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)

He wasn’t the first naked ten-year-old boy the prostitute with the heart of gold had ever seen, if indeed she was a prostitute, but it was the first time she had seen a naked ten-year-old boy that was supposed to be a girl and she recognized the difference right off. She was surprised, that’s all—not flabbergasted, not astounded, not astonished merely surprised.

Piffy, on the other hand, was as close to being totally, completely, unreservedly and incontinently discombobulated as he had ever been. To say he was mortified wouldn’t have been close. He grabbed an armful of Algernon’s clothes and tried to hide behind them but there was too much Piffy for the amount of clothes and the messages his brain was sending to his hands weren’t getting through and he was being undone by his own excitement.

“Well, well,” said Yasmin. “You really had me fooled. Tell me, dearie, who are you running from? Tariq Ramadan or Anjem Choudary? They say there’s a hot little boy for every Mad Mullah in London.”

“I…I…” mumbled Piffy. He turned away from her His heart was thumping furiously. He tried to steady himself. Why couldn’t Algernon have been six-foot-six instead of four-foot-four—the dirty rat!

He tried to shove his foot into a pant’s leg, lost his balance and fell flat on his face. If he could have, he would have laid there for the rest of his life but he had to get up. He made it to one knee before Yasmin caught him by the hand. She pulled him to his feet and gave him a great big hug—yes, a great big hug, crushing him to her bosom so fiercely it left him not only breathless but as giddy as a Boy Scout at a Hugh Hefner garden party.

She sat him on a chair. “Now, dearie,” she said, “tell me what’s going on and don’t make up any stories. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

Piffy gulped. He couldn’t tell her the truth—she wouldn’t believe it. She would think he was lying. He looked at the floor. “Do you know Asma bint Marwan?” he mumbled.

When she didn’t say anything, he looked up at her out of the corners of his eyes. And there was Algernon A. Algernon behind her with something in his hand—a rag of some sort. He lurched to his feet but he was too late. Algernon clamped the rag over Yasmin’s mouth. Piffy could smell chloroform. He watched helplessly as Yasmin sank to the floor unconscious.

Well, this was a fine how-do-you-do! He looked at Algernon, at Yasmin, at the pile of clothes on the floor. Right then and there he made up his mind: He wasn’t leaving Yasmin’s flat dressed as a girl! He made a mad dash for the pile of clothes. He grabbed Algernon’s pants but he was a man trapped in the body of a ten-year-old boy and the imp was as strong as a demon, stronger than a mere jinn; almost as strong as a gremlin from Hell! He never had a chance.

“Darn it!” he wailed.

There was a commotion in the corridor and someone started banging on the door. “Are you all right, Yasmin?” a voice called.

Algernon quickly locked and barred the door. He looked at Piffy. “Put your clothes on,” he said. “We’re getting out of here!”

“I’m not gong dressed as a girl!” pouted Piffy. “Give me some of your clothes!”

“I thought we settled that?” said Algernon. “Do you want to go naked?”

Piffy eyed the bustier and the French maid costume. No way! It would only draw more attention to him. He dressed as hurriedly as he could in the clothes Aisha had lent him. He would get Algernon for this…he would get Asma bint Marwan for this too…and Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour and Yaser Abdel Said…

They left through the window and within a matter of seconds were zooming through the fog-shrouded streets of London in Algernon’s 1927 Hudson Essex. He had expected a Duesenberg. They could have been Bonnie and Clyde—or Clyde and Clyde. That would have been fine—much better than Barney Oldfield and the late Princess Diana, yeah, a blind Barney Oldfield and an about to be dead Bernard Piffy!

Maybe it was the first near miss or the pedestrian Algernon almost ran over at an intersection. Maybe Piffy should have noticed it as soon as he got into the car—Algernon could scarcely see over the steering wheel. Another car zipped by altogether too close for comfort.

“I think you had better let me drive,” said Piffy.

“You? Drive?” scoffed Algernon. “You’re a kid. Kids don’t drive cars.”

“They do too!” said Piffy.

“Not boy kids that wear dresses,” said Algernon.

“I’m an adult trapped in the body of a ten-year-old,” said Piffy. “I can drive.”

Algernon didn’t answer.

“I can drive better than you,” challenged Piffy. “Anybody can drive better than you. At least I can see over the steering wheel.”

That wasn’t smart. Algernon took his eyes off the road to focus them on his obstreperous passenger. “Hush!” he warned. “Driving is taxing enough without having to put up with someone like you. One more word, young lady, and I’ll take you over my knee!”

“Look out!” screamed Piffy. Algernon swerved just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a truck.

Piffy made the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,” he said.

Algernon’s eyes were back on the road as the 1927 Hudson Essex barreled through the night. “Did you say something?” he asked.

“I’m praying to St. Anthony,” said Piffy.

“St. Anthony?” echoed Algernon.

“Yes, to St. Anthony. I’m praying to St. Anthony to come and kick the crap out of you like he did that time behind the bar,” said Piffy.

Algernon remembered that particular incident very well. It still stuck in his craw. “That pot-bellied, washed-up old has-been?” he snarled. “The Patron Saint of Lost Items? What a joke! He couldn’t find rooster poop in a henhouse.”

“He could too!” said Piffy.

“You ought to get a real patron saint,” said Algernon. “Someone like Wenceslaus or Bernardine. Yeah, Bernardine! Maybe she could cure you of wearing dresses. But Saint Anthony…”

“What about St. Anthony?” someone said from the back seat.

Algernon glanced at the rearview mirror. There wasn’t supposed to be anybody in the back. He wasn’t running a taxi service and the last stowaway had three bullet holes and twelve stab wounds in him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Piffy looked into the back seat. He would have recognized the tonsure, the apple dumpling cheeks and the little potbelly anywhere. “It’s St. Anthony!” he gasped.

Saint Anthony smiled. The glow lit up the car like the noonday sun. “I don’t like the way your friend is driving,” he said to Piffy. “So, if you don’t mind, I’ll take the wheel.” And he reached into the front seat.

Piffy was horrified! Maybe he shouldn’t have prayed so hard! The last thing he had wanted to do was start a war over a steering wheel—but, apparently, that is what he had done and it would be a hot war too.

St. Anthony put one hand on the steering wheel and with the other reached for the aspergillum that was dangling from a cord on his belt. Algernon had no intention of submitting meekly. He kept one hand on the steering wheel—with the other he dug a small cat-o’-nine-tails from one of the car’s convenience pockets and began flailing at St. Anthony with as much gusto as the narrow confines of the front seat provided.

“Oh, dear!” said St. Anthony. “I didn’t know this Guardian Angel business could be so stressful!”

“Give up, Kuffar?” screeched Algernon.

St. Anthony hit the imp on the head with his aspergillum so forcefully that Algernon lost his grip on the steering wheel and the car went out of control. It veered across the median and struck a parked car—or maybe it was a fence or a wall or a building. Piffy never did find out. He was stunned by the impact and tumbled into the back seat. By the time he regained his senses Algernon and St. Anthony were long gone and a dozen Bobbies had surrounded the 1927 Hudson Essex which was lying on its side beneath a street lamp. Whistles were blowing, lights were flashing on and off and a large crowd was gathering.

“Come out with your hands up!” someone shouted.

Piffy crawled out on his hands and knees. It could have been worse—he could have been wearing the bustier or the French maid costume.

(To be continued)

Oh, yes, he had went and done it this time! No one in the history of law enforcement had ever attempted a more ridiculous hair-brained scheme—not Inspector Clouseau; not Maxwell Smart, not Tracer Bullet; not Deputy Dawg. It was a new low—for him, for his profession, for mankind. What on earth had possessed him to think he could pull off something so incredibly stupid? Asma bint Marwan? Yeah—Asma bint Marwan!

So here he was, racing down a London street, pursued by only God knew whom, an adult male trapped in the body of a ten-year-old boy dressed in girl’s clothes, without a cent to his name and in desperate need of a trip to the loo, my darling. And it wasn’t one of the better sections of London. Oh, no, not by a long shot. It was full of neon lights and low dives. Every building seemed to house a honky-tonk or a topless bar. He expected to see Willy Lump-lump or Foster Brooks or W. C. Fields step out of a sporting house arm in arm with Irma la Deuce singing, “For Piffy’s a jolly good fellow!” It was no place for a ten-year-old boy dressed as a girl! He began to wish he had chosen the pantyhose!

He was afraid to stop and ask for directions. The chances were he would be mugged—if not raped! Little Qrphan Annie had never had it this bad! He was puffing now, running out of breath. He saw a likely looking alley. The population had thinned considerably. Perhaps no one would notice him. He darted into the dank passageway. It was deserted!

He was hiking up his skirt when a door popped open directly in front of him and a woman in a low cut blouse blundered into him. She was young, blonde and buxom—with an accent on the blonde and buxom. Her breasts were smiling at him! He would have sworn to that in a court of law. Oh, yeah, there was more to this woman than any ten-year-old boy could behold at one time. And she was so close! He was falling in love! Yeah, sure, it was absurd but he was young and impressionable and the adult Bernard Piffy might as well have been a million miles away.

The blonde grabbed him by the arm—by then his skirt had fallen back to where it belonged.

“Allahu akbar!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here, dearie? A wee lass like you ought to be at home at this time of night.”

“I’m lost and I’m hungry,” said Piffy. It was the truth.

The blonde smiled. “Well, we’ll see about that,” she said. “Come with me.”

Piffy blinked. What incredible luck! A prostitute with a heart of gold! Maybe she would loan him a few squid. Or better yet, call a taxi. It would be ridiculous to expect her to take him to bed. He wouldn’t know what to do anyway.

She turned back into the building and started up a flight of stairs. Piffy followed as closely as he dared. Gosh almighty! She was beautiful—so blonde and so buxom.

She led him to a room at the end of a long corridor. “This is where I stay when I’m working,” she explained once they were safely ensconced in what turned out to be a well-appointed apartment. “Make yourself at home. I’m a pole-dancer. I work in the bar below. I’ll be back as soon as I’m done with my act. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.”

And she was gone! Piffy glanced around the apartment. Wow! This was keen! It was better than Harry Potter.

He went to the bathroom, did his business and then looked in the fridge. There was a lot of noise coming from below. Someone was singing the blues. A drum was beating. There was a picture of Omar Bakri Mohammed on the dinning room table. If that wasn’t bad enough there was one of Yasmin Fostok next to it.  Piffy should have been able to put two and two together but right now he was more ten-year-old boy than he was Bernard Piffy private detective. He didn’t make the connection.

It wasn’t long before he got the urge to move on—to vacate the premises, to try his luck somewhere else. He looked around for some clothes he might appropriate. He didn’t find much—a bustier, a garter belt, a French maid costume; nothing he could wear in the street that might prevent him from being raped by the first pervert that might come along.

He should call somebody to come and get him, that’s what he should do. But whom did he know aside from Asma bint Marwan? There was Inspector Clouseau and James Bond. He might as well call Rosie O’Donnell or Roseanne Barr.

And then he thought of Algernon A. Algernon. Yeah—Algernon A. Algernon! Who better to call than Abu Afaq's London agent? But what was Algernon’s number? He remembered seeing a telephone directory in the corridor. He would give it a try.

There was no one in the corridor and no Algernon A. Algernon in the phone book. That was odd. There had to be an Algernon A. Algernon. He looked again and again. A door squeaked open behind him and a large man stumbled into the corridor. Piffy closed his eyes and pressed his face against the phone book, trying to make himself as small and as inconsequential as possible as the man staggered past mumbling incoherently. Did ten-year-old boys dressed in girls clothes have to go through this every day? Gosh! It was frightening!

When the drunk had disappeared down the stairs, he opened his eyes and there in front of his nose in the phone book was Algernon A. Algernon! It was a miracle! He ripped the page from the directory and hurried back to Yasmin’s apartment.

“Algernon, here,” said Algernon A. Algernon. Thank God it wasn’t Lily Tomlin!

“It’s Piffy,” said Piffy. “Can you come and get me?” 

“Piffy? Piffy?” mused Algernon. “Of the Chichester Piffys or Bernard Piffy?”

“Bernard Piffy,” said Piffy.

“Okay,” said Algernon. “Where are you and what’s up?”

“I need your help,” said Piffy. He was desperate. “Look, Algernon—it’s hard to explain but bint Marwan turned me into a ten-year-old boy and I socked a kid in a McDonalds and the cops are after me.”

“Is that all?” said Algernon. “You called me for that? You should see Social Services—or call the League of Nations.”

“It’s the United Nations,” said Piffy.

“Since when?” said Algernon.

“Since—“ began Piffy. He paused. This was going nowhere. “Dog-gone-it, Algernon, bint Marwan talked me into enrolling in a Madrassas and now Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour are after me.”

“I’ve heard that story before,” said Algernon. “It serves you right for getting mixed up with bint Marwan and enrolling in a Madrassas.” He paused. “Say? You’re not calling collect, are you?”

“I escaped from the Madrassas by dressing as a girl,” said Piffy. “I’m hiding out in a pole-dancer’s apartment.”

“A pole-dancer?” said Algernon. “Just how much have you had to drink?”

“Look, you bull-headed little twirp,” snarled Piffy. “The man that owns the Madrassas is none other than Yaser Abdel Said!”

“There are many Yaser Abdel Saids,” said Algernon.

“Yeah?” said Piffy. “This Yaser Abdel Said is a Keeper of the Sacred Fleas. He carries the secret code that can release the King Flea from its cage!”

“Honest?” said Algernon.

“Would I lie to you?” said Piffy.

“Yes, but I’ll be right there anyway,” said Algernon. And with that he hung up.

“Wait! Wait!” cried Piffy. Good grief! He hadn’t told him where he was! He grabbed the page from the telephone directory. Maybe he could catch the rascal before he left for God only knew where! But, alas, no matter how hard he tried he could not find Algernon’s name on the page he had ripped from the phone book—not on the front, not on the back, not anywhere! What in tarnations was going on here?

Maybe he ought to turn himself in to the police—throw himself at the mercy of the law. What could they do to a ten-year-old boy? Yeah, what? Well—for one thing, they could grill him. They would ask him questions—a lot of questions. They could bring Richard Cheney over from the States to water-board him. He wouldn’t like that.

It was then that he heard a noise at the window! Good Grief! Someone was trying to break into the apartment! Maybe it was Atta and Hanjour! He looked around for a weapon—a stool, a lamp, anything.

He needn’t have bothered. It was Algernon A. Algernon. Where he had come from was anyone’s guess, but there he was, slicing a hole in the window with a glasscutter. Piffy raised the window and the four-and-a-half foot imp slipped into the pole-dancer’s apartment like an ogre into a child’s nightmare.

“You can leave the window open,” said Algernon. “It may come in handy on the way out.” He looked Piffy up and down. “You are Piffy, I presume?”

“Who the hell else could I be?” said Piffy.

“Nice disguise,” said Algernon. “I saw an outfit just like it at Bloomingdale’s. Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. You’re just the right age for short skirts.”

Piffy glowered at the imp. “Very funny,” he said. “You’re a regular George Costanza

Algernon set the brief case he had been carrying on the dining room table.

“What have you got in there?” Piffy asked suspiciously.

“Aside from Molotov cocktails and my Junior G-Man badge,” said Algernon. “My whip.”

“You carry a whip in your brief case?”

The imp glared at Piffy as if he were a mere ten-year-old. “Do you know how many sadomasochists there are per square inch in this part of London? I wouldn’t be able to get ten feet without somebody mistaking me for the Marquis de Sade ” He took the whip from its case, gave it a trial run, then let the loose end trail to the floor.

Piffy eyed the brief case suspiciously. “What else have you got in there?” he asked.

“Mace… chloroform…Uncle Ben’s Converted Rise…and D-Con,” said Algernon. He glanced round the apartment. “Now where is this Yaser Abdel Said?” he asked.

“I would imagine he’s at his Madrassas,” said Piffy.

“Okay, we’ll go there,” said Algernon. “I want to meet him while the savage juices are still flowing freely.”  And to demonstrate just how savage they were, the whip shot out, snatched a fly that had been circling a light bulb in the kitchen and drew it into the dining room.

Piffy grimaced.

The imp removed what was left of the fly from the end of the whip and took it into the bathroom to flush it. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here…”

By now Piffy was having second thoughts. Maybe he should have called Clouseau—or Whip Wilson or Lash LaRue. He would have been a lot better off. He was playing with fire. It was people like Algernon that had given Ygor a bad name; he was to Piffy like hemlock had been to Socrates. Why on earth had he called the wretch? Had he lost his mind? Hadn’t he learned the first time? He tugged at his skirt. He felt incredibly vulnerable—like a ten-year-old girl! He didn’t want to go back to that darn Madrassas. He wanted to go home! He wanted to go back to the States, back to Mayberry County, back to throwing drunks into the tank, back to baseball and soda pop!

Algernon brought him out of his reverie. “Hey!’ said the imp. He was still in the bathroom. “There’s hot water! I think I’ll take a shower!”

To say Piffy was thunderstruck would have been to put it mildly. “A shower?” he gasped. “Here? Right now?”

“Why not?” said Algernon. “I haven’t had a decent shower in months. And you know what they say—cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

“But— “

“It’ll only take a few minutes. Don’t have hot water in my flat. Amuse yourself for a couple of minutes. Watch SpongBob SquarePants—whatever you kids do.”

It was no use arguing—what good would it have done? The man was impossible. Piffy would have cried if he could. If he hadn’t been wearing a dress he would have marched right into the bathroom and bopped the little rat-bag on the head.

“I think I’ll soak for a few minutes first,” said Algernon, “If it’s all right with you.”

It wasn’t but it didn’t matter. There came the sound of running water, then a short silence, followed by some vigorous splashing, then silence and more splashing. Piffy peeked in through the door. The shower curtain was drawn around the tub. Algernon’s clothes were lying in a pile in the middle of the floor. Did he dare? They would be a tight fit. “Are you done yet?” he asked.

“Give me another five minutes,” said Algernon from behind the curtain.

Piffy slipped into the bathroom. Five minutes would be enough. There was a diabolical gleam in his eye—yes, a diabolical gleam! He swept up Algernon’s clothes and rushed back into the living room. The hell with Algernon; the hell with the prostitute with the heart of gold; he was leaving this God-forsaken place and he was leaving now, this instant, even if it had to be as Algernon A. Algernon!

He had just stripped off Aisha’s clothes and was standing naked in the middle of the room, trembling, when the door to the hallway popped open and in stepped the prostitute with the heart of gold—and that was when the screaming commenced!

(To be continued)

If only he had been Mike Hammer or Hulk Hogan or even George Costanza, he might have had a chance, but he was Bernard Piffy—worse yet, a ten-year-old Bernard Piffy, a puny little kid who would have had trouble handling Shirley Temple on the deck of the Good Ship Lollipop, and here he was in the clutches of King Kong’s Siamese twin, the notorious Yaser Abdel Said. At least he thought it was Said. And it was all thanks to Asma bint Marwan and the latest of her hair-brained schemes! He would be lucky if he got out of this alive!

And then he got angry—very angry. This behemoth was Said—the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the SOB he had come all the way to England to corral for the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club, the rat-bag who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage. He didn’t have to take this crap from him! He was Bernard Piffy!

As he came out from under the bed, he rolled over, got one leg free and drove it into Said’s groin. It felt good! Said screamed, grabbed for Piffy, lost his balance and fell. His head struck the edge of the bed. It went thunk—a good solid thunk, like a blackjack hitting the back of a drunk’s head. It was music to Piffy’s ears. Said was incapacitated—at least temporarily.

It must have been self-preservation that took over. Piffy yanked an extension cord from a wall socket. His mind was racing madly. He knew what he had to do but did he remember how to do it? Of course, he did—it was something he would never forget! In less than ten seconds, using the extension cord as a pigging string, he had tied one of Said’s wrists to his ankles! Then he found a scarf and tied the other wrist to the extension cord! Gosh, it was easy. He stuffed a stocking into Said’s mouth and the job was done.

Aisha was dumbfounded. She could not believe her eyes. A trickle of blood was coming from the corner of her mouth. “How—how—“ she began.

Piffy grinned. He was tempted to take a bow. “I was Mayberry County Junior Calf-Roping Champion three years in a row,” he said proudly.

Aisha looked at her father and then at Piffy. “What do we do now?” she whispered hoarsely.

It was a good question, one the Judges at the Mayberry County Junior Calf-Roping Championships had never asked. There was no Plan B and Said—he was sure it was Said—was beginning to stir. If he didn’t vacate the premises muy pronto there would be hell to pay and it wouldn’t be on the installment plan. “Is there any way out of here but downstairs?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

Well, that took care of Plan C…and D and E and F. If this were Murder She Wrote or Mission Impossible…maybe, but this was reality—damn stinking reality. How in the hell was he to get his butt past Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour in the lobby before Said began to make a scene?

How? If only he had a gun! Yeah…a gun! Ah, but who was he kidding—he wasn’t Mike Hammer; he wasn’t even Maxwell Smart. He was doomed!

“I know!’ said Aisha. She went to a dresser and pulled open a drawer. “Put these on!” she said, tossing one garment after another in Piffy’s direction.

Like any normal ten-year-old boy, Piffy was aghast. “A dress?” he said, poking at the clothes piling up in front of him. “And pantyhose?”

“Hurry!” she urged. “Hurry! They could come up here any minute!”

Piffy scowled. But who was he to argue? He didn’t have any macho reputation to uphold. He was ten years old—nobody would know. “Are you going to turn your back?” he asked.

She smiled and turned away.

He stripped off his clothes. He was sweating profusely. He was terribly excited. Pantyhose! Ten-year-olds didn’t wear pantyhose—not ten-year old boys. The very idea! Aisha didn’t have to be this authentic, did she? He wasn’t going to the Senior Prom! But there wasn’t much time. He slipped on a dress and pulled a pair of panties up over his legs—maybe he should have done it in the reverse order but what the heck did he know. He could try the pantyhose the next time.

Then it occurred to him—what about his head? He would have to do something about his head! He couldn’t go strutting past Atta and Hanjour looking like Yul Brynner!

Fortunately, Aisha was ahead of him.  She had a wig—one of her mother’s wigs—and in a few seconds he was appropriately coiffed. Okay, so he wasn’t Shirley Temple, but he could have passed for Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer’s twin sister.

“Let me do the talking,” said Aisha

They went down the stairs to the lobby. Hanjour was sprawled in a leather chair studying the Qur’an. Atta was pacing back and forth. He scowled at Piffy, then at Aisha. “Who’s your friend?” he said, nodding at Piffy.

Aisha panicked. Her mind went blank. “Martina Navratilova?” she said hesitantly.

“A Kuffar!” grumbled Atta. He looked at his watch. “What’s keeping your father?” he demanded.

Piffy smirked. “He’s all tied up,” he said. Oh, yes, a wise guy to the very end!

Atta glared at Piffy. “Little Kuffar pig,” he mumbled. “We’ll take that out of you one of these days.”

Aisha swallowed. She had regained her composure. “Papa will be with you in about ten minutes,” she said.

It would be sooner than that—a lot sooner. A bellow of rage came from Aisha’s room. Then something hit the floor, something heavy and the building seemed to shake. Atta and Hanjour exchanged glances and Atta started immediately up the stairs. Hanjour put aside the Qur’an, smiled at the ‘girls’ and followed Atta. Aisha and Piffy slipped though the door and out into the street. They would have two or three minutes at most.

“Where do we go?” whispered Aisha. If she wasn’t terrified, she was close to it.

Piffy shrugged. “To McDonalds?” he suggested. Where else would a ten-year-old on the lam go…to Countdown with Keith Olbermann? He might as well go to the Twilight Zone—there wasn’t that much difference.

“Do you have any money?” she asked.

And that was another thing. His money was in his pants and his pants were in Aisha’s room with the rest of his boy clothes. It was fast becoming apparent he hadn’t thought this thing through but he hadn’t expected to make his debut as London’s newest drag queen for at least another twenty or thirty years. Boy, was Asma bint Marwan going to get an earful!

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got some.”

He looked at her. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked. “Your—ah, dad is gonna be awful mad.”

“I will stay with my sister for a few days,” she said. She was close to tears.

They walked in silence for a while. It was getting dark. They were nearing a McDonalds. It was easy enough to do, start out in any direction and in ten blocks there would be a McDonalds.

“Do you have anyone?” she asked.

Piffy grimaced. It was not an easy question. He was an old man in the body of a ten-year-old boy, but he had someone. Oh, he had someone all right! “Yes,” he said slowly, almost harshly. “ My mommy—Asthma—she will come and get me.” And she had damn well better!

Aisha ordered the Chicken McNuggets, Piffy had the Fish Fingers. They found a table near the entrance.

“So your mother’s gong to come and get you?” said Aisha. She was making conversion.

“Yes,” he said. He couldn’t tell her the truth.

“You act so grownup,” she said.

Grownup? He wanted to scream—boy, did he ever want to scream! That would be grownup! He felt as naked as a porno queen in Aisha’s dress and her panties were riding up like a seaman climbing the rigging of a sailing ship that had just hit an iceberg. Good grief, what if he had to go to the bathroom? Or the loo or whatever it was they called it? He glanced toward the window. It was getting darker by the minute. Maybe that would help. He could go back to his apartment. It would be a long walk. Maybe he could take a bus. Maybe Aisha would lend him a few squid. Or was it quid? Why didn’t they just use nickels and dimes and be done with it. He stood up. “Aisha,” he began, “could you…”

She was looking right past him at someone who had just come in through the door. Piffy wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

A voice boomed in his ear. “Who’s your friend, Aisha?” it said.

The words cut through Piffy like a knife! It was Goober—Goober from the Madrassas! What was he doing here? Of all the rotten luck! He was afraid to turn around but if he wanted to get out of McDonalds in the next ten seconds he had no choice.

“Hey, you’re cute!” said Goober. “What’s your name?”

Piffy looked at the floor. Maybe the wretch wouldn’t recognize him in his disguise. “I’m Martina Navritalova,” he mumbled.

“No, you’re not,” smiled Goober. “Navritalova is an old-maid tennis player. You’re not a tennis player—if you were a tennis player you would be wearing a short skirt.”

“He does too play tennis!” said Aisha. “Don’t you, Martina?” Okay, she was trying to be helpful.

Goober scowled. He looked Piffy straight in the face. Something wasn’t right here. He could sense it. “You don’t even look like a girl,” he said.

“I am too a girl!” said Piffy. He didn’t think he would ever say that.

“He is too a girl!’ said Aisha.

“Prove it!” said Goober. “Show me your underwear!”

“I don’t have to show you anything!” said Piffy.

Now Goober was having second thoughts. Maybe she was a girl. She acted like a girl. She looked like a girl. He would find out! It was his duty as a Muslim. No girl dared talk to a future Mujahideen like this little snip was walking to him!

Goober moved so quickly he caught Piffy by surprise. He grabbed Piffy where no decent girl wants to be grabbed in public by so despicable a creature. It was then that Goober realized with whom he was dealing. “Allahu akbar!” he shrieked. “It’s Piffy!”

That was when Piffy hit his assailant a blow any ten-year-old would have been proud of. Goober went down like the Titanic—only quicker and with a lot less noise. He was unconscious before he hit the floor. There were shouts and cries of alarm and then Piffy was out the door and down the street into the glowering dark, dressed as a girl, without a cent to his name and not the slightest idea of where he was going!

(To be continued)

Piffy sat there. What else could he do? He might as well have been glued to that gol’ durned prayer rug! He was as helpless as a jackrabbit with a broken leg at the bottom of a prairie dog hole thanks to Asma bint Marwan. What on earth had made her think they could pull off such a ridiculous stunt?

He glared at the kid who had singled him out. “You little rat-bag—“ he began. Then he remembered the kid was only ten-years-old. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Wait till I tell your mother!” he hissed.

Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour, followed by the instructor, were hurrying across the room. Piffy glanced at the exit. It was ten miles away. He would never make it. If he weren’t ten years old he might have a chance! He looked at the kid standing beside him. “I’ll get you for this, Goober!” he hissed.

That didn’t calm Goober down a one bit. “He’s Bernard Piffy!” he squealed. “He’s Bernard Piffy!” He was actually jumping up and down.

Atta stopped directly in front of Piffy. He seemed ten foot tall! “Are you Bernard Piffy?” he demanded.

Piffy stuck out his chin. “Who wants to know?” he said. His own words calmed him. What did he have to worry about? Nothing—that’s what! They didn’t know him from Adam! He had been reacting like a ten-year-old kid—like a dumb, stupid ten-year-old kid!

Atta scowled. He glanced at Hanjour. “What do you think?” he said.

Hanjour shrugged. “It’s a kid,” he said.

Atta looked Piffy over carefully, pursed his lips; stepped to one side to get a different angle. He shook his head. “Allahu akbar,” he muttered. “He looks like Piffy; except that Piffy is an adult and this is a mere child.”

“He sings songs about a mockingbird,” piped up Goober.

Atta looked at Hanjour. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Maybe some jinn turned Piffy into this child,” suggested Hanjour

“Could this be Piffy’s son?” mused Atta.

“Why don’t we ask him?” said Hanjour.

It there was anything Piffy was prepared for it was a question and answer session. He had rehearsed his phoney background with bint Marwan for hours on end; he could repeat it in his sleep. He was Christopher Odin Junior. He was from Aden; his dad was a metallurgy professor; he had a cat named Poobah.

After about a dozen questions Atta and Hanjour lost interest. They drifted to the other side of the room where they engaged in a quiet but earnest conversation. Piffy let out a sigh of relief. He glared at Goober. “You little rat!” he hissed. “I’ll fix you for this!”

The instructor joined Atta and Hanjour for a short chat and it wasn’t long before the instructor ordered Goober to join them. Goober must have thought he was testifying before the Supreme Soviet. His face turned three shades of red and his voice rose and fell, alternating between a whisper and the screech of a hawk. He pointed in the general direction of Piffy once or twice. Atta and Honjour listened for a few minutes and then dismissed the brat. They had a few more words with the instructor, told him to keep his eyes open and then they left.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. By 4 o’clock Piffy had made up his mind—he would not return to Ahmed’s Madrassas School. It would be too risky. It had been a hair-brained scheme from the start. He blamed bint Marwan. It would have been better if she had changed him into a ninety-year-old geezer and had sent him to a nursing home.

He waited until everyone had left, then he slipped out a side door. That was smart! They were waiting for him—Goober and three or four other kids.

“Jew boy!” snarled Goober.

One of them had a switch in his hand; another had a club of some sort. Piffy had been in a few brawls. He knew if he turned and ran they would be after him like a chicken on a June bug. He would get a first-class whipping and the King would need all his men and all his horses to put him back together again. But Piffy was a tough little rascal—when he was ten years old he played fullback for the Mayberry Junior High football team. And Grandpa Piffy had taught him how to crack walnuts on his head. Grandpa Piffy had also taught him what to do when he was in a tough spot. He was to do like Grandpa Piffy’s grand-pappy had done at Chancellorsville—let out the old Rebel yell and charged straight at them damn Yankees. And that is what Bernard Piffy did. He charged straight at them. He knocked one of them down, trampled right over him and took a blow to the shoulder. Something glanced off his head.

But he was fast—lightning fast. He made it around a corner before they knew what had hit them but he stumbled and fell. He managed to scramble on his hands and knees behind a garbage can as they charged around the corner and continued on down the alley. They would be back in a minute. He grimaced. It was tough being a ten-year-old in the 21^st Century!

A voice yelled, “In here! In here!”

Piffy got to his feet. A girl was standing in an open doorway gesturing to him. He hurried through the door and she slammed it shut. He was safe—for now.

He smiled. He had recognized her. “You’re the girl from McDonalds,” he said.

“My name is Aisha,” she said.

“I’m Bernard Piffy,” he said. “I’m ten years old.” His head ached and he had torn his pants, but, gosh, she was cute!

“Some of my people can be very cruel,” she said.

“I guess I irritated them,” he said. Gosh! She wasn’t just cute—she was super-cute!

“I heard you singing at McDonalds,” she said. “You have a very nice voice.”

“Thank you,” he said. It was the first time he had heard that since—since he was seven years old! “Don’t you listen to them, Bernard,” his grandmother had said. “They said the same thing about Andy Devine. You’ve got a nice voice. Now let me give you a great big hug.” He was blushing—like some dopey ten-year-old kid! Then he remembered—he was a dopey ten-year-old kid, at least physically. He had better get a grip on himself.

“Could you teach me the words to your mockingbird song?’ she asked.

“Sure,” he said eagerly.

“Let’s go to my room where we won’t be disturbed,” she said.

He followed her down a corridor, through a large entrance lobby and up a flight of stairs to a second-story room. He could get in big trouble for this—but he was only ten years old, wasn’t he, an adult in a child’s body? But what would a judge say? This was ridiculous! What was he doing here? Oh, yeah, he was hiding from a bunch of bullies that wanted to beat the dhimmi bejesus out of him—thanks to bint Marwan and her hair-brained schemes! He would give her an earful when he saw her again—if ever. In the meantime he was alone with a pretty little girl. If he wasn’t in heaven, it was close. The minutes flew by

He taught Aisha the words to Mockingbird Hill.

“Tra la la, twiddle-dee dee-dee, There’s peace and good will and You’re welcome as the flowers on Mockingbird Hill.”

She had a lovely voice. Alongside of her he sounded like Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer with a bad case of laryngitis. But she was sad, so sad, and the more she sang the sadder she became. Then she started to cry.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. Maybe it was the song. But it was such a happy song. Girls! He didn’t understand girls! He put his arm around her to comfort her. She winced.

“My father beats me,” she said. She showed him the welts on her back. “He beats with me with an electricity cable for being a bad Muslim.”

Piffy scowled. This wasn’t good. He was getting angry. “Who is your father?” he demanded.

“My father is Ahmad al-Mohammed,” she said. “He owns the Madrassas.”

“What?” said Piffy.

“He owns the Madrassas. We live in one half of the building and the Madrassas is the other half.” She shivered. “If he knew you were here—in this room—he would be furious. He has a terrible temper.”

“But he’s on vacation, isn’t he?” said Piffy. Something was curdling in his stomach. Dracula was climbing out of his coffin. He could sense it.

“Yes,” she said. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “He will be back soon. Maybe you had better leave.”

They left Aisha’s room. The mockingbirds were silent now, perhaps forever, as they moved down the corridor to where a low balustrade overlooked the entrance lobby.

They were too late. Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour and a third man were in the lobby. Aisha and Piffy crouched out of sight behind the balustrade. The three men were talking loudly as if they were having a disagreement of some sort. Piffy peered cautiously over the top of the balustrade to see what was going on. The third man—the one he had never seen before—turned to look in his direction. Piffy’s mouth dropped open. Good grief! It was Yaser Abdel Said! He would have recognized him anywhere! “It’s him!” he gasped. “It’s Yaser Abdel Said!”

Aisha peeped over the balustrade. “No,” she said. “That’s not Yaser Abdel Said. That’s my father and his friends—Sheikh Atta and Sheikh Hanjour.”

Piffy grimaced. It didn’t much matter anymore—Yaser Abdel Said or Aisha’s father—was staring straight at them. They had been discovered! They ran as fast as they could to Aisha’s room and slammed the door shut!

It was not the smartest move in the world—they were trapped! But where else could they have gone? The Vatican? By now Piffy was as terrified as a ten-year-old could get. There were no windows, no closets—no drapes. There was nowhere to hide. Frantic with excitement, he crawled under the bed.

Ahmad—or Yaser Abdel Said—thundered into the room like the Prophet bearing down on the last surviving Quraysh. “Harlot!” he screamed. “Harlot!’ He hit Aisha a terrible blow that sent her tumbling across the room; then he saw Piffy’s feet sticking out from under the bed. “Kuffar pig! Defiler of Muslim virtue!” he screamed. He grabbed Piffy by the ankles and dragged the kicking and squalling 10-year-old out from under the bed. There would be the devil to pay!

(To be continued)

The transformation couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. He didn’t know what he had been afraid of. He didn’t feel any different than he had before. He was still Bernard Piffy, the same old insouciant unflappable world-renowned private eye on the trail of Yaser Abdel Said—at least that is what they thought at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club and that would have to do. He glanced at Asma bint Marwan. She seemed a lot taller than she had before—more formidable.

“It didn’t work,” he said.

Bint Marwan smiled. “Take a look in the mirror,” she said.

Piffy glanced at the mirror over the bureau. Good Grief! His mouth sagged in amazement! He would have fallen if she hadn’t caught him by the elbow! She steadied him as he gaped at the mirror. “That thing—that thing in the mirror—“ he croaked, “that’s me?”

Oh, it was him all right .It was Bernard Piffy but not the Bernard Piffy he had grown comfortable with the past thirty-forty years. He swallowed. He had forgotten how much he had looked like Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer of The Little Rascals. Not a bad looking kid, but he was so small, so little, so tiny. He felt vulnerable. It was hard to believe he had ever been so young. It was scary! He looked like a kid dressed in his dad’s clothes. But it couldn’t be! He clumped across the room in shoes several sizes too large for his feet. He wanted to say, “This is another fine mess you have gotten me into,” but he was afraid she might turn him into Stanley Laurel.

He looked at his feet, glanced at the mirror. “Okay,” he muttered. “What do we do now?”

“We sign you up for Ahmed’s Madrassas School,” she said, “and you steal the secret code that controls the King Flea.”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” he said.

She smiled sweetly. “And then we find out where Yaser Abdel Said is hiding and you take him back to America,” she said.

No! No! That was too easy. It would never happen that way. The whole idea was absurd! It was insane! He looked at the scrawny arms and legs buried under the folds of his alter ego’s clothes and winced. For crying out loud, they were the arms and legs of a ten-year-old! He would be at the mercy of every undernourished teenage girl in London let alone someone like Yaser Abdel Said!

He shook his head. “I can’t go like this,” he said. He was searching for an excuse—any excuse. “My feet are cold…my back hurts…I don’t have a thing to wear…”

“Don’t worry,” said bint Marwan. “I’ve taken care of all that.”

She produced a valise. Piffy watched in dismay as she opened the valise, dumped its contents on the bed and begin sorting through them. They were clothes—boy’s clothes. “You can change in the closet if you want,” she said.

He scowled, took the clothes she offered him and headed for the closet. Ten-year-old boys didn’t undress in front of strange ladies and if bint Marwan wasn’t a strange lady he had never seen one. The clothes were a perfect fit—he didn’t know how she got the sizes right, but he wasn’t crazy about the Doctor Seuss underpants and he could do without the turban.

He must have stayed in the closet longer than he should have because bint Marwan started hammering on the door.

“You’re not trying to escape, are you?” she said.

“No,” he said. If he had thought he could have he would have tried. He edged out of the closet. She looked him over carefully.

"Tra la la, twiddle-dee dee-dee,” he sang, “there’s peace and good will.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

Yes, what was that? Then he remembered. “It’s a song I used to sing when I was a kid,” he said. It must have welled up from his subconscious.

“I’ll get you something to eat,” she said, “and then we’ll get you enrolled in Ahmed’s Madrassas School.

She took Piffy to McDonalds. He had a Big Mac Meal. A fat lady at a nearby table looked at him and then at bint Marwan. “Is that your child?” she asked. “He is such a well-behaved boy.”

Piffy wanted to throw his Big Mac at her. “Don’t you dare!” hissed bint Marwan.

Piffy glowered. He didn’t like being ten-years-old. The only advantage so far was it gave him a better view of bint Marwan’s legs.

She told Piffy to wait at the table while she went to the Ladies Room. He sat there for some time, studying the other kids in the restaurant. Other kids? Good Grief! He wasn’t a kid—he only looked like one. He was Bernard Piffy, private eye on the trail of the notorious Yaser Abdel Said. Nonetheless, one little girl caught his eye. She was so cute! His mind began to wander.

“Tra la la, twiddle-dee dee-dee,” he sang. “It gives me a thrill To wake up in the morning to the mockingbird’s trill.”

People were looking at him so he shut up, stared at the table. What was keeping bint Marwan? Had she deserted him? It would be just like her. He looked at the cute little girl. She was leaving the restaurant. It was then that he noticed the woman in the full-length black nikab hovering at his elbow. She was staring down at him, only her eyes visible through the thin slit in her headscarf. He could have reached out and touched her. He frowned. What the Hell did she want?

“Come along, junior,” the woman said.

It was bint Marwan! The voice was harsher, the eyes darker, angrier, but it was bint Marwan. She had gone to the Ladies Room, a hot young chick and had returned as an old hag. He remembered the old hag well. He didn’t like the transformation. He made a face—that’s what kid’s do when they are displeased. “I don’t like you like this,” he whined.

“It can’t be helped,” she said. “It wouldn’t do for me to enroll you in Ahmed’s Madrassas School wearing a short skirt, with my bra glowing through my blouse. They would take a whip to me.”

He made another face. Okay, if he were a kid, he would act like a kid. “I ain’t going,” he pouted. “I’ve changed my mind.”

Bint Marwan put a hand on his shoulder, her fingernails digging deeply into his tender ten-year-old flesh. She might as well have been Hulk Hogan. “Okay, okay, I’ll go!” he said.

It wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. The enrollment went off without a hitch. So for the next three days Piffy sat on the floor of the Ahmed Madrassas School with a bunch of other kids trying to memorize the Qur’an. It was super-nova boring. He got the Allahu akbars right and most of the PBUHs but his heart wasn’t in it. And there was no Ahmed. He was on vacation or something and the kids were being instructed by a substitute who didn’t know anybody’s name and kept losing his place in the Qur’an. He was what would be called a strict disciplinarian.

But bint Marwan told Piffy to keep trying, Ahmed was bound to show up; it was his Madrassas.

The fourth day Piffy forgot himself—maybe it was the boredom, maybe it was the synchronized weaving back and forth; maybe he was just a kid rebelling against something he didn’t want to do. Anyway, it the midst of a sura the old song came bubbling up from the past.

“Tra la la, twiddle-dee dee-dee,” he sang,  “And my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill of the birds in the tree tops on Mockingbird Hill.”

There was a stunned silence. The teacher walked over to Piffy. There was an ugly look on his face. He was halfway between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He had a baton in his hand and was about to administer a trashing to bint Marwan’s favorite ten-year-old child when there was a commotion near the entrance to the schoolroom. He glared at Piffy, tucked the baton under his arm then hurried to the door to greet what he thought were Madrassas inspectors.

Piffy let out his breath. He had almost peed in his pants! What a close call that had been! But it wasn’t over—not by a long shot. He would be lucky if he weren’t water boarded before the day was over! He focused his eyes on the Qur’an. He started to pray. Not to Allah—maybe to God, maybe to Rooster Cogburn—yeah, maybe to Rooster Cogburn, to somebody.

He could hear the hum of voices as the instructor led the inspectors to the front of the class. One of them sounded vaguely familiar. Where had he heard that voice before? There was something else too—a fragrance, a scent wafting though the air as they passed by. He knew that smell! It was acrid, bitter…suddenly something curdled in his stomach. It was cordite! And mingled with it was the odor of freshly mown hay! Phosgene! He was afraid to look up.

The instructor rapped his baton on his lectern. “Children!” he announced. “We have two very important guests—Sheikh Atta and Sheikh Hanjour. The Prophet has sent them to us. They are searching for an infidel spy.”

Piffy groaned. At last he looked up. Oh, yes, it was Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour! He remembered the last conversation he had had with them.

“They are looking for a Bernard Piffy,” said the instructor. “They were told he was here. He is a very dangerous man—this Piffy. He is an infidel. But there is no Bernard Piffy here. They have been mistaken,”

 Atta smiled. “Insha Allah,” he said. “We are sorry to have inconvenienced you.” He turned to go followed by Hanjour.

They had taken less than a dozen steps when the kid sitting next to Piffy jumped to his feet and pointed at bint Marwan’s favorite ten-year-old. “He’s Bernard Piffy!” he squealed. “He said so! He sings infidel songs and eats Big Macs at McDonalds! He doesn’t wash before prayers! He is an apostate—a Jew! Come and get him!”

Good Grief! What was this? Bernard Piffy a Jew…an apostate? What in the hell had he done to deserve this? He was a kid…a ten-year-old kid!

(To be continued)

It could have been worse—he could have been killed in that library, he could have been cut up in little pieces, maimed, scarred for life at the end of that crazy man’s hook. He could still be in jail, pacing that ridiculous five-by-five cell till the hairs on his head turned gray, thinking up cute names for the roaches that would creep out from under his bed to steal the crumbs from the corners of his mouth whenever he dozed off.

He was sure Mike Hammer had never experienced anything like what he had been through the last few days—not Hammer, not Shell Scott, not Travis McGee. It was the kind of adventure that would have made Jessica Fletcher wet her pants. He had thrown a shoe at the notorious Sheikh Riyadh ul-Haq, he had been arrested for breaking into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office in Lambeth, he had insulted Abu Hamza and because of that he now had a fatwa hanging over his head. How could he have done all that it such a short span of time without trying? It was a mystery.

He was lucky to be alive; he was lucky to be in one piece. It was Algernon A. Algernon who had saved his butt. The breaking and entering charges had been dropped—thanks to Algernon and his friends in M15 and to James Bond, too, no doubt. The Archbishop’s papers were back in the Archbishop’s safe and Piffy was free—free to get back to the States.

The search for Yaser Abdel Said was over. It was a shame. It had never got off the ground but he had to think of himself for a change. He knew when he was licked. Sarah and Amina Said would not be avenged. Not by Bernard Piffy. Maybe when he got back to the States he could talk Dan Tanna into taking up the cause though Dan might be too expensive for the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. Or Edd Kookie Byrnes of the old 77 Sunset Strip gang—he could use the work. Piffy would find somebody.

It would be great to get back to the real world, to see Sheriff Wild Bill Bascomb and the old gang again. Boy, would he have some stories to tell!

He went out to Heathrow, made reservations for Friday, found a nice little diner and settled down for some fish and chips with malt-vinegar Mayonnaise. With a little rhubarb pie and chickpeas fried in breadcrumbs he would have been in Hee Haw heaven.

He was finishing the last of his chips, glancing down at the Daily Mail that lay on the table alongside his plate when suddenly he smelled cordite! Something curdled in his stomach! Oh, no, not cordite, please not cordite! But it was! And phosgene!

He looked up as nonchalantly as he could. Not as distressed as Fay Wray getting her first glimpse of King Kong or Lou Costello on discovering he was sitting in the Frankenstein monster’s lap, it was more like a Boston Red Sox fan watching the ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs in a World Series game. Piffy had been there before.

It was the 9/11 twins, Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour. While he had been enjoying his first decent meal in three days, they had, unbeknownst, sidled up to his table. They were all smiles. Atta pushed in alongside Piffy, Honjour plopped down on the opposite side of the table.

“Fancy meeting you boys here,” gulped Piffy. “What’s up?”

“I’m going to be blunt about this, Piffy,” said Atta. “We want to make a deal. We can be generous. It’s up to you.”

“If it’s about the toenail clippings,” said Piffy, “I don’t have them, I don’t know where they are and I don’t care where they are.”

“We know that,” said Atta.

“I don’t have the fleas either,” said Piffy. “I don’t know where they are and I don’t care where they are.”

“We know that, too” said Atta. “It’s not about the clippings or the fleas.”

“You’re wasting your time,” said Piffy. “I don’t know anything about anything. I’m going back to the States. I’m through looking for Yaser Abdel Said. I’m sorry I threw the shoe at ul-Haq. It was an accident. I’ve got reservations for Friday.”

“You’re leaving?” said Atta. He glanced at Hanjour. They were puzzled.

“You damn bet-cha!” said Piffy. “I wouldn’t give a wet goat’s pizzle for all the fleas in Mohammed’s beard.”

Atta stood up. He was smiling. Well,” he said, “That’s a load off our minds. We thought we would have to pay you to leave. Bon voyage.”

“Pay me?” said Piffy. “You were going to pay me to leave? How much?”

Atta smiled like the Cheshire cat. “Oh, a member of the Royal Family said he would be willing to go as high as a million dollars.”

“A million dollars?” gulped Piffy.

“But seeing as you are leaving anyway,” said Atta, “the offer is withdrawn. Of course, if you return we will be forced to kill you.” He bowed. “Allahu akbar.”

Well, if that didn’t beat all—if that didn’t beat all to hell and back! A million clams! A million dollars! He looked at the last chip wallowing in what was left of the Mayonnaise. Should he polish it off, save it for a souvenir to celebrate his stupidity or toss it at Atta and Hanjour? For a moment he considered chasing after them. But what would he say? I’ve changed my mind? I was only kidding? I’ll take the million bucks? No, he’d better leave well enough alone. He swished the last chip in the remaining sauce. He’d lost his appetite along with the million dollars. He finished his coffee, left a modest tip—a Bernard Piffy tip, not a Diamond Jim Brady windfall—and went back to his apartment over the Red Dragon.

Asma bint Marwan was waiting for him. He had been wondering when she was going to show up again. She had shed the Old Hag routine. He was glad, the getup had scared the life out of him. She had reverted to Moll Flanders. She was wearing a thin peasant blouse and a short skirt—a very short skirt. He couldn’t take his eyes off her legs. He swallowed. This is how Marilyn Monroe must have looked to JFK. Maybe he should make the sign of the cross. His last meeting with bint Marwan playing the Old Hag had been less than cordial. He could see her bra glowing beneath the thin peasant blouse—her time warp between the 21^st Century and the netherworld.

“I’ve got good news,” she said enthusiastically. “I’ve located a man who knows where Yaser Abdel Said is hiding.”

“I’m going back to the States,” said Piffy.

“He’s a member of the Keeper of the Fleas. We can kill two birds with one stone,” she said.

“I’m going back to the States,” repeated Piffy.

“You will really like this,” she said. “He is one of the elite Keepers. He carries on his person at all times a secret code that can release the King Flea from its cage.”

“I’m going back to the States,” said Piffy.

“We’ve been through this before,” warned bint Marwan. “We made a deal. I promised to take you to Yaser Abdel Said and I intend to keep that promise.”

“As much as I would like to take a trip in your magic carpet—“ began Piffy.

“Magic carpet?” she said.

”Your bra,” said Piffy.  “As much as I might like that, I’m going to pass on it.”

This time when she grabbed him by the arm he didn’t try to pull away. The embrace lasted less than a few seconds but it was more than enough. Bint Marwan could be very persuasive.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Who is this guy and where do I find him?”

“He is very cautious. He is always on his guard. He runs a Madrassas. You will have to use a disguise.”

“A disguise?” he echoed. “Why?”

“Well, you can’t go like you are,” she said. “You would stick out like a sore thumb. You will have to pose as a student”

“A student?” he said. “At a Madrassas? Ain’t I little too old for that?”

“I’ve got a plan,” she said. “If you put your hand on my—ah, magic carpet—close your eyes and count to ten I can turn you into the little boy you were when you were ten years old and you will fit in perfectly at a Madrassas.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“Not at all,” said bint Marwan. “Physically you will be ten years old but you will retain your current mental capacity and your historical knowledge will remain intact.”

This was ridiculous! She could do no such thing. “So I’m ten-years-old again, then what do I do?”

“You enroll in Ahmad’s Madrassas and when you get the chance, you steal the secret code.”

This was not only ridiculous; it was preposterous! “I don’t think so,” he said.

But she was too quick for him. She grabbed his hand and drew it toward the magic carpet. “Now close your eyes and count to ten,” she ordered.

Something strange was happening to him! A tingling sensation shot through his fingers, coursed up his arm, surged through his body, curled his toes! An incredible euphoria swept over him! He closed his eyes; he could hear someone counting. He could feel himself shrinking, shrinking; shrinking into himself! He went limp; he was loosing it…loosing it.

(To be continued)

“Well, if that doesn’t beat all!” said the Professor. He shook his head, finished reading the article, shook his head again, folded the newspaper carefully, laid it on the bar and took up his beer. “I don’t believe it!” he said.

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

“Piffy,” said the Professor.

“What about Piffy?” Joe asked. “Did Cowsnofsky and Henrietta forget to pick him up at the airport this morning?”

The Professor snorted. “Fat chance of that!” he said. “Piffy’s been arrested for breaking into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office at Lambeth Palace.”

“Our Piffy?” said Joe. “Are you sure?”

“Is there any other?” said the Professor.

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 Dallas cabdriver who had murdered his two daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic Rage. Piffy was not what one would call a hard-boiled private eye. He was nowhere near Mike Hammer. He was more like Junior Tracy with muscles. He was better than Inspector Clouseau. Not as good as Nick and Nora Charles. He was more like Bulldog Drummond. He was dogged, determined, persistent, relentless and pertinacious. He was like the son Charlie Chan didn’t talk about. And he had a sense of humor. Picture Spanky and Alfalfa making believe they were Abbott and Costello meeting the Frankenstein monster and one had Bernard Piffy.

But Piffy could make waves—he could make waves standing in an empty bathtub. He had insulted the notorious Riyadh ul-Haq; he had been chased through the streets and back alleys of London by assorted thugs, jinns and assassins; he had spent all the money the boys at the bar had been able to scrape together and he wasn’t a bit closer to finding Yaser Abdel Said than the day he started. Now, out of sorts and out of money, he had given up, thrown in the towel; he had called it quits and was supposedly on his way back to the States. Cowsnofsky and Henrietta had gone to the airport to pick him up.

There was a sudden clamor at the door. It was Cowsnofksy. He was furious. He stormed angrily into the bar, plopped down on his favorite stool. “He didn’t show! The son of a gun didn’t show!” he exclaimed. “He wasn’t on the plane. Hank said to wait for the next flight. But he wasn’t on that one either! Can you beat that? I was in that airport six hours sitting alongside a transvestite—a transvestite, your nephew, Joe—and he was wearing a tight skirt! Everybody in the airport was staring at me! Wait till I get my hands on that guy!”

“Henrietta?” said the Professor.

“No, not Henrietta!” thundered Cowsnofsky. “I mean Piffy!”

“If you want Piffy, you’ll have to go to England,” said Joe. “He’s still there. He’s in jail. He was arrested for breaking into the Archbishop of Cantilever’s office in Lambeth.”

“You’re kidding!” said Cowsnofsky.

They were silent for a moment. The Professor looked up and down the bar. “Well,” he said slowly, “I guess we’ll have to bail him out.”

“Oh, no!” said Joe. “That means me!”

Piffy was furious. He paced back and forth across the tiny cell—five steps in one direction; five steps in the other. He would have climbed the walls if he could have. He had been left holding the bag! He could scarcely contain his rage. Algernon A. Algernon had got away scot-free, and with a stack of the Archbishop’s private papers if the story he was hearing was true, and here he was, the one and only Bernard Piffy, the pride and joy of Mayberry County, locked in a bleeping jail cell under a suicide watch! A suicide watch! Who did they think he was? Michael Jackson? He hadn’t meant it when he had said he would kill himself before he would put on one of them ugly orange prison jump suits. Sure, he had tripped and tore the crotch out of one of the dang things but they didn’t have to put him under a suicide watch!

He should have got on that plane; he shouldn’t have listened to Inspector Clouseau; he shouldn’t have listened to Algernon A. Algernon; he shouldn’t have listened to Asma bint Marwan; he shouldn’t have listened to anybody!

A guard coming down the corridor interrupted his nightmarish reverie. The man stopped in front of Piffy’s cell. “They will see you now,” he said.

It was about time! He stopped pacing, the door opened and two screws entered the cell. Screws! Sixteen hours in the slammer and he was already talking like Jimmy Cagney!

They escorted Piffy to an elevator. They went down six floors to what looked like a bomb shelter. He thought he heard water trickling. Das Fuhrer must have spent his last hours in a place just like this. The ‘screws’ led him to the end of a dimly lit corridor and dumped him in a room one of them referred to as “M’s office.” They closed the door and he was alone. For a minute he thought he was in a guest room at the Playboy Mansion. Everything seemed to be painted mellow yellow, the décor was Marquis de Sade; there was a massive portrait of Pantagruel on one wall and one of Dionysus on the other. He could very well be in Matt Helm's boudoir. Then he noticed a shriveled-up old man sitting behind a desk. He blinked.

“Bond,” said the man, “James Bond.”

Piffy was stunned. “You’re James Bond?” he whispered hoarsely.

“You were expecting Sean Connery?” said the old man.

“No, but…gosh, what happened to you? You’re…you’re so old and shriveled. Mike Hammer could snap you in two with his little finger.”

“It was the babes,” whispered Bond. “I couldn’t keep up. I could handle the Goldfingers and the Dr. Nos, but the babes—they got the better of me.” He sighed. “If Her Majesty should be so kind, I hope to attend a refresher course for Double Naught Spies at the Playboy Mansion next fall.”

“Really?” said Piffy. “The Playboy Mansion?” He couldn’t get over it—this little old man, this shriveled-up Peewee Herman, this dried-up remnant of Pa Kettle was the legendary James Bond! If Jethro Bodine could see this pathetic Andy Warhol caricature of the great 007 it would break his heart! A fry cook had more appeal.

“What do you know about Inspector Clouseau and the fleas?” asked Bond.

“What am I supposed to know?” said a wary Piffy.

“You look like a man I can trust,” said Bond.

“I should say so,” said Piffy. “Ten years as Deputy Sheriff to Wild Bill Bascomb of Mayberry County, ten years in the private detective business and three months with the JBGGC, one of the newest and most aggressive citizen’s crime fighting groups in America.”  (The JBGGC stood for the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. It was Cowsnofsky’s idea and Piffy’s received his checks from that source. The Professor said the initials gave their little group cache)

Bond was not deceived. “I’ve been informed about the boys at the bar,” he said. “Now sit down and I will clue you in.”

Piffy sat down. There were a lot of things he didn’t know and he was anxious to be clued in. And clued in he was.

First, there was Inspector Clouseau. The Keepers of the Fleas had kidnapped Clouseau more than a decade ago! Yes, the Keepers of the Fleas! They had kept Clouseau in an altered state most of that time. They would send him out on missions when it was too risky to use one of their own operatives. They had used him to keep an eye on Piffy. Then Clouseau had escaped and had told Piffy about the fleas. Most of this didn’t make much sense to Piffy.  He told 007 to cut to the chase.

“What would you say if I told you somebody stole the fleas from the Keepers and the Keepers want them back?” said Bond.

There wasn’t much Piffy could say to that. They talked for another half-our, Bond wheezing and gulping air from an oxygen tank. If you’re going to have sex under water he told Piffy, do it in a diving bell. And stay away from sexual escapades in outer space. When he asked Piffy what he did for excitement the man from JBGGC said he rode bucking broncos, wrestled alligators and shot flies off fence posts at a hundred yards. “Commendable,” said Bond.

When the interview was over 007 looked Piffy over carefully. No one would mistake Sheriff Wild Bill Bascomb’s deputy for Napoleon Solo. Still the man had possibilities—anybody who would break into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office had potential. He would do. “There’s a man waiting for you in the Annex,” he said. He tapped a button on a remote control and a section of the wall slid open.

This was more like it thought Piffy. The Annex! He stepped into a small room and there was Algernon A. Algernon! The one and only Algernon A. Algernon!

“You!” said Piffy. He lurched toward the runt, fists clenched, nostrils flaring—for a fraction of a second he was the Frankenstein monster; no, no, it was worse than that, he was Mike Hammer; Mike Hammer with a mad on!

“Take it easy!” said Algernon. “I’ve arranged for your release. You’re a free man!”

Piffy grimaced, dropped his hands to his sides.

“You brought this on yourself,” said Algernon. “Didn’t I tell you not to push forward against that wall?’ He paused; he had something in his hand. “Look, “ he said. “I’ve brought you a sandwich. I was told you like ham.”

Piffy stopped. The mad was over. How could anyone stay angry with this weird little rascal? It couldn’t be done. He sniffed. Was that really ham? Yes, it was!  After sixteen hours of eating prison slops he was as hungry as a Tasmanian devil loose in a rabbit preserve. He took the sandwich from Algernon. Oh yes—it was ham and it was covered with mustard!

“You’re free to go,” said Algernon.

“Go where?” said Piffy.

Algernon gestured toward a door on the other side of the Annex. “You can go there,” he said. “It leads to the prison library—or you can go with me.”

”Where are you going?”  Piffy asked.

“I’m delivering a load of Viagra to Bond,” said Algernon.

“I think I’ll take the library,” said Piffy.

“Suit yourself,” said Algernon.

Piffy took a bite from his sandwich, crossed the room, opened the door, went down a short corridor and stepped into the prison library. Wow! What a change!

A one-eyed 'Asian' wearing a skullcap and with a hook for a right hand, was haranguing a group of other ‘Asians’ in front of a book display. He appeared angry and was gesticulating with his hook as if surrounded by drooling crocodiles.

“She likes John Travolta,” he was saying.

John Travolta? Did he say John Travolta? Piffy stopped. He wanted to hear this.

“John Travolta,” said the one-eyed ‘Asian.’ “Who is dancing and moving his stomach as quick as the—as I don’t know what—and she likes that…

“We teach our wives through television how to answer back—is that clever?

“Kaffir blood is halal (permitted), it means he can be killed…his money can be taken unless he accepts shahada (witness)…”

The man went on and on. Piffy edged closer. He wanted to hear what the nut would say next. He took a bite of his sandwich—his ham sandwich—and down he went! He must have tripped on a robe or a shoe or something. He fell flat on his face, the sandwich and its contents splattering across the one-eyed man. There was a stunned silence.

“Was that…was that…ham?” croaked the one-eyed man.

“Yes…it was ham!” gasped the man standing next to the orator. He pointed at a yellow splotch that had appeared suddenly and mysteriously on his friend’s robe. Then he noticed a piece of ham sticking to his own robe. “Allahu akbar!” he cried. “I think I got some on me!” His eyes rolled up in his head and he would have fainted if someone had not grabbed him by the elbow!

“It’s blasphemy! Blasphemy!” roared a man in a turban.

Another ‘Asian’ pointed at Piffy. “It was him!” he cried. “He did it! Get him! Get him!”

The one-eyed man was screaming in Arabic.

Somebody grabbed Piffy from behind and before he knew it he had been dragged back through the short corridor and into the Annex. The door was quickly slammed shut and bolted. By now Piffy’s heart was in his throat!

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute!” grumbled Algernon A. Algernon.

“What in the Sam Hill is this all about?” asked a trembling Piffy.

“I think,” said Algernon, “Abu Hamza al-Masri has just laid a fatwa on you!”

(To be continued)

It was too much! Fleas from the Prophet’s beard loose in the 21^st Century! It was mind-boggling! If what Inspector Clouseau had said was true and the fleas were as dangerous as he claimed then the entire world was at risk! An attack by these hellacious insects would make Osama bin Laden’s assault on the World Trade Center look like Richard Reid fumbling with his shoelaces.

Well, he couldn’t go back to the States now. He would have to tough it out. The boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club would have to cough up a few more pounds—that’s all. He would have to notify the authorities. He would have to tell M-15 and M-16 and 17 and 18 and 19! He would have to tell Blair and Brown and Bush and Obama and Thatcher and Bond. They would have to call out the Marines, the National Guard; the RAF…

Wait a minute! Wait a minute! What was he going to tell them? What Inspector Clouseau had told him? “Mr. Brown, Mr. President, fleas from Mohammed’s, uh, beard are loose in London and are plotting the destruction of English civilization?”

Oh, yes, they would believe that. Fleas—1,400-year-old fleas! One got loose in a trench filled with German soldiers in 1918 but was corralled by its keeper before it could do any damage—only one man, an Austrian Corporal, had been infected and he had reportedly died in a military hospital in Pasewalk, Germany! Who would believe a story like that? Obama? Brown? Hardly. How about Asma bint Marwan? Mohammed Atta? Sure. Maybe Harry Potter. But who else this side of Spanky and Alfalfa? It was absurd.

He was exhausted. He needed some rest Maybe things would look better in the morning. He curled up on the bed, the airline tickets still tucked in his shirt pocket.

He awoke with Clouseau’s feet in his face. Pink socks? Good grief! He sat up quickly. Someone had cleaned the room. He smelled bouillabaisse. Clouseau’s manservant Cato was puttering over a portable stove. “Smells good,” said Piffy.

“Not for you,” said Cato. “For boss man.”

Clouseau had made a remarkable recovery. He was as dashing as ever. He danced about the ‘remodeled’ apartment, took a trench coat from an oversized portmanteau that had appeared from nowhere, tugged a crown hat down over his head. “Now zat I am properly attired,” he said, “let’s see if mine can salvage something from the mess you have made of zis thing. Of course, mine shall be off to France to contact Chirac. I trust you will inform Blair and the Archbishop.”

He scarcely sampled the bouillabaisse and was gone—just like that! It was almost as if he hadn’t been there at all and if it weren’t for the three unconscious ‘Asians’ left in the corridor alongside Piffy’s door by Cato he might not have been.

Piffy finished the bouillabaisse. It was cold. What the hell was going on here? Blair? The Archbishop? What Archbishop? He didn’t know any Archbishop! He didn’t want to call on Asma bint Marwan again. He had had enough of halos and shopping bags to last him a lifetime. Besides, she might be dead. He hoped not but it was a possibility. No, he would go home first.

Then he remembered Algernon A. Algernon, the little guy with the whip, Abu Afaq's London agent. Compared to the others he seemed reasonable. He looked in the phonebook and there it was: Algernon A. Algernon: London Agent, Abu Afaq Enterprises.

Algernon A. Algernon waited for his secretary to leave the room. Piffy was the first caller he had had in more than two years and he didn’t want to seem anxious or to screw up. Abu Afaq kept track of things like this. It was said he monitored them for public relations.

He adjusted his tie, smiled at Piffy, bit the end off a cigar and spat it on the floor. “The Archbishop?” he said. “That would be Rowan Williams.” He got up, walked around the desk, kicked the fragment from his cigar into a corner, turned around, came back and glared at his potential client. “How bad do you want to see the Archbishop?” he said suddenly.

”It’s a matter of life and death,” said Piffy.

“It’s about the fleas, isn’t it?” said Algernon.

“Yes,” said Piffy.

“Well, it won’t be easy,” said Algernon. “Have you been cleared by the CIA? Has the FBI ever heard about you? How about Rush Limbaugh?”

Piffy shrugged. “Ah, no,” he said. “Is that good?”

“No matter. Will it be Master Card or Visa or would you prefer our new 10-year plan?”

Piffy thought quickly. “Ah, the 10-year plan,” he said.

“Smart choice.”

“How soon can you get me in to see the Archbishop?”

“Right now, if you want. It will be dark in an hour or so.”

“Okay,” said Piffy. “That sounds good.”

“Smart choice. I’ll get my whip.”

Whip? Why would he need a whip? They were only going to see the Archbishop. This was not reassuring…

Something wasn’t right. If this was one of the entrances to Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop’s main London residence, where were the church officials? Where were the young acolytes with the candles? Where were the guards in their gaudy uniforms? Where was the old geezer in the long robe mumbling something from Leviticus as he led them to the Archbishop’s inner sanctum? They hadn’t seen a single living soul! And why was it so dark? And that sound of trickling water! It was scary! Were they near an artesian well?

They were being watched. He was sure of that! Something scurried out of their way. Was it a rat? “Where the hang are we?” he croaked.

“Quiet!” hissed Algernon. “We’re almost there.”

“There?” said Piffy. “Where’s there?”

“The Archbishop’s loo,” said Algernon.

“The Archbishop’s loo?” gasped Piffy.

“Yes,” whispered Algernon. “I always come this way to avoid the crowds. It’s where we turn to the left. Now be quiet. You don’t want to get arrested, do you?’

Arrested! What had he gotten into now? He should have risked bint Marwan’s halo!

“Follow me,” hissed Algernon. “I know this place like the back of Moll Flanders bum.”

That was precisely what worried Piffy. Of all the dumb decisions he had made this was positively the worst. He could end up in Newgate. But he kept quiet and it wasn’t long before they were climbing a series of crumbling, curving steps. It was still as dark as the Devil’s colon and the passageway was so narrow that his shoulders seemed to brush both walls at the same time. He could hear muted voices coming from somewhere. He coughed.

Again Algernon cautioned silence. “Do not make any sudden noise, you could disturb the ghost of William Whittlesey. He is said to inhabit these precincts.”

Fine! Ghosts were all Piffy needed to make the evening complete! By now they had come to a stop. Algernon felt along the wall. He removed a small piece of canvas from a porthole of some kind and a spray of light penetrated into the passageway. “Whatever you do now,” he warned, “do not push forward—you could fall through the wall. I will be back in a minute. I have to visit the Archbishop’s loo.”

Algernon was gone before Piffy could object. Well, that did it! He was alone! He had been deserted! He couldn’t have followed Algernon in that black maze if he had wanted. He might as well make the best of it. He edged closer to the porthole in the wall. If he put his face right up to the small opening he should be able to see what was on the other side of the passageway. Great idea! Right? He had to do something.

There was a conference room on the other side of the wall and he had a great hiding place. He could see everything.

Several men were seated around a large table. He was looking down at them. He didn’t know it at the time but he was watching them from behind a portrait of the famous William Whittlesly. One of the men at the table appeared to be the Archbishop. He was talking and gesticulating. Piffy strained to hear what was being said.

“So the second objection to an increased legal recognition of communal religious identities can be met,” the man was saying, “if we are prepared to think about the basic ground rules that might organize the relationship between jurisdictions, making sure that we do not collude with unexamined systems that have oppressive effect or allow shared public liberties to be decisively taken away by a supplementary jurisdiction.”

“Here! Here!” someone said.

Piffy didn’t know whether he agreed with that or not. He wasn’t even sure he understood it. He edged closer to the aperture so he could see from the corners of his eyes.

“Once again, there are no blank cheques,” said the Archbishop.

“Here! Here!” someone interjected enthusiastically.

The Archbishop droned on and on. “There is a bit of a risk here in the way we sometimes talk about the universal vision of post-Enlightenment politics.”

“Here! Here!”

Post-enlightenment politics? That was well and good but how was Piffy to get the Archbishop’s attention? The men below were unaware of his presence and if he said something he would probably scare the be-Jesus out of them. That would never do. They might think it was Whittlesly’s ghost. Maybe he should wait till the conference was over. But that could take hours. What should he do? And where was Algernon?

And then a loud screeching noise broke the deathly stillness of his hiding place. It came from above and below and from all around! Was it a smoke detector? No, it was a burglar alarm! It didn’t really matter. It might as well have been an air-raid siren! He could not have been more startled if the Devil had blown a trumpet in his ear! What was it Algernon had warned him not to do—was it not to push forward? Yeah, whatever he did he was not to push forward! Well, that is what he went and did—he pushed forward. Yeah, he pushed forward. He pushed forward rough the wall, through the portrait of Whittlesly and down, down he went, head over heels into the conference room, arms flailing like a drunken sailor trying to grab a Maypole.

If he hadn’t landed on the Archbishop he might have been hurt!

(To be continued)

maxflack@charter.net

“Now just a darn minute!” cried Piffy. This was getting ridiculous! He shouldn’t even be here! How had he gotten into this mess? Good grief! It was enough to make a grown man cry! All he had wanted to do was to make a few extra bucks. He had been a certified public account and a deputy sheriff. He had busted broncos and hunted alligators in the Everglades. But he craved excitement and adventure and he wanted to be somebody. So he became a private eye—a semi-hardboiled private eye. He had never been one of those social justice guys but the thought of  “honor killings” was more than he could tolerate. It angered him as nothing else could. So when the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club asked him to track down Yaser Abdel Said, the notorious Dallas taxi-driver who had murdered his two daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage he had jumped at the chance. He had promised to pursue the wretch to the ends of the earth if necessary. He should have been back by now basking in the adulation of an admiring public, counting his reward money and gabbing with Bill O’Reilly on the O’Reilly Factor.

But, no, here he was in an alley behind a London pub being horsewhipped by a runt—an imp, an imp no bigger than Opie Taylor had been in the 4^th grade; okay, make that the 5^th grade. It was humiliating! It had started innocently enough. A tip from Ka'b had sent him to London to contact Asma bint Marwan. He had done that. Then things began to go awry. Umyar, Mohammed’s favorite assassin, had chased him out of the Birmingham Central Mosque and then someone trashed his flat. He suspected Inspector Clouseau. After that it went from bad to worse. He accidentally threw a shoe at Imam Riyadh ul-Haq in front of the Birmingham Central Mosque: had been pursued by a mob of enraged so-called Asians; had taken refuge in a sleazy London pub where he made contact with a new and improved bint Marwan and was then told that the fabled clippings from the Prophet’s toenails was not only a true story but that the clippings were still in existence. Then Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour found him in the pub and dragged him out into the alley. They would have killed him had not Umyar showed up and run them off. But Umyar was scarcely a gentle giant and in a fit of rage tried to kill Piffy and would have done so had it not been for the runt with the cat-o’-nine-tails.

But then the runt, for no apparent reason turned the cat-o’-nine-tails on Piffy! Well, if that didn’t beat all! Piffy tried to defend himself as best he could but in no time at all the whip had cut his shirt to shreds and had left his chest crisscrossed with angry red welts! “Who the Hell are you?” he gasped. “Lash La Rue?”

The imp paused. He looked the private eye up and down. “I am Algernon A. Algernon,” he said, “London agent for Abu Afaq.”

“Abu Afaq?” said Piffy. He had heard the name before. “What does Abu want with me?”

“I don’t know,” said the runt. He snapped his cat-o’-nine-tails harmlessly at the ground, studied the private detective from the corners of his eyes. “And who are you?” he asked at length.

“I am Bernard Piffy, private detective. I am on the trail of Yaser Abdel Said.”

“Piffy…Piffy…” mused Algernon A. Algernon. “The name is not familiar. Are you sure it’s Piffy? Let me check” He tucked the stock of his cat-o’-nine-tails into his belt, drew a scroll almost as long as he was tall from inside his shirt and producing a pair of spectacles as thick as the Hubble Telescope, perched them on the tip of his nose. He shook out the scroll, brought it up to his face. “Hmm…” he said. He pursed his lips, shook his head. It took some time. There were a lot of names on the list. When he had finished he tucked the scroll back inside his shirt. “No,” he said slowly. “You’re not on this list. You appear to be an innocent bystander. Serves you right for being in an alley behind a sleazy bar. Do you always hang out in such places? You ought to join the AA. I can get you an appointment.”

By now Piffy had lost his patience. “You moron!” he said. “I ought to trash you to within an inch of your miserable life!”

“Moron?” said the imp. “You are calling Algernon A. Algernon, London agent for Abu Afaq a moron?

Belatedly, Piffy realized he had made a mistake. After all, Algernon A. Algernon had saved his life. “Now calm down, little fella,” he said. “Calm down!”

But it was too late. The cat-o’-nine-tails was already out of Algernon’s belt. There was a fiendish glow in the runt’s eye and he was smiling—yes, smiling! And then he was after Piffy like a chicken on a June bug on a hot summer afternoon.

There wasn’t much Piffy could do. His shirt was in tatters, blood dribbled from a half-dozen scratches. He could retreat—that was about it. The cat-o’-nine-tails was popping at his toes like a string of angry 4^th of July firecrackers. He backed down the alley, dodging one way and then the other. Good grief! Where was bint Marwan? He needed help! Forget the oscillating bra, he would settle for the halo. And where was Ka’b? Where, for that matter, was Yaser Abdel Said, the reason he was in London in the first place? Nothing like this had ever happened in Mayberry! This was The Twilight Zone and he wasn’t Rod Serling; he was Bernard Piffy! He wanted out!

But Algernon A. Algernon was running out of steam. Maybe his heart wasn’t in it. The first rush of anger had dissipated. He stalked his victim as if he didn’t really want to catch him. He would glower and cackle but the cat-o’-nine-tails had lost its snap. There were no showers of sparks.

From the corner of his eye, Piffy saw a man in a long brown robe enter the alley. He had a little potbelly, an inoffensive smile and the smoothest set of apple cheeks Piffy had ever seen on a human being. The stranger seemed to exude benignity and benevolence with every step. He was a mendicant of some kind. A monk’s tonsure crowned his head and an aspergillum dangled from his belt.

Algernon looked the stranger over carefully, “Go away, kuffar,” he said. He shook the cat-o’-nine-tails at the man.

The mendicant ignored Algernon. He looked at the private eye. “Are you Bernard Piffy?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Piffy.

“Go away!” ordered Algernon. “Can’t you see he’s busy?”

“Busy is as busy does,” said the mendicant. “I am not one to judge what busy is. I am here to save his life.”

“Who are you?” demanded Algernon.

“I am St. Anthony.”

“St. Anthony?” scoffed Algernon. “What’s the matter? Somebody lose his rosary? You had better beat it before I introduce you to Mr. Cat-o’-nine-tails.” He stepped toward the self-proclaimed Saint, drew the whip back against his shoulder.

“Oh, dear!” said St. Anthony. Was this a fast-draw contest? The aspergillum came out of his belt as if it were a six-shooter out of Wyatt Earp's holster. He flicked it once, twice, at Algernon. “Oh, how I hate to do this,” he said.

The Holy Water from the aspergillum splashed across Algernon’s face. The runt screamed, dropped his cat-o’-nine tails and fled blindly down the alley.

Piffy was dumbfounded. This couldn’t be happening! Was he dreaming? Was he hallucinating? What had they put in the near beer they served at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club? Everything had been upside down ever since. He didn’t trust that Cowsnofsky.

St. Anthony picked up the discarded cat-o’-nine-tails. “Oh, my,” he said. “The poor chap forgot his whip. I will have to send it to him. It looks like the Captain Bligh model. I didn’t know they were still using them.”

“Thank you,” said Piffy. “Thank you for saving me from a terrible beating.”

“Oh, don’t thank me,” said St. Anthony, “thank Henrietta. She prayed to me to intercede for you.”

“Henrietta?” blinked Piffy. “I don’t know any Henrietta.”

“Oh, she hangs out at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. She prayed to me to protect you from trials, woes and tribulations and I guess this fits in there somewhere.”

“I didn’t know St. Anthony was a guardian angel,” said Piffy.

“Oh, I’m not,” said St. Anthony. “I’m in the Lost and Found Department. If you lose something, pray to me. I’m better than a want ad and it doesn’t cost as much and it gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling. However this guardian angel stuff is new to me. But Henrietta is such a fine girl and she prayed so hard I thought I might give it a try and Gabe said it would be okay.” He grinned at Piffy. “How am I doing?”

“Fine,” said Piffy. “But could you turn off your smile? It’s hurting my eyes.”

“I wish Henrietta wouldn’t hang out at that bar; she’s better than that,” said St. Anthony. “Now—is there anything else I can do for you? You haven’t lost a credit card or forgotten where you left your dentures? That’s a little joke, of course.”

“No,” said Piffy. “Everything’s under control.” Then he had a sudden thought, one he would later regret. “Suppose—just suppose…” he begin.

“Yes?” prompted the Saint.

“Suppose somebody asked you to find the Prophet’s toenail clippings—could you do it?”

“The Prophet’s toenail clippings?” mused St. Anthony. “That’s a tall order but I supposed I could if I really tried. I can find anything—that’s what they say and who am I to argue. Besides, I think I know where they are—some of them. Now I must make this perfectly clear—are you asking me to find the clippings for you? They have been a cause of great evil, you know.”

Piffy grimaced. It was getting out of hand. “If I could get my hands on them, would they help me find Yaser Abdel Said?”

“Possibly,” said St. Anthony.

Piffy sighed. “Well, okay,” he, said. “How dangerous can it be?”

“Quite dangerous.”

“No, matter,” said Piffy. With someone like St. Anthony backing him, it would be a cakewalk and he could show that snooty bint Marwan a thing or two. “I’m your boy,” he said. He would regret that.

(To be continued)

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