The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 6)

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Cowsnofsky looked up from the newspaper he had been reading. “Here’s something interesting,” he said. “Some goofy tourist took off his shoe in front of the Birmingham Central Mosque in London and threw it at an Imam…Isn’t that where Piffy was going… to the Birmingham Central Mosque?”

The Professor glanced at Joe. “Piffy?” he said.

“Ah, no!” said Joe. “Not Piffy! I could get sued!”

“And Piffy could get killed if he was stupid enough to do something like that,” said the Professor.

Piffy was Barney Fife, alias Bernard Piffy, the private eye the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club had hired to track down the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas taxi-driver who had murdered his two daughters in a fit of Islamic rage. Joe was the owner of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. He liked to keep a low profile. He’d been in the CIA…or was it the FBI…something important. His grandpa had been a big-man in the WPA…something to do with excavation. Joe had a large reproduction of a Dick Tracy Junior Crime Stopper’s Badge placed near the cash register.

“Does the story name names?” asked Joe.

“Naw,” said Cowsnofsky. “Just tome tourist. He was pursued by a mob of angry Asians.”

“Asians?” said Ranch House. “They have a China Town in London?”

“It’s a euphemism, Ranch,” said the Professor.

Joe glanced down the bar at Henrietta. “Will, you please stop doing your nails in here,” he said.

Slowly, deliberately, Henrietta crossed one delicate leg over the other. “Why?” she said.

“If Blind Pew finds out you’re a transvestite, there will be hell to pay in here,” said Joe.

“You should have sent me to London,” said Henrietta.

“Now that is an idea whose time has come,” said Joe.

“Henrietta has a crush on Piffy,” said Rufus Quagmire.

“I do not!” said Henrietta. “I scarcely know the man.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been Piffy,” said the Professor. “The man is not a complete idiot.”

“If it was Piffy,” said Cowsnofsky, “I hope he was wearing his Air Jordans.”

Was there a record for the hundred-yard dash with one shoe on and one shoe off while being pursued by a mob of howling Asians? It there wasn’t, there should be. It would be just Piffy’s luck to miss out on the Guinness Book of Records. If he had had a stopwatch, if he had had an official timer, if he had been wearing Air Jordans who knows what records he might have set. He hadn’t run this fast since he was eight-years old. He had just left a midnight Halloween spook show and one of his companions had pointed at a shadow and had screamed, “It’s the Frankenstein monster!” Bone chilling, it had been.

Now, legs pumping like pistons, Piffy fled down an alley, cut through a back lot, and dodging traffic crossed from one side of the street to the other. By then his pursuers had been left in the dust. He slowed to a walk and slipped into the first pub he came across. He let out his breath. He was sweating profusely. Safe—safe at last! He put on his shoe—the one with the missing heel—and strode toward the bar as if he were Hoot Gibson sizing up a rustler’s hideout.

The place was almost empty. No Otis, no Andy Capp, just a couple of lushes and Wow! Va-va-voom—sitting at the end of the bar, a blonde bombshell with a décolletage reaching almost to her navel! She was digging in a purse large enough to conceal a cosmetics factory! She could have passed for Brigitte Bardot! She would have made Paris Hilton look like a boy! She had more curves than Daisy Mae—more curves than Moonbeam McSwine at the end of an all-day Sadie Hawkins Day race.

Piffy slicked back his hair, strode manfully toward the end of the bar. He sat down. “Howdy,” he said. Oh, yeah, Hoot Gibson. Now where was that horse he was supposed to kiss?

“You sure made a mess of things,’ she said.

Piffy nearly fell off his stool. “Bint Marwan?” he croaked.

“You were expecting Little Orphan Annie?” she said.

He looked her over carefully. The voice was bint Marwan’s all right but the accessories belonged to someone else. “What happened?” he gasped. He was suddenly out of breath. “You’ve…you’ve …you’ve changed!”

“I can’t go around looking like Orphan Annie all the time,” she explained. “They’d get on to me.”

Piffy was gawking. Maybe it was the décolletage, maybe it was the short skirt, the healthy thighs, the ample hips, the…

“Oh, this is not the real bint Marwan,” she said. “It’s a disguise. I don’t look like this. What you’re seeing is a phantasmagorical projection of you own psychic imbalance. I’m a poet. Good Heavens! Do you think poets look like this?” She laid a hand on his arm. “You’re trembling,” she said.

He was. Maybe it was the close call he had just had in front of the mosque, maybe it was his proximity to the new and improved, more mature version of bint Marwan, the decolettage…the short skirt. He swallowed. “Where’s your, ah, halo?” he asked.

“That old thing?” she said. “It doesn’t go with this outfit. I’m having it overhauled.”

She smiled and a thrill ran up his leg. He was turning into Chris Matthews. He hadn’t been this excited since Goober dragged him into the room behind Floyd’s barbershop to show him his Playboy collection.

“You want me to change into someone else?” said bint Marwan. “I can be the Lady from Worcester. I can be Maggie Thatcher. I can be Ann Boleyn.”

“No, no!” said Piffy. “That won’t be necessary. You’re fine just the way you are! Just fine!”

Bint Marwan reached into her purse, produced a tissue, dabbed delicately at the corner of her mouth.

Piffy eyed the purse. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “The purse is your escape hatch. Smart! It looks roomy enough. I hope it has seat belts.”

“It’s an accessory,” said bint Marwan. “It’s part of the disguise—nothing else.”

“An accessory?” echoed Piffy. “Then how do you get back and forth from the netherworld? I don’t see anything that could be a conveyance of any kind…” He stopped. A strange oscillating glow was coming from beneath bint Marwan’s blouse. Was it her bra? He swallowed. He was getting that Chris Matthews feeling again.

“Victoria has her secret,” said bint Marwan, “and I have mine.

Piffy couldn’t take his eyes off the oscillating glow. Wow! Would he like to take a ride in that thing! Nothing like this had ever happened to Mike Hammer; he was sure of that.

Suddenly the glow was gone. “Let’s get down to business,” said bint Marwan. “Abu Afaq says he knows a man who will take us to Yaser Abdel Said but the price is steep.”

Piffy frowned. “I’ll have to call the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club.”

“The man doesn’t want money,” said bint Marwan. “He wants toenail clippings.”

“Toenail clippings?” echoed Piffy. Inspector Clouseau has said something about toenail clippings!

“Yes, toenail clippings.”

Piffy was hesitant to ask. “Whose toenail clippings?” he said carefully.

“Muhammed’s.”

Piffy blinked. “Muhammed’s?” he echoed. “The Prophet? He wants the Prophet’s toenail clippings? Is there such a thing?”

“Yes.”

Piffy was silent for a moment. His mind was racing. Toenail clippings? It was absurd! He looked at bint Marwan. A green oscillating glow was coming from her bra. “I—“ he began. He didn’t finish.

Bint Marwan was nodding toward the pub’s entrance. “Don’t look now,” she whispered, “but your friends are here.”

By now the smell of cordite and phosgene was overpowering. He should have been paying more attention to the pub’s entrance than to bint Marwan’s magic bra, now it was too late. Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour were bearing down on him like a couple of undertakers after a two-day old corpse and bint Marwan had disappeared inside her bra. Yes, disappeared! He made a grab for what he thought was a bra strap, came up short and sprawled across the floor. When he looked up, Atta and Hanjour were grinning down at him. “Allahu akbar!” one of them said. Did it matter which? Of course not, he was doomed.

(to be continued)