The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 37)

CHAPTER 37:

OSAWATOMIE BROWN

Bernard Piffy, private detective, greatest fool in the world, lay in a pool of blood in the Madrassas courtyard, the Keeper that had tried to kill him sprawled across him, bleeding all over him, pinning him to good old Mother Earth like a creepy crawler in one of Opie Taylor’s bug collections. He wanted in the worst way to get up and run—to run and to run and to run until he was a long way from Gaza, a long way from London, a long way from Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club, until he was safe and sound back in Mayberry County where there were calves to be roped and broncos to be busted

And then the voice and the song! “Tra la la, tweedle dee, dee dee, there’s peace and good will!” It was Aisha!

Why in the hell did if have to be Aisha? Couldn’t it have been Rosie O’Donnell or Roseanne Barr or Randi Rhodes—some piece of crap he couldn’t stand the sight of? But it was Aisha! He had been ready to call it quits; pack up the old kit bag; go back to the States; found a chair at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club and spend the rest of his life telling tall tales to people with short memories…”There was the time I threw a shoe at ul-Haq…”

And if the horrible twinge of conscience wasn’t bad enough his stomach hurt where the Keeper with the big knife had tried to cut out his liver! He cursed his luck, prayed he wouldn’t be discovered.

The janitor, the former goatherd, got the girls back into their barracks or whatever it was and it got quiet. Piffy dragged himself out from under the dead Keeper. He felt the ouch in his side. It wasn’t deep and it wasn’t bleeding. The pain was mostly in his head. It was a superficial wound. Fearless Fosdick must have been watching over him

Then the door to the janitor’s habitat creaked open and the janitor, the former goatherd, stepped into the courtyard. He had a flashlight in his hand. “Are you okay?” he called.

Piffy sat up. The flashlight played across his face. What was this?

“I am Jamaluddin,” said the man with the flashlight. “I am the janitor. I saw the fight through my window. Are you a jinn?”

Piffy smiled. “I have been mistaken for one,” he said.

“You are bleeding,” said the janitor. He flashed his torch over the body of the Keeper. “Is he dead?” he asked.

“I should hope so,” said Piffy.

“What was the fight about?” asked the janitor.

“It was about you,” said Piffy.

“I am not surprised,” said the janitor. “The jinns have been haunting me for weeks—ever since the terrible scratching started in my beard. I have worn my fingernails to the nubs. It is vexing.”

“I think I can relieve you of the itch,” said Piffy.

Jamaluddin helped the private eye to his feet. “You are a mess,” he said. “You can clean up in my room. I have some fresh clothes and maybe you would like some tea.”

The man was too good to be true. Piffy followed him into his quarters. It was nothing much—a monk’s retreat. There was a bed, two chairs, a dilapidated dresser topped with a washbasin, a pitcher of water and a neatly folded towel. It would do. Piffy took off his shirt.

The janitor sat down on one of the chairs and scratched vigorously in his beard. “I have been having un-Islamic thoughts ever since the itching began,” he said. “I have become so tolerant of everything it frightens me. A month ago if I had seen you in the courtyard I would have thrown stones at you. But now…” He paused to scratch in his beard. “I don’t know…”

He was silent for a while, watching his guest, as he gathered his thoughts. Finally he sighed. “And the poor girls in this Madrassas,” he said. “I feel so sorry for them…for the horrors that await them when they grow up. Better they become suicide bombers than adult Muslim women. The other janitors tell me I talk and behave like a Sufi but that is silly, I don’t know what a Sufi is. I’m a poor goatherd who can barely keep his family fed.

“The other day, even though I can’t read, I bought a book at a used bookstore. It was by Walid Shoebat. Do you know Walid? He is a smart man. I opened the book and without reading I understood! Yes, I understood. Is that possible?”

He was silent again and when Piffy didn’t say anything, he continued, “Oh, how my head hurts when I think! It is not good to think too much. For instance why would Allah turn the Jews into apes and pigs? Why couldn’t he have turned them into lambs or miniature horses for the children to ride…or into oxen to turn my gristmill…make something useful of them…but apes and pigs…nothing makes sense anymore. Am I going crazy? Do you know what is wrong with me?”

Piffy had finished wiping the small amount of blood from his wound. It was time he said something. “You’ve got the Sufi Blues, old man,” he said. “I can’t do a thing for you but I know a man who can cure you and I’ll take you to him.”

“Oh, but I can’t leave this Madrassas,” said Jamaluddin. “Ahmad would beat me.”

“If you don’t go with me,” said Piffy, “I’ll be the one that beats you.”

“Oh, I don’t think you can do that, ” said the janitor. “You are not big enough.”

He had a point there. He was a large man—not as large as Hulk Hogan but he would make two of Peewee Herman and all three of the Seinfeld crowd. He would be a match for most private eyes, maybe even for Mike Hammer.

But Piffy was not in the least daunted. “You forget,” he said. “I am a jinn—I can do what I please.”

The janitor scratched his beard. “How do I know you really are a jinn?” he said.

“Look—“ said Piffy; he was getting irritated. “I can get you to the Fuhrerbunker, have my friend cure you of the Sufi Blues and get you back to the Madrassas before the first call to prayers and nobody will know you’ve been gone.”

“If you are a jinn,” said the janitor, “you should be able to do some magic.”

Piffy had had enough. He grabbed Jamaluddin by the arm, twisted it up behind his back, propelled him through the door and pitched him to the ground alongside the dead Keeper.

The janitor took one look at the corpse, screamed, “Allahu akbar!” and jumped to his feet. He was shaking like a leaf. “Please, please, no more magic!”

“Ready to go?” said Piffy.

Jamaluddin edged away from the dead man.

“Well?” said Piffy.

Jamaluddin swallowed. “Can—can you wait till I get my Qur’an?” he croaked.

“Sure,” said Piffy. They had plenty of time to get to the Fuhrerbunker before Piffy’s appointment with White Robe.

They went back into the little cubbyhole apartment with Jamaluddin now in a very cooperative mood. Nothing was too good for his guest. He loaned Piffy a set of clothes from his sparse wardrobe and while the private eye picked out something that would fit Cosmo Kramer if not Mike Hammer, the janitor babbled on and on about the girls in the Madrassas.

He seemed infatuated with them. Little Fatima cried all the time, he said, and Aisha had been punished for singing the bird song. He was worried about what would become of them when they left the Madrassas. If he could he would take little Fatima away from here—maybe even marry her.

Although he didn’t know how to read he had been looking at the book of Walid Shoebat and he understood. Wasn’t that strange?

Once he started he never shut up and Piffy had all he could do to keep him quiet as they passed through the empty streets.

White Robe was waiting for them in the Fuhrerbunker. He had the monitor in his hand. There was a contraption on the conference table that looked like an L. Ron Hubbard stress machine. It had a lot of dials, pulsating needles and flashing lights. There was also a thing that removed fleas from beards—at least that is what Piffy was told. It could have been mistaken for an oversized WWI gas mask. It generated ultra-violate magnetic waves that duplicated the mating call of a sexually aroused flea. It had been tested successfully in the Soviet Union.

Even with the pulsating needles and the flashing lights White Robe’s technological setup was a half-century behind the House of Frankenstein. It was more like Weird Science split down the middle…maybe if he had Morticia Addams for a receptionist…or Ygor as a gentleman’s gentleman. Piffy doubted if any of the stuff would work. He would probably have to sit on Jamaluddin while White Robe went through the poor wretch’s beard with a magnifying glass.

Fortunately it was a lot easier than that.

White Robe attached some wires to the monitor, produced a scanning wand and gave Jamaluddin’s beard a quick once over. There was only one flea he announced. Obviously, it was the Sufi. They would not need the magnetic flea remover or the Herbal Flea Powder.

It was just as well for the janitor had lost his composure. Maybe it was the pulsating needles; maybe it was the flashing lights; maybe it was the dungeon-like atmosphere. A five-year-old on his first trip to the dentist could not have been more terrified. And when White Robe hooked Jamaluddin up to the L. Ron Hubbard stress machine and the needles started to jump and something started to click it was the last straw. Jamaluddin’s eyes rolled up in his head and he began praying to Walid Shoebat! Yes, to Walid Shoebat!

“The Sufi Flea is very agitated,” said White Robe.

“Where did you get this machine?” asked Piffy.

“At as garage sale,” said White Robe. “It was a steal. It belonged to a retired Scientologist. I made a few adjustments, bought a memory card and it works like a charm. A lot better than the one the Keepers gave me…and so far no one has been electrocuted.”

“Okay,” said Piffy. “So how do you propose to get the flea out of his beard?”

White Robe opened his briefcase. He took out a tiny lockbox and a small vacuum.

Piffy raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to suck the flea out of his beard with that thing?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” said White Robe. “How else do you think we do it? “

“I thought maybe you used a pick and a shovel,” said Piffy.

“This is the most powerful flea vacuum available,” said White Robe. “It was designed by”—he checked the inscription on the handle—“by a Tim the Tool Man Taylor.”

Tim the Tool Man Taylor? This was too much! It was ridiculous! It would never work!

White Robe turned on the vacuum; the Sufi Flea was sucked into the lockbox and Janitor Jamaluddin fainted.

Well, maybe it wasn’t that ridiculous.

Piffy scooped up the lockbox. “I should turn this little rascal over to bint Marwan or Ka’b,” he said.

White Robe frowned. “Ka’b? Bint Marwan?” he said. It was the first he had heard mention of Ka’b or bint Marwan and he didn’t like it. They were not friends of the Keepers.

Piffy produced his cell phone and called the bin Laden Madrassas.

He had a short wait. A surly voice came on the line. “The Madrassas is closed,” it said. “You can call in the morning.”

“This is an emergency,” said Piffy. “I have to talk to Muhammad al-Ahmad.”

“Al-Ahmad isn’t here,” said the voice.

“Who am I talking to?” said Piffy.

“His secretary.”

“This is Bernard Piffy,” said the private detective. “Tell Ahmad I’ve got the Sufi Flea and I’ll swap it for Aisha.”

The Sufi Flea…Aisha…what was this? White Robe watched Piffy with growing apprehension. As a Keeper of the Fleas he could not permit a transaction of this sort!

“The flea?” said the secretary. “You’ll swap the flea for Aisha?” He paused. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Bernard Piffy!” said Piffy.

“The Kuffar pig from London?” queried the secretary.

“Tell Ahmad he’s got ten hours,” said Piffy. “He can have the Sufi Flea for Aisha. He can call me at my International number or at any Abu Afaq Agency in the Middle East. If he doesn’t call he’ll never see his precious little flea again!”

“Are you crazy?” said the secretary. “Al-Ahmad would never swap his daughter for a flea! She is being trained to become a suicide bomber!”

“I have the Sufi flea,” said Piffy.

“This is preposterous!” said the secretary.

“He can turn her over to Interpol or to the UN Refugee Agency as a displaced person,” said Piffy. “He’ll get the flea when I get Aisha.”

“You’re a kidnapper,” screamed the secretary. “A Kuffar kidnapper!”

“You’ve got ten hours,” said Piffy.

What followed must have been a string of expletives.

Piffy hung up. He looked at the lockbox. Okay, so maybe he was a kidnapper but he wasn’t Richard Bruno Hauptmann or Machine-Gun Kelly or some creep from the Symbionese Liberation Army. He would be kidnapping somebody who wanted to be kidnapped. That wasn’t kidnapping—it was an intervention.

He should call Ka’b. What was Ka’b’s number? He should have written it down. He noticed a phonebook on the conference table. He picked it up. He thumbed through the pages.

He was still angry. The lout had called him a kidnapper! The very idea! He wasn’t a kidnapper! He was an Abolitionist! That’s what he was! An Abolitionist! He was freeing a slave! He was William Lloyd Garrison! He was old Osawatomie Brown! Ahmad should go to jail for what he had been doing to Aisha…

“You had better set the lockbox down, Mr. Piffy,” said White Robe.

The private detective glanced at the Keeper. An edge had come into the old man’s voice.

While Piffy had been on the phone White Robe had been rummaging in his brief case for something he didn’t normally carry, something he had picked up on the table of Yasser Arafat’s office two days previously—Che Guevara’s Redhawk 357—and now that the telephone conversation had ended he pulled the long-barreled weapon slowly and awkwardly from its hiding place and pointed it at Piffy.

“Aw, come on!” said Piffy. “What do you think this is? A Tom and Jerry Cartoon?”

White Robe was close to tears but the Redhawk was steady in his hand. “I am sorry,’ he said. “I had come to like you. But in the end, like all good moderate Muslims, I must follow the Qur’an. And it says:

‘Believers, take not for friends those who take your religion for a mockery or a sport, a joke whether among those who receive the Scripture before you or among those who reject Faith; but fear Allah.’”

“It’s a flea!” said Piffy. “A damn stinking flea!”

The old man’s finger tightened around the trigger. “Islam is not a joke, Mr. Piffy,” he said. “It is not something to be made sport of. I want the lockbox. Set it down or I will shoot!”