The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 21)

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version  There were no laws against being caught in flagrante dilecto in a hospital bed in England or anywhere else for that matter—not that Bernard Piffy had committed an illegal act or had done anything that could be considered as contributing to one (indeed, if anyone had been sinned against it had been Piffy) and by the time Nurse Gladys and the intern got over their surprise the originator of the one-act hospital comedie, Algernon A. Algernon had, like any good jinn, disappeared. Piffy, of course, insisted he did not know the man or where he had come from. Nurse Gladys accepted Piffy’s story. She thought the pathetic little wretch was a leprechaun of some sort. The intern was skeptical. There was a bar down the street and it wasn’t the first time a drunk had staggered into the hospital but none had ever made it this far before. They all had a good laugh and Piffy went back to sleep. He would need all the rest he could get—he would be checking out of the hospital in the morning.   He was up early, had dressed and was busy tying his shoelaces when Deputy Chief Constable Stumble stopped by for a word. Piffy looked up at the law enforcement officer and grimaced. His gnarled fingers were having trouble running the laces through the eyelets in the shoe tops and he was not in one of his better moods. Nothing had gone right since he had landed in England—in fact, things had been going steadily downhill. He was now—for better or worse—a middle-aged man trapped in the calcifying body of an eighty-year-old; he had become an octogenarian with one foot in the grave. It hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, if fact only a few days previously he had been a mere child, a ten-year-old as spry as an antelope bounding across a Kansas prairie, as athletic as Phil Rizzuto scooping up a ground ball behind second base and firing it to first, and a few days previous to that he had been Bernard Piffy, the real Bernard Piffy—a middle-aged, true-blue, red-blooded All-American private detective on the trail of the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas taxi driver that had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, and then fled the country and Piffy wanted that middle-aged body back—his body—in the worst way. He would—if he had to—kill to retrieve it. And it was Asma bint Marwan who had taken it from him and Algernon A. Algernon who had heaped insult on injury. Oh, he would get them for this!   “There’s a fellow in a limousine waiting for you out front, Mr. Piffy,” said Stumble. “He says he’s from the Kharma With Darma Show. Should I tell him to get lost?”   “No,” said Piffy. “I’ve been expecting him.”   Stumble raised an eyebrow. “Only a bloody fool would appear on that show, Mr. Piffy,” he said.   “I don’t have any choice,” said Piffy. “My ‘agent’ signed an ironclad contract. If I don’t show up, Darma will sue.”   “Your agent?” said Stumble.   “Algernon A. Algernon,” said Piffy.   “Ah, yes,” mused Stumble. “The inimitable, insatiable Algernon A. Algernon. We’ve been after him for years. Unfortunately, no one in law enforcement has ever laid eyes on him and he has never, so far as is known, left so much as single fingerprint at the scene of his many nefarious deeds. He is everywhere—he is nowhere. Whenever someone pulls a crazy stunt and can’t explain why they did it, they say it was Algernon A. Algernon who put them up to it. He’s as ubiquitous as Kilroy. Personally, when I screw up I tell the Missus it was leprechauns. Do you believe in leprechauns, Mr. Piffy?”   “Sorry, I haven’t got the time to chat, Constable,” said Piffy. “I’m off to see the wizard.”   “The wizard?”   “Darma.”   “Ah, yes…Darma,” said Deputy Chief Constable. “Mind if I tag along?” ”Suit yourself,” said Piffy. “I’ll need somebody to tell me which ones are the Muslims and which ones are the Asians.”   Piffy stood in the wings waiting for his cue. He hoped to get it over with as quickly as possible. Fortunately, he did not have a long wait.   Darma was nodding her head at him. It was the signal. She smiled then gestured toward the audience. “Okay!” she yelled. “Let’s hear it for Mr. Bernard Piffy!”   The crowd was silent.   “Come on, you know who Mr. Piffy is!” she called. “He’s the old geezer that survived that vicious street-thug attack last week that took the life of Mr. Otis. He’s the guy who mistakenly identified those poor Asian kids as Muslims. Mr. Piffy is here to apologize.” She paused; raised a clenched fist in the air and shook it vigorously.  “Let’s hear if for Mr. Piffy!”   The applause—what little there was—was mixed with a smattering of boos.   Piffy had no idea of what to expect. He had never heard of Darma until a few days ago and he would not have been impressed if he had. She did not look like what a Darma person should look like or what any TV talk show host he had ever heard tell-of looked like. She looked more like Algernon A. Algernon than Joy Behar; more like Louie DePalma than Barbara Walters; more like Mrs. Captain Hook than Jimmy Carter swooning before Yasser Arafat at Camp David. She would have frightened Mammy Yokum. He was sure of one thing—there was a jock somewhere under her skirt. Old men thought things like that and all the vibes were that bad. He would have preferred taking a swine flu shot at Castle Frankenstein.   Darma gave Piffy the obligatory embrace and he sat down on a couch between a confused pimply-faced, buck-toothed youth who was garbed as if he were trying out for a role in Arabian Nights and what must have been Tariq Ramadan’s son, brushed and shaved and washed behind the ears for an appearance at a dhimmi Senior Prom. One of them was the slack-jawed beady-eyed Jihadist who had helped kill poor Otis and the other was King Abdullah’s grandnephew thrice removed—Piffy did not need a scorecard to tell which was which.   “It’s nice to have you, Mr. Piffy,” said Darma. “You don’t mind if I call you Bernie, do you?”   Piffy looked into the camera. He was sweating profusely. A hot flush was creeping across his wrinkled face. “You can call me anything you want,” he blurted, “as long as you don’t call me late for supper”   It wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to have said but Piffy’s mind had gone blank. He was on TV—live TV and he was a nervous as a goldfish on a blind date with a piranha. His heart was racing faster than a rally car at the Indianapolis 500. It was his big chance and he was acting like a hick from the sticks—like he had just finished grinnin’ and pickin’ with Buck Owens and Roy Clark. At least he could have done his George Costanza impression. His legs were trembling. He was eighty years old—an octogenarian! He shouldn’t be put through something like this!   Don’t be nervous, Bernie,” said Darma. “We’re all friends on Kharma With Darma.”   “Yes—friends,” mumbled Piffy. ‘Friends’ was good.   “You’ve already met Muhammed al-Hussein,” said Darma.   “Muhammed al-Hussein?” muttered Piffy. Wasn’t Muhammed al-Hussein the low-life Muslim thug that had participated in the murder of poor old Otis? Sure. It had been someone named Muhammed al-Hussein! Now some fool was grinding his teeth! It was as annoying as hell. Piffy wished whoever it was would stop. When he took a deep breath, the noise ceased Thank God! Why did they invite such fools on talk shows?   Darma was still talking, “…King Abdulla’s grand nephew, Chauncy bin Abu Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, aide to Ambassador Nawaf, has flown in from Saudi Arabia to offer condolences to Otis’ family.”   Piffy wasn’t listening. He was glaring at the pimply-faced, buck-toothed kid in the voluminous pants and the old turban. “What did you hit him with, you little bastard?” he said, spitting the words through his teeth like bits of broken glass.   The pimply-faced youth was taken completely by surprise. His eyes went wide and his mouth popped open. He swiveled away from Piffy and looked imploringly at Darma.   The hostess was almost as surprised as the kid. “Mr. Piffy!” she exclaimed. “Control yourself! This is Kharma With Darma!”   “No! No!” someone shouted from the audience. “You’ve got the wrong one, Piffy, the wrong one! It’s the other blighter!” It was Constable Stumble.   The ‘Asian’ sitting on the other side of Piffy—the one who could have been on his way to a dhimmi Senior Prom—nudged Piffy with his elbow. It was a hard nudge. “Careful, Kuffar swine!” he hissed under his breath.   Piffy glanced at the ‘Prom King’ “I’ll take care of you later, Barbarino,” he said.   “You and who else, Jew boy?’ said the Prom King.   By now Piffy should have known he had made a mistake—he had confused his Zeros with his Kates—but he didn’t care. He was as mad as Mike Hammer had ever been—twice as mad as Columbo was the day his wife washed his trench coat. He stood up; so did Prom Boy and so did the pimply-faced kid. Piffy ignored Prom Boy, he wanted Otis’s killer, not King Abdullah’s thrice-removed grandnephew. But the pimply-faced kid was quick on his feet and took shelter behind Darma. “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” he cried.   “Wow!” gushed Darma. “This is better than Jerry Springer! It’s going to do wonders for the show and will probably put me in jail but it’ll be worth it!”   “Don’t let him hurt me!” squalled the pimple-faced thug.   Piffy pushed Darma out of the way. He hit the kid once. It was more a shove than a Jack Dempsey pulverizer but the kid went down like Freddie the Freeloader diving for a cold stogie.   Piffy took a deep breath. What the hell was he doing? He was a forty-year-old man trapped in an eighty year old body, he should be talking peace and tolerance; he shouldn’t be socking some kid on a TV talk show! He turned away from the cringing kid and there was Prom Boy, the King’s shirttail relation, glaring at him—yeah, glaring at him with the fires of hell burning in his dark eyes. Piffy had seen that look before. It was hatred—pure hatred! He had seen it in the eyes of the street thugs the night Otis had been killed. It was then that he realized he had slugged the wrong rat-bag! It was Prom Boy not the pathetic wretch groveling on the floor at Darma’s feet that had participated in the murder of Otis. It was Prom Boy who had been a member of the mob that had tried to kill him—and had darn near succeeded!   The bastard…the dirty little bastard…   Something snapped inside Piffy. He hit the SOB as hard as he had ever hit anyone and when Prom Boy got up he hit him again even harder. For ten, twenty, perhaps thirty seconds Methuselah had become Samson, Peewee Herman was striding the earth in Rooster Cogburn’s boots! He had never felt stronger and when Prom Boy got up again he knocked him down again and this time the rat-bag stayed down. And when Deputy Chief Constable Stumble grabbed him by the shoulder Piffy knocked him down too!