The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 43)

CHAPTER 43:

WHACHAMACALLITS

AND PIZZLES

Puppy dog was not a lovable mutt. No one would mistake him for Old Yeller or Spuds MacKenzie. He had never rescued a baby from a burning building like Rin Tin Tin or Lassie. He never chased simple toys around a room or a backyard at breakneck speed. In other words, he was not an ordinary dog. There wasn’t much to him—scarcely a handful and most of it were teeth. He couldn’t be cuddled; he was vicious, intolerant, sluggish—inert 99 percent of the time—and he had eaten half of Piffy’s shoes but he was the best dang dog the kid had ever had and he would be damned it he would let some potbellied Saint with his head poking through his hair send the mutt to doggie heaven and it didn’t matter if the Saint had Gabriel’s permission or the Almighty’s blessing.

But what could he do? He was ten-years-old—and he would remain ten-years-old, conceivably forever, unless he could get to Cairo where Ka’b could change him back into the adult version of Bernard Piffy, private detective on the trail of Yaser Abdel Said, the notorious Dallas cabdriver that had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage and then had fled to Europe. But even if he were grown up again what could he do? Bark at the moon?

“Give me the dog,” said St. Anthony.

“No!” said Piffy. He stuck out his chin, rolled what was left of the Black Transylvania garlic around in his mouth.

“I’m warning you—“ threatened St. Anthony.

And that was when Piffy spit in his Guardian Angel’s eye! It was an easy shot for a kid who had won the Mayberry County Tobacco-Spitting Championship when he was ten years old against competitors six and seven times his age. There wasn’t an Old Timer in Mayberry County that hadn’t congratulated him. He had been made an honorary member of the George Gabby Hayes Society and had been presented with a silver spittoon. He never chewed tobacco again—Grandma Piffy had seen to that and Grandpa Piffy had spent the next six months sleeping on the dining room couch. But it was a skill that Piffy would never forget.

St. Anthony screamed, dropped his aspergillum and pawed at his eye. And then he started to cry. He sank down on the stable floor and let loose with one wracking sob after another. It was as if his whole world had collapsed.

“I never wanted to be a guardian angel!” he wailed. “Never! It was that silly Henrietta that talked me into it! I don’t know why I listened to her. We’re supposed to answer prayers, not take suggestions. I didn’t know anything about guarding people and I still don’t! And this guardian angel dog business is so confusing…there are so many rules and I have broken every one of them…and handling a pooper-scooper just terrifies me…I want to go back to looking for lost rosaries and car keys. Maybe give Britney Spears a helping hand like Wheatley says I should. But…but…” His voice trailed off hopelessly.

Piffy picked up the aspergillum. It had a nice feel to it. He could see himself socking a Mutaween over the head with it. Nice.

“And that Gabriel is such a tyrant!” moaned St. Anthony. “He said if I didn’t bring the dog back I would be assigned to finding things that weren’t lost but were thought to be lost! I would be sent to nursing homes to locate false eyelashes and cats whiskers for the The Golden Girls!”

Piffy took St. Anthony by the elbow and helped him to his feet. “You think you got troubles,” he said. “I’ve lost my donkey master. How am I going to get into that Madrassas and rescue Aisha without a donkey master?”

St. Anthony eyed the aspergillum in ten-year-olds hand. “Can I please have my whachamacallit back?” he asked. “I feel naked without it.”

Piffy ignored the Holy Man. “I’ve got to got to find somebody that will take my donkey into the Madrassas with me hiding in a jar of cooking oil,” he said. “If I don’t they’ll turn Aisha into a suicide bomber.” He stared at St. Anthony. “Do you think you could do it?”

“Aisha?” said St. Anthony. He mulled the name over in his mind. “Oh, yes…Aisha.” He smiled. “Charming little girl. You use protection when you’re with her, I hope?”

“Good grief!” cried Piffy. “We’re ten-years-old! We’re kids! What are you doing recommending something like that? You’re supposed to be a Catholic priest! Just thinking about it is bad enough! We’re supposed to be playing spin the bottle not Hi Jinks with Irma La Douce! Good grief! Who do you think I am? George Costanza?” He paced back and forth for a moment, stopped, glared at St. Anthony. “You must know something about donkeys. Christ traveled around on a donkey, didn’t he?”

“Well, yes,” said St. Anthony. “But it’s not that. I’m not allowed to meddle in earthly affairs. But if you will be so kind as to return my whachamacallit, I will bless the donkey and that could be of considerable help.”

“Damn!” said Piffy. “I’m going to get into that Madrassas if I have to carry the donkey on my back!”

But St. Anthony was no longer paying attention. A commotion on the other side of the stable had caught his eye and what he saw brought a startled gasp to his lips and a tremble to his knees. “Mother of God!” he croaked. “Wheatley! What are you doing?” He made a hurried sign of the cross.

Wheatley W. Wheatley looked up from among the dead Mutaween. “What does it look like?” she said. “I’m looking for high quality Mujahideen pizzles. I’ve always wanted to make a spare whip in case something should happen to this one and now is as good a time as any to start collecting the parts.”

“Well, at least put their robes back in place when you’re done with them!” said St. Anthony.

“They’re not Mujahideen,” said Piffy. “They’re Mutaween.”

Wheatley smiled. “That’s all the better,” she said. “Then I’ll have pizzle whips made from two different groups.”

“Oh, dear,” said St. Anthony. He groped around for a place to sit down. “I had no idea this guardian angel business could be so…so…”

“Dangerous?” said Piffy.

“No…no,” said St. Anthony. He sank down on a bale of hay. “That’s not the word I’m looking for.”

“Disgusting?” said Piffy.

“No…no…” said St. Anthony.

“Debilitating?”

“No…no…” mumbled St. Anthony. The word was emasculating but he was too embarrassed to use it.

“Hey, kid,” said Wheatley. “Where’s that mutt of yours?” She glanced round the stable. “He was here a minute ago. Where’d he go?”

“He probably went back to his cage,” said Piffy. “It’s where he goes when he gets done chewing things up. It’s where he went when he bit off Hani Hanjour’s foot and when he ate the butt off on one of Allah’s Cro-Magnons. All that chewing tires him out…he’s so little. I’d better go get him.”

Piffy went out into the street and, sure enough, there was puppy dog sound asleep in his cage. He brought him back to the stable.

He stopped in front of St. Anthony and then nodded at Wheatley. “Okay,” he said, “which one of you two is going to take my donkey into the Madrassas?”

”Sorry, kid,” said Wheatley. “I don’t do donkeys. It’s against company policy. We can help but we can’t meddle and that would be meddling.”

Piffy glared at St. Anthony. “How abut you?” he said. He waved the aspergillum under the Holy Man’s nose. “How about if I give you your thing back?”

St. Anthony eyed his whachamacallit. “I’d like to help you,” he said, “but Gabriel would have a fit. He would make me read Leviticus standing on my head.”

“Hey!” said Wheatley “What about him?”

Him was Prince Chauncey, King Abdullah’s sixth cousin, twice removed. The wretch was cowering behind a bale of hay, as bloody and as disheveled as if he had just spent the afternoon jitterbugging with Edward Scissorhands at a Jack the Ripper revival. His eyes were as wide as the saucers used by the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.

“Uh-uh,” said Piffy. “He’s worthless. He’s the bastard I beat the crap out of on the Kharma With Darma Show.”

“Kharma With Darma?” said St. Anthony. “Oh, I just love that show!”

“Well, kid,” said Wheatley, “it looks like you’ll have to take the donkey into the Madrassas yourself…Do you know anything about hoofed ruminants?”

“Yeah,” said Piffy. “I had the champion mule at the Pendleton Round-Up three years in a row when I was a kid.”

“You’re a kid now,” pointed out Wheatley.

“You know what I mean,” said Piffy.

“Well, you’re in luck,” said Wheatley. “A donkey is about as close as you can get to a mule without having to pull a barnyard Dr. Kildare.”

It took the three of them to strap the 50-gallon jar of cooking oil to the donkey’s back. But there was still the empty jar and they would need something for ballast or the poor donkey wouldn’t make it out the stable door.

“Hey!” said Wheatley. “Why don’t we stuff Aladdin in the damn thing?”

“Aladdin?” said Piffy.

“Yeah, Aladdin—Prince Chauncey,” said Wheatley. “Not only will it be easier on the poor critter’s back but you’ll have a place to hide Aisha when you sneak her out of the Madrassas.”

That had been Piffy’s plan from the beginning and Wheatley would have known it if she had bothered to ask. But with nobody to lead the donkey into the Madrassas he would have to do it himself and he would need a surrogate to fill the empty jar. He looked Chauncey up and down.

The sixth cousin twice removed of the richest oil potentate in the world was shaking like a leaf.

“I don’t think he’s going to like it,” said Piffy.

“It doesn’t matter what he likes it,” said Wheatley. “It only matters that he fits.”

Chauncey was dragged screaming and kicking from behind his hiding place.

“How long do you want him rendered inoperable? “ asked Wheatley. Inoperable—it was a nice choice of words. “Three hours…four hours? How about six?”

Before Piffy could answer Wheatley tapped the Prince on the head with the stock of her whip. It sounded like a six-hour tap; that would be fine

It was a tight fit but the three of them together managed to stuff the Saudi Prince into the jar and then strap it to the donkey’s back.

“Well,” said Piffy. He set St. Anthony’s aspergillum on a bale of hay, picked up puppy dog’s cage and glanced round the stable. “This is it…wish me luck.”

Maybe it was the setting; maybe it was the dead Mutaween littering the stable floor; maybe the world was more perverse than it had been the day before. No one said a thing. There was not so much as a smile! The Frankenstein monster got a better sendoff in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.

Okay, so be it. He took up the lead rope and with puppy dog’s cage in his other hand he started for the exit. Still not a word…not a damp eye…nothing…nada…what the hell was this…the last scene from the Planet of the Apes? What the hell kind of friends were they?

Well, the hell with them! He still had Aisha…lovely ten-year-old Aisha…with the beautiful voice and the dark eyes…and he was going to get her out of that damn Madrassas if it was the last thing he ever did!

As he passed though the large double-doors and out into the street the quarrelling behind him commenced.

“That’s my whachamacallit! You give it back!”

“Keep you pants on, Saint Antonia—if you’ve got any. I just want to look at it.”

“You’ve looked at it long enough! You’re getting it dirty!”

“I’ll hit you with one of these Mutaween pizzles! Is that what you want?”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

Well, maybe it was better they hadn’t said anything…