The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 31)

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version He wasn’t Audie Murphy; he wasn’t Alvin York; he wasn’t Shane or Rooster Cogburn; he wasn’t Cump Sherman marching through Georgia; he wasn’t any of those, he was Bernard Piffy, an average private eye up to his neck in a lot of things he didn’t understand—Mike Hammer had once called him a nerd—but he would be damned if he was going to let some Muslim SOB shoot him dead in the basement of a dirty, stinking, little Madrassas because that particular Muslim SOB thought Allah had given him a license to kill unbelievers He lurched to his feet. The movement was awkward but was so sudden and unexpected it caught Mohammed Atta by surprise. The Glock 17 exploded in Piffy’s face. The bullet tore a lock of hair from the side of his head. Atta stepped back to get a better shot. Piffy lunged at the SOB. He was after the tiny cage in Atta’s left hand. The Glock 17 roared again but Piffy was already falling to the floor tearing the cage from Atta’s grasp with one hand and ripping the door open with the other—and puppy dog was loose! The chocolate terrier with the double row of shark’s teeth came out of the cage like Phil Sheridan riding to the rescue at Cedar Creek! The air was suddenly filled with the snarl of a thousand angry gremlins, cheered on by a chorus of banshees. A hundred steamboat whistles added to the cacophony. There was less noise in Dante’s Inferno on the 4th of July! St. Anthony’s guard dog was free and a hundred razor-sharp teeth set in an oversized mouth encompassed by an undersized body went hurtling across the basement in search of victims. Hanjour threw away his .38 and took to his heels. Atta swiveled round and round trying to get a shot at the elusive mutt but the animal was too quick for him. He gave up, screamed at Habib to do something and chased after Hanjour. Cowsnofsky was still pummeling the Cro-Magnon that had threatened Henrietta. The wretch was trying to get up but every time he got to his knees Cowsnofsky would knock him down again. The second Cro-Magnon came up behind Cowsnofsky. He would be a bigger problem. He had a 9 mm Steyr TMP in his hand. He put the gun to the back of Cowsnofsky’s head. Henrietta screamed a warning. Piffy lay on the floor where he had fallen. It was then that puppy dog earned his Kibbles and Bits. The mutt tore into the Cro-Magnon’s posterior like a shark going through Davy Jones’ locker in search of tasty morsels. The Cro-Magnon screamed. He dropped the Steyr TMP. He was bleeding from a thousand cuts. Blood sprayed across Cowsnofsky and Henrietta. Then, suddenly, a new voice was added to the horrendous din! “Stop! Stop! I order you to stop!” it thundered. It was Habib, the Islamic Wizard of Hogwarts. He was standing on the tips of his toes, hands raised as high over his head as they would go, wrists bent, fingers extended. Piffy could feel the energy flowing from Habib’s fingers. The man was, indeed, a wizard, a magician of some sort. The gremlins stopped snarling, the banshees ceased to wail and the steamboat whistles were silenced. A deathly stillness wrapped the basement in an Islamic gloom. The effect on puppy dog was immediate. It was once again a miserable undersized chocolate terrier. Whimpering, its tail between its legs, it retreated back to its cage. Habib smiled. “That’s a good doggy,” he said When the cage was securely locked, the Wizard turned on Cowsnofsky and Henrietta. Once again he rose to the tips of his toes, brought his hands high above his head and gestured. It didn’t take long—less than a few seconds. Cowsnofsky ceased pummeling the Cro-Magnon. He turned around, gazed at Habib. There was a confused look on his face. “What am I doing here?” he asked no one in particular. Henrietta came up beside him. “Down on your knees!” ordered Habib. Cowsnofsky and Henrietta complied. “Kill them!” ordered Habib. The Cro-Magnon Cowsnofsky had been pummeling unmercifully got to his feet. He picked up the Steyr TMP, checked to see if it was loaded. Piffy grabbed Hanjour’s .38. It would be a difficult shot—the wretch was inside the cell, partially shielded by the bars, but Piffy was Mayberry’s all-time skeet-shooting champion. The one time he had missed a shot in the State Championships Grandpa Piffy had refused to talk to him for a month. He hadn’t missed a shot since but he didn’t have much time and his vision was blurry at best. So he relied on instinct. He shot the Cro-Magnon through the head from ear to ear. The wretch collapsed across his bleeding companion. Piffy sat up. He looked at Habib. “Undo what you have done or I will kill you,” he said. Habib licked his lips. He knew from previous experience that his magic had no effect on Piffy but this was a younger Piffy, capable of being battered and knocked down. He would try. He rose up on his toes, extended his fingers just as the wizard’s manual instructed. He was Mandrake the Magician; it was a perfect gesture but it did not work. Nothing happened, Piffy did not disappear, was not rendered into a pile of hog dung. What he had learned in his short stay at Hogwarts had availed him naught. Piffy could have shot the wretch, but he didn’t—maybe he should have, it would have been part payment for Otis and the hundreds of thousands of Christians and animists murdered and starved to death in Sudan but there was little honor in killing despicable trash like Habib and he was tired of it all. He let the wretch go, he had Cowsnofsky and Henrietta to worry about. The Wizard fled in the direction taken by Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour. Puppy dog, released from the spell, came out of the cage to hasten them on their way. “What the hell is going on?” asked a confused Cowsnofsky. “Puppy dog! Puppy dog! Come back! Come back!’ shouted Piffy. He glanced at Cowsnofsky. “Get Henrietta!’ he said. “We’ve got to get out of here!” St. Anthony’s gift guard dog was back in a matter of seconds, a bloody portion of Habib’s robe dangling from its razor-sharp teeth. “Ain’t that mutt something!” said an awed Cowsnofsky. Piffy pried the bloody rag from puppy dog’s mouth. He stroked the mutt’s head, tossed the rag into a corner. Then he looked at Henrietta. “Still want to be the better half of Nick and Nora Charles?” he asked. Henrietta didn’t answer. By then the police had arrived—and the ambulances—and the coroner—and the photographers. Deputy Chief Constable Stumble paced back and forth in front of Piffy in the interrogation room at police headquarters. He had asked every question he could think of, few of them had been answered, none to his satisfaction. This was not the way Sherlock Holmes did things. He had grown to dislike Piffy. He shifted his no-tobacco pipe to the left side of his mouth. It felt more comfortable there. He stared at the sheaf of papers in his hand and then a Piffy. “You will be deported, of course,” he said. “You can’t go around shooting Asians because you don’t like them.” “They were Muslims,” said Piffy, “and it was self-defense. And I like Asians. Charlie Chan has been a friend of mine for years.” Stumble ignored the private eye. “Tariq Ramadan is going to look into this,” he said. “You have violated a half-dozen civil rights laws. The Prince of Wales, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Duke of Normandy, the Lord of Mann and the Paramount Chief of Fiji is interested in your case.” “I’ve heard of Prince Charlie,” said Piffy. “But who in the hell are those other guys?” “Foreign Secretary David Miliband will meet with Hillary Clinton this afternoon. It will be on the telly. Ms Clinton is expected to apologize for the strange happenings at the Ahmad Madrassas.” “I’ll have to watch,” said Piffy. Stumble sighed. “It’s people like you that give America a bad name,” he said. “You don’t mind if I go home and pack, do you?” asked Piffy. “No, go right ahead,” said Stumble. “We didn’t need you Yanks in ’41 and we don’t need you today.” “I’ll tell Ward Churchill,” said Piffy. He went back to his apartment. The Cowsnofskies had taken a suite at the Hilton London Metropole and Henrietta was recovering from surgery at a ‘Transgender Clinic’ in the East Side. Piffy plopped down in a chair. Well, it was over! His search for Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas taxi driver that had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage was over—not that it had ever started. He had been sidetracked by one thing after another—Inspector Clouseau, the fleas from the Prophet’s beard, Algernon A. Algernon, the murder of poor Otis, Aisha, the Mockingbird Song, Ahmad’s Madrassas and bint Marwan…always bint Marwan. He got up, wandered over to the refrigerator. He could use a bite to eat, something to chase the taste of garlic from out of his mouth, but the fridge was as barren as his prospects. He turned back to the living room and there she was—Asma bint Marwan, looking as beautiful and seductive as ever. The miniskirt was shorter, the peasant blouse, a teenager’s wet dream. The bra beneath the blouse was glowing like a neon sign, first orange, then green, then red. It was something Hugh Hefner would have been proud to wave over the entrance of the Playboy Mansion. He stared at her legs—those marvelous unattainable legs, at her breasts—so near, yet so far. “Well,” he said. “I guess this is goodbye.” “You’re not going anywhere,” said bint Marwan, “unless it’s to Gaza.” “Gaza?” said Piffy. “What do you mean—Gaza?” “You’ve become part of the show, Bernie,” she said. “You can’t get out. You’re one of us now. You’re in for the long haul if it takes another 1,400 years. This is the last crusade.” “Fourteen-hundred years?” cried Piffy. “I won’t last that long!’ “You will,” promised bint Marwan. “I’ll see to that.” “I wont go!” cried Piffy. “You can’t make me!” “We have ways,” said bint Marwan. They had ways. (To be continued)