!’ said Ka’b, spitting the word out like a broken tooth. “I told him Hell would be a better place to reside than the Paradise he was promising everyone.”

Something was breathing down Piffy’s neck. He smelled smoke! Good grief! His hair was on fire! He lost sight of Ka’b and then he hit something in the stygian dark and he tumbled end for end for what seemed an eternity. When he came to a stop, he rolled over onto his back and took a deep breath. He sat up; nothing appeared to be broken. Ka’b was gone.

A door opened and someone shined a flashlight in his face. It was the waitress. “What the hell are you doing in the alley? Ain’t you got no place to stay?”

Special investigator Piffy got up; brushed the dirt from his trench coat. A rat scurried out from behind an overturned garbage can. It was the garbage can that had sent him sprawling. The stench of rotting grapefruit was overpowering. He looked at the waitress. “Of course I got a place to stay,” he snapped. “I’m staying with my friend, Ka’b.” If it was a jest, it was a poor one.

The waitress flipped him a quarter. “Here,” she said. “I think you need this more than I do.”

Special investigator Piffy would see more of the waitress and Ka’b in the near future. His search for Yaser Abdel Said had just began.

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