The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 22)

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version“It was on You Tube,” said the Professor. “It was a hoot. A guy named Bernard Piffy—“ He paused to look down the length of the bar. “Now where have I heard that name before?” he said. He smiled and continued: “This Piffy character attacked the grandnephew of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on the Kharma With Darma Show. Then he beat up some Asian kid and knocked down a Constable, appropriately named Stumble. It took three Bobbies and Darma’s masseuse to subdue him. He was a wild man.” “Not our Piffy?” groaned Joe. He didn’t like the sound of this a one bit. “Who would you think?” said the Professor. He was teasing. Joe grimaced. He was beginning to regret the day he and the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club had hired Piffy, an out-of-work, semi-retired private detective who had said he had worked with Mike Hammer on the My Gun Is Quick caper, to track down the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas taxi driver who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage and then fled the country. Piffy had trailed Said to England and his expense account had been a heavy drain on Joe’s cash register. It this story was true, it was too much. “Relax, Joe,” said the Professor. “It wasn’t our Piffy. It was some eighty-year-old geezer with one foot in the grave but he was as spry as the devil. It was the name that got my attention. Bernard Piffy! Half the people in England must be named Bernard Piffy. There was that ten-year-old kid that went on that rampage last week that I told you about—he was a Piffy, a Bernard Piffy—and we have our own Bernie who was arrested for breaking into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Palace and stealing the Bishop’s personal papers.” “It’s more than a coincidence, if you ask me,” said Cowsnofsky. “It’s cosmic. Things come in threes—we’ve got three Piffies, we’ve got three crimes and I’ve just finished my third beer.” Joe put the last of the six-packs in the cooler and closed the door. “Oh, sure,” he said. “We got a ten-year-old kid, an eighty-year-old man and Bernard Piffy. Why don’t we call up Yogi Berra and make it a foursome?” “That’s ridiculous,” said Cowsnofsky. “Things don’t come in fours; they come in threes. We got three Bernard Piffies…” “Why don’t we wait a while?” suggested Joe. “Maybe there will be a fourth next week.” “Suppose,“ said Cowsnofsky. “Suppose each one of these Piffies is part of our Piffy? Suppose by some strange concatenation of events, by some juxtaposition of the stars…suppose some metaphysical force is in play here…” “Do you still watch Family Guy, Sky?” asked Joe. “I’ve got a months leave coming,” said Cowsnofsky. He had made up his mind. “I’m going to England and I’m going to find out what’s going on there.” “And I’ll go with you, Uncle Sky,” said Henrietta. The Professor picked up his newspaper. It was the Daily Mail. He had been hoping to find a story on the Kharma With Darma donnybrook. “Well,” he said, “if London can handle three Bernard Piffies, they ought to be able to handle the best damn sanitation engineer ever to unclog a drain at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club and the hottest female impersonator this side of Frank Marino.” “Frank Marino?” gushed Henrietta. “Do you really think so, Uncle Sol?” “Hey! Hey!” said Joe. “None of that talk in here! This is supposed to be a bar and gun club not an evening with Whoopi Goldberg.” Piffy sat on the edge of his cot. He had a cracked rib, a badly bruised hip, all the lumbar pain he had ever imagined possible and the little finger on his right hand was twice as large as the one next to it. He had been strip-searched, booked and tossed into a rat hole. It could have been worse. “Is there anything I can get you?” asked Deputy Chief Constable Stumble. Piffy focused his tired eyes on the law enforcement official. “How about an early release?” he said. “Anything but that,” said Stumble. He was silent for a moment, then: “You have anybody you want to notify?” Piffy drew a deep breath. There was Asma bint Marwan. It was her fault that he was in this pickle. But he couldn’t tell anybody about her—not Stumble, not even Algernon A. Algernon. Who would believe him? They would put him in a room with padded walls. Maybe he would die in a day or two and get it over with. He didn’t like being eighty years old—only as a last resort. “Oh, by the way,” said Stumble. “A man from the Mutaween was here this morning.” “The Mutaween?” said Piffy. “The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,” said Stumble. “I’ve heard of them,” said Piffy. “What did they want?” “Oh,” said Stumble, “they want you extradited to Saudi Arabia.” “Could that happen?” asked Piffy. “Of course not,” said Stumble. “We still have some sovereignty left.” He sighed. “You’re a popular man, Piffy. Everybody in London is talking about you, including Anjem Choudary and you’ll be hearing from M15—they want to clear up that fingerprint thing, how three totally different individuals can have the same fingerprints has stumped them. What are the odds of that? And Bond will be in for a chat.” Piffy stared straight ahead. Stumble turned to leave; then remembered something. “Oh,” he said. “Almost forgot. Here’s your mail.” He tossed an envelope on the cot. “Well, cheerio,” he said. Piffy sat motionless for several minutes after the Constable left. Mail? He had mail? One thin envelope without a return address and he called that mail? Should he open it now or should he wait a day or two? Maybe he would be dead by then. Maybe it was a check from the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. He didn’t owe anybody any money, so it couldn’t be a bill. If he opened it today, he wouldn’t have anything to do tomorrow. Maybe he would be dead tomorrow. If this is what prison did to a person he didn’t want any of it. Ah… what the heck, he might as well open the letter—he would die of suspense if he didn’t. It was from Aisha, from little ten-year-old Aisha, from his friend from another age. It seemed so long ago now but it was only last week—no more than a few days ago. Oh, how much fun and excitement they had had together, mixed with enough mind-numbing terror to age a ten-year-old boy seventy years. How in the dickens had she found out where he was? He had to squint to make out the childish scrawl. Dear Mr. Piffy, (it said) I hope you are tra-la-la twiddle-dee dee-dee’s grandpa. You are my last hope. My father is taking me to Palestine—to the Gaza Strip. I have dishonored the family. I will be enrolled in the bin Laden Madrassas for girls and will be trained as a suicide bomber. Please help me. I do not want to be a suicide bomber; I would prefer to be a courtesan. If you know where your grandson is, please contact him. If you are not his grandpa and do not know him you can ignore this because I don’t want to get you in a lot of trouble. It was signed, Tra-la-la Twiddle-dee Dee-dee, Aisha. Piffy sat there for a long time without moving. A tear trickled from the corner of his eye. He sniffled. Damn it, he was an old man—he wasn’t supposed to cry; he wasn’t supposed to sniffle. He was as tough as a wart that had been soaked in Godzilla’s urine. He could be bent but he couldn’t be broken. He was Bernard Piffy. But it was his fault that Aisha was in this fix—if he hadn’t listened to Asma bint Marwan; if he hadn’t run down that alley; if he hadn’t sung that silly Mockingbird song at McDonalds; if Ahmad hadn’t caught him in Aisha’s bedroom. That damn bedroom! Good grief! What did Ahmad think they had been doing in there? They were ten-years-old! What did they know about cardinal knowledge? He had never heard of it. He thought girls got pregnant playing spin-the-bottle. Opie Taylor knew more about sex than he did! What in the Hell was he supposed to do? How could he help her? He was eighty years old and locked up in jail! So he prayed; he got down on his knees and prayed. He prayed to God and to the Apostles and to St. Anthony—especially to St. Anthony, his guardian angel. He prayed all day long and the next day and nothing happened. He prayed to Jerry Falwell and Mother Teresa. For one whole day he imagined he was Rooster Cogburn. But shooting bad guys wasn’t the sedative he had expected. He went back to praying to real saints. He scarcely touched the slop the screws brought him three times a day. He didn’t care—he would be dead inside a week. He had been dozing for some time—he didn’t know how long—when a voice buzzed in his ear. “Bernard? Bernard Piffy?” it said. He opened one eye. It was dark in the cell. “Is that you, Rooster?” he asked. He must have been dreaming of Rooster Cogburn. “No, it’s me,” said the voice. “Me? Who’s me?” said Piffy. “St. Anthony, your guardian angel—remember?” Piffy sat up; he swung his feet over the edge of the cot. St. Anthony! Wow! “You got to get me out of here, Tony!” he said excitedly. “Yaser Abdel Said is going to take Aisha to the Gaza Strip and turn her into a suicide bomber.” “Yes, I know. I heard your prayers,” said St. Anthony. Piffy stood up. “Well, let’s get cracking,” he said. “I’ll need a Sten gun and some grenades and Glen Campbell and a good horse…” “Easy! Easy!” said St. Anthony. “I can’t get you out of here.” “You can’t?” said Piffy. He was stunned. “What kind of guardian angel are you?” “I’m a law and order guardian angel,” said St. Anthony. “You were arrested for committing a crime. You broke the law, Bernie. If I help you escape from this place I would be guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. St. Peter wouldn’t like that. But I can get you a good lawyer. I could come to Greta Van Susteren in her sleep.” “Damn it!” said Piffy. “I don’t want a lawyer!” “Then how about a puppy dog?” St. Anthony suggested. He was smiling—yes, smiling! Piffy was dismayed. “Are you crazy?” he said. “Oh, this is no ordinary puppy dog,” said St. Anthony. “It’s a guardian puppy dog. It’s a chocolate terrier. It’s the smallest guard dog they make. Smaller than small—smaller than a large cat. It has an extra set of teeth so sharp they could tear the seat out of Jack the Ripper’s underpants in less than ten seconds.” It was not what Piffy had wanted to hear. “Look, Tony—“ he said. He was getting angry. It was then that St. Anthony pulled an undersized chocolate terrier from somewhere inside the voluminous folds of his robe and handed it to Piffy. The terrier smiled at its new owner. Yes, it had an extra set of teeth and what a set of teeth—not what one would call sharks teeth, they were more like those found in the mouth of a piranha but a nasty set indeed. St. Anthony wasn’t finished. He pulled a large vial from another fold in his robe and handed it to Piffy. “This is extract of Transylvania garlic. It is an extreme sedative. It is harmless to human beings. Be sure to smear your toes with it every night before you go to sleep. It will soothe your guardian dog.” Piffy was stunned. He stood there with the puppy dog in one hand and a vial of garlic in the other. He knew a hundred thousand cuss words but couldn’t think of one strong enough to appropriately express his indignation. “Is there anything else?” asked St. Anthony. Piffy was totally demoralized. “I would like to talk to Aisah, if it could be arranged,” he said. “Is that all?” said St. Anthony. “You should have asked sooner. It would have saved me one puppy dog.” He hitched up his belt, checked his aspergillum to see if it was loaded and opened the cell door. It was that easy. “Follow me,” he said. Piffy set the puppy dog and the garlic on his cot and followed. They went down the corridor and to the visitor’s center. No one noticed them. It was strange. They found a telephone and St. Anthony provided the number to Ahmad’s Madrassas from his memory bank. Piffy dialed the number. If Aisha answered everything would be okay, if not…there might be a problem. “Hello?” said a trembling voice. It was Aisha! Thank God! “Aisha, it’s me! It’s Bernie! Tra-la-la twiddle-dee-dee!” croaked Piffy. “Bernie?” she echoed. “I’ll come and get you,” he said, the words tumbling against each other in his mouth. “I’ll come and get you as soon as I can!” “Bernie?” she said. “Are you okay?” “If they hurt you, I’ll make them pay!” he croaked. “You sound so old,” she said. “Are you sick?” “No,” he said, “just worried.” “I’m so glad to hear from you,” she said. Then she began to sing. “Tra-la-la twiddle-dee dee-dee”’ she sang. In another moment she was crying and Piffy was snuffling. It didn’t last long. There came a sudden yelp and a cry of pain from the other end of the line and then the sound of something falling. “Are you okay?” asked Piffy, his ear glued to the receiver. Another voice came on the line. “You little Kuffar bastard!” it said. “Allah will get you for this!” It was Yaser Abdel Said—Piffy was sure of that. He hung up. He looked around. St. Anthony had disappeared and a couple of screws with clubs, mace and stun guns were hurrying toward him. Oh, no! Not again! “I’m too old for this!” he screamed. (To be continued)