“Can you believe that!” exclaimed the Professor.

“What’s that?” said Joe of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club.

The Professor set aside the letter he had been reading. “Our private eye—Bernard Piffy,” he said.

“What’s he up to now?” asked Joe.

Bernard Piffy was 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 Dallas cabdriver who had murdered his daughters, Sara and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage. It had been weeks since they had heard from Piffy. He was supposed to be in England hunting for Said. Cowsnofsky was betting the gumshoe was in Istanbul or Tahiti sunning himself on Joe’s frequent flier miles.

“No, he’s in England,” said the Professor. “This letter is birth-marked U. K.”

“So, what’s he up to?” asked Joe.

“Well, he’s doing what he said he was going to do,” said the Professor. “He’s stuffing himself with fish and chips and looking for Asma bint Marwan. Heh-heh! And look at the way he spells Asma! A-s-t-h-m-a. Asthma! Heh-heh!”

“That’s the way I spell it,” said Joe.

“What’s he have to say?” prompted Cowsnofsky.

“Well, let me read it,” said the Professor. He adjusted his spectacle, made a great display of shaking out the letter as if it were full of autumn leaves and at length began to read. “’Ka’b told me that if I wanted to find the soul of Yaser Abdel Said I should go to the Birmingham Central Mosque and look up Asthma bint Marwan. She would be my escort. I went to the mosque and asked for Asthma bint Marwan.” The Professor paused, rolled his eyes. “The poor deluded fool!” Then he continued.

“’I was lucky to get out of there in one piece. This Asthma bint Marwan isn’t any more popular with the Muslims in England than Ka’b was with Mohammed Atta and his playmate in Dallas…I’ll let you know as soon as I find Asthma and Said. Keep a stiff upper lip.’

“It’s signed Bernard Piffy,” said the Professor.

“Couldn’t we get that guy a computer?” suggested Cowsnofsky. “Snail mail takes forever. He might be in Madagascar by now.”

“No, no!” said Joe. “No computer—that’s out!”

“Asma bint Marwan has been dead 1,400 years,” mused the Professor. “She was a poet. The Shakespeare of the 7^th Century…the voice of moderation…her beauty and her intellectual brilliance were cosmic surges streaking through the obsidian darkness of the Arabian Peninsula! And she was quite the busybody. When she heard that the Prophet had sent his soldiers to kill Abu Afaq she raised a stink. She let loose with some poetry. Biting, sarcastic, though I can’t say whether it rhymes or not. ‘I despise you,’ she wrote, ‘Oh, you tribal people. You obey a stranger who is not from you. He’s not from any of your tribes. How can you expect good from the person who killed all your leaders?’ She was talking about Mohammed, of course. She wasn’t Lenny Bruce but the Prophet was taken aback. ‘Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?’ he asked. That night Umyar bin Uday went to the home of Asma bint Marwan where she slept with her young children and while she lay in bed with a suckling babe at her breast he slew her with violence aforethought. ‘I have killed Marwan,’ he announced. And Mohammed was pleased, not like Henry II who was devastated when he learned his knights had killed Thomas a Becket.”

“Well, I hope he doesn’t try to solve that one too,” said Joe. “I’m not made of money.”

One mystery at a time was enough for Piffy—more than enough; his investigation had come to a complete standstill. No one would talk to him, he had been thrown out of the Birmingham Central Mosque, the cop on the beat kept telling him to move on, his feet were killing him and he had spilled some goop on his spare pants and it wouldn’t come out. Nobody had ever heard of Asthma bint Marwan or would admit they had. He felt like Jethro Bodine with an empty crawdad bucket. Maybe if he took a couple of days off, relaxed a little, let his hair down. It was tough playing the hardboiled detective 24 hours a day. Mike Hammer could do it. But he was Bernard Piffy. He was more like Columbo in a clean trench coat. Yeah, that was it. Columbo.

He put a do-not-disturb sign on his door and away he went. He saw London Bridge, Old Bailey, Big Ben, Picadilly Circus, Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, Trafalgar Square, Fleet Street; Number Ten Downing Street and for ten dollars in chump change he got a peek at Andy Capp’s barstool. Wow! Andy Capp’s barstool! Wouldn’t Otis be jealous! And if someone could have shown him to the Champs Elysees he would have seen everything in one day! The next second day he rested—and then it got boring. Time begin to drag. He found a coffee shoppe he liked, ran an ad in the newspapers: Are You a Bint Marwan? If you are contact: B. Piffy at the Red Dragon, and then settled down at a corner table near the entrance of said coffee shoppe and waited.

And waited…and waited…

He waited two weeks, one day and thirty-five minutes and then Inspector Clouseau showed up. Imagine! Clouseau! 

He sauntered over to Clouseau’s table. “Clouseau!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Clouseau looked Piffy up and down as if he were a Gunnery Sergeant inspecting Beetle Bailey. “I am looking for a reum,” he said.

“A reum?” echoed Piffy.

“A reum,” repeated Clouseau. He gave Piffy a last look as if to certify what he had seen, then got up abruptly and left the Red Dragon.

Well, if that didn’t beat all! The same thing had happened in Dallas. Clouseau had come in out of the blue looking for Ka’b and now here he was looking for a reum. There was something strange here! He couldn’t help feeling he was being set up. This was getting curiouser and curiouser. He signaled the waitress. “Let’s have a little more coffee over here,” he said. He would have to think this thing out.

The waitress sauntered over to Piffy’s table. “Sure, Yank,” she said. She seemed to be sneering. She slopped coffee over the plastic tablecloth and the side of the cup. Was it studied indifference or criminal neglect? Why did he always get the waitress with an attitude?

“Ever hear of someone name Asthma bint Marwan?” he asked.

The waitress stiffened. She was looking toward the door. “The ‘Asians’ are here!” she hissed. She turned and hurried back to the lunch counter.

The hair stood up on the back of Piffy’s head. The Asians! It was the boys from Dallas, Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour! He would have recognized them anywhere. They barged into the Red Dragon just as they had barged into the hash house in Dallas. Narrow-faced, thin-lipped, beady-eyed…why did they call them Asians? They weren’t Asians. Charlie Chan was an Asian. Chiang Kai-Shek was as an Asian. Hirohito was an Asian. Hop Sing was an Asian. These guys were Middle-Easterners.

Atta strode briskly to the lunch counter. “Have you seen Asma bint Marwan?” he asked the waitress.

The color had drained from Alice's face. “Don’t know any Asma bint Marwan,” she croaked, “but the Yank over there was asking about her.” And she pointed at Piffy.

“Thanks a lot!” mumbled Piffy.

Atta, with Hanjour trailing in his wake, passed close to Piffy on their way out. “Allah akbar!” Atta smiled at Piffy.

“Bonjour,” said Piffy.

“Will you be staying with us in the dar al-Harb?” asked Atta.

Piffy tried another language. “Nein, nein,”” he said.

Atta bowed. “Bismilla ir-Rahman ir-Rahim,” he said.

“Shalom…shalom,” mumbled Piffy. He was struggling. “Shalom Aleichem.” Why the hell did he say that? It didn’t make sense. But it didn’t matter; the ‘Asians’ were gone out across the sidewalk and to only God knows where, followed by an aroma of cordite and phosgene. Ugh!

Well, this was it! There would be no more fooling around. If he didn’t’ find this Asthma broad soon he never would.

The waitress was staring at him. “Scared, honey?” she asked.

“What do you think?” he said grimly.

“You pour any more coffee in that sugar bowl and I’m going to come over there and box your ears!” she said.

Okay, maybe he was a little scared. But these guys were supposed to be dead. Didn’t anybody else know that? It wasn’t a jungle out there—it was hell’s anteroom. Yeah, but he was Bernard Piffy, wasn’t he? Yeah…