The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 46)

CHAPTER 46:

SOME LIKE IT HOT

It was the first time Bernard Piffy had been caught in a strange bedroom with a dead body and a naked lady and it wasn’t going down easy. It would have been child’s play for someone like Mike Hammer. Spillane’s creature would have taken the dead man’s pulse, slapped the naked bimbo on the derriere and explained to Chief Detective Pat Chambers what had happened in twenty words or less.

But Bernard Piffy was not Mike Hammer; he was a middle-aged private detective groveling in the body of a ten-year-old child. He didn’t like touching dead things; he had never learned how to take a pulse and the last time he had slapped a naked lady on the butt his mother had just stepped out of the shower and he had received a talking-to he hadn’t forgotten till this day and though he could be as talkative as the next guy for the moment he was at a total loss for words, but he had to say something besides, “Aw, shucks, ma’m…it was Opie Taylor…he ate my homework…” He had tried that once and it hadn’t worked.

So he winced, glanced from Aisha to the naked ‘lady’ hog-tied and struggling on the floor by the bed, then back to Aisha and then to the dead guy…what was his name?

“Ah… puppy dog killed Jamaluddin,” he said. “And then…and then…ah, and then the girl came in and…ah…” Words failed him.

By then Aisha had noticed the naked girl on the floor. “It’s Hanadi!” she exclaimed. “What’s she doing here and why is she tied up like that?”

At last Piffy came to his senses and began to act like a grownup private detective. He swept around Aisha and Fatima and closed the door. He looked for a bolt or a latch of some kind to secure the premises, but there wasn’t any! Holy Hot Damn! There was no way to keep out intruders, busybodies, used Qur’an salesmen or summer tourists! What kind of operation were they running here? If this didn’t beat all!

Aisha sank to the floor beside Hanadi and her fingers went to work on the ribbons knotted about the girl’s wrists.

“Don’t untie her!” warned Piffy. “We can’t have her running around loose!”

Aisha looked up. “What happened?” she cried.

So Piffy explained as best he could and in a lot more than twenty words; Jamaluddin had attacked him, he said; puppy dog had killed Jamaluddin; Hanadi had blundered into the room and had behaved very contumely—yes, that was the word he used; contumely. He had had no choice but to suppress her; and she had been naked when she came into the room, save for the towel.

“What are we going to do?” wailed Aisha.

“Well, first,” said Piffy, “we got to get a mop and a bucket of water and clean this place up and then we got to get rid of the body.” It sounded easy when put that way.

Fatima had been staring at Piffy since she had entered the room, her eyes as wide as those of a Hentai babe about to be ravished by an alien. “Are you the Christ child?” she asked breathlessly.

“Christ child?” blinked Piffy.

Fatima nodded eagerly. She had seen pictures of the Christ child in a forbidden book and Krista looked like the child in the book and he had the same name. “Are you?” she asked.

“Hush, Fatima!” said Aisha.

Fatima glanced at her friend. “But he looks like the child in the book,” she said. “The Christ child.”

“Don’t say things like that!” warned Aisha. “You will get us in trouble!”

“But he does,’ said Fatima.

Piffy stalked back and forth across the cramped room. “We got to get organized,” he said. “Fatima—you stay here. I don’t want you going anywhere. Aisha—you get a mop and a bucket of water and whatever else you will need. Hanadi can stay just like she is.”

“But what about Sheikh al-Kabibble?” asked Aisha.

“Who?” said Piffy. He had never heard of Sheikh al-Kabibble.

“Sheikh al-Kabibble,” she said. “He’s coming here this afternoon to marry Hanadi!”

“To marry Hanadi?” said Piffy. “Our Hanadi?”

“Yes,” said Aisha.

It took a while for it to sink in. He rolled the words around in his head. Marriage? Hanadi? Sheikh al-Kabibble? It didn’t sound like Joanie and Chachi. If this was another of Islam’s “Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful” thing it could greatly complicate his rescue mission.

“Hanadi was excused from prayers to prepare for the wedding,” explained Aisha.

Piffy sank down on the chair alongside puppy dog and reached into the cage to stroke the mutt on the head. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear this again. Who in the hell is al-Kabibble?”

“He’s a very learned man,” said Aisha. “He writes books. He’s a theologian. He is always studying things. He says nine-year-old girls make better sexual companions for grown men than grown women do…better than Yasmin Fostok or Britney Spears.”

“Grown men?” said Piffy. “Are you sure? How many grown men can there be in Islam? Two or three dozen?”

“Al-Kabibble is honored by all of Islam,” said Aisha.

“How old is he?” asked Piffy.

“He’s very old,” said Aisha.

“More than sixty?” asked Piffy.

“Oh, more than that,” she said.

“And he’s coming here this afternoon to marry Hanadi?”

“Yes,” said Aisha. “To marry Hanadi.”

“Oh, boy,” said Piffy. “We’ll have to work fast.”

Work fast was one thing they could do and with Piffy driving them they accomplished a couple of minor miracles. They scrubbed the room till it fairly sparkled and they washed the blood from Jamaluddin’s face.

Aisha ventured out to get a laundry cart and with Piffy wearing one of her dresses and the wig she had salvaged from her stay in London, they managed to load Jamaluddin into their makeshift hearse. They made it to the laundry room without being stopped or questioned and there in a remote corner they dumped the corpse and covered it with rags.

So far, so good, but they were scarcely out of the woods let alone the Madrassas and the place was alive with rumors. A Saudi Prince had been discovered in a jar of cooking oil in the kitchen storeroom and a strange donkey had been found ground-hitched near an unused classroom.

As if that wasn’t bad enough a dozen Mutaween had been found murdered in a stable less than a half-mile from the Madrassas—Hamas said it was the work of MOSSAD operatives and the Saudis were demanding an explanation. What the Mutaween were doing in Gaza was left unsaid.

While local authorities were interviewing Royal Prince Chauncey—King Abdullah’s sixth cousin twice removed—the Madrassas was preparing a gala welcome for Sheikh Rahman al-Kabibble, the noted author and theologian, who was expected to arrive in the early afternoon to claim his bride. It would be a super-fun day at the Osama bin Laden Madrassas for Girls. Ariana Huffington would interview the bridegroom via satellite.

And then the bride-to-be turned up missing! It set tongues to wagging and the rumor mill went into overtime. Someone said Hanadi had been spirited away by her parents who objected to the marriage! That was only one explanation.

Many were convinced the bride-to-be had panicked at the thought of being fondled by an old man and had run away!

Not so, said her best friend. She had enemies who wanted to embarrass her and she was in hiding!

A Mullah, reputedly close to the Hamza family, had his own version of the disappearance. One of the Sheikh’s former wives, he said, still jealous after all these years, had hired two Jews to carry her off to Israel!

No, no, said a lady who worked in the laundry room. The kidnappers had been Somali refugees trying to make a quick buck. They had taken her to Lebanon to wait on tables at a Druze restaurant.

A man high up in the Madrassas hierarchy said these theories were too ridiculous to be entertained. She had been discovered to be more than nine years old—eleven, in fact, almost twelve—and had been declared sexually unfit for the Sheikh. They were looking for someone younger.

But there were those who winked and said Hanadi already had a lover and had run off with him.

And then janitor Jamaluddin was discovered to be missing! It didn’t take long for a hundred tongues to put two and two together. Hanadi had eloped with Jamaluddin!

A grand search was ordered. They would find Hanadi if they had to look under every bed in the Madrassas! .

“What do we do now?” wailed Aisha.

“We’ll hide her under the bed,” said Piffy.

“But that’s where they are going to look!” said Aisha.

“No,” said Piffy. “They wont look there…they’ll never get that far.”

“Are you sure?” said Aisha.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Piffy. He was thinking of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. “We’ll have a lingerie party.”

“A what?’ said in incredulous Aisha.

“A lingerie party,” said Piffy. He was getting excited. “You and Fatima get your underwear—as much of it as you can—we’ll pile it on the bed. When they come in we’ll be laughing and joking and parading around in our skivvies…”

The looks he got were uncomprehending at best.

He glanced at the door. “When they come around inspecting, they knock before they enter, don’t they?” he said.

“Yes,” said Aisha. “They give us that.”

“Well,” smiled Piffy, “we’ll be in our underwear—or in my case in your underwear—and they will think we’re just a bunch of silly girls, and they will leave us alone! Smart, hey?”

Oh, yes, it was Tony Curtis smart. It was Jack Lemmon smart. And Aisha would be his Marilyn Monroe!

Fatima’s Hentai eyes were a mixture of awe and admiration. “You are the Christ child!” she said.

“This is crazy!” said Aisha. “It will never work!”

“Have you ever seen Some Like It Hot?” asked Piffy.

“I have!” volunteered Fatima.

“It will never work!” insisted Aisha.

“Have you got a better idea?” asked Piffy.

“No,” she said.

“Then we had better hurry,” he said. “The Gestapo could be here any minute and we have to be ready.”

The girls got their underwear and piled it on the mattress while Piffy rolled the bride-to-be under the bed. It was a tight fit. So he got up on the bed and bounced up and down to see if she would be any the worse for wear and tear—she wasn’t. There was plenty of clearance.

Then came the makeover. It took the ten-year-old a while to make up his mind. After some exaggerated deliberation he chose a crop top Bratz bra and nylon-lycra rosebud panties and went into the closet to change.

Yes, he went into the closet, he was a modest kid. He would never reach the Bill Maher level of sexual maturation should he live a hundred thousand years.

He changed as quickly as he could. By the time he was finished his ears were burning and his face was red. He took a deep breath and stepped out of the closet. Aisha smiled and Fatima put a hand over her mouth. At least there was no giggling—he was one of the girls. He was only ten years old; he could have passed for almost anything. But was he Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot? Of course, not—he was more like Carl Alfalfa Switzer in a tutu in an Our Gang comedy.

“You look silly,” said Aisha.

Piffy grimaced. It was not what he had hoped to hear.

“Here,” she said. She placed the old London wig on his head. “That’s much better.”

With the wig snugly in place he did look like a ten-year-old girl. He tugged at the Bratz bra. If Grandma Piffy could see him now…

They had completed the transformation just in the nick of time. The doorknob jiggled and the three ‘girls’ leapt for the bed, tumbling together in a heap amongst the panties and camisoles. Piffy could not help but laugh and so did Aisha as they bounced up and down on the bed.

“Careful, don’t overdo it,” he whispered.

The door opened and Piffy looked past Aisha to see whom it was. He was expecting a clerk with a clipboard and a list of things to check off, a functionary of some sort—at the worst an Imam with a first edition of the Qur’an in one hand and the Sword of the Prophet in the other. But it wasn’t either of those—not by a long shot.

It was St. Anthony!

The Holy Man slipped into the room, snatched up the cage containing puppy dog and was out the door before Piffy could get off the bed!

The ten-year-old in the crop top Bratz bra and the nylon-lycra rosebud panties was stunned. “Holy Jesus!” he said. “What the Hell was that?”

“He stole puppy dog!” exclaimed Aisha.

Yes! He had stolen puppy dog! Just like that! It was the mother of all ill omens! Pray for the poor children!