Asma bint Marwan could be very persuasive when she crossed her legs and looked into Piffy’s eyes. There was far more thigh than miniskirt and that suited Piffy just fine. She was like Marilyn Monroe standing over a heating grate designed by the Marquis de Sade. She would have given Potsie Weber a heart attack. There wasn’t anything in the world Bernard Piffy would have liked better at the present time than a trip in bint Marwan’s magic oscillating traveling bra—her time warp—the magnificent H. G. Wells contraption that carried her back and forth to the netherworld and to the many places she visited past, present and future—some that may have existed for no other reason than her presence. It went orange and green and red by turns. He liked it best when it was orange—orange was more soothing and he needed all the soothing he could get.

But he had business to conduct. Yeah, business…

“If I go to Gaza,” he said, “do I get to ride in your magic carpet?” It was a business question, wasn’t it? Sure—and he was all business.

“No,” she said.

“Then I’m not going,” he said for the tenth time.

“You must think of Aisha,” she said.

He had thought of Aisha; he had thought of Aisha a hundred times. If he didn’t go to Gaza the chances were good, perhaps 100 percent, that Ahmad would enroll his ten-year-old daughter in the Osama bin Laden Madrassas for suicide bombers. And there was Ahmad himself—he was a Keeper of the Fleas from the Prophet’s Beard. He was high on the list of unfinished business. Bint Marwan had learned in Cairo that one of the sacred fleas had escaped its Keeper and had leapt from its container onto the beard of a passing goatherd. The flea had been on its way to poison a Coptic well. It was not the first time that particular flea had aborted an operation. The goatherd—a good-natured boob—had run off before he could be shorn and was now residing somewhere in Gaza. Piffy’s job would be to find the goatherd and Yasser Arafat’s fabled fuhrerbunker where the Keepers kept the homing devices that kept track of the fleas—so it was said. The device would be wrapped in the original copy of Jimmy Carter’s Roadmap for Peace. It was said that Carter, seized by inspiration after kissing Yasser Arafat on the cheek, had drawn the map from memory in less than five minutes.

And there was Habib, the Islamic Wizard of Hogwarts. He had fled to Gaza. And there was Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour—all in Gaza. And according to Ka'b, though it could not be verified, the Keepers had recruited Che Guevara to do their dirty work. Piffy would have preferred Mad Dog Coll or Ned Pepper, but Guevara? He could tolerate Coll and he kind of liked Pepper. It seemed the radical left was rushing from the grave to assist Islam in its war on democracy and capitalism. These were trying times. Even Tom Paine would be hard pressed to keep up. With Guevara, Atta, Hanjour, Habib and the usual run of Allah’s Cro-Magnons, Piffy would have his hands full. No wonder he didn’t want to go to Gaza. If only bint Marwan would stop crossing her legs maybe he could find the moral courage to say no once and for all.

And there was Chauncey bin Abu Abdul Aziz al-Saud, the aide to the Saudi Arabian ambassador to England, a great nephew of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the pimply-faced wretch the octogenarian Piffy had physically assaulted on the Kharma With Darma Show. Chauncey had returned to Saudi Arabia to recruit a dozen or so volunteers from the Mutaween. They were to assist Chauncey in his efforts to regain his manhood. No one used the word ‘vendetta’ but a fatwa had been mentioned in connection with a certain dhimmi private detective.

Ahmad, Habib, Atta, Hanjour, Guevara, Chauncey…throw in ul-Haq and Abu Hamza…

Piffy felt like Shane in Grafton’s Saloon. He shook his head. “There’s too many,” he said.

“You don’t need to take them all on at once,” said bint Marwan.

Piffy smiled. “It would be worth a ride in your magic carpet, wouldn’t it?” he said.

“I’m afraid not,” she said.

“If a serial killer can get a last meal, I ought to get a last ride,” said Piffy.

“It would be too risky,” said bint Marwan. “Besides—Ka’b already has your passport and your airline reservations.”

”Can’t we fake it?” suggested Piffy. “We could fly over in your unmentionables and when the flight lands at Yasser Arafat International I could crawl out of your bra and mingle with the passengers as they get off the plane. Who would know?”

“You are beginning to annoy me, Bernard,” warned bint Marwan.

“It’s the only enjoyment I have left,” said Piffy. “You would deny me that?”

“Be a good boy and catch your plane, Bernie,” she said.

“Can’t we take a quick spin around the block?” he said.

“Maybe when you get back,” said bint Marwan.

Maybe…it was always maybe…Well, there was the repartee, they had that—and at times he did get the best of her, and, who knew, perhaps in a distant millennia in an Elysian field strewn with the bodies of their enemies, a tumble amongst the daffodils awaited them—if he wasn’t shot full of holes first. And then he got to thinking…and he thought and he thought.

Damn, why did the strange things always happen to him? They never happened to Mike Hammer or to Shell Scott, or to Travis McGee or Bulldog Drummond. It was always him. A dollar to Johnny Dollar was always a hundred pennies. Piffy never got a hundred pennies back, not even when he was paid. And the uncertainties he faced—they were frightening. Fortunately, he seldom understood them until too late. It preserved his sanity. I, the Jury, Nightmare in Pink—they had a start a center and an end. He just sort of ambled along. Oh, sure, he knew where he started—it was in Joes’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club where the resident barflies hired him to track down the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas taxi drive who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic Rage. After that it got confusing. He had seen more lineup changes than Casey Stengel had seen with the 1962 New York Mets. Maybe he was where Winston Churchill was when he said the allies weren’t at the beginning of the end, they were merely at the end of the beginning. He wished he had said that. He was in the middle of something…an indefinable, indistinct, blur, a shadow of a reflection…there was something hovering over him, the Sword of Damocles, perhaps. It was scary. 

It was some time before he noticed the man in the long brown robe standing on the other side of the room. There was no mistaking the tonsure, the little potbelly; the inoffensive smile, the apple dumpling cheeks. It was St. Anthony! What was he dong here? What did he want? Piffy didn’t remember praying to him—not recently, anyway.

St. Anthony cleared his throat; he had a prayer book in one hand and he looked as if he had been crying. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he sniffled.

Piffy braced himself. “Bad news?” he said. “Did somebody die? Not Henrietta! Not Cowsnofsky! Oh, my God…not…not Aisha?”

“No,” said St. Anthony.

Piffy heaved a sigh of relief. He was over his fright. He could stand the death of just about anybody else. ”Well, so long as it wasn’t any of them,” he said. “How about Bill Maher? Was it Bill Maher? Woody Harrelson? Sean Penn?”

“Nobody has died,” said St. Anthony. “It’s much worse than that. I don’t know how to tell you this but I’m no longer your guardian angel. I have been relieved of that duty. I’ve been told I have been exceeding my authority. Gabe was quite put out. I’m the patron saint of lost items, he said, not Saul of Tarsus. I go before the Board this afternoon.”

“Gabe?” said Piffy. “Who’s Gabe?”

“St. Gabriel,” said St. Anthony. “He has such a frightful temper! He has threatened to confiscate my aspergillum!”

“Your aspergillum?” echoed Piffy. 

St. Anthony sniffled. “Yes,” he said. “And I just had the handle bronzed! See?’

Piffy knew what an aspergillum was but by now St. Anthony was quite carried away. He tugged the aspergillum from his belt and waved it under Piffy’s nose.

“Nice,” said Piffy. “I like the textured grip.”

“Oh, yes,” said St. Anthony. “No matter how hard I swing, it remains firmly in my grasp…Watch.” He demonstrated by sprinkling the apartment with Holy Water—not once but twice.

“What has all this got to do with me?” asked Piffy.

“Oh, that’s right!” said St. Anthony. “There’s one more thing! I’ve come for the dog.”

“For the dog?” said Piffy. “For puppy dog?” He was stunned! What was this…some kind of a cruel joke? He couldn’t believe it! Suddenly he couldn’t think of being without the little mutt…the lovable little mutt!

“He wasn’t mine to give!” sobbed St. Anthony. “Oh, I’m so embarrassed!”

“Look—“ Piffy said desperately. Can’t we work something out? I’ve grown attached to the mutt. He eats Black Transylvania Garlic from my toes! What will I do without him?”

“It’s out of my hands,” said St. Anthony. He looked at the ceiling, rolled his eyes. “Oh, I rue the day that Henrietta prayed to me to take care of you. Oh, what a vain fool I was; I thought I could be somebody…a guardian angel, not a mere finder of lost trinkets. But apparently it is not to be. I am so sorry.”

“You’re sorry!” exploded Piffy. “What do you think I am?”

St. Anthony sniffled. “I hope you have married Henrietta, she seems like such a fine young woman.”

“She’s not a woman,” said Piffy. “She’s a man.”

St. Anthony seemed not to hear. “Now, would you please give me the dog?” he said.

“Sure, “ said Piffy. He would let St. Anthony have the dog. He would miss the mutt. He had been Piffy’s ace in the hole, the card he kept in the top of his boot when he ventured into the Long Branch Saloon for a game of chance with Wild Bill and Black Bart but there was no telling what St. Anthony might do to if he refused to cough up the mutt. There was more fire than smoke in that aspergillum. “I’ll be right back,” he said. He had left puppy dog in his cage on the roof to get some fresh air. No one would steal him up there—no one in his right mind.

Piffy hadn’t taken more than a half-dozen steps down the corridor from his apartment when the Asian in the Mujahideen pantaloons came charging at him from out of the shadows screaming, “Allahu akbar” and waving a three-foot sword! Piffy dodged the blow by flinging himself to the floor but before he could get up the Mujahideen was towering over him, the Sword of the Prophet poised to send another unbeliever to his eternal doom!

Fortunately, it was not to be! The Mujahideen collapsed like a bar rag in Archie Bunker's Place at three o’clock in the morning. It was a miracle! Piffy stood up, nudged the unconscious man with his foot.

St. Anthony was staring at his bent aspergillum. “Oh, dear!” he said. “These things do pack a wallop but they are so fragile! I hope I didn’t hurt the blighter!”

Piffy rolled the man on his back. “Do you know him?” he asked.

St. Anthony was surprised. “Why, I do!” he said. “It’s Bulrush al-Tamimi of the Mutaween! He is a very bad man! He works for Prince Chauncey.”

“Prince Chauncey?” echoed Piffy.

“Yes, Prince Chauncey,” said St. Anthony, “one of the many spoiled-brat nephews of King Abdullah.”

Piffy sighed. He hadn’t taken ten steps out of his apartment and they were after him. “I think you better let me keep puppy dog,” he said.

“Well, okay,” said St. Anthony. “But for no more than a couple of weeks.”

A couple of weeks—for Bernard Piffy it could be a lifetime.

(To be continued)

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 Atta again but he wasn’t after the 9/11 Jihadist, he was after the tiny cage in Atta’s left hand. The Glock 17 roared one more time but Piffy was already falling to the floor tearing the cage from Atta’s grasp with one hand and ripping the cage 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 dank oppressive air of the Madrasssas basement was filled with the instantaneous 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 the day Lucifer was crowned King of the Universe! St. Anthony’s guardian angel 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 Asian 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 butt like a shark crunching 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 County’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, just like he had learned in his short stay at Hogwarts. He was Mandrake the Magician; he was Yen Sid; it was a perfect gesture but it did not work. Nothing happened, Piffy did not disappear; he was not rendered into a pile of hog droppings. What he had learned as a Hufflepuffian had availed him naught.

Piffy could have shot the rat-bag, 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 so despicable a piece trash as Habib and he was tired of it all. He let the rat-bag 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.

Cowsnofsky came out of his temporary stupor. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.

Piffy started after puppy dog but stopped after a couple of steps. “Puppy dog! Puppy dog!” he shouted. “Come back! Come back!’ He glanced at Cowsnofsky. “Get Henrietta!’ he said. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

St. Anthony’s guardian angel 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. We exchange Chinese New Year’s cards every year.”

Stumble ignored Piiffy. “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 are all 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 is apartment. The Cowsnofskies had taken a suite at the Hilton London Metropole; 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 who 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?” said Piffy. “I won’t last that long! I’m a mere mortal.”

“You will,” promised bint Marwan. “I’ll see to that.”

“I wont go!” said Piffy. “And you can’t make me!”

“We have ways,” said bint Marwan.

They had ways.

(To be continued)

“What are we going to do, Uncle Bernie?” wailed Henrietta.

Piffy stared at the bomb. It wasn’t much—five sticks of dynamite, some wires, a clock and a detonator; Mike Hammer would have ignored it—but it was more than enough to send Nick and Nora Charles (or was it Bert and Ernie) to Purgatory or to Plains, Georgia, if not to Hell. He shook his head. It didn’t look good. “I don’t know, kid,” he said. “If we had more time we could do the Stations of the Cross but two or three Hail Mary’s isn’t going to be enough to get us out of this mess.”

They had ten minutes! Nine, now…maybe only eight and a half! They could scream, curl into a ball; hold their breath, pray. It was a shame they didn’t have more options.

“If we had a fire extinguisher or a garden hose we could spray it with water,” said Henrietta.

“Yeah, there’s a fire hydrant right outside,” said Piffy.

“You’re being sarcastic, Uncle Bernie,” said Henrietta.

The kid was right. At least he was thinking—he hadn’t panicked. They could put that on his tombstone—Henrietta, brave kid, never panicked, but Bernard Piffy did or at least he was on the verge of it. But what could he do? They were up the Sahara without a fire extinguisher, without a garden hose, without a drop of water. He wouldn’t give a bucket of cold spit for their chances.

And that was when he thought of something, something so strange and bizarre it just might work. The black Transylvania garlic! He grabbed his coat, searched frantically through the pockets! Yep, there it was—the garlic! His fingers a-tremble, he opened the package. If he could chew up a good mess of the garlic and spit it across the floor the chances were better than fifty-fifty that he could gum up the timer parts of the bomb! Yeah, he could stop the clock! He could coat the detonator with saliva! It was worth a try! He was sure he could hit the clock nine-out-of-ten times if he tried. He had won the Mayberry Tobacco-Spitting Championship for both distance and accuracy when he was ten-years-old! Ten-years-old! He had been a Phenom! A sensation! His grandpa had trained him in secrecy for months before springing him on Mayberry County. Grandma Piffy had been horrified when she found out what had been going on behind her back and grandpa had been forced to sleep in the spare bedroom for weeks on end but grandpa said it was worth it—not only did he get back at the old codgers in his Club but Bernie had won the Tobacco-Spitting Championship and had become the hero not only of Mayberry County but also of the local chapter of the George 'Gabby' Hayes Society of which he had been made an honorary member. Of course that was the last time Piffy had had chewing tobacco in his mouth—Grandma Piffy had seen to that. Now with his life on the line he would get one more chance to demonstrate his unique skill. He hoped he could remember more than he had forgotten.

“What are you doing, Uncle Bernie?” asked Henrietta.

“I’m chewing garlic,” said Piffy. He stuffed another clove into his mouth. “When I’ve worked up a good mess I’m going to spit it at the clock. It should jam up the works and keep it from going off!”

“Will that work?” said Henrietta. He was on his knees stripping the wire from his bra.

“You bet,” said Piffy. He swished the garlic around in his mouth, pressed his face between the bars, took aim and let fly. It was a great shot! Grandpa would have been proud of him! Heck, Gabby Hayes would have been proud of him! The garlic splattered across the face of the clock. Sure, it was disgusting but what else was he to do and the first shot was encouraging. Yeah—encouraging! This was war and he was an artillery officer just like his great-grand pappy had been in World War One!

He launched one salvo after another until his jaws began to ache and Atta’s homemade bomb disappeared under a tidal wave of garlic and black saliva. By then he was getting low on his precious weed and something unsavory had crept up from his stomach into his mouth. “I’m going to need a stomach pump before this is over,” he groaned.  He grabbed at a cell bar; he was sweating profusely. If he never saw another clove of garlic it would be too soon. “Well, at least I won’t get cancer or E. coli,” he mumbled. He was well aware of garlic’s medicinal value.

He wondered how much time had elapsed. Two or three minutes perhaps—no less than that he hoped. He glanced at Henrietta. Good Grief! The kid was on his knees trying to pick the cell lock with a wire from his Maidenform! How ridiculous! “You can’t pick a lock with a wire from a bra, kid,” he said.

“I can too!” snapped Henrietta.

“No,” groaned Piffy. “It can’t be done. Sabrina Duncan tried it. If she couldn’t do it neither can you.”

“I beg your pardon!” said Henrietta. He stood up and the door swung open.

Piffy was surprised but not amazed. His stomach hurt, his jaws ached horribly and something was burning in his throat. “I guess I was wrong,” he said. He hurried over to the bomb and tore the wires loose from the dynamite. Then he looked round the basement. “We better get out of here. There’s no telling how many bombs Atta and his rat-bags have left lying around this place.”

They had scarcely started down the corridor when they came face-to-face with Cowsnofsky! The best damn sanitation engineer ever to unclog a drain at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club had a flashlight in one hand and the puppy dog cage in the other.

“What are you doing here?” gasped an incredulous Piffy.

“I’ve come looking for you,” said Cowsnofsky.

Piffy eyed the cage. “And you brought puppy dog?” he asked.

“Naw,” said Cowsnofsky. “Your dog ran away. I brought the cage so I would have something to put him in case I found him.”

“Puppy dog is loose?’ said Piffy.

“Yeah,” said Cowsnofsky. “And boy, can that mutt dodge traffic! I swear he goes right between the wheels of the cars.”

“He ran away?” said Piffy.

“I let him out for some air,” explained Cowsnofsky. “I thought it would do him some good. He was whining and whining. He wouldn’t eat anything. When I gave him one of my slippers to play with he tore it to shreds and then got after Mrs. C’s platforms. He made so much noise your super came up to complain and the mutt got after him—ripped his pants to the crotch. Then what’s-his-name—Mr. al-Maliki—showed up. He was mad because I changed the toilet back to the way it was. That fellow doesn’t know a one damn thing about bathroom configuration! He kept screaming it shouldn’t be pointing in the direction of Mecca—My God! Was I glad to get rid of that rat-bag! That was when your dog ran away. I followed the mutt for a block but he was too fast for me so I thought I’d come down here and see how you were doing.”

“You did well, Cowsnofsky,” croaked Piffy.

Cowsnofsky eyed the private eye. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Of course Piffy was not okay. He had consumed far more garlic than was normal and on an empty stomach and it was boiling up from inside. He reeled, grabbed at the cell door for support. It he wasn’t careful he would lose his lunch.

“Uncle Bernie had too much garlic,” said Henrietta.

“Really?” said Cowsnofsky. “It never bothers me.” It was then that he noticed Henrietta—the kid’s tattered clothes, his still bloody face.

“My God!” he said. “What happened to you?” He paused, shook his head. “Oh, no! Don’t tell me! They didn’t…Oh, God! Joe’s going to kill me! I was supposed to watch out for you!”

“I’m okay,” said Henrietta. He wasn’t okay but he would act as if he was. That’s how Bernard Piffy did it.

The ensuing silence was shredded by a voice that screamed at them from out of the gloom. It was Habib, the Wizard of Hogwarts. “I told you! I told you!” he screeched. “We should never have left them alone! They have escaped! See! See!”

Habib wasn’t alone. Hani Hanjour was right behind him and then came Mohammed Atta and two of Allah’s Cro-Magnons.

“Well, well, “ cooed Atta. “What have we here?” He had a Glock 17 in his right hand and was holding his left hand behind his back as if it contained something he didn’t want anybody to see. He waved the Glock at Piffy.

One of the Cro-Magnons was eyeing Henrietta. He was large, dull and drooling at the mouth. Visions of a temporary Islamic marriage danced in his head. “The spoils of war,” he mumbled.

Habib had also noticed Henrietta. A Jack the Ripper smile crossed his face. “Force not your slave-girls to whoredom if they desire chastity,” he said, “But if anyone forces them, then after such compulsion, Allah if oft forgiving.”

Piffy, his stomach churning, had all he could do to hang on to the cell door. Hanjour produced a snub-nosed Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. The Cro-Magnon advanced on Henrietta.

Habib was enjoying himself. “You may have whomever you desire; there is no blame,” he gloated. “It says so in the Qur’an.”

Henrietta was no match for the Cro-Magnon. The cross dresser backed slowly into the cell but the massive Jihadist was too quick and before Henrietta could swing the door shut or slip out of the way Allah’s slave had him by the wrist. Henrietta screamed! The Cro-Magnon pushed him against the wall and tore at the kid’s blouse. By then Cowsnofsky, still as agile as the All-State wrestler he had been in high school, had sprung into action; he leapt into the cell, grabbed the Cro-Magnon by the shoulder and smote him a terrible blow. The rat-bag collapsed across Henrietta’s feet.

Hanjour aimed his Smith and Wesson .38 caliber at Cowsnofsky. Piffy lunged for Hanjour but the crippled terrorist managed to step aside and Piffy, his head spinning and his stomach churning, lost his balance and sprawled across the floor. But Piffy wasn’t finished—he vomited across Hanjour’s legs! It was enough to distract the rat-bag’s aim. The Smith and Wesson barked but the shot missed Cowsnofsky by a foot-and-a-half. Hanjour cursed and swung the gun at Piffy’s head.

The private eye was still on the floor, one hand clutching at Hanjour’s pants leg. He was trying to get up but he couldn’t get his legs under him. He glanced desperately round the basement. He was looking for puppy dog—where the hell was the mutt? And where the hell was bint Marwan? She had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He rolled over, got to one knee. Hanjour was trying to pull away from him; he was beating at Piffy’s head with the barrel of the.38.

And then Mohammed Atta came up. He had a Glock 17 in one hand and an itty-bitty cage in the other. Puppy dog was in the itty-bitty cage—sound asleep! So much for St. Anthony’s guardian angel dog! Atta pointed the Glock 17 at Piffy. Unless bint Marwan came out of the woodwork in the next few seconds Piffy would be one dead private eye.

“Ah, jeez,” he groaned.

“Atta was enjoying himself immensely. “Killing disbelievers is a small matter to us,” he said. And he prepared to kill another disbeliever.

(To be continued)

For once Bernard Piffy was at a loss for words. He had no idea of what he should do. He was in a cell full of dead roaches in the basement of a Madrassas not in an emergency room at a Metropolitan hospital where trained medical personnel looked after rape victims or in a woman’s shelter where psychiatrists and psychologists with more degrees than he had days in school had some idea of what would work and what wouldn’t. But he tried his best and if cursing were part of the healing process he might have been of some help.

He tried to make Henrietta as comfortable as possible. He wrapped his coat around the kid’s shoulders, found a clean spot on the floor; helped him sit down. He took the bloody underwear from his hands and then didn’t know what to do with it, so he stuffed it in his pocket. He thought of making a cobweb poultice—yes, a cobweb poultice—he had read about them in a Jim Hatfield Western when he was a kid though he didn’t know what they were used for or where to apply them. He dabbed at Henrietta’s face with the one piece of Kleenex he could find that hadn’t already been soiled with his own blood. It was only when he started singing the Mockingbird Song—tra la la, twiddle-dee, dee dee—that Henrietta calmed down. He put an arm around the kid’s shoulders and squeezed gently.

Henrietta snuffled. “Why would they do such a thing?” he wailed.

“They’re Muslims,” said Piffy.

“Damn them!” said Henrietta.

“They’re sexist, chauvinist, homophobic pigs,” said Piffy.

“Who?” Henrietta asked. .

“Muslim men,” said Piffy.

“But Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, Uncle Bernie,” said Henrietta.

“That’s what they want you to think,” said Piffy, “but they aren’t any more tolerant than the Nazis that wiped out the Warsaw Ghetto. You could fit all the tolerant Muslims in England in a Dogpatch outhouse…if you’d have been caught in Riyadh or Teheran dressed like you are you would have been stoned. Muslim men don’t like happy women. You were too happy for them, kid. And you were dressed inappropriately—provocatively. Women like you—well, you know what I mean—women, in general, frighten them…happy women.”

“But the vast majority of Muslims are good, decent, honest, peaceful people, Uncle Bernie,” said Henrietta. “They’re moderates.”

“Moderates?” said Piffy. “Yeah, I suppose…and so were those millions of people who lived in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and didn’t do a damn thing to stop the Holocaust. Moderates don’t make waves, kid…there’s a Mad Mullah in every mosque listening to what is said…Hundreds of dhimmis and Kuffars are beaten and killed every day by Jihadists just like those bastards that worked you over and it’s done all over the world and right here in England too and the moderates never open their mouths. And you know why…because they prefer the slavery of the dar al-Islam to what we have in the good old U.S.A. Freedom terrifies them. They’re Nazis—they’re fascists. They would have served Hitler better than the Germans did.”

“I can’t believe that,” said Henrietta.

They were silent for a while.

“It’s a funny religion,” said Piffy. “All the things they can’t do…no whoring, no drinking, no carousing…at least not on this man’s earth. And it’s the little things, too—no laughing, no blind dates, no mixed bowling, no Sadie Hawkins Day. Fun is wrong; it is un-Islamic. You can do all the drinking and whoring you want when you get to Heaven. If you think that makes sense you’re smarter than I am. It’s like paying for your sins before you commit them. Everything forbidden on earth is okay in Heaven.”

(Suddenly his mind wandered) “And round them shall serve immortal boys of perpetual freshness, never altering in age. If you saw them, you would think they were scattered pearls. (It must have been the influence of Asma bint Marwan tucked away in some dim recess of his mind)

(And then he was back to reality) “Allah must have had you in mind when he coined that one, kid. Immortal boys of perpetual freshness—collapse buildings on them in this world, enjoy them in the next.

“And the women in Allah’s Great Whorehouse in the Sky are all virgins! Especially created by the master to serve the needs of the Mujahideen! I suppose the few Muslim women that actually get there from Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan—like Hanadi Jaradat or Yvonne Ridley—will be put to work scrubbing floors and washing clothes for the perpetual virgins. A Muslim woman could get a better deal at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion and she wouldn’t have to worry about going to hell for disobeying her husband.

(Again his mind wandered) “The Believer will be in Delightful Bliss. On couch-like thrones, gazing, their thirst slaked with pure wine.

He shook his head  “If the men get virgins what will the women get—aside from the scrubbing and washing? I would think Allah’s Great Whorehouse in the Sky would be a place Bill Maher would want to go.”

He glanced at Henrietta. “I’m not boring you, am I?’

Henrietta didn’t answer. His eyes were focused on the cell door. Allah’s Cro-Magnons were back. They had come up so quietly Piffy hadn’t heard them—either that or he had been so enthralled by his own voice, he hadn’t cared. Now he could care—and care a lot.

“Piffy?” said one of the Cro-Magnons.

The cell door swung open. Piffy got up, brushed the dirt from the seat of his pants. He dug Henrietta’s bloody bra and panties from his pocket, returned them to their owner. He gave the kid a wink. “If I meet St. Peter first,” he said, “I’ll put in a good word for you.” And then it was back to the interrogation room.

He sat down on the chair in the middle of the room. He had to wait a few minutes for Mohammed Atta and Hani Honjour. There was a third man with them—an old acquaintance of Piffy’s from his days as an octogenarian. It was Habib, the Wizard of Hogwarts; the man who was to have turned Piffy into a fairy prince but instead had given the detective and his friend Otis Star of David raincoats.

Atta stopped directly in front of Piffy. He looked at Habib. “Is this the man that blasphemed Allah’s Apostle?” he asked.

Habib squinted at Piffy. He couldn’t be sure. He stepped closer, pushed his face to within inches of the private eye’s battered visage.

Piffy wrinkled his nose, drew back as far as he could. “What the hell happened to you?” he said. “Fall in a sewer? You smell like bin Laden’s bladder!”

Habib scowled. The words were familiar and the voice sounded the same. “I don’t know,” he said. “If he were 40 years older…maybe…could you make him say, ‘You couldn’t turn Arnold Ziffel into a pig if you were standing on Muhammad’s posterior?’ That’s what he said and it would help if I heard it again. ‘You couldn’t turn Arnold…’” That was as far as he got.

Atta hit Habib so hard he knocked the Wizard to his knees. “Swine!” he shouted. “No wonder you were booted from the Hufflepuffians!”

“To think of all the time and money we wasted forcing this wretch on Hogwarts,” said Hanjour.

Habib cowered on the floor as if he expected another blow. “I was only repeating what the dhimmi said,” he whimpered.

“Stupid fool” hissed Atta.

“Is this all you wanted me for?” asked Piffy.

“No,” said Atta. “We wanted to ask you one more time where you got the dog.”

“The dog?” said Piffy. “I got him from Harry Potter.”

Habib lurched to his feet. “He lies!” he screeched. “This man does not know Harry Potter! He has never been to Hogwarts!”

“It was Abu Afaq,” said Hanjour. “He got the dog from Abu Afaq.” Nothing would convince him otherwise.

Habib cuffed Piffy across the face.

Piffy grimaced. “One of these days…” he said, “one of these days…” He was tempted to make that day right now but the odds would have been ridiculous.

“Enough of this!” snapped Atta. “Take him back to the cell and set the timer for ten o’clock.”

Timer? Cell? Ten o’clock? What was he talking about? It didn’t sound good—whatever it was.

It was then that Hanjour produced the bomb. It was a frightening thing. A clock, some wires and a couple of sticks of dynamite…maybe they had never heard of plastic explosive…perhaps plastic wasn’t scary enough for them.

Accompanied by Habib, Hanjour and the bomb, Allah’s Cro-Magnons escorted Piffy back to the cell in the basement. From there Piffy and Henrietta watched as Hanjour set the timer for ten o’clock.

“What is that thing, Uncle Bernie?” asked Henrietta.

“It’s our passport to the Pearly Gates,” said Piffy.

Hanjour limped over to the cell. He glared at Piffy. “It was Abu Afaq, wasn’t it?” he said.

“Go to hell,” said Piffy.

“Kuffar swine!” snarled Hanjour.

“We’d better hurry,” urged one of Allah’s Cro-Magnons. “We’ve only got ten minutes!”

Yes, ten minutes! Only ten minutes…

(To be continued)

Well, at least he had found Henrietta. It wasn’t much, but it was something. A couple of thugs—Asians, Jihadists, Islamo-fascists, boogermen, Cro-Magnons: call them what one would—came out of the shadows to reinforce Atta and Hanjour. Piffy was searched. They took his wallet; his cell phone, his complimentary Tenth Anniversary Shell Scott Pick and Skeleton Key Ring and they found the quarter pound of black Transylvania garlic Algernon A. Algernon had left in his pocket.

One of the Islamic Cro-Magnons eyed the package suspiciously. “What’s this?” he demanded.

“Garlic,” said Piffy.

“He can keep it if he wants it,” said Mohammed Atta.

They stuffed the package back in Piffy’s pocket.

Atta removed the gun he had been holding to the side of Henrietta’s head long enough to wave it toward the far end of the basement. “Move,” he said.

They moved. Piffy and Henrietta were pushed into the cell Ahmad used to discipline recalcitrant students and the door clanged shut behind them. The place smelled of tobacco and was full of cobwebs and dead roaches. Piffy couldn’t help wondering if Aisha had spent some time in there.

“Make yourself comfortable,” said Atta. “We’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Mr. Anjem Choudary will be making a little speech and al-Maliki is to present Ahmad with the Qur’an Mohammad Sidique Khan used the morning he blew up London’s commuter trains. It will be quite an event. Tariq Ramadan is expected.”

“Have fun,” said Piffy. “But I want you kids back before two o’clock in the morning.”

Hani Honjour did not appreciate the humor. He limped toward the cell and glared at Piffy through the bars. “We’ll be back, Kuffar swine,” he promised, “and you will get yours!”

In another minute they were gone.

Piffy sighed; he looked for a place to sit down. There wasn’t any. “Well,” he said, “this is another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into.”

“What are we going to do, Uncle Bernie?” wailed Henrietta.

Piffy shrugged. He was a model of nonchalance. “Well, if they hadn’t taken my skeleton key and lock pick ring we could be out of here in ten seconds and if they hadn’t taken my cell phone I could call Deputy Chief Constable Stumble—he’s upstairs. He could lead a cavalry charge or something.”

“We’re in big trouble, aren’t we?” said Henrietta. He was on the verge of tears.

“There are times I wish I wasn’t Bernard Piffy,” he said. “There are times I wish I was somebody else.”

“Like who?” sniffled Henrietta.

“Well, if I were Maxwell Smart,” said Piffy, “I could take a hacksaw from out my shoe and we could saw our way out of here in a couple of days.”

“Who’s Maxwell Smart?” asked Henrietta.

Okay, so the kid didn’t know whom Maxwell Smart was but at least he had taken the kid’s mind was off the mess they were in and that was a good thing. But Maxwell Smart was not the best choice in the world. There had already been enough bumbling in this caper.

“How about if I was Tiger Mann?” said Piffy. “Now there was a guy. If I was Tiger Mann I could bend these bars with my teeth and we could walk out of here, straighten them up and nobody would be the wiser.”

“Tiger Mann?” said Henrietta. “Was he a real person?”

“Tiger Mann was an associate of Mike Hammer’s, I guess,” said Piffy.

Jeez! Why was he always stuck with the kids? Yeah, the kids…it was always the kids…the children… the girl children…first Aisha and now Henrietta, although Henrietta wasn’t a girl he might as well have been. These relationships weren’t natural. He didn’t like kids. Never had. Maybe he should try something different, appeal to Henrietta’s femininity.

“Suppose I were Sabrina Duncan,” he said. He paused. Maybe he shouldn’t go there. Ah, what the hell. “If I were Sabrina Duncan I could use the wire from my bra to pick the lock or I could strip the elastic from my pantyhose and make a slingshot. Of course, Stumble would probably arrest me for possession of a dangerous weapon.”

“Sabrina Duncan?” said Henrietta. “I know you’re trying to cheer me up, Uncle Bernie, but who’s Sabrina Duncan?”

“She was one of Charlie’s Angels,” said Piffy. Maybe he wasn’t getting through to the kid. Maybe he was just too old to communicate. He was silent for a moment.

“Is it okay if I start praying, Uncle Bernie?” asked Henrietta.

“Go ahead, kid,” said Piffy. “And don’t call me Uncle Bernie.”

So Henrietta prayed—he got down on his knees and prayed. He prayed to Jesus and to St. Anthony and to a lot of Saints Piffy had never heard of including a St. Justus. Piffy did not join in. He was not much for praying. Maybe if it had been to some really big saint like St. Peter. But St. Anthony? Piffy still had issues with his self-appointed guardian angel. So he sat on the floor with his back to the wall and tried to concentrate. He counted the number of bars in the cell as Henrietta droned on and on. Maybe he should have been planning an escape—sure, it was what he normally would have done but he wanted to see what Atta and Honjour were up to and they had said they would be right back. He would be able to plan better if he had some idea of what they were up to.

The time passed quickly—too quickly. In less than half an hour two of the Cro-Magnon Jihadists were back. They unlocked the cell door and gestured for Piffy. He got up, straightened his clothes and followed them. They went up the stairs, down a dim corridor to a sparsely furnished room. There were a couple of chairs, a dresser and an end table—nothing else. Piffy was told to sit in one of the chairs. Mohammed Atta and Hani Honjour were already in the room. They closed in on Piffy from either side.

“Where did you get the dog?” asked Atta.

“What dog?” said Piffy.

One of the Cro-Magnons hit Piffy across the face with the back of his hand hard enough to knock the private detective to the floor

“Get up,” ordered Atta.

Piffy got back on the chair. He was familiar with the routine.

“Where did you get the dog?” repeated Atta.

“You mean the puppy dog?” asked Piffy.

Wham! Allah’s Cro-Magnon hit him again and down he went again. This time when he got up a flap of skin inside his mouth was brushing against his teeth.

“Where did you get the dog?” repeated Atta.

Piffy sighed. This could go one forever. “I got him from St. Anthony,” he said.

“Impossible!” screeched Hanjour. “St. Anthony doesn’t have that kind of power! It was Abu Afaq, wasn’t it?”

“I got him from St. Anthony,” repeated Piffy.

Another back of the hand and down he went again—so much for telling the truth.

“St. Anthony is not the Patron Saint of Dogs,” mused Atta. He studied Piffy’s battered face. “You got the mutt from St. Roch, didn’t you?” he said. “Come on, you can tell us.”

“Yeah, sure, it was St. Roch,” said Piffy. Blood was pouring from his nose. Who in the hell was St. Roch? He had never heard of him. He would have to study up on this religious stuff.

“He’s lying!” screamed Hanjour. “It was Abu Afaq!”

They hit Piffy again and again and again…so many times he lost count as well as his ability to answer questions. After what seemed like a light year minus a super nova the two Cro-Magnons dragged him back to the cell in the basement.

Slowly Piffy’s head began to clear. Someone was dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. It was Henrietta. As soon as he became aware of the proximity of his head to ‘Hank’s bosom he drew away from him.

“It’s okay, Uncle Bernie,” said Henrietta. “I’m not gay.”

“You’re not?” said Piffy.

”Of course not,” said Henrietta. “I’m a cross-dresser…a transvestite…

“Oh, yeah,” said Piffy. He remembered now. He wished he had paid more attention to the things he had been told at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. But as usual, he hadn’t. He felt his jaw—it wasn’t broken. He looked at the empty box of Kleenex and the pile of bloody tissue on the floor. Henrietta had done a great job of cleaning him up. “Look, Hank,” he said, “I don’t know what kind of fascination you have for me but I’m an ordinary guy. I’m not a deep thinker. When it comes to psychology I’m behind the curve. I rely on Rooster Cogburn and Jed Clampett and so far they haven’t failed me. When it comes to the big minds…like Norman Mailer and Bill Maher… well, Mailer lost me after The Naked and the Dead and Bill Maher has always been fructose light so if you’ve got anything you want to get off your chest you might as well do it now.”

“I thought we might team up,” said Henrietta.

“Team up?” echoed Piffy. He hadn’t the slightest idea of what that meant.

Henrietta’s face lit up. “Yes!” he said eagerly. “Like Nick and Nora Charles. You could be Nick and I would be your beautiful wife, Nora. We would be the greatest husband and wife private detective team ever. I could go under cover. We wouldn’t really be married. I wouldn’t want to sleep with you—that would be yucky!”

“Yes, it would,” agreed Piffy.

“Do you remember the guy that dressed like a women in that Mike Hammer story and had Mike fooled right to the end? Well, I would be like him only I wouldn’t be fooling you and I’d be a good guy.”

It was too much for Piffy. He was hoping the Cro-Magnons would come back to check the ventilation or something.

“Or we could be Pam and Jerry North,” Henrietta said. He was getting excited.

Piffy gnawed at the loose piece of flesh hanging on the inside of his mouth.

“I wouldn’t be much trouble,” said Henrietta.

Piffy was getting desperate. “How about Dave Addison and Maggie Hayes?” he suggested.

Henrietta didn’t like that a one bit. “No,” he pouted. Maybe he was imitating Shirley Temple. “I don’t like Dave Addison. He’s a brute.”

Piffy sighed. “You’d have to get a license,” he warned. Maybe that would discourage him. “You’d have to be trained in the martial arts. You’d have to learn to shoot like Rooster Cogburn.”

Henrietta was not fazed in the least. “If I learn to do all that will you take me on?” he said eagerly.

“Well… maybe,” said Piffy. Now why in the hell did he say that? Was he losing his mind? Take him on? That was downright frightening!   “We have to get out of this mess first,” he said. “Then we’ll see.”

Henrietta was repairing his makeup when Atta’s Cro-Magnons returned. “We want the he-girl,” said the larger one.

The door opened. Henrietta was scared—who wouldn’t have been?

“Don’t give in to the bastards,” said Piffy.

“I won’t, Uncle Bernie,” Henrietta whispered hoarsely.

Piffy must have dozed off for a while. It shouldn’t have been surprising—he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since he had landed in England. Winkin and Blinkin and Nod had been dogging him for days. Now suddenly he was awake and he didn’t like the feeling. Something was wrong. He could sense it. Lugosi was stirring in his coffin and Charlie Brown's stomach was hurting!

Allah’s Cro-Magnon’s were bringing Henrietta back to the cell. He was crying. When they got close Piffy could see that his clothes were torn and he was carrying his underwear in his hands. They opened the door and shoved him into the cell. He would have fallen if Piffy hadn’t grabbed him. One of the Cro-Magnon’s made a coarse joke about dhimmi women and they went back in the direction they had come.

Piffy looked at Henrietta’s bloody underwear. “Oh, no,” he groaned. “Tell me they didn’t…”

“Uncle Bernie…Uncle Bernie…” cried Henrietta.

(To be continued)

Mrs. Cowsnofsky was furious. The worst that could possibly have happened had happened. Aisha had been snatched from under her nose! She started across the restroom toward Henrietta. ‘Hank’ was still sitting on the floor wiping at his bloody nose with the back of his hand. There was blood on his blouse and on the floor around him.

A noise came from one of the stalls, a muffled cry for help, perhaps. Mrs. C had always been a woman of action, that’s what Mr. C liked about her. She had played lacrosse in college and not on the girl’s team. She leapt toward the stall and tore open the door. It was Aisha and she wasn’t alone. A woman in a burqa was standing behind the ten-year-old, an arm wrapped around the child’s waist, a hand clamped over her mouth. Someone cursed. It must have been Mrs. C. Aisha bit at the hand covering her mouth. The woman in the burqa yelped and shoved Aisha at Mrs. C, drawing a gun from somewhere inside her burqa at the same time. But Mrs. C was too quick for the pistol-packing momma. She stepped around Aisha, grabbed the woman by the arm and tossed her across the restroom as if she had read and understood every word Mike Hammer had ever written on how to safely dispose of creeps, thugs and gunmen without working up a sweat. Neat! She picked up the creeps gun. It was a Beretta Tomcat 32ACP.

The woman in the burqa had lost her headscarf in her mad tumble across the tiles and with her baldhead and Levis jeans exposed to the world she proved she was anything but a woman. Mrs. C was not surprised. She waved the Beretta at Mr. Burqa in a manner that could only be considered threatening. Then, while winking at a frightened Aisha, she took Henrietta by the arm and helped the semi-stunned cross dresser to his feet. “Let’s get out of here!” she said. “I’ve got a cab waiting!”

The man in the burqa was furious! To be manhandled by a woman, to be tossed about like a grain of sand in a windstorm by someone who possessed nothing in herself, to be shamed by a dhimmi woman in a privy was something that could not have been foretold! No Mujahideen could have suffered a greater insult! He glared at Mrs. C—1,400 years of Islamic Jihad welling up from the depths of hell; she would pay for this!

Mrs. C herded Aisha and Henrietta from the restroom, handed the Beretta to a startled waitress. “You can shoot the first person through that door, honey, and God will forgive you,” she said.

The waitress dropped the Beretta. It hit the floor with a resounding clang.

The cab was waiting at the curb in front of the restaurant. Mrs. C shoved Henrietta and Aisha into the back seat and squeezed in beside them.

“Where to, ladies?” said the cabbie.

“To Stratfordshire…” began Mrs. Cowsnofsky.

Suddenly the hackles rose on Mrs. C’s neck. Something was wrong here! This wasn’t the cabbie she had asked to wait in front of the restaurant! It was the same cab all right but not the same cabbie! “Sweet Mother Jesus!” she muttered under her breath. What the hell was going on here?

There was a commotion on the sidewalk and the taxi was quickly surrounded by what Deputy Chief Constable Stumble would have said were Asians.

“What is this?” demanded Mrs. C.

The cabbie looked into the back seat. It was Mohammed Atta. “Get rid of the old one,” he said. “We’ll take the younger one with us.”

The back doors were yanked open, and one of Stumble’s Asians grabbed Mrs. C by the arm. Aisha screamed and Henrietta kicked at a man that tried to push his way into the cab. There were too many for Mrs. C to contend with and she was dragged squalling and kicking from the back seat and flung across the sidewalk. This had never happened to her before, not even in a game of lacrosse with the boys who, after all, were gentlemen. She lost most of the skin on her left elbow and the knees from her pantyhose. She rolled over, struggled to her feet, her fists clenched. She was ready for anything but it was too late! The taxi with Aisha and Henrietta crowded into the back seat with their abductors had already disappeared down the street! This was not going to sit well with Bernard Piffy!

“Joe’s going to kill me for this,” groaned Cowsnofsky. “Henrietta was his favorite nephew.”

Joe, of course, was owner of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club, the man more responsible, perhaps, than any other, for hiring Bernard Piffy to track down the notorious Dallas cabdriver, Yaser Abdel Said, who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage and then had ostensibly fled to England.

Piffy studied Mrs. Cowsnofsky. “Don’t blame yourself, Mrs. C,” he said. “You did as well as you could under the circumstances.”

“Yeah, honey bun,” said Cowsnofsky. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Mrs. C massaged her skinned knees. Tears streaked her face. She had been crying on and off for at least a half hour. No matter what they said it was her fault. She had failed miserably in the face of rampant Islamic absolutism. She would never forgive herself—not today, not tomorrow: not ever.

There wasn’t much Piffy could do about Aisha. The Islamo-fascist thugs that had grabbed her off the street had the law on their side—Sharia Law, Common Law, Tom Jefferson’s Law, Barney Rubble's Law; every law but that of Judge Roy Bean and Rooster Cogburn and they were dead and buried, gone with high-button shoes, Winston Churchill, Dr. No and Maggie Thatcher. It was the 21^st Century—a strange and perplexing time. Britain was going down the politically correct, cultural diversity drain. The handful of Brits still willing to die for the Queen and country had less chance of prevailing in their desperate rearguard action against the encroachments of Islamo-fascism than Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne had had of successfully retreating from Saratoga. But damn it, if he, Bernard Piffy, couldn’t do anything about Aisha he could do something about Henrietta and he wouldn’t go crawling to some obsequious government timeserver like Deputy Chief Constable Stumble—no, sir, not to Stumble; not to James Bond, not to Andy Capp, not to the Queen. He would rely on himself! By the time he was done, Mike Hammer would be proud of him; Rooster Cogburn would let him pet Sterling Price.

And he had an idea of where he could find Henrietta. They would take Aisha to her father and where they took Aisha they would have to take Henrietta. So he had time. He would go to the Madrassas. They would be there. It had suffered only minor damage in their botched explosion attempt and was still in operation. And he would go alone—this was his mess. Sure, sure, he could hear Little Joey whispering in his ear, “But, Shane, there’s too many!” Well… maybe…

Piffy looked at Cowsnofsky. “I want you to do me a favor,” he said. “I want you to call Deputy Chief Constable Stumble in exactly one hour. Tell him I’m ready to surrender. Tell him I’ve got the girl and I’m at Ahmad’s Madrassas.”

Cowsnofsky blinked. “You’re kidding?’ he said.

“Call him,” said Piffy.

Cowsnofsky was cautious about committing himself. “And where are you going to be?” he demanded.

“I’ll be there,” said Piffy. “I’ll be somewhere in the environs.”

“Are you sure you wont need any help?” asked Cowsnofsky. “I’m a pretty good man with my fists. Mrs. C can make the phone call.”

“No, you’re staying here,” Piffy said emphatically.

Cowsnofsky was a hard man to convince but with the help of Mrs. C he agreed to stay behind and hold down the fort.

Piffy took a cab to the Madrassas. As the vehicle pulled up to the curb across the street from the squat two-storied structure Piffy could see that Plan A was obsolete. Stumble was already there. And so were Anjem Choudary and Red Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London and currently adviser on urban planning to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. There were others—two score and ten. They were holding a farewell party for Mohammed Ahmad. He would be leaving shortly for Gaza. Aisha was there, red-eyed and silent. There was no Henrietta.

Piffy mingled with the guests. He bumped into Maliki al-Maliki.

“Glad you could come, Mr. Piffy,” said the unctuous al-Maliki,

“Wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” said Piffy.

He wandered about for a while; sampled the hors d’oeuvres; then asked a waiter for directions to the boy’s room. There was a cell in the basement beneath the Madrassas and if Henrietta were in the building that is where they would be keeping him.

He slipped away from the crowd into the classroom section of the building. The basement door was locked but it was no match for Piffy’s Tenth Anniversary Shell Scott Pick and Skeleton Key ring. He paused to look at his watch—in another fifteen minutes Cowsnofsky would be calling Stumble on his cell phone—a lot of good that would do. He eased through the door.

They must have been waiting for him. A man came hobbling toward him from out of the gloom. It was Hani Hanjour. Piffy knocked him down, found a gun in his pocket. That was as far as he got. The lights came on before he could straighten up and in the sudden harsh glare he saw Mohammed Atta holding a gun to the side of Henrietta’s head. Oh, yeah…they had been waiting for him…

(To be continued)

“Don’t you worry, Mr. Piffy,” said Cowsnofsky. “We’ll get you the best damn lawyer in England and you’ll be out of jail before those rat-bag government plumbers can aim your toilet at the good old red, white and blue.”

Piffy said something like "Tie me kangaroo down, sport,” and it was off he went.

Piffy knew the routine. At length he was ushered into the interrogation room. Deputy Chief Constable Stumble, no-smoke pipe clenched between his bulldog jaws, eyed the private eye silently for some time. He waited till Piffy began to fidget and then he spoke. “Well, well,” he said. “So you’re the Bernard Piffy that threw his shoe at Riyadh ul-Haq and broke into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office at Lambeth Palace and stole the Archbishop's private papers.”

“That’s what they say,” said Piffy.

“And I take it you’re the Bernard Piffy that assaulted Abu Hamza al-Masri in the prison library by throwing—what was it—a ham sandwich at him?” said Stumble.

“That’s what they say,” said Piffy.

“An unusual choice of weapons,” said Stumble.

“You want to know the truth, Inspector,” said Piffy, “it was a waste of a perfectly good ham sandwich. Abu Hamza isn’t worth a goat’s pizzle that’s been soaked in hog urine and roasted in hell.”

“It’s Constable, not Inspector,” corrected Stumble.

A uniformed Bobby poked his head into the interrogation room. “Mr. Piffy’s lawyer is here,” he said.

Stumble stood up. “Ah, yes,” he said. "Mr. Rumpole, no doubt.”

“No,” said the Bobby. “It’s a little guy in a wheelchair. He says his name is Softsides.”

“Softsides?” mused Stumble. “Softsides? Never heard of him.”

He would and very soon for a loud voice from the anti-room shattered the fragile silence of the interrogation chamber. “Where’s my client?” it roared. “I demand to see my client!” It might have been Softsides but it sounded like Algernon A. Algernon. “We still have rights in England. This isn’t Sharia country—not yet, if I have anything to say about it!”

“We had better let him in, Constable,” the Bobby said nervously. “He’s run his wheelchair into just about everything but Ms Trimble’s coffeemaker.”

Stumble sighed. “Well, we can’t have that,” he said. “We’ll have to let him in—but this is highly unusual.”

“He says he’s Abu Afaq’s London agent.”

Piffy would be out of the interrogation room and on his way to his apartment in less than an hour, a quarter pound of black Transylvania garlic for puppy dog in his pocket, compliments of Softsides. Algernon A. Algernon could be a Godsend—at times.

Meanwhile Aisha was enjoying lunch with Mrs. Cowsnofsky and Henrietta in a tiny restaurant nestled in the shadows of the Village at Westfield Shopping Center in Shepard’s Bush. Under the circumstances, it had been a pleasant if not terribly exciting morning. They hadn’t purchased anything—Mrs. Cowsnofsky was as tight-fisted as Calvin Coolidge and Henrietta didn’t have a schilling to his name and was too proud to beg. The ten-year-old didn’t quite know what to make of Henrietta—was she a he or a he pretending to be a she. Cross-dressing was haram in Islam. But whatever Henrietta was, he certainly knew more about cosmetics than Mrs. Cowsnofsky and he was more ladylike. It wasn’t that Aisha didn’t like Mrs. C. She liked her fine. Mrs. C reminded Aisha of an old lady she had seen in a black-and-white movie the one time she had been allowed to stay up after 10 o’clock. A strong woman with a heart of gold, the mother of a gangster—she kept a blackjack in her purse and knew how to use it.

Henrietta finished his desert, dabbed delicately at the corners of his mouth with a napkin; applied a bit of gloss to his lips. He winked at Aisha, crossed one leg delicately over the other and stowed his compact in his purse. Aisha was impressed.

Henrietta lowered his voice and nodded toward the kitchen area. “See that man over there?” he said. “He’s been watching us like a hawk for the last ten minutes.”

Mrs. Cowsnofsky was instantly on the alert. “What man?” she asked.

“The man by the kitchen door,” whispered Henrietta.

Mrs. C scowled. “ Maybe it you’d stop flashing your legs every ten seconds he would stop looking,” she said.

“Oh, Auntie C!” pouted Henrietta, “I’m not flashing. I know better than to do that!”

“What man?” asked Aisha.

“The Asian,” said Henrietta.

“That’s not an Asian,” said Mrs. Cowsnofsky. “It’s a Muslim.”

Aisha gasped. Mrs. C was right! It was a Muslim! It was Mohammed Atta! The color drained from her face and she slopped Coca-Cola across the tabletop.

“What’s the matter, dearie?” said an alarmed Mrs. C. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Do you know that man?”

“She’s trembling!” said Henrietta.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Aisha whispered desperately.

“He’s one of them, isn’t he?” said Mrs. C.

“I think he’s leaving,” said Henrietta.

“Play it cool now,” warned Mrs. C. “Don’t let him know we’re on to him.”

Mohammed Atta was, indeed, leaving. He passed within a few feet of their table without giving them a glance. He stopped at the front to pay his tab. He joked with the maitre d, glanced briefly over his shoulder at Aisha—or was it Henrietta—left a large tip and sauntered out the front door as nonchalantly as Richie Cunningham would leave Al’s Diner.

Aisha had covered her face with her hands.

“It’s Mohammed Atta, isn’t it?” said Mrs. C.

Aisha nodded. Her ‘yes’ was barely audible.

“Maybe I’d better follow him,” said Henrietta.

“Don’t be silly,” hissed Mrs. Cowsnofsky. “You’d be no match for him! That’s why Joe hired Piffy.” She looked round the restaurant. If Mr. C were here she would feel a lot better. “You two stay right here,” she ordered. “I’ll get us a taxi.” She looked at Henrietta. “And don’t let her out of your sight,” she warned.

Before Henrietta could protest Mrs. C had snatched up her purse and was out the front door. Well, that’s what he got for being a daddy’s girl! But there were things he was good at. He put his arm around Aisha. “Don’t you worry, honey,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Aisha buried her face in Henrietta’s shoulder. She was crying, softly, silently.

Henrietta gave her a hug. “Uncle Bernie will get after that guy,” he said. “Now let’s see a big smile.”

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” she whispered.

“Okay, can’t be no harm in that,” he said.

He walked her to the little girls room. She paused at the door. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked,

“No,” he said. “I’ll wait out here—so Mrs. C won’t think we’ve disappeared.” It wasn’t like he had never used the ladies room—he had, plenty of times, enough to be comfortable in one but never with someone he knew.

Aisha disappeared through the door. Henrietta waited a few seconds, then he began to have second thoughts—maybe he should have stayed with her. He remembered what Mrs. C had said, “Don’t leave her out of your sight.” There were separate stalls in there—no one need be embarrassed. Who knew what might be lurking inside—a Hanadi Jaradat wannabe perhaps. It was possible. Maybe he had better check. He opened the door. “Aisha?” he whispered.

“Henrietta?” she said.

It took Mrs. Cowsnofsky a lot longer to flag down a cab than she had expected. When at last a hack drew up at the curb, she handed the driver a few quid, told him to wait and then hurried back into the restaurant. Once inside, she stopped dead in her tracks. Henrietta and Aisha weren’t anywhere in sight. The table where they had been sitting was empty. “Where did they go?” she snapped at a waitress.

“To the little girls room,” said the waitress, surprised at Mrs. C’s vehemence.

Mrs. Cowsnofsky hurried to the restroom, her heart thumping furiously. Couldn’t Henrietta ever do what he was told? If anything happened to Aisha…

Scarcely knowing what to expect Mrs. C threw open the door to the ladies room. Henrietta was sitting on the floor, his clothing in disarray, blood flowing freely from his nose—and Aisha was missing!

(To be continued)

Piffy was caught between a rock and a hard place; between the devil and the deep blue sea; between a last tango in Paris and a dance with the devil in Hell. With the muzzle of Hani Hanjour’s Glock 17 pressed to the side of his head there wasn’t any time for prayers—no Last Confession; no Hail Mary; not even a Jesus Saves! He was less than a second from eternity and a dumb headline in the newspapers—if they ever found his body. He managed one word—just one word; maybe it was wait; yeah, wait, as it “Wait! Can’t we talk this over?” But there was no talk—they had run out of time.

And then there came a terrible unearthly shriek, a cross between the cry of a gorgon being devoured by a plague of locusts and a hundred cats with their tails caught in whirling airplane propellers. It swept across the room and beat against the walls.

It was puppy dog! The mutt came out from under the bed or maybe from out of Piffy’s pocket—no one would ever know. It tore into Honjour’s foot like a chain saw ripping into an old board fallen loose from a Dogpatch outhouse. Hanjour screamed. He pulled the trigger of his Glock 17. The bullet slammed into the ceiling. His face dissolving into shock, horror and consternation, he looked at the thing that was devouring his foot! Mohammed Atta had drawn his gun at the first sign of trouble. He was dancing around trying to get a shot at whatever it was that was eating its way through Hanjour’s Buster Brown footwear

Piffy was not one to let an opportunity pass. He looked about for a weapon. He found a perfume bottle. It wasn’t much but it would have to do. He was Mayberry’s all-time dump-the-clown-in-the-water-tank champ and he couldn’t miss at this range. Hanjour was screaming and pointing his Glock 17 at puppy dog but he couldn’t get a clear shot. Atta was hesitant, afraid of shooting Hanjour instead of the jinn. Then he saw Piffy and he swung his weapon toward America’s last great living private detective. But Piffy had already cut loose with his famous Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych curveball. It hit Atta right between the eyes. The assassin lost his balance and stumbled over a footstool; he went down, his gun flying from his hand. Piffy did not try for the weapon—he wouldn’t have made it anyway. He had another idea. He leapt across the room, snatched up the dog carrier and turned out the lights.

“Puppy dog! Puppy dog!” he shouted. And then he ran—he ran for his life to the room with the open window.

Ahmad was still on the floor where Piffy had left him, hogtied but awake and trying to get loose. Piffy turned off the lights. He worked better in the dark. He could hear Hanjour screaming and Atta cursing back in Aisha’s room. There would be no pursuit—not for a while, at least. He squeezed through the window and down the ladder—pet cage and all—as quickly as any jack tar who had ever negotiated a ratline on the HMS Bounty.

Aisha was waiting for him at the bottom of the ladder. She was trembling. “What happened,” she asked breathlessly. “Are you…are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. “But I guess we lost puppy dog…what a brave mutt!” He took her by the hand. “We’ll have to get a taxi,” he said.

“I’m afraid,” she said, then, “Where are we going?”

“To my apartment,” he said.

“Is Bernie there?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. Her Bernie was long gone—gone forever. How could he tell her that? Perhaps Asma bint Marwan could turn him into a ten-year-old again…but no, that would be ridiculous! He wouldn’t want to go through that again. “We’ll go to my apartment,” he said. “And then we’ll get you to Social Services. I’ll talk to Stumble…”

Stumble? That would be absurd! Stumble wouldn’t know the real Bernard Piffy from Adam. Oh, what a fine mess he had made of things, but he had had to do it to save Aisha and now he was sure to get in big trouble.

They walked in silence for a while. Then a cab came along and Piffy waved it down. They got into the back. Piffy set the now useless dog cage on the seat between them. He was getting ready to close the door when Aisha grabbed his arm. “Wait! Wait!” she yelped.

Good grief! What now he thought! Had she forgotten her fingernail polish?

“It’s your doggie!” she said.

Sure enough—it was puppy dog! The mutt was racing down the sidewalk toward the taxi. Piffy held the door open long enough for the animal to leap into the back and it was soon curled up in its cage sound asleep.

Piffy got Aisha settled in his apartment, told her not to let anyone in under any circumstances, said he had to see Deputy Chief Constable—a white lie—and then took puppy dog for a walk in the park. It was not just anyone who would take a dog in a carrying cage for a walk in the park in the middle of the night but he wasn’t going to stay in an apartment with an unrelated ten-year-old girl no matter what. It might be okay in Bill Maher’s America but it wasn’t in his and Piffy would make sure he had plenty of witnesses to his presence in the park. He was taking no chances.

It was a long night. He dozed on and off, had a long conversation with a wino; smiled at a sodden lady of the evening. Dawn came and at last he fell asleep on a park bench. When he awoke the sun was already high in the sky. On the way back to his apartment he picked up the morning edition of the Daily Mail. One item caught his attention.

Man Loses Foot in Madrassas Explosion

Hani Hanjour, 29, an Asian immigrant lost his left foot in an unexplained explosion

at the Ahmad Madrassas late last night. Emergency room surgeons said Hanjour’s

injury was similar to those caused by shoe mines in World War Two. Mohammed

Ahmad blamed the explosion on Islamophobia.

Well, that would put a crimp in Hanjour’s style. It served the devil right. The wages of sin!

There was a bigger surprise waiting for Piffy when he got back to his apartment. Aisha was not alone. Cowsnofsky met him at the door. “What are you doing here?” said Piffy.

“I’ve come to help you,” said Cowsnofsky.

Piffy was not so sure about that. He glanced at Aisha who was standing beside Cowsnofsky. “I told you not to let anybody in,” he scolded.

“They said they were your friends,” said Aisha.

“They?” said Piffy.

“Hi, Bernie,” gushed Henrietta.

Piffy had been about to say something when he caught sight of the cross-dresser. His mouth opened—he got that part right—but his brain went into neutral and his eyes went into overdrive. Wow! He had never seen so ravishing a creature! She was beautiful! She took his breath away! She was as blonde and as curvaceous as Daisy Mae Yokum…as fresh and as well-scrubbed as a starlet trying out for the part of Nancy Drew in a TV series…as long-limbed and as sensual as Leslie Caron gliding across a dance floor with Fred Astaire…as…as…”Who are you?” he gulped. “I don’t remember seeing you at Joe’s Bar and Grille…”

“It’s Hank,” said Cowsnofsky. “Joe’s nephew. He likes to dress like this.”

“Oh, yeah,” remembered Piffy. It was Joe’s cross-dressing nephew! The wind came out of Piffy’s balloon so quickly it left him not only disappointed, but also angry. What was Joe’s nephew doing here? This was hard-boiled serious private eye business! It was as dangerous as all get-out! A person could get killed doing what Piffy did! He glared at Cowsnofsky. “Who else did you bring?” he said.

Just then the toilet flushed.

“Just the misses and Henrietta,” said Cowsnofsky. “That’s all.”

Piffy grimaced. It was enough.

Mrs. Cowsnofsky squeezed into the crowded living room .She was short, blonde and vigorous. She had muscles where Henrietta had curves. She was a flinty, non-nonsense dame. She could have been related to Rooster Cogburn. She looked Piffy up and down. “So, you’re the famous private eye I’ve been hearing so much about,” she said.

Piffy was impressed. She could have played middle guard for any of the Green Bay Packer football teams of the 1960s and have held her own.

The introductions had scarcely been completed before a fierce thumping commenced upon the door to Piffy’s lodgings. It was the building super. Standing beside him were two men loaded down with pipes and wrenches.

“What is it?” asked Piffy.

“These gentlemen are here to make your toilet more user friendly,” said the super.

“User friendly?” said Piffy. “Are they are going to make it flush every time or are they going to fix the seat so it doesn’t pinch?”

“Naw, you’ll have to do that yourself,” said the super. “They’re here to turn the toilet 90 degrees so that it won’t be facing in the direction of Mecca.”

“You’ve go to be kidding!” snorted Henrietta.

“This is England,” said Cowsnofsky. “They do strange things here.”

The plumbers exchanged knowing glances and, gathering up their pipes and wrenches, they hustled through the crowded living room into the bathroom.

By then the super had spied puppy dog’s cage. “So you still got the mutt, ‘ey?” he said. “Didn’t I tell you to get rid of it?”

“The dog’s dead,” lied Piffy. “I’ll bury it this afternoon.” He would have preferred burying the super’s head in the cage but that would have been more trouble than it would have been worth.

The apartment was too crowded for comfort and soon after the super left Mrs. Cowsnofsky decided to take Henrietta and Aisha shopping. The plumbers broke for lunch at eleven o’clock, after only an hour on the job, and Piffy was left alone with Cowsnofsky—but not for long. There was a tap on the door. It was Deputy Chief Constable Stumble. He had two men with him, one was Mohammed Ahmad—the other was introduced as Sharia Judge Maliki al-Maliki

“Sorry, boys,” said Piffy. “The toilet isn’t ready yet.”

Stumble looked Piffy over carefully. There was something familiar about him but he shrugged it off. “We’re not here to use the toilet,” he said. 

“We’re here for the girl,” said al-Maliki.

“For my daughter,” said Ahmad.

“And to arrest a fellow named Bernard Piffy,” said Stumble.

(To be continued)

The nikab proved to be an excellent disguise. No one paid much attention to him. He passed within an arm’s length of three different Bobbies and one even smiled at him. He got back to his apartment without any difficulty

It was when Piffy removed the nikab that he discovered that Asma bint Marwan, as usual, had had the last laugh. Secreted in one of the pockets of the bulky garment was puppy dog! Yes, puppy dog!  The infernal pooch had been dozing. It came awake at the first touch—or maybe it was the sudden exposure to fresh air. It bared its piranha’s teeth and hissed like a cat. Piffy set St. Anthony’s gift guardian angel dog on a chair and searched the nikab for the Black Transylvania garlic. It was the only thing that could keep the mutt under control. But he couldn’t find it! He turned the garment inside out, felt along every seam; even slammed it against the wall but no Black Transylvanian garlic! Bint Marwan had left him with a problem—a big problem.

He sat down to take stock of his situation. Just what in the hell had he accomplished since he had landed in England? On a scale of one-to-ten it was less than zero. The boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club had hired him to track down the notorious Dallas taxi drive, Yaser Abdel Said, who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage. He had promised to bring the wretch to justice. So far he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Said, had made no major arrests, in fact, it had been Piffy who had been arrested by the duly constituted authorities and not just once but three times, once as himself, once as a ten-year-old boy and lastly as a doddering old man. If that wasn’t bad enough he had been sidetracked from his search for Said by the machinations of bint Marwan and Inspector Clouseau—he had been caught up in the search for the fleas from the Prophet’s, ah, beard. No one knew where they were, not even their Keepers—someone had stolen them and the world was in eminent danger; at least that was what James Bond had told him.

And there was Aisha—poor, sweet, ten-year-old Aisha! He was responsible for her predicament. He had to get to Ahmad’s Madrassas and rescue her before she was dragged off to Gaza and enrolled in a suicide bomber’s class.

But first he had to do something about puppy dog. He put on his Magnum P.I. outfit and went down to the nearest drugstore. He was told he could get Transylvania garlic at a regular grocery store. Piffy said it was a special kind of garlic. Black or white, asked the druggist. Black, said Piffy. Ah, said the druggist, the black was very rare and Piffy would have to go to the Transylvanian Alps and see Ygor at Castle Stoker. Piffy tried a couple of other drugstores. They had never heard of Black Transylvania garlic.

He went back to his apartment and called Algernon A. Algernon. If anyone knew where to get Black Transylvania garlic it would be Algernon. Sure, said Algernon, he could get some but when Piffy told him what it was for, Algernon changed his mind. He wouldn’t have anything to do with one of St. Anthony’s ‘guardian angel dogs,’ wouldn’t get within a mile of one. Get a cage, he told Piffy—get a cage with steel-reinforced titanium bars and if you’re ever in the same room with one of the mutts don’t go to sleep for more than five minutes at a time. It was sound advice but disheartening.

It was getting dark and there was a chill in the air so Piffy changed into his retro-Sam Spade togs and went out to look for a pet store. He was in luck—there was one just down the street. He purchased the strongest carrying cage they had available and lugged it back to his apartment. While he had been gone puppy dog had chewed his spare Buster Browns into spaghetti strings and had devoured half of his genuine leather Hudson suitcase. The mutt had eaten itself into a world-class stupor. Piffy put puppy dog in the carrying case and locked it.

He had collected the tools he would need to break into Ahmad’s Madrassas when a fierce thumping commenced upon his apartment door.

It was the building’s super. “I hear you got a mutt in there,” he said.

“A little one,” said Piffy. “He’s in a cage. He’s already eaten. He won’t be any trouble.”

“Trouble or no,” said the super, “you get him out of here right away.”

“Right away?” echoed Piffy. “Can’t I wait till morning?”

“Look,” said the super,  “there’s Muslims, ah, Asians, living in this building—they don’t like dogs and what they don’t like I don’t like. You get rid of the dog or I call the cops.”

“Okay! Okay!” said Piffy.

The super left.

Piffy put on his coat and picked up the pet carrier. It was a light load. Puppy dog couldn’t have weighted more than one of Gaylord Perry’s doctored baseballs. He went out into the street. It was dark. He took a taxi to the Madrassas. He was lucky the driver wasn’t a Muslim or there might have been a scene.

The Madrassas classrooms were ablaze with lights but the living quarters were dark. That might or might not be a good sign. He paced back and forth beneath a second-story window. When he was properly oriented he found a ladder and placed it in an advantageous position alongside the building. It would be clumsy going up the ladder with a dog in a cage but he couldn’t leave the mutt behind—it could fall into innocent hands and there was no telling what horrors might ensue. So he went up the ladder like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters—or was it Nancy Drew.  It certainly wasn’t like Mike Hammer or Shell Scott.

He had brought along some masking tape and a rock to break the glass in the window frame but it turned out he didn’t need them. The window was unlocked; he pushed it open, squeezed through the aperture and dragged puppy dog’s cage over the sill. When he straightened up the cage thumped against the side of the window frame and slipped from his hand. It hit the floor with the same sound Wilson's gun made when it blasted Stonewall Torrey into the mud wallow in front of Grafton’s Saloon. Good grief! He might as well have ordered an artillery barrage! Eleanor Roosevelt must have heard it! He froze where he was. He held his breath, ears straining to catch any unusual sound. But there was nothing—no Apache scream, no thundering cavalry charge, only silence. It was as dark as pitch and as quiet as a graveyard in Gun Blast, Texas, on the day Robert E. Lee surrendered.

He picked up puppy dog’s cage and moved warily through what seemed to be a bedroom. At length, he found the door and slipped into the corridor he was sure led to Aisha’s room. He had taken no more than a half dozen steps when puppy dog hissed! Good grief! Did the mutt always have to act like a cat? “Shush!” he said.

Suddenly a voice fraught with alarm and fear lunged at him from out of the paralyzing dark. “Who’s there?” it said. It was Aisha!

Piffy paused. She might not be alone. What should he do? He didn’t want to give himself away all at once. "Tra-la-la, twiddle-dee, dee-dee,” he sang softly.

“Bernie?” she said.

He moved quickly down the corridor and to the room on the right. He opened the door and flipped on the light switch. Aisha was seated on the edge of her bed. Her hands were manacled in front of her and tears streaked her face. Her hair was a tangled mess and there was an ugly bruise on her cheek. “You’re not Bernie,” she said.

He set puppy dog’s cage on the floor. “I’m Bernie’s older brother,” he said. “I’ve come to get you.” Yeah, he had come to get her and what he was about to do could get him in big trouble for there were people who might call it kidnapping—people with badges and government authority to back up their beliefs, but it was too late to turn back now.

He examined the manacles. They were meant more for punishment than confinement. They might have confused Deputy Dawg for a day or two but they were no match for Bernard Piffy and his Tenth Anniversary Shell Scott Lock Pick and Skeleton Key Set and in a matter of seconds, Aisha, her eyes wide with astonishment, was massaging her sore wrists. “You must be Bernie’s brother!” she said.

“Come on; let’s go!” he urged. “I’ve got a ladder up against the side of the house.”

“I can’t go like this,” she protested. She was right; she was in her pajamas. “Let me get some things.”

“Okay,” he said. “But hurry.’

He didn’t know what she intended so he slipped out into the corridor to give her some privacy. The light from the bedroom was casting ugly shadows down the length of the hall. He glanced at his watch. They didn’t have much time. They could be discovered any minute. The dogs of war, girded with their Qur’ans, might already be on their way. “You’ll have to hurry!” he urged.

“I’m changing,” she said.

He waited another few seconds; then went back into the room. Aisha was kneeling in front of puppy dog’s cage. The door was open and the mutt was gone! “Oh, no!” he said.

“Your doggie was crying,” said Aisha. “When I opened the door he ran out.”

Well, that did it—puppy dog was free to do what he pleased! Let his new owner beware! He grabbed Aisha by the hand and tugged her out into the corridor.

“My clothes!” she protested.

“I’ll buy you some new ones!” he said. 

He led her into the room with the open window and started her down the ladder. That was when the lights came on and Ahmad thundered into the room like a thirsty bison sensing water on a dry Kansas prairie. His rage knew no bounds and he made straight for Piffy. He was too angry for his own good. Piffy had been a Close Combat Instructor during the Viet Nam War and he knew all the tricks. He could have killed Ahmad if he had wanted. He got the larger man by the elbow and the wrist, applied only a fraction of the techniques he had learned in Nam and Ahmad went down quicker than Max Schmeling in his second fight with Louis. In another ten seconds Piffy had the Madrassas owner hog-tied with curtains ripped from alongside the open window.

Then he went back into Aisha’s room to retrieve the dog cage. He still had time and he would try to find puppy dog. The first place he looked was under the bed. There was a strange smell in the room, seeping in through the garlic he had smeared on his feet and behind his ears. By the time he realized what it was it was too late. It was cordite! And phosgene! The 9/11 twins! He was still in a kneeling position when a Glock 17 was pressed to the side of his head!

It was Hani Hanjour! The assassin was smiling from ear to ear. “You didn’t leave England like you promised,” he chortled. “Now you will be punished. Allahu akbar!”

Mohammed Atta was standing behind Hanjour. “We might as well kill him right here,” he said. “This place is going to blow up in a half hour. It will save us the trouble of disposing of his body.”

“Allahu akbar!” said Hanjour, his finger pressing against the trigger.

“Allahu akbar!” said Atta.

(To be continued)

Piffy offered no resistance and the patrol officers hustled him back to his cell—it was time for another conference with Deputy Chief Constable Stumble and it wasn’t long in coming.

He sat there on the edge of his cot, a tired old man, as Stumble paced back and forth in front of him. Neither said a word. At last Stumble sighed, shifted his no-tobacco pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other, checked the cell door for the third time—Harry Houdini couldn’t have got out of this room without help, not Harry Houdini. He studied the old man. “Just how did you get out of here?” he asked.

“The door was unlocked,” said Piffy.

Stumble resumed his pacing—but only for a moment. He stopped, appeared puzzled, sniffed. “Is it my imagination or do I smell a dog in here?”

“A dog?” aid Piffy. “What would a dog be doing in here?” Yes, what would a dog have been doing in there? It would have been against regulations.

Stumble sighed again. “There’s something strange about you, Piffy,” he said. “I’m going to have the prison psychiatrist come around tomorrow for a talk…you’ll be at home, won’t you?”

“If I’m not dead,” said Piffy.

“That’s what I like about you—“ said Stumble, ‘your positive attitude.” He tried the door again—no, not Harry Houdini. He called to a guard to let him out.

Stumble had scarcely disappeared down the corridor when the chocolate terrier came bounding out from under the cot and onto Piffy’s lap. It was a frisky little mutt—as playful as all get-out and not much more than a handful—but the extra set of teeth worried Piffy. He tossed a chicken bone into a corner for puppy dog to fetch and the bone came back shredded as if somebody had run it through a meat grinder. Nothing seemed to last in its mouth and it never slavered. Strange!

When the screws came around with supper, puppy dog hid under the cot. When they left Piffy shared his meal with his new cellmate. Then he stretched out on the cot to catch a few winks. But as exhausted as he was he could not sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about Aisha. Whatever had happened to her had been his fault. He had heard her cry out in pain and then the sound of something falling and then Said’s or Ahmad’s ugly voice. She was only ten-years-old and he was eighty but in those few hours he had known her as ten-year-old Bernard Piffy the sparks had flown and one of them had lit a fire in his heart. He had to do something for her—but what? He could have told Stumble but what good would he have accomplished by that? British officials dare not meddle in Muslim affairs. Sharia Law was already replacing English Common Law and Bonnie Prince Charlie was running around telling everyone who would listen how lucky England was to have so many Pakistani immigrants. Maybe he could arrange to throw a shoe at the Prince—he had managed to do just about everything else.

About the time he thought he would never fall asleep he dozed off and that was when he found out why St. Anthony had told him to smear his toes with Transylvania garlic before he hit the sack. Something about soothing the savage beast, wasn’t it?

He awoke with a start. Puppy dog had already chewed through the toe of his left shoe and had hit flesh! Good Grief! It was a piranha attacking a goldfish! He yelped, sat up and grabbed for the garlic! The mutt would chew his foot off at the ankle if he didn’t do something in a hurry! He pushed the mutt away, opened the vial and smeared as much garlic across the mutt’s mouth as he could. The effect was immediate and, as far as Piffy was concerned, most gratifying. The mutt must have liked it too for it was almost instantaneously becalmed. It began to purr, or something akin to purring, and if it wasn’t smiling it was closer to it than Spud McKenzie ever got.

Piffy sighed. He took off his shoes and smeared his feet with Transylvania garlic. Then he added a touch behind each ear—he was taking no chances. By the time he was finished with his ablutions puppy dog was curled on the floor around his feet like a kitten sleeping off a three-day tuna fest. He spent the rest of the night with one eye open.

Morning came and he shared his breakfast with his new ‘pet.’ He had St. Anthony to thank for this. Next time he would pray to St. Francis of Assisi or to St. Benny of Anaheim. He spent most of the morning worrying about Aisha and cursing Asma bint Marwan—St. Anthony was, after all, still a very minor irritant. And his thoughts were not happy ones. He was doomed to die in this rat hole because of what bint Marwan had done to him and St. Anthony’s puppy dog would devour his mortal remains. No one would ever know what had happened to him. He would have cried if he could. He was a total one hundred percent wreck. His head ached, there was a pain in his side; a boilermaker had left a red-hot rivet in his left hip and the only reason he wasn’t worried about the little finger on his right hand was that it hadn’t turned black—yet.

Sometime around ten o’clock a screw stopped in front of his cage. “Bernard Piffy?” he said. “Conjugal visit. A Pernicia Piffy awaits you.” 

“How can you be so cruel?” said Piffy. “Conjugal visits aren’t allowed in England.”

“You have a special permit because of your…ah…because of your …ah, health,” said the screw.

“What about my health?” demanded Piffy.

“Ah…they don’t expect you to…ah, live much beyond the end of the week,” said the screw.

“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Piffy. “I’m going to die!” He started to cry.

The screw grimaced. He turned away. “Sorry,” he said. “Follow me.”

The door opened. Piffy scooped up the chocolate terrier and stuffed it in his pocket. It might come in handy in the jailbreak he was planning. It didn’t take up much room as long as he wouldn’t have to sit down. The garlic went into a back pocket.

The screw led Piffy to room 69 in the prison annex. It was Asma bint Marwan. He had known that right from the start. Leave it to bint Marwan to choose a name like Pernicia Piffy. He was hoping it would be the luscious mini-skirted version in the peasant blouse and the glowing bra, not the old hag in the bulky nikab with the shopping bag, the wart on her nose and the steely eyes. Unfortunately, it was the latter, minus the shopping bag.

As soon as the officer left the room, bint Marwan removed her headscarf. She was very angry. “I’ve got half a notion to leave you just like you are for the rest of your life,” she said.

“Where’s your shopping bag?” he asked.

The shopping bag was essential to his escape plans. Without it he wouldn’t be going anywhere. It was the old hag’s time machine, the way she got about from one end of the universe to the other, her hole in the wall to the netherworld. It could take them to where the woodbine twineth or to the innermost recesses of hell. All the spooks, jinns and goblins had their time warps to and from the twilight zone. With the mini-skirted bin Marwan it was the glowing all-purpose bra; with the precocious preteen version it had been a halo; Ka'b used a perpetually shifting doorway.

But the old hag was not cooperating. “We haven’t got much time,” she said. “We’ve got to change you back into what you were…you know the routine. This time you will have to count backward—from ten to one instead of from one to ten. Think you can manage that? And you must start counting immediately or you could end up in your mother’s womb…Do I make myself clear?”

It was all too clear as far as Piffy was concerned. “Is there any other way we can do this?” he asked. He didn’t want to put his hand on the old hag’s boob.

For once the hag smiled. She saw right through Piffy. “Make believe you’re putting your hand in the ‘other’ bint Marwan’s ‘magic carpet,” she said. “It has worked before.”

Piffy reached inside the old hag’s nikab for the younger bint Marwan’s ‘magic carpet.’ He closed his eyes and began to count. “Ten…nine…eight…”

There came an incredible surge of energy. It shot through Piffy like a bolt of lightning! It raised him up on his toes! His eyes rolled up in his head and every hair on his body stood straight up. He couldn’t be sure but he thought his toenails were smoking and the little finger on his right hand imploded. It was not a pleasant experience but when it was over he was once again the Bernard Piffy he wanted to be—the middle-aged private eye on the trail of the notorious Dallas taxi driver, Yaser Abdel Said, who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage and had fled the country supposedly to the British Isles.

Piffy wiped the sweat from his brow. Thank God it was over. He ran a hand across his face—the wrinkles were gone! It was a miracle! He felt his right arm. The flab had disappeared; the muscle was back. He could bend his knees without pain! An

Alfred-E-Neuman-smile spread across his face. “You know,” he said, “for a minute I thought you might turn me into a woman to get some kind of revenge.”

“A woman?” she said. “It can’t be done. I tried.”

The words should have scared him but they didn’t. “Now all I have to do is get out of here and rescue Aisha,” he said.

“Aisha?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Piffy. “She’s a beautiful little girl. She’s only ten years old. Her father, Ahmad, who I think is Yaser Abdel Said, is taking her to Gaza to enroll her in a Madrassas. She says he wants to turn her into a suicide bomber because she dishonored the family.”

“Ten-years-old?” said the hag. “You’re not pulling a Mohammed, are you?”

“Of course not,” he said. “There was nothing between us but a little tra-la-la twiddle-dee dee-dee. And I was only ten years old at the time—you saw to that.”

“Tra-la-la twiddle-dee dee-dee?”  She wasn’t sure what that was. “If you turn into Mohammed, I’ll turn you into a warthog,” she warned.

“It was the ten-year-old me that fell in love with her,” he said.

“Sometimes I think you are more trouble than you are worth,” she said. She started to remove her nikab.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“We’ve got to get you out of here,” she said.

“That’s where your shopping bag would have come in handy,” he said.

“No,” she said. “We’ll exchange clothes. They will never recognize you in a nikab.”

It was a good idea, better than risking an exploding time warp inside an enclosed space.

The swap was accomplished in a matter of minutes and just in time too for a screw was soon pounding on the door. “Times up!” he called.

They came out of the room holding hands. The old hag in the prison jump suit looked enough like the eighty-year-old version of Bernard Piffy to have fooled just about anyone. When they reached the corridor in the annex where the visitor took leave of the prisoner they stopped. The screw was watching them closely.

“Let’s make this look good,” said the old hag.

“What?” said Piffy.

She whispered in his ear. “Kiss me, you damn fool!” she hissed.

Piffy grimaced but did as he was told. He kissed her full on the lips. The response was more than he expected—far more. Something scorched his heart and started a fire down below. It was all he could do to pull away from her.

And then he was out the door and a free man! And the old hag was stuck with the puppy dog and the garlic and he was on his way to rescue Aisha. At least that was what he thought. Things had never looked rosier!

(To be continued)

“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, the insouciant laid-back private eye who had said he had worked with Mike Hammer on My Gun Is Quick 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 to some other country. Piffy had trailed Said to England and his expense account had been a heavy drain on Joe’s cash register ever since. 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 his 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 Bernard Piffy who was arrested for breaking into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Palace and stealing the Archbishop’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. How about if I give you another beer 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 a fourth Piffy will pop up next week.”

Cowsnofsky was thinking. “Suppose each one of these Piffies is part of our Piffy?” he said. “Suppose by some strange concatenation of events, by some juxtaposition of the stars…by some metaphysical force that could be in play here…that…”

Joe broke in. “Do you still watch Family Guy, Sky?” he asked.

“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 grille 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—not even 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, of course, 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 part of it. Ah… what the heck, he might as well open the letter—if he didn’t he would die of suspense.

It was from Aisha, from little ten-year-old Aisha, his friend from the Madrassas. It seemed so long ago now but it was only last week, a few days ago. How time flies when people are beating the crap out of you. He remembered how much fun and excitement they had had, mixed with enough mind-numbing terror to age a ten-year-old boy seventy years. How had she descovered out where he was?

He had to squint to make out her 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 angel puppy dog. It’s a chocolate terrier. It’s the smallest guardian angel dog they make. Smaller than small—smaller than a large cat. It has an extra set of teeth so sharp they could, it they had to, 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—they were not what one would call sharks teeth, they were more like those found in the mouth of a piranha but they were 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 Black Transylvania garlic. It’s 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 angel dog. And be sure to feed him a bowl of Black Transylvania garlic once a week or he will eat every piece of leather you have in your house.” 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 he couldn’t think of single one strong enough to appropriately express his indignation.

“Is there anything else?” asked St. Anthony.

Piffy sighed. He sank down on the edge of his cot. “I would like to talk to Aisah, if it could be arranged,” he mumbled.

“Is that all?” said St. Anthony. “You should have asked sooner. It would have saved me a 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?’ he croaked. “It’s me! It’s Bernie! Tra-la-la twiddle-dee-dee!”

“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, “I’m just worried.”

“I’m so glad to hear from you,” she said. Then she began to sing. “Tra-la-la twiddle-dee dee-dee.” 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 swine!” 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)

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 was up early in the morning, 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 had been struggling with his shoelaces for five minutes and he was in a foul mood. Nothing had gone right since he had landed in England—he was on a toboggan going downhill and the end was nowhere in sight. He had arrived at Heathrow a middle-aged private detective, had met Asma bint Marwan and through some amazing sleight of hand had been turned first into a child and then into the doddering old fool he now was, an octogenarian with one foot in the grave.

Only a few days ago he had been a 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 before that he had been Bernard Piffy, the real Bernard Piffy—the middle-aged, true-blue, red-blooded All-American private detective hot 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. Piffy wanted the old body back—the middle-aged one with the dents and the bruises. It was his—the only one he was comfortable with and he would get it back one way or another. It was Asma bint Marwan who had taken it from him and Algernon A. Algernon who had rubbed salt into his wounds. He would get them for this!

“There’s a chap 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 warned.

“I don’t have any choice,” said Piffy. “My ‘agent’ signed an ironclad contract. If I don’t show up, Darma will sue me.”

“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 left a fingerprint—imagine that! Not one! As many crimes as he had committed one would think he would eventually slip up and leave a clue. But nothing! We have his name and that’s it! He is everywhere—he is nowhere. Whenever someone does something really stupid and can’t explain it they say Algernon put them up to it. He’s ubiquitous. He is another Kilroy. You’re not going to blame your little contretemps this morning on Algernon, are you, Mr. Piffy?” He shifted his pipe to the other side of his mouth. “When I screw up,” he said, “ 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 might 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. He would but not quite in the manner he expected. It wasn’t long before Stumble nudged him in the ribs.

Darma was nodding at him from a circle of light. It was his cue; he started across the stage. She turned 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 cajoled. “He’s the old geezer that survived that vicious street-thug attack last week that took the life of dear Mr. Otis. He’s the guy that misidentified 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. 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. Sure, eighty-year-old men think things like that and the vibes were 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—and 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 Muhammed al-Hussein!

He heard a crunching noise. Someone was grinding his teeth—or eating Cracker Jack. If that didn’t beat all! It was annoying as hell—and disrespectful too!  It must be the low-life Muslim thug! He would tell the rat-bag to stop! But when he took a deep breath, the crunching ceased. Good grief! He had been the one grinding his teeth—his old geezer teeth! Oh, how he hated being eighty years old! And now his jaws ached and he needed to go to the bathroom!  Somebody would pay for this. 

Darma was addressing the audience “…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. “You hit him, didn’t you, you little rat-bag?’ he said, spitting the words through his teeth like bits of broken glass. “You killed poor Otis! You killed him!”

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, you’ve got the wrong one! The other blighter is the one that assaulted Otis!” It was Constable Stumble.

The Asian sitting on the other side of Piffy—the one who appeared to be on the 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 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 ratings and will probably get me some jail time 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 haymaker 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 damn near succeeded!

The rat-bag…the dirty little rat-bag…

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, Pee-wee 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 he knocked him down too!

(To be continued)

Piffy was lucky to be alive. The police found him lying in the gutter. Otis was dead. His skull had been fractured and his spleen ruptured. The attendant at the Esso Petrol Station had called the police. Fortunately, a police cruiser had been in the area. It might have been the famous Lamborghini Murcielago. Anyway, that’s what Piffy would tell the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club when he got around to it. In the meantime it was off to the hospital.

For an octogenarian he made a remarkable recovery. He had a lump on his head, several scratches on his face, a bruised knee and a shoulder that exhibited more mortis than rigor. They insisted he remain in the hospital for observation and though he could walk they wheeled him into a private recovery room. In the morning he would meet Deputy Chief Constable Stumble and his troubles would start all over again.

The nurse had scarcely wheeled away the remains of Piffy’s breakfast and he was tugging at a loose tooth when he became aware of someone watching him. It was Stumble. He was sitting quietly in a chair in a corner of the room. “How long have you been here?” asked Piffy.

Stumble looked at his watch. “Since five A.M.” he said.

“Since five A.M?” said an incredulous Piffy. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I’ve been waiting for the right moment,” said Stumble.

And now that he had the right moment, the Deputy Chief Constable got out of the chair, twisted his hat in his hands and stared at Piffy. “What did you say to make those kids react so violently?” he asked.

Piffy blinked. “What did I say?” he said. “I didn’t say anything! I didn’t have a chance to say anything! I was minding my own business!”

“Well, you must have said something,” insisted Stumble. “They were Asian kids—good kids—Pakistanis—their Imam says they would never attack innocent people…Are you sure you didn’t make some kind of an offensive gesture?”

“I was walking in the rain!” said Piffy. Good grief! He couldn’t believe this!

“The investigating officer says you were wearing a raincoat with a Star of David on the back,” said Stumble. “That could be considered provocative.”

“It was raining, for Christ’s sake!” said Piffy.

Stumble sighed heavily. He looked at his watch. “I see it every day,” he grumbled. “You old geezers haven’t learned a thing. Times are changing. The Asians are here to stay.”

“They weren’t Asians!” said Piffy. “They were Muslims!”

“They were Asians,” insisted Stumble. “Asians.”

“Charlie Chan is an old friend of mine,” said Piffy. “I know an Asian when I see one and so does he. Those kids were Muslims.”

“That attitude will do you no good in England, Mr. Piffy. “Now—how many of these Asians were there?”

Piffy could only guess. Stumble asked a few more questions, appeared satisfied, warned Piffy not to confuse religion with race ever again and left.

But there was no rest for the wicked. It was Stumble out and a reporter from the London Times in. The reporter must have been waiting outside the recovery room longer than Stumble. Piffy would never know.

“You’re the man who threw the shoe at Riyadh ul-Haq, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Nobody is supposed to know that,” said Piffy.

“You’re a lot older than I thought you would be,” he said. He produced a camera, took Piffy’s picture and fled.

The Times reporter wasn’t his last visitor. They came in a steady stream all day long. There was the man from the Home Office; the guy from M15; an ‘Asian’ from the Muslim Council of Britain; a large incredibly unctuous fellow who said he represented Tariq Ramadan; a vicar from the Church of England who urged redemption through moral restraint and the adoption of Abrahamic principles; a Sister of Charity; a man from Alcohol Anonymous; an ‘Asian’ who said he could cure Piffy of hemorrhoids if he would convert to Islam; and a guy wielding a buffer who told Ramadan’s man “to move his feet because he had to clean there.” Piffy wished the guy with the buffer could have stayed longer. By the time the last of them had left, Piffy was exhausted. He fell into one of Edgar Allen Poe’s profound slumbers.

When he awoke it was dark—startlingly dark! He had an eerie feeling. Something wasn’t quite right. He could sense it. He was not alone in the room. Maybe it was a nurse…

“Who’s there?” he asked.

It was Abu Afaq’s London agent, Algernon A. Algernon! The four-and-a-half foot imp was standing on a chair alongside the bed looking down at Piffy.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Piffy.

“I’m getting you out of here,” said Algernon.

“Are you mad?” said Piffy. “It’s the middle of the night. Can’t you wait till morning?”

“We haven’t got time,” said Algernon. “You’ve got to on the set by two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“On the set?” said Piffy.

“I’ve got you a shot on the Kharma With Darma Show,” said Algernon.

“Kharma With who?” said Piffy. He had never heard of her.

“Kharma With Darma,” said Algernon. “She’s like Jerry Springer, only bitchier and more intellectual. You will like her. She reminds me of Joy Behar…Have you ever seen Alan Ladd ride a mustang bareback? She’s like that…only scarier. She’s relentless. You’re not given to blubbering when under pressure, are you? She will go for the jugular.”

“Count me out,” said Piffy.

Algernon appeared to be aghast. “We can’t back out now!” he said. “I’ve already signed a contract!”

“I’m going to tell Abu Afaq on you,” warned Piffy.

“You will change your mind when I tell you who the other guests are,” said Algernon.

“Unless one of them is Senor Wences,” said Piffy, “I’m not going.”

“Senor Wences…the face in the box? Are you trying to frighten me?” said Algernon.

“I’m not going,” repeated Piffy.

“You will,” said Algernon. “Darma has invited an aide to His Royal Highness Mohammed bin Nawaf, Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and he has accepted. The aide is the grand nephew of non-other than King Abdullah!”

That got Piffy’s attention. He sat up straight in the bed.

“And the other is—“ said Algernon. He paused for dramatic effect. “The other is Muhammad al-Hussein!”

“Never heard of him,” said Piffy.

Algernon was surprised. “Really? He is one of the ‘Asians’ that killed your friend Otis.”

Piffy was stunned. How could that be possible? Otis wasn’t even in his grave yet and his killer was being celebrated on a TV show? It was too much for a middle-aged man entombed in the body of a half-dead octogenarian. “Out!” he said. “Out!”

“Does that mean no?” said Algernon.

“What’s going on in there?” a voice called from the corridor.

“Shush!” said Algernon.

“Are you having a nightmare, Mr. Piffy?” said the voice from the corridor.

“It’s Nurse Gladys!” whispered Piffy.

“Nurse Gladys?” said Algernon. “Not Nurse Gladys Emanuel?””

That was when Algernon fell off the chair. When he got up he knocked the bedpan off the bedside cabinet. It hit the floor with a horrendous crash.

“Are you all right, Mr. Piffy?” called Nurse Gladys.

And that was when things got confusing. Before Piffy had the slightest idea of what Algernon was up to or what he was capable of, Abu Afaq’s London agent has slid underneath the bed sheets beside him. “Get out of here!” screamed Piffy.

“Shush!” said Algernon. “She’ll go away—I’ve done this before.”

“Intern! Intern!” cried Nurse Gladys.

Piffy shut his eyes. All he could do was hope for the best.

The lights came on and a burly intern stormed into the room. Nurse Gladys was right behind him. The intern took one look at Piffy’s bed and could see that something was amiss. He stripped the sheets from the bed and there was Algernon A. Algernon curled up alongside Piffy, night-vision goggles strapped to his head and a cat-o’-nine-tails in his right hand. Behind the intern and Nurse Gladys was the Times reporter with his camera. Piffy could already see the headlines.

Octogenarian, victim of street assault, caught in sex-capade in hospital recovery room!     

It would make a great introductory line for his appearance on Kharma With Darma!

(To be continued)

Piffy was stunned. He sat there for some time in the coffee bar as the patrol officers from the visitors center rushed about looking for an escaped prisoner. Of course, they were looking for ‘him,’ but he was no longer ‘him,’ he was something else—something he had wanted to be, older, but too much of a good thing could be devastating and Piffy was devastated.

Being turned into a ten-year-old boy was one thing—thirty extra years of life stuck in Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer's slim body wouldn’t be a disaster—but to be turned into a doddering old wreck with one foot in the grave and a coronary lurking behind every tick of the clock was too much. He looked at his hands—they were ugly and they were shaking. What was he supposed to do? Sit on them? He was too old to cry but not too old to be angry—and angry he was! Oh, he would get bint Marwan for this! He had said that before, of course—many times.

Well, he couldn’t sit in the coffee bar forever. They would be closing the place and he would have to leave. He went through his pockets. He had plenty of money—bint Marwan had seen to that. Maybe he should be thankful. Yeah, maybe it was his fault for not immediately counting to ten like he had been instructed.

Somehow he got back to his apartment. He couldn’t sleep. He paced the floor. What the hell was he to do? He moped around for the better part of the next day.  Should he call Algernon A. Algernon? No, he would rather die. But whom else did he know? Bint Marwan was out of the question. She was in Cairo and he had no way of contacting her. Besides, she only appeared when she felt like it. So he prayed to St. Anthony. Maybe he didn’t pray hard enough; maybe St. Anthony no longer wanted to have anything to do with him. He was so old and decrepit; he ached all over and could die any minute.

He was in a Hard Rock Café gnawing on a burger with what was left of his teeth when his eye fell on the Daily Mail and the Andy Capp comic strip. Andy Capp! Now there was a chap who knew how to cope with the vagaries and vicissitudes of life on planet earth. And he had the same answer for every problem he came across whether it was nuclear fallout or hemorrhoids—he would tie one on. Yeah, he would tie one on like Otis Campbell or Willie Lump-lump! And that is what Piffy would do—he would tie one on; he would get hammered; he would get plowed! He hadn’t had a drink in a long time but already he was feeling better. He finished his burger and took a deep breath, the first one he had dared take since his ‘conversion.’

It was hours later and he wasn’t quite sure how he got there. It was a dingy little bar on a side street, full of solitary drinkers with a barkeep not given to conversation. By then he had lost track of how many he had had. He sat down on a stool next to a chap that looked like Otis from The Andy Griffith Show. The barkeep set a beer in front of him.

Otis stirred, eyed the octogenarian sitting next to him and nodded. “How are you doing old-timer?” he asked.

Piffy grimaced. “That’s a stupid question to ask a man in the prime of life who’s been turned into a doddering old fool by a woman,” he said.

Otis grinned. “Been there; done that,” he said.

It was the beginning of a great though short-lived friendship. Piffy needed someone to talk to and Otis was it—and Piffy talked and the story came out, not the entire story, not even half of it, but enough to impress Otis. It was Holy Communion between two drunks—a High Mass for the Dead, for the repose of the soul of one Bernard Piffy.

“So you see,” said Piffy, “it was that woman, bint Marwan, that turned me into this nauseating physical wreck you see sitting next to you in this dirty stinking miserable bar.”

Otis was overwhelmed. “What you need is a wizard to turn you back into a fairy prince,” he said.

“Fat chance of finding a wizard in the East End,” said Piffy.

“How about Harry Potter?” said Otis. “He can change you back into a fairy prince.”

“You know Harry Potter?” said Piffy.

“No, but I know where I can find a wizard.”

“Where?”

“At Hogwarts.”

“Is that near Quahog?” asked Piffy.

“Come, I’ll take you there,” offered Otis. “It’s only a short piece.”

They staggered out into the night. Otis fell twice but true to his word it was only a short piece for they soon came to a sign along the side of the road that proclaimed “This Way to Hogwarts.” It was too good to be true. A few more steps took them to a tumbledown house. It was Hogwarts. Two life-size cardboard mockups of Peter Griffin stood to either side of a crumbling entranceway.

Piffy was dismayed—drunk but dismayed. “This is a gyp,” he said.

“Who’s there?” a voice called from inside Hogwarts.

“Friends,” said Otis.

A clanking noise came from inside the shack and a portly man in a caftan and a turban emerged.

“That’s not Harry Potter,” said Piffy.

“I didn’t promise you Harry Potter,” said Otis. “I promised you a wizard and this is a wizard.”

The wizard glared at Piffy. “Who dares mention Harry Potter?” he snarled.

Otis tugged at Piffy’s sleeve. “Don’t mention Harry Potter again,” he said nervously. “Habib hates Harry Potter. Habib tried to Islamicize the Hufflepuffians and Harry threw him out of Hogwarts. It was on TV and everything. Habib has never forgiven Harry. And he hates the Hufflepuffians too. He was disgraced. He named this hovel Hogwarts to get even with them. So shush!”

Hufflepuffians? Islamicize? Had Piffy taken one drink too many?

The wizard looked them up and down, squinting fiercely at Piffy’s companion. “Is that you, Otis?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Otis. “I have brought a friend.”

“Ah,” said Habib.

“He was once a proud fairy prince,” said Otis, “but a wicked sorceress turned him into what you see here—a pathetic, disgusting old man. He wants to be a prince again.”

“Allahu akbar!” said Habib. “I will see what I can do.” He studied Piffy closely; then looked at Otis. “Is he a dhimmi?” he asked.

Otis frowned. “I never thought to ask,” he said. “It’s okay, isn’t it?”

“If he’s a dhimmi,” said Habib, “there will be a surcharge of one thousand pounds.”

“Oh, ‘e doesn’t have one thousand pounds,” said Otis, “”E ‘as three quid.” Somehow or other he knew exactly how much money Piffy had.

The wizard thought it over for a while. Maybe he was mentally subtracting Piffy’s three quid from a thousand pounds. “Well,” he said carefully, “perhaps we can make an exception in his case. He seems to be a worthy gentleman—though I normally don’t do charity. If you will follow me…”

He led them through a room piled nearly to the ceiling with used furniture to a tiny alcove at the rear. There was nowhere to sit down. He looked at Otis and nodded at Piffy. “If your friend will convert to Islam,” he said, “I will give him ten percent off.”

Piffy was aghast. “Convert to Islam?” he said.

“Take it,” urged Otis.

“Are you crazy?” said Piffy. “I will do nothing of the sort! The Pope would kick me out of the Church!  It would kill my Aunt!”

“You’re going to make the wizard mad!” warned Otis.

Piffy took a handful of coins from his pocket and laid them on a cluttered table. “This is all I’ve got,” he said. “You can take it or leave it!”

Habib was not one to reject a stipend of any kind. He counted the money, pulled a purse from beneath his caftan, deposited Piffy’s three quid and then smiled graciously. “Now that that is out of the way,” he said, “I will change you into a fairy prince though I cannot guarantee you will be the exact same prince you were before. There will be some erosion.”

Piffy was already having second thoughts. “What the Hell am I doing here?” he asked.

Otis snuggled up as close to Piffy as he could get. “This is exciting!” he said.

Habib rose up on his toes, brought his hands up near the top of his head and gestured. It was a good gesture—not as good as a Harry Potter gesture; it was more on the order of Mandrake the Magician, but it was a good gesture. But nothing happened—it didn’t take. Piffy was still a broken down old man but Otis seemed to have been affected and was having trouble staying on his feet.

Habib gestured again…and again… and again. And each time nothing happened. Nada! Zilch! Sweat had popped out on his brow.

He tried again…and again.

Piffy had had enough. He had paid this man—this charlatan—good money to turn him into a fairy prince and nothing had happened! There was only so much he could take. He got angry. He got Mike Hammer angry. Maybe it was the beer; maybe it was the surroundings; maybe it was the suggestion he convert to Islam. “I want my money back, Mandrake!” he said.

“Sorry,” said Habib. He was sweating profusely by now “There are no refunds. All sales are final.”

That was the last straw. “Why, you stupid camel jockey,” said Piffy, “if I were fifty years younger I would trash you to within an inch of your miserable life!”

The wizard bristled. “Vile Christian dog!” he snarled. “You dare to insult the great Habib?”

“Who you calling a Christian dog, you lop-eared son of a Muslim sea cook?” grated Piffy.

“Careful, dhimmi swine, or I will turn you into a pig!”

“You couldn’t turn Arnold Ziffle into a pig if you were standing on Mohammed’s butt!” roared Piffy.

“Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” screamed Habib.

Piffy turned to Otis. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “This place stinks worse than bin Laden’s bladder.”

Otis peeked out a window. “It’s pouring down rain,” he said. There was a strange look on his face. Something had happened to him; he had changed. His eyes seemed beady, piggish and his nostrils had widened to twice their normal size and were spread across his face like craters on a moonscape.

Piffy was shocked. What the hell had happened to Otis? He had been standing close to Piffy—too close perhaps! Piffy swallowed nervously. He was on the verge of panic. Could this be the reason Harry Potter had thrown Habib out of the Hufflepuffians? Was Habib not merely incompetent, but—worse yet—criminally incompetent? Then he got a-hold of himself. He was too old to be frightened—too old to give a damn about anything. So what if Otis looked more like Arnold Ziffel than Otis Campbell?

Suddenly Habib was solicitous. “It’s raining,” he said. “You will get wet.” He took two raincoats from a hook on the wall. “Here—take these. They will protect you from the elements. You can return them later.”

Piffy was impressed—after all that ugly talk the wizard was proving to be as human as the next guy. He took the raincoat, put it on and then helped Otis struggle into the other coat. There was something on the back of the garment, a symbol of some sort, but Piffy couldn’t make it out in the gloom. It was a yellow star of some kind. No matter, he was glad to get out of the wizard’s shack.

They were not much more than a block from Hogwarts when a gang of hoodlums materialized from out of the driving rain and before Piffy and Otis realized it they had been surrounded. It could have been a scene out of The Blackboard Jungle.

“Kuffar swine!” screamed one of the thugs.

“Jew pigs!” cried another.

A short squat imp circled round and round Otis and Piffy, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Zionist scum!” he hissed.

One of them had something in his hand that looked like a ball peen hammer.

There was enough light coming from a nearby Esso Petrol Station for Piffy to see the logo on the back of Otis’ raincoat. It was the Star of David! My god—the Star of David! It was large enough to be seen at a hundred paces! Piffy guessed the same Star of David was plastered across the back of the raincoat he was wearing! Oy, vay! Habib was having his revenge and it was too late to run!

Otis looked at Piffy. He wasn’t Alan Ladd and it wasn’t Grafton’s Saloon. “There’s too many,” he said.

One would have been too many. It was a drunk and an eighty-year-old man against the ‘Asians’ and the drunk wouldn’t be any more help than Little Joey had been to Shane.

Then something hit Piffy along the side of the head and he went down like a steer in a Chicago slaughterhouse!

(To be continued)

The Professor looked up from the newspaper he had been reading. “If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I would think this was our man Piffy, but that couldn’t be. It would be ludicrous to even think so.”

“Piffy?” said Joe. “Our man in London?” Joe was proprietor of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. “What’s he up to now? Wasn’t he supposed to have been back in the States weeks ago?”

Piffy was Bernard Piffy, the low-key private detective the boys at the bar had hired to track down the notorious Dallas taxi driver, Yaser Abdel Said, who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage and then fled the country.

“Piffy?” said Cowsnofsky. He put away his cell-phone. “He hasn’t been arrested again, has he?”

“Well, that depends,” said the Professor. He laid the newspaper on the bar. “According to the Daily Mail, a Bernard Piffy, age ten, was arrested for assaulting a Madrassas school owner, a customer at a McDonalds, a pole-dancer named Yasmin in an apartment over a topless bar and for stealing a car belonging to a certain Algernon A. Algernon and crashing it into a tree. The Daily Mail says he embarked on his crime spree dressed as a girl.”

“And it says that in the Daily Mail?” said Cowsnofsky. He shook his head. “You got to stop reading that newspaper, Professor. Why don’t you watch Countdown With Keith Olbermann or Family Guy. It’ll take your mind off things.”

“Here’s the weird part,” said the Professor. “When they fingerprinted this ten-year-old ‘Bernard Piffy’ they found his prints were already on file. And get this—they belonged to, believe it or not, to a middle-aged tourist named Bernard Piffy! Now that is a coincidence!”

“Not our Piffy?” said Cowsnofsky.

“It’s Yogi Berra all over again,” said Joe.

“M 15 says there might have been a mix-up at the fingerprint office,” explained the Professor. “In the meantime, they are trying to locate the adult Bernard Piffy but he seems to have disappeared.”

“I don’t like this,” said Joe. “We should never have hired that guy.”

“There’s something weird here,” admitted Cowsnofsky. “I’ve got a half a notion to go to England and straighten this thing out.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Henrietta.

Joe glared at his nephew. “Oh, no, you won’t!” he said. “I promised my sister on her death bed that I would take care of you and you’re not going anywhere—not while I’m paying the bills!”

“Oh, let them go, Joe,” said the Professor. “What could it hurt?”

Yes, what could it hurt?

Piffy stared at the wall. He had to think this thing out. He couldn’t be as bad off as it seemed. A Juvenile Detention Home was better than the lockup at Gun Blast, Texas; better than the brig on the H.M.S. Bounty—maybe not quite as good as a room over the stable at the O.K. Corral but it was adequate and the food wasn’t bad and at least he had some proper clothes to wear. But—dog-gone it—he was still stuck in the body of a ten-year-old boy and he wanted the old bag of bones back. They might be a bit used and the covering might be wrinkled here and there but they were his and they still had some muscle attached to them with which he could defend himself. Sure, he could live an extra thirty or forty years if he stayed in Opie Taylor’s slim body but the mind would decay long before he reached the big 5-0. No, he much preferred the way he had been than to what he had become. It was exasperating, that’s what it was.

He paced back and forth in the room—back and forth. He seemed to be growing angrier by the minute. Where was his Mommy? Where was Asma bint Marwan? She was supposed to come and get him, wasn’t she? That’s what Mommies do. Where was she? He would get her for this!

Not that he hadn’t had plenty of guests to keep him company in his short stay at the Detention Home—he had talked to a child psychologist, to the police, to M15, to a Baptist minister, to an Episcopal priest, to a half-dozen social workers, to the Daily Mail, but not to Asma bint Marwan.

When he asked to see James Bond, they laughed at him. They thought he was being a stupid kid. Maybe he should have made a clean breast of it, confessed to everything. So far the only thing he had told his interrogators was what he and bint Marwan had rehearsed over and over again for the ‘Madrassas operation.’ He was Christopher Oden Junior, he was from Aden, his father was a metallurgy professor and he had a cat named Poobah.

Oh, what a fool he had been to trust bint Marwan!

There came a tapping on Piffy’s chamber door. He stopped pacing. “What do you want?” he said truculently. Oh, yeah, he was beginning to sound like Slip Mahoney of the Bowery Boys—okay, make that like Jackie Cooper imitating Slip Mahoney.

“Get your gear, son,” said the Detention Home manager. “You’ve been upgraded. We’re taking you to Belmarsh.”

Wow! Belmarsh! Belmarsh was big time! That’s where they kept Abu Hamza al-Masri—where they would have kept Jack the Ripper. Of course, Abu Hamza was the nut that had pronounced the fatwa on the adult version of Bernard Piffy. But what did that matter? Abu Hamza would never recognize the little twirp trapped forever in Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer’s emaciated body as Bernard Piffy.

He had scarcely settled into a holding cell at Belmarsh when he was told he had a visitor. A guard escorted him to the visitor’s center. Except for the surveillance cameras and a handful of patrol officers the hall was deserted. The visitor was bint Marwan.

One look at Mommy was enough. All those angry things he had been going to say were forgotten and he started bawling! Yes, bawling! It was difficult at times to tell where the ten-year-old child left off and where the adult began. Nor was it the beauteous, mini-skirted, divinely curvaceous bint Marwan that had brought forth the deluge of tears—far from it, it was the old crone, the wart-on-the-nose bint Marwan with the sagging stockings and the shopping bag that had released the floodgates. Try to figure that out.

“Get a-hold of yourself!” hissed the old crone.

It was easier said than done but a sharp elbow to the ribs brought Piffy to his senses. He stopped crying, sniffled; he eyed the shopping bag—his escape hatch from the mess he was in; bint Marwan’s Time Machine, her hole in the universe, the magic carpet to where the deer and the antelope played. He grabbed for the shopping bag—he was getting out of here—but bint Marwan jerked it away from him.

A patrol officer hurried toward them. “Is this little bloke getting fresh with you, Ma’m?” he asked. He was an ugly, beetle-browed specimen

“No,” said bint Marwan. “He thinks I’ve got candy in my shopping bag.”

“Well, ‘e better behave,” warned the officer and with that he retreated to what was considered a respectable but observable distance.

“A bloke?” said Piffy? “A bloke? What in the heck is a bloke?”

“Listen—“ bint Marwan said urgently. “I don’t have much time. I have to be in Cairo in ten minutes. The Keepers of the Fleas are meeting in the casbah. Your friend from the Madrasses—Ahmad—will be there. We must stop them. Ka'b is waiting for me.”

Piffy had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Take me with you!” he begged. He reached for the shopping bag. “There’s room for me in there!”

“No!” hissed bint Marwan—the tough, ugly, old crone bint Marwan. “Ka’b doesn’t want anything to do with you after what happened in Dallas.”

“I won’t take up much space!” wailed Piffy. “I’ll scrunch myself into a little ball. I’ll be as quiet as a June bug in a frozen food locker. Start it up and let’s get out of here!” He had his hand on the shopping bag. He could feel a surge of kinetic energy.

“Are you crazy!” said bint Marwan. “Starting a portable time warp in an enclosed space could cause an explosion! It could collapse the entire building! And even it if didn’t, it would suck all the oxygen out of the air and asphyxiate everybody!”

Oh, no!” he wailed. “What am I going to do?”

Bint Marwan reached inside the voluminous folds of her shapeless granny dress for a baby’s bottle. Piffy watched suspiciously. What now, he thought? Bint Marwan removed the nipple from the bottle and like David Copperfield, drew the clothes Piffy had been wearing the night she had changed him into a ten-year-old boy from inside the container. “Put these on,” she whispered.

“They won’t fit,” he said.

“You’ll grow into them!” she hissed.

It took a moment for the idea to sink in. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s right!” And then he jumped the gun. He reached for bint Marwan’s breasts.

The patrol office hurried over. “Is the little bloke trying to cop a feel, lady?” he demanded.

“Oh, no,” said bint Marwan. “He was admiring my locket.”

The officer scowled. “Okay,” he said “But if he gets fresh, let me know.” And once again the officer retreated to a respectful distance.

“Put the clothes on!” hissed bint Marwan. She was getting annoyed.

Piffy did as he was ordered. When he was done he looked like Opie Taylor in Sheriff Andy’s uniform. Bint Marwan turned so her back was to the patrol officer and Piffy put his hand on her breast. “And don’t forget to count to ten,” she said.

He would have preferred the younger, more nubile version of bint Marwan but once he made contact the tingling sensation that shot through his fingertips and up his arm and through his body cleansed his mind of all rational thought! An incredible wave of euphoria swept over him! The hairs on the back of his neck were standing out like porcupine quills and his toenails were curling! Something was burning! Then he remembered he was supposed to count to ten. He wondered if it would make any difference if he started late. It shouldn’t. One…Two…He felt himself expanding…expanding…growing larger… larger…and then he was drifting…drifting…

Then it was over and he was alone in the visitor’s center except for the patrol officers. Bint Marwan was gone and he was Bernard Piffy again, the real Bernard Piffy—a little achy perhaps, but that should not have been surprising, his hip hurt and he was having some difficulty focusing his eyes but that was understandable with all he had been through. That’s what he thought, anyway.

He walked right past the patrol officers and out the door. He stopped at the coffee bar and that’s when he glanced in the mirror—and was stunned by what he saw! Good grief—that face looking back at him couldn’t be his! It was hideous! It was the face of an old man, a broken-down old man! It was lined, wrinkled. There was enough sagging skin there for two faces! He put his hand to his chin—an old, wrinkled, heavily veined hand—and the creature in the mirror did the same thing.

A waitress helped Piffy to a chair.

What had bint Marwan done to him now?

(To be continued)