The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 36)

CHAPTER 36:

GO FOR THE JUGULAR

Okay, so the game was up. “On the count of three…” the gun would go off and they would see who the coward was…”Mr. Piffy.”

So Che Guevara had figured out who he was. It hadn’t taken much—Piffy had given himself away repeatedly, he couldn’t blame everything on Asma bint Marwan and the chances were one hundred to one that Ward Churchill’s patron saint had stuffed enough bullets up his butt to blow Bernard Piffy to Kingdome Come with a few left over for the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia.

A double-homicide was in the offing. Piffy had two choices: he could make a dive for the gun and take one in the head or he could stand still and take one in the head; there was no Asma bint Marwan or Ka’b lurking off stage to save his sorry butt. That wasn’t the way they worked. He was on his own.

But there were two things going for Bernard Piffy: Jimmy Carter’s rabbit and White Robe and they both chose to appear at the same moment: the rabbit out of Carter’s perfervid imagination and White Robe who came blundering into the chamber like the nun who waltzed into Father Flanagan’s sacristy with a basket full of Easter eggs only to catch the priest with his pants down.

In the end there was nothing for Piffy to do. He stood there—an innocent bystander to a tragedy written by Chaucer and acted out by Seinfeld.

“It’s the rabbit!” cried Jimmy Carter. Maybe he had mistaken White Robe for Peter Cottontail. He pointed into the darkness, let out an unearthly scream and took to his heels.

A rattled Guevara saw the rabbit too—at least he fired two or three shots in the general direction of Carter’s hallucination, flung the empty or nearly empty long-barreled Redhawk at whatever it was and then chased after the President!

A stunned White Robe watched them go. “I—I haven’t interrupted anything have I?” he croaked.

Piffy picked up the discarded Redhawk. “You haven’t got a couple of bullets stowed on you somewhere so I can reload this thing, have you?” he asked.

White Robe sat down in Yasser Arafat’s chair. He was shaking like a leaf and beads of perspiration had popped out on his brow. “That Senor Guevara is a very bad man!” he whispered hoarsely.

“All the Keepers are bad men,” said Piffy. “You shouldn’t be associating with them.”

“I—I came back for one of my monitors,” said White Robe. “I seem to have misplaced it. The Keepers will be very angry.”

“It’s okay,” said Piffy. “I’ve got it.”

“You?” said White Robe. “Allahu akbar! What a relief! How on earth did you find it?”

“I prayed to St. Anthony,” said Piffy.

”St. Anthony? I’ll have to try that,” said White Robe. By now he suspected a rat. There was more to this new Keeper than met the eye.

Piffy checked the Redhawk 357. There were two bullets left in the cylinder. He laid the weapon on Arafat’s desk.

White Robe eyed the private detective suspiciously. “Could you tell me how you knew the monitor was missing before it was missing?” he asked.

“I’m clairvoyant,” said Piffy.

“You are also a thief,” said White Robe. “But that may be a good thing. I may have need for someone like you. I have located the Sufi flea’s host.”

“You mean the goatherd?” asked Piffy.

“Yes,” said White Robe. “The problem now is how to get him here without the other Keepers knowing so I can perform the necessary examinations. I may have to douse the poor wretch with flea powder and I will need someone to hold him down. It can be an uncomfortable experience.”

“Flea powder?” said Piffy.

“I will have to kill the other fleas, if any, so I can isolate the Sufi and return it to the lockbox,” explained White Robe.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” asked Piffy.

“Oh, no, not at all. I use a non-toxic herbal flea powder and I wear rubber gloves and I use a jeweler’s loupe and I wear a nikab. A flea can jump seven inches, you know, that’s about 250 feet for a human. I wouldn’t want the Sufi flea to get in my beard.”

“Okay,” said Piffy. “So where do I find the goatherd?”

“He has only recently arrived in Gaza,” said White Robe. “He works as a janitor at the bin Laden Madrassas for Girls.”

“Oh, boy!” exclaimed Piffy.

White Robe eyed the private detective. “Is there something wrong with that?” he asked.

“No,” said Piffy. “Absolutely not.”

But there could be. Maybe he should look at it as an opportunity, not as an obstacle, a chance to solve two problems at the same time. But he would have to be careful—none of the usual Inspector Rousseau blundering. He would have to be Jessica Fletcher, or Jim Rockford, not Mike Hammer. It would by tricky. But he had an idea.

If Aisha was already enrolled in the Madrassas and the goatherd was a janitor…maybe he could sneak into the school…swap places with the janitor…abduct the ten-year-old—there was that word again; abduct—hide her in the Fuhrerbunker…disguise her as a boy…sneak her over the border…

And then he had another idea. It was so brilliant; so outrageous, it shocked him!

“Look—“ he said, “if I bring the goatherd here how long do you think it would take you to find the flea?”

“It could take anywhere from a couple of minutes to two to three hours,” said White Robe.

“But you can find it?” said Piffy. “That’s guaranteed?”

“If it’s in the man’s beard I can find it,” said White Robe.

Okay,” said Piffy. “I’ll bring the man here the day after tomorrow—right about the same time as it is now. Forty-eight hours. It will be our little secret. Nobody else will know. How about it?”

White Robe didn’t waste any time thinking it over. “Agreed!” he said. “I prefer to do the preliminaries without fanfare. We can find the flea and spring it on the members when it becomes necessary.”

It was exactly what Piffy had wanted to hear. “It’s a deal!” he said.

He had made up his mind—he would swap the flea for Aisha! Yes, as absurd as it sounded he would swap the flea for Aisha!

Was he crazy? Who in their right mind would swap a precious little ten-year-old girl for a six-legged blood-sucking parasite the size of a fly’s eyelash? It was ridiculous, wasn’t it? It was a hair-brained scheme—a human being for a flea! No normal person would do such a thing; not Lucky Ned Pepper, not Polack Joe Saltis, not Bugs Moran.

But the Keepers were not normal people, they believed in the Flea Fairy, in jinns, in Caliphates, in jizya, in honor killings, in cutting the hands off thieves, in smiting off fingertips. They were Qur’an-quoting, dhimmi-hating, jihadists; true believers, misogynists, bigots, homophobes, self loathing bottom-feeders on their way to Allah’s Great Whorehouse in the Sky. They cared little for this life except to make it as miserable as possible for the rest of humanity. Why wouldn’t they swap a ten-year-old girl for a flea?

Suddenly a voice welled up from somewhere inside him. It must have been bint Marwan.

“Allah has purchased the believers, their lives and their goods. For them is the Garden of Paradise. They fight in Allah’s Cause and slay and are slain, they kill and are killed.”

“Did you say something?” asked White Robe.

Piffy smiled. “No,” he said. “I was just thinking. I’ll see you in two days—about forty-eight hours. I’ve got work to do.”

You bring the goatherd,” said White Robe, “and I’ll bring the flea powder.”

The bin Laden Madrassas was built like a fortress. It lurked at the end of a dreary one-way street as appetizing as a canker sore in the mouth of a black widow spider. It was dark; it was gloomy; it reeked of evil, a forgotten corner of Dante’s Inferno. There were no guards but there were surveillance cameras.

Piffy was not worried about the cameras. He could short-circuit the Madrassas electrical system any time he cared. It would not be a difficult feat. He had studied electronics with Thomas Alva Edison’s grandson. There were ways.

He slipped across the street into the shadows surrounding the Madrassas. In no time at all he was inside the courtyard. He knew where he wanted to go. Two days would have been long enough to case Fort Knox. There were lights coming from a row of windows across the way. The room on the right belonged to the janitor—the goatherd.

He eased across the courtyard, sidled up to the window, peeked inside. The janitor, the goatherd, was on his knees on his prayer rug but he wasn’t praying, he was cracking walnuts. He would get his prayer rug dirty thought Piffy. Maybe it didn’t matter, maybe it was the way Muslims acted when possessed by a Sufi flea.

He was so absorbed in the domestic scene the man was on him almost before he knew it! Some sixth sense saved him, maybe it was bint Marwan, maybe it was dumb luck, but at the last second he twisted away as something sliced into his ribs!

He just did get a hold of the knife-wielder’s wrist. Go for the jugular! Go for the jugular, someone screamed in his ear. It must have been Mike Hammer from My Gun Is Quick. He tore the knife from the man’s grasp and as they rolled over and over on the ground he slashed the poor bastard’s throat from ear to ear just like Shell Scott had showed him that day at Laguna Beach!

The fight lasted only a few seconds and they couldn’t have made much noise. He laid there while his assailant’s life’s blood poured over him. It was the Keeper who looked like Telly Savalas!

His heart was thumping furiously and he had broken out into a cold sweat! Good Grief! What the hell was he doing here? Was he crazy? This was too much…too damn much! He had had it! It was over! No more! He was going back to the States before he got killed!

To hell with Yaser Abdel Said! To hell with Asma bint Marwan! To hell with Ka’b! To hell with the whole damn bunch of them! To hell with Islam—especially to hell with Islam! This was it! What kind of a damn fool life was this anyway? He didn’t have a horse in this race! Was he crazy?

The janitor, the goatherd, had come out of his room, was peering into the dark. Piffy could hear voices—children’s voices, anxious, fearful.

“Go to sleep, little ones,” said the goatherd. “It is nothing to be afraid of. The good jinns are playing tag.”

“I’m scared!” someone said. It was the thin, quavering voice of a child on the verge of tears.

“Don’t you worry,” said the goatherd. “Hamas Mouse will protect you. Netanyahu only eats babies and you are grown children—you are too large for him to digest.”

Piffy couldn’t understand how that last might sound comforting to a terrified child but he kept quiet, unseen and unheard and covered with blood in the darkness.

“I’m still scared,” wailed the child.

“Don’t be frightened, Fatima,” said a familiar voice.

“I can’t help it!” cried Fatima.

And then the familiar voice broke into a soft song:

“Tra la la, tweedle dee, dee dee, there’s peace and good will. You’re as welcome as the flowers on…”

“Hush, Aisha!” warned the goatherd. “They will cut your tongue out!”