“Letter for Cowsnofsky,” announced the mailman as he dumped the mail on the bar at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. “From somebody named P-i-f-f-y…What’s that? Piffy?”
“For Cowsnofsky?” echoed Joe. “Why Cowsnofsky?”
Piffy was Bernard Piffy, the private detective the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club had hired to track down the notorious Yaser Abdel Said the murderer of Sarah and Amina Said. They hadn’t heard from Piffy for weeks. He had gone to Texas to look into things, to poke around a bit, to talk to a few people, to put his vast store of knowledge of the criminal mind to work, to nail the rascal’s hide to the wall, to put Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club on the map. During the last few days the odds they would never see him again had grown to three-to-one. That he remembered Cowsnofsky’s name was surprising—maybe there was more to the man than an oversized trench coat and a runny nose, more than anyone had suspected. Joe called Cowsnofsky on his cell phone.
Cowsnofsky was there within an hour. He took a deep breath, adjusted his spectacles; glanced around to make sure everybody was watching.
“Open the damn letter,” someone said.
Cowsnofsky opened the letter and read—and read and read and then read some more.
“Well, what does he have to say?” prompted Joe.
“He wants more money,” said Cowsnofsky. “He says it’s a jungle out there. He says a waitress tried to poison whim with a bad cup of joe. He says he got caught in a storm and he had to go effeminate for a while.”
“Effeminate?” glowered Ranch House. “He didn’t look like a cross dresser.”
“Never can tell what’s under a dirty trench coat,” said Joe.
“He said the trail’s getting hot,” said Cowsnofsky. “He says he’s got to watch his pennies. Then there’s a lot about some guy named Johnny Dollar.”
Let me see that letter,” said the Professor. He studied Piffy’s hurried scrawl. “Hmm,” he mused. “He didn’t say he went effeminate. He said he went ephemeral. There’s a difference.”
“Ephemeral?” said Cowsnofsky. “What’s that? Plural for effeminate?”
“I never did trust that guy,” said Ranch House.
“This is serious,” said the Professor. “He needs help.”
“Well, what do we do?” said Joe. “Send him more dough?”
The vote was not unanimous but in the end the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club agreed to send Piffy what remained in the collection plate. They would hope for the best.
“Effeminate!” muttered the Professor. “Sometimes I wonder why I come in this place.”
Piffy was in a one grand quandary. The trail had grown cold. He was stumped; he was at an impasse. There he sat, day after day, in the same dreary restaurant, waited on by the same surly waitress, drinking the same hellacious coffee—call it mud; call it joe—reading the same crumpled newspapers, waiting for something to happen, to turn up, for Ka’b, for a clue, for anything. If it hadn’t been for the daily adventures of Hagar and Beetle, adventures he should have been having, he would have went insane. He wanted action…suspense…adventure…a hide to nail to the wall.
He stood up, dug a quarter from his pocket. He was about to toss the coin on the counter when he noticed a man lurking in the doorway—a man in a trench coat. There was something familiar about him—the trench coat; the crown hat, the long nose, the mustache. Why, Good grief! It was Inspector Clouseau! What was he doing here? This wasn’t his bailiwick! He belonged on the other side of the world—where the human race was sunk to its neck in a Faustian haze of socialism and Islamism, where nothing was funny anymore because Benny Hill was dead, where the devil no longer bothered to take the hindmost because there was no difference between the top and the bottom, where Tariq Ramadan and Inayat Bunglawala determined science and religion because Henry VIII’s Church of England was kaput. Piffy had met the Inspector in Paris a few years ago and had found him to be the most irritating person he had ever met. Still it would not be proper for him to ignore the man. He tossed the quarter on the counter, went over to Clouseau.
“There is no reum for you here, Clouseau,” he said.
The Inspector ignored the jest. “”I am looking for Ka’b,” he whispered. “I have been told you know where to find him.”
“You’ve been told wrong,” said Piffy. “I couldn’t find him with the Hubble Telescope. If there’s any finding to be done, Ka’b is the one who will do it.”
“This is important,” said Clouseau. “Tell him the Asians are after him.”
“Asians? What Asians?” said Piffy.
“The Asians,” said Clouseau. “He will know.” He paused, looked toward the street. Suddenly, he stiffened. “There they are now,” he whispered hoarsely.
Two men had clambered out of a touring car and were crossing the sidewalk toward the diner. Piffy frowned. They didn’t look like Asians. He had known Charlie Chan and Charlie’s Number One Son for years. He knew an Asian when he saw one. These eggs weren’t Asians; they looked like they were from the Middle East, like they should have been in turbans and djellabas instead of Dockers and Beach Boy sandals. And one of them was a dead ringer for Mohammed Atta. The Mohammed Atta! And the other could have passed for Hani Hanjour! He had studied their ugly faces on the Internet for years. And they were carrying guitar cases—guitar cases large enough to house every Tommy gun Al Capone had ever owned! Who did the Inspector think he was kidding? Asians?
Piffy turned to Clouseau, to say something, to warn him, but the Frenchman was gone. He had disappeared…vanished into thin air!
The dead ringer for Mohammed Atta approached the surly waitress. “Have you seen Ka’b?” he asked.
The waitress looked him up and down. “Don’t know anybody named Ka’b,” she said.
Atta smiled. He thumped the guitar case he was carrying. “We are playing a gig for Ka’b tonight,” he said. He thanked the waitress and followed by Hani Hanjour, made for the exit. As he passed through the door he smiled at Piffy. “Allahu akbar,” he said and then he was gone.
Allahu akbar! That was another phrase Piffy had been hearing of late. He went to the lunch counter, looked at the waitress.
“Okay, I lied,” she said. “Ka’b comes in here all the time. Especially when no one is here. He’s got his own cup. It’s got his name on it. He calls it his Ephemeral Cup. But he’s not a pervert.”
Ephemeral! The word hit Piffy like a bolt of lightning. He had a sudden inspiration. That was the best kind. He took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet, laid it on the counter. “Pour me a cup of joe in Ka’b’s cup and you can keep the change,” he said.
“Thanks, Mister,” said the waitress. “Ka’b kind of likes you—though I can’t understand why.”
Piffy stared into the coffee. If this were one of Ka’b’s ways of communicating with mere mortals he wouldn’t have long to wait. And he didn’t. The coffee in the cup was working up a tempest. It bubbled, crested, rose, receded, lapped along the sides of the cup. And there was Ka’b, his wizened face drifting in and out of the obnoxious brew, forming and reforming.
“If you want to find the soul of Yaser Abdel Said,” Ka’b voice whispered in Piffy’s ear, “you will go to the Birmingham Central Mosque and look for Asma bint Marwan. She will be your escort.”
“Asma bint Marwan?” echoed Piffy.
“Asma bint Marwan.”
“Better drink up, Mister,” hissed the waitress. “They’re here!”
Piffy looked up from Ka’b’s cup of joe. The waitress was nodding toward the kitchen door. They had come in the back way. It was Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour. Atta was smiling. “Would you care to donate to the Holy Land Foundation?” he said.
“No soliciting allowed in here,” snapped the waitress
Piffy studied the pair, then looked down at the coffee in Ka’b’s cup. The face had disappeared. The spell had been broken. Okay—so what next? Was he supposed to drink the coffee? Dispose of the evidence? No way! He caught a faint whiff of sulfur. It wasn’t coming from the coffee—it was coming from Atta and Hanjour. Was it a warning from Ka’b? He stood up, tossed a quarter on the counter, started for the door. “Shalom,” he said as he passed the Asians.
“Bismillah,” said Atta.
Bismillah—another word he would have to learn.
He went back to his suite at Best Western, turned on the TV. He tried to think. The TV screamed at him: Bad boy! Bad boy! Wha-cha gonna do! He turned off the tube, crawled into bed. He got up after a few minutes, paced the floor for a half hour and then put on his duds, the Dennis Weaver Stetson, and went back to the restaurant.
The waitress was in tears; there was a bruise on her cheek. “They took Ka’b’s cup!” she sobbed. “They broke it into a thousand pieces!”
Cowsnofsky looked up from the letter. “Piffy wants more money,” he said. “He’s got to check out a Central mosque in Birmingham, Alabama.”
“Birmingham, Alabama?” said Joe. “That’s out!”
The Professor took the letter from Cowsnofsky, studied the hurried scrawl. “There’s no central mosque in Birmingham, Alabama,” he said. “He must have meant the Birmingham Central Mosque in Birmingham, England.”
“Birmingham, England?” said Joe. “Well, that’s definitely out!”
“How many frequent traveler miles have you got stored away, Joe?” asked the Professor.
“Aw, now, Professor…” said Joe.
“If it was Birmingham, Alabama,” said Cowsnofsky, “I’d go myself.”
Piffy had never been a thinking man’s detective and this caper was requiring far more thought than was normal. He was no Hercule Poirot when it came to figuring out mysteries. He was a man of action; that was why Sheriff Wild Bill Bascomb had given him the bad cop assignments back in Mayberry. Sure, he liked Nick and Nora Charles, they were cute and funny, but he preferred Sam Spade and Boston Blackie. He liked the feel of a full Magnum tugging as his belt. “When are you going to grown up, Bernie,” his Grandma would always ask him. But there were times when a private eye had to use his head, had be Travis McGee instead of Mike Hammer and this was one of those times.
He sat there and squinted into the twilight. Thinking hurt but he kept at it and the more he thought, the more his mind drifted back to the ephemeral. Yeah, to the ephemeral, to the evanescent, to the scarcely occurring—Ka’b’s gateway to and from the netherworld! If he could contact Ka’b for just one minute…one minute... Maybe if he could replicate the conditions of that first meeting…It would have to be a dark and stormy night—a Bulwer-Litton night with Sopwith Camels and large-nosed Beagles on the loose…Realistically, what other choice did he have? Run an ad in the shopper’s guide?
He would wait for a dark and stormy night. Fortunately, it was the rainy season and a cold front was due. He checked the barometric pressure. Barometric pressure? Who was he kidding? What the hell did he know about barometric pressure? But if an ant could move a giant saguaro plant…
The thunderclouds had been gathering all day and it was as dark as Golgotha when he arrived at the restaurant. He found a spot in the shadows near a parking lot, turned up the collar of his trench coat and settled in. He didn’t have a long wait. Two or three lightning flashes and there was Ka’b, lurking in the alley alongside the diner, surrounded as usual by his floating doorway, his entrance into the mortal world and perhaps his escape hatch as well.
“Ka’b!” he shouted. “It’s me—Barney! Barney Piffy!”
But they were not alone! Someone screamed, “Allahu akbar!” And Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour stepped from the shadows of an abandoned pickup truck and into the harsh glare of a lamppost. “Allahu akbar!” It was Atta. He was the mouthy one.
They had come prepared—they had brought their guitar cases and in the twinkling of an eye, their AK-47s were swinging toward Ka’b!
Piffy grabbed for his gun—but he was too late. A hundred slugs from the AK-47s were ripping the floating doorway to shreds. Wood chips flew through the air, some of them landing at Piffy’s feet. Steam rose from the alleyway. A Banshee screamed. It might have been Piffy. Atta and Hanjour approached the wreckage in the alley cautiously. Ka’b was gone. Somehow he had managed to escape.
“Curses!” snarled Atta.
“Foiled again!” said Hanjour.
“How many times does that make? Six?” said Atta.
“Do you think we will ever get to Paradise?” wondered Hanjour.
“He will find a new portal,” said Atta. “Come…we must go.”
The Asians stowed their AK-47s in their guitar cases and disappeared into the night.
Piffy was speechless. He had fired at least a dozen shots in their direction and had not scored a hit! How could that have happened? He was a crack shot! And then it dawned on him—in the excitement he had drawn his wallet instead of his Magnum! Of all the stupid… If dollar bills had been bullets he would be dead broke! It was a good thing they hadn’t noticed him!
The rain was pouring down now. He went into the restaurant. The waitress was lying on the floor—dead!
Maybe the weather would be better in Birmingham. Maybe…