The
Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part Six)
Cowsnofsky looked up from the newspaper he had been reading. “Here’s something interesting,” he said. “Some tourist took off his shoe in front of the Birmingham Central Mosque in London and threw it at an Imam…Isn’t that where Piffy was going—to the Birmingham Central Mosque?”
The Professor glanced at Joe. “Yes, I believe he went there looking for Asma bint Marwan, didn’t he?”
“Oh, no!” said Joe. “I hope it wasn’t Piffy! I could get sued!”
“And Piffy could get killed for doing something like that,” said the Professor. “That’s a mighty tough crowd that hangs out at the Birmingham Central Mosque.”
Piffy was Bernard Piffy, the private detective the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club had hired to track down the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas taxi-driver who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage. Joe was the owner of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. He liked to keep a low profile. He’d been in the CIA…or maybe it was in the FBI. He’d been arrested once for beating up two punks who had broken into his bar. He had used threatening and insulting language. His grandpa had been a big-man in the WPA. His dad had been with Merrill's Marauders in Burma in WWII. Joe kept a large reproduction of a Dick Tracy Junior Crime Stopper’s Badge next to his cash register.
“Does the story name names?” asked Joe.
“Naw,” said Cowsnofsky. “It just says some tourist. He was pursued by a mob of angry Asians.”
“Asians?” said Ranch House. “They have a China Town in London?”
“It’s a euphemism, Ranch,” said the Professor.
Joe glanced down the bar at Henrietta. “Will, you please stop doing your nails in here,” he said.
Slowly, deliberately, Henrietta crossed one delicate leg over the other. “Why?” he said.
“If Blind Pew finds out you’re a transvestite, there will be hell to pay in here,” said Joe.
“You should have sent me to London,” said Henrietta.
“Now that is an idea whose time has come,” said Joe.
“Henrietta has a crush on Piffy,” said Rufus.
“I do not!” said Henrietta. “I admire him as a private eye.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been Piffy who threw the shoe,” said the Professor. “He knows better than that. He was a pallbearer at Bulldog Drummond’s funereal. Played golf with Jake and the Fatman. He’s been around.”
“If it was Piffy,” said Cowsnofsky, “I hope he was wearing Air Jordans.”
If there was a record for the hundred-yard dash with one shoe on and one shoe off while being pursued by a mob of howling Asians it would have belonged to Bernard Piffy. The private eye’s mad dash would have made the Guinness Book or Records if someone had been on hand to record it. A stopwatch, an official timer, a photographer—fame was beckoning. An Air Jordan commercial might have been in his future. He hadn’t run this fast since he was eight-years old. He had just left a midnight Halloween spook show and one of his companions had pointed at a shadow and had screamed, “It’s the Frankenstein monster!” It had been bone chilling.
Now, with his legs pumping like pistons, he fled down an alley, cut through a back lot, and dodging traffic crossed from one side of the street to the other. By then his pursuers had been left in the dust. He had won the Mayberry County all High School 100-yard dash when he was nine years old. Little Bernard Piffy had been able to motor.
He slowed to a walk and slipped into the first pub he came to. He was out of breath and sweating profusely but he was safe. He put on his shoe—the one with the missing heel—and strode toward the bar as if he were Hopalong Cassidy entering a Dodge City saloon.
The place was almost empty. No Otis Campbell, no Willy Lump-lump, no Andy Capp, just a couple of lushes and… Wow! Va-va-voom—sitting at the end of the bar, a blonde bombshell with a décolletage reaching almost to her navel! She was digging in a purse large enough to conceal a cosmetics factory! She could have passed for Brigitte Bardot! She would have made Paris Hilton look like a boy! She had more curves than a road through the Smoky Mountains, more curves than Daisy Mae Scragg—more curves than the chorus line at the Follies Bergere! If Mayberry County had ever held a Sadie Hawkins Day race he would have fallen down in front of her. Yeah! She was Mad Comic Books’s ne plus unltra version of Va-va-voom! Willie Elder had had her in mind when he created Little Annie Fanny
He slicked back his hair, strode toward the end of the bar. He sat down. “Howdy,” he said. Oh, yeah, just like Hopalong Cassidy. Now where was that horse he was supposed to kiss?
“You sure made a mess of things,’ she said.
He nearly fell off his stool. The voice was more than familiar. “Bint Marwan?” he croaked.
“You were expecting Little Orphan Annie?” she said.
He looked her over carefully. The voice was bint Marwan’s all right but the little girl was gone. She had—matured. “What happened?” he gasped. She must have stopped by the Playboy Mansion for a makeover. He was suddenly was out of breath. “You’ve…ah, you’ve changed!”
“I can’t go around looking like a little moppet all the time,” she said. “They’d get on to me.”
He was gawking. Hell, God would have gawked! Maybe it was the décolletage, maybe it was the short skirt, the healthy thighs, the ample hips, the…
“Oh, this is not the real bint Marwan,” she said. “It’s a disguise. I don’t look like this. What you’re seeing is a phantasmagorical projection of you own psychic imbalance. I’m a poet. Good Heavens! Do you think poets look like this?” She laid a hand on his arm. “You’re trembling,” she said.
He was. Maybe it was the close call he had just had in front of the mosque, maybe it was his proximity to the new and improved, more mature version of bint Marwan, the decolettage…the short skirt…the healthy thighs…. He swallowed. “Where’s your, ah, halo?” he asked.
“That old thing?” she said. “It’s in the shop getting overhauled—besides it doesn’t go with this outfit.”
She smiled and a thrill ran up his leg. He was turning into Chris Matthews. He hadn’t been this excited since Spanky Abernathy had dragged him into the room behind Shontek’s barbershop to show him his Playboy collection.
“You want me to change into someone else?” said bint Marwan. “I can be the Lady from Worcester if you want. I can be Maggie Thatcher. I can be Anne Boleyn.”
“No, no!” said Piffy. “That won’t be necessary. You’re fine just the way you are! Just fine!”
Bint Marwan reached into her purse, produced a tissue, dabbed delicately at the corner of her mouth.
Piffy eyed the purse. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “The purse is your escape hatch. Smart! It looks roomy enough. I hope it has seat belts.”
“It’s an accessory,” said bint Marwan. “It’s part of the disguise—nothing else.”
“An accessory?” echoed Piffy. “Then how do you get back and forth from the netherworld? I don’t see anything that could be a conveyance of any kind…” He stopped. A strange oscillating glow was coming from beneath her blouse. Was it her bra? He swallowed. He was getting that Chris Matthews feeling again.
“Victoria has her secrets,” smiled bint Marwan, “and I have mine.
Piffy couldn’t take his eyes off the oscillating glow. Wow! Would he like to take a ride in that thing! Nothing like this had ever happened to Mike Hammer or Dan Tanna, he was sure of that.
Suddenly the glow was gone. “Let’s get down to business,” said bint Marwan. “Abu Afaq says he knows a man who will take us to Yaser Abdel Said but the price is steep.”
Piffy frowned. “I’ll have to call the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club.”
“The man doesn’t want money,” said bint Marwan. “He wants toenail clippings.”
“Toenail clippings?” echoed Piffy. Inspector Clouseau had said something about toenail clippings!
“Yes, toenail clippings.”
Piffy hesitated. “Whose toenail clippings?” he asked carefully.
“Muhammad’s.”
Piffy blinked. “Muhammad’s?” he echoed. “The Prophet’s? He wants the Prophet’s toenail clippings? Is there such a thing?”
“Yes.”
He was silent for a moment. His mind was racing. Toenail clippings? It was absurd! He looked at bint Marwan. A strange oscillating glow was coming from her bra. It was green, then orange, then red. “I—“ he began. He didn’t finish.
Bint Marwan was nodding toward the pub’s entrance. “Don’t look,” she whispered, “but your friends are here.”
By now the smell of cordite and phosgene was overpowering. He should have been paying more attention to the pub’s entrance than to bint Marwan’s magic bra, now it was too late. Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour were bearing down on him like a couple of brontosaurs on the last Dodo bird in Dr. Caligari’s Cabinet of Horrors and bint Marwan was disappearing into her bra! Yeah, disappearing into her bra! She was taking a B cup powder! He was being left in the lurch! He grabbed for the trailing edge of her skirt. But it wasn’t there! It was gone. The Netherworld express was leaving the station! He saw a flash of oscillating green—a bra strap! He made a desperate grab for bint Marwan’s Secret but he came up short! He fell off the barstool and sprawled across the floor! By the time he could sit up, Atta and Hanjour, two happy brontosaurs, were grinning down at him.
“Allahu akbar!” said Muhammad Atta. Or was it Hani Hanjour? Did it matter? No, not al all, he was doomed!