MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami
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She picked up the telephone. “Give me hotel security!” she barked. “This is Doña Antoinetta,” she said. “In just a moment or two, a very suspicious-looking bearded man is going to try to steal a television set—my television set—by rolling it through the lobby. Stop him, hold him, send for the police, and have him jailed!”
She put the telephone down, nodded her head in satisfaction, and turned back to the makeshift confessional.
“Now, where were we?” she asked. “Did I get to the part where he pressed his burning lips on mine as he held me to his massive, hairy chest with arms of steel?”
“Not quite,” the bishop said. “As a matter of fact, we had barely begun.”
“Good,” Doña Antoinetta said. “I certainly don’t want to leave anything out.”
FROM F.B.I. MIAMI
TO F.B.I. WASHINGTON
1. DEPUTY AGENT-IN-CHARGE LLEWELLYN FINKLESTEIN HAS TEMPORARILY ASSUMED COMMAND OF THE MIAMI BUREAU DURING THE TEMPORARY ABSENCE OF BIRCH BEEBE, AGENT IN CHARGE.
2. THS BUREAU HAS BEEN ADVISED BY THE METROPOLITAN POLICE FORCE OF GREATER MIAMI THAT IT IS HOLDING BIRCH BEEBE, MALE CAUCASIAN, THIRTY-NINE YEARS OLD, FIVE FEET TEN, 175 POUNDS, OCCUPATION: AGENT IN-CHARGE, MIAMI BUREAU, F.B.I. SUSPECT BEEBE IS CHARGED WITH GRAND THEFT, TELEVISION. FOLLOWING ARRAIGNMENT, BAIL WAS SET AT $25,000 BY JUDGE BAXLEY WILLIAM, WHO SAID SUSPECT HAD “A CRIMINAL FACE IF I EVER SAW ONE.”
3. PLEASE ADVISE IF THIS OFFICE MAY MAKE BOND FOR SUBJECT BEEBE. A REQUEST TO JUDGE BAXLEY WILLIAM THAT SUSPECT BEEBE BE RELEASED ON HIS OWN RECOGNIZANCE WAS MET WITH LAUGHTER AND DERISION. THE GREATER MIAMI FREE-THE-INNOCENT BAIL BOND COMPANY HAS OFFERED TO GO SUSPECT BEEBE’S BOND AT NO CHARGE, BUT THE UNDERSIGNED FEELS THIS MIGHT POSSIBLY INVOLVE A CONFLICT OF INTEREST, AS THIS OFFICE HAS SUBJECT BAIL BOND AGENCY UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR FRAUD, COERCION, EXTORTION, AND KIDNAPPING.
4. AN INDIVIDUAL IDENTIFYING HIMSELF AS J. ELLWOOD FISCH, MALE CAUCASIAN, FORTY-ODD YEARS OLD, SIX FEET TALL, 190 POUNDS, LOTS OF TEETH, HAS APPEARED AT THIS OFFICE CLAIMING TO BE UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA. WHILE FULLY AWARE OF NUTS-AND-KOOKS MENTALITY OF CALIFORNIA, STILL FIND THIS HARD TO BELIEVE. FISCH SAYS SENATOR C. C. CACCIATORE WILL VOUCH FOR HIM, AND THAT THE F.B.I. HAD BETTER GET THIS STRAIGHTENED OUT IF IT KNOWS WHAT’S GOOD FOR IT.
5. ACTING AGENT-IN-CHARGE FINKLESTEIN IS MAINTAINING SURVEILLANCE OF SUSPECT KNOWN AS DOÑA ANTOINETTA GOMEZ Y SANCHEZ BEGUN BY AGENT-IN-CHARGE BEEBE. THIS AGENCY WILL SHORTLY FORWARD DUPLICATE OF TAPE RECORDINGS TO F.B.I. WASHINGTON FOR EVALUATION. SHIPPING CARTON IS MARKED, DUE TO LEWD NATURE OF CONTENTS, “FOR EARS OF MALE AGENTS ONLY.”
LLEWELLYN FINKLESTEIN
(ACTING) AGENT IN CHARGE
The long black Cadillac limousine of Col. Beauregard C. Beaucoupmots, publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Orleans Picaroon-Statesman, rolled slowly down Rue Royale in New Orleans, Louisiana. Col. Beaucoupmots himself, his massive, silver-maned head hanging out the window, carefully scanned the streets and what he could see of the interiors of the various watering places that line that historic street.
“Stop!” he suddenly shouted, and the limousine stopped, dislodging Col. Beaucoupmots’ plantation-model Panama hat from his silvery locks. He jumped out of the car, put the hat back on, and marched purposefully into Ye Olde Absinthe House.
A young man sat at the bar, a glass in his hand, a tear trickling down his left cheek. He was Lemuel “Ace” Travers, ace reporter of the Picaroon-Statesman.
“Ace, my boy!” the colonel cried. “What are you doing sitting here in this saloon at half-past two in the afternoon swilling booze when you should be about your journalistic chores?”
Ace Travers raised his eyes and looked at Col. Beaucoupmots, but said nothing.
“Ace, my boy, your commanding officer has asked you a question!” Col. Beaucoupmots said.
Ace Travers told him what he could do with his question. Not only was his suggestion physiologically impossible, it was just a little rude.
“Something is bothering you, my boy,” the colonel said. “I’m a very good judge of character, and I can tell.”
Ace didn’t reply.
“I don’t suppose, my boy, that you have any idea where I might find Miss Margaret?”
(* Col. Beaucoupmots, a southern gentleman of the old school, referred to the Rev. Mother Emeritus Margaret Houlihan Wachauf Wilson, R.N., of whom he was deeply enamored, as “Miss Margaret.)
“She’s in Miami,” Ace replied.
“Miami?” the colonel responded. “Well, I suppose that explains why she didn’t meet me for lunch at Brennan’s. I was looking for her when I spotted you in here. What’s Miss Margaret doing in Miami?”
“She’s there with Prudence,” Ace replied.*
(* Mrs. Lemuel Travers was the former Ms. Prudence MacDonald. The details of their somewhat unusual courtship and marriage may be found in M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans.)
“What are they doing in Miami?” the colonel inquired.
‘God only knows, Colonel,” Ace said. “All I know is that when I went home for a nooner . . . that is to say, for lunch . . . there was a note from Prudence, Scotch-taped to the refrigerator door, saying that she’d been talking to Hot Lips . . .”
“Ace, my boy, I am the most tolerant of employers, but I have warned you and warned you and warned you. The next time you refer to my beloved Miss Margaret as ‘Hot Lips,’ you’re out of a job!”
Ace told the colonel what he could do with his job. “In that case, I suppose you can call her ‘Hot Lips,’ ” the colonel said, catching the bartender’s eye and then saying, “Bring us four of these, and make them doubles.” He waited until they were delivered. “What about Miss Margaret?”
“The note said that she’d been talking to Hot Lips, and that she’d decided it would be better for our marriage if she went away for a while. She said she had to be alone.”
“She didn’t say why?” the colonel asked, draining the second of his double Sazaracs and motioning somewhat imperiously for another round.
Ace shook his head. “All I know is that she’s going to Miami,” Ace said. “I don’t like to think what can happen to my Prudence in Miami, especially if she’s with Hot Lips.” He drained his Sazarac, his six or seventh.
“My God!” Col. Beaucoupmots said. “Miss Margaret all alone in Miami! There’s nothing in Miami but Yankees and Cubans. And God knows, there’s no worse combination on the face of the earth when it comes to taking advantage of innocent females.”
“What are we going to do, Colonel?” Ace asked.
“There is only one thing to do, my boy,” the colonel said, “and that’s to go to Miami and get them. My blood runs cold at the thought of Miss Margaret in the clutches of some depraved Yankee.”
Two minutes later, Col. Beauregard C. Beaucoupmots and Mr. Ace Travers, holding each other up, left Ye Olde Absinthe House and climbed into the back seat of the colonel’s limousine.
“I’m relying on you, Luther,” Col. Beaucoupmots said to his faithful chauffeur moments before he slumped unconscious against the soft seats, “to get Ace and me on the next plane to Miami.”
Chapter Seventeen
En route from Spruce Harbor International to Miami International, the pilot-in-command of Air Hussid DC-9 Number Twelve turned over the controls to the copilot and went back into the passenger compartment, where he conferred with Dr. Hawkeye Pierce and Dr. Trapper John McIntyre vis-à-vis what he called “a pound of prevention.”
Between them, it was decided that the Archbishop of Swengchan would stay close by the sides of the Baroness d’Iberville and Esmerelda Hoffenburg, the ballerina. Dr. Hawkeye Pierce would, so to speak, escort Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov and HRH Prince Hassan ad Kayam, and Dr. Trapper John McIntyre would stay with Col. Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux. Dr. Walter Waldowski and Dr. T. Mullins Yancey, it was hoped, could take care of François Mulligan.
“That should get us,” His Eminence said, “into the hotel without a major riot. Once we’re in the hotel,
we’ll have to play it by ear.”
“We forgot Pancho,” Trapper John said.
“He can go with you and Horsey,” the archbishop said.
The best laid plans of mice and men, however— to coin a phrase—sometimes go awry.
When Air Hussid Twelve taxied to a halt at Miami International and the first of the four limousines dispatched by Chevaux Petroleum Florida drove up to the stairway, the first two passengers off the plane were Doctors Walter Waldowski and T. Mullins Yancey.
Dr. Waldowski and Dr. Yancey had passed the flight in pleasant conversation, pinochle, and a bit of tippling. Less tippling, truth to tell, than they would have liked. While Air Hussid took pride in providing for its passengers’ every conceivable need, especially when the aircraft was to be in the service of His Royal Highness Prince Hassan ad Kayam, this flight had not run altogether smoothly. In his wildest dreams, and even taking into account every incredible idiosyncracy of his Royal Highness’ infidel acquaintances, he had noted the director of in-flight beverage services had not been able to conceive of the demands that might be placed upon the airborne stock of beer by two such dedicated guzzlers as Dr. Yancey and Dr. Waldowski.
The supply of Fenstermacher’s Finest Old Pilsener had been severely dented by the end of the Paris-Prudhoe Bay leg of the flight. It had been just about exhausted when Air Hussid Twelve had touched down at Spruce Harbor International, and, due to the brief duration of the stop, there had been no opportunity to replenish the stock.
Two minutes out of Spruce Harbor, when Dr. Yancey, then engaged in a game of chance played with two small, dotted squares of simulated ivory, had called for beer, the steward assigned to serve the gentlemen in cabin four had been—even though mortified down to the tip of his pointed beard— obliged to confess that there was no beer.
“You’re kidding,” Dr. Yancey had replied.
“He’s got to be kidding,” Dr. Waldowski had added when the steward had shaken his head.
“No beer at all?” François Mulligan had asked incredulously. “What a hell of a way to run a airline!”
The steward had produced a variety of potables in lieu of beer. Doctors Yancey and Waldowski and Mr. Mulligan had tasted Scotch, bourbon, brandy, aquavit, schnapps, gin, creme de menthe, and seven other liquids.
The net result of all this was that they had arrived in Miami feeling not very much pain and a large thirst. They had quickly agreed among themselves that since they had no real role in the upcoming ceremony, and that since there was no telling what liquids would be offered at what threatened to be a religious-type affair, common sense dictated that they abandon their fellow travelers and find some beer.
The moment the door opened, they came rushing down the stairs and got into the limousine at the head of the line—the one intended, in other words, for Col. de la Chevaux himself.
“Something has come up,” Dr. Yancey said to the somewhat startled driver, who hadn’t really expected to have three gentlemen, none of them Col. de la Chevaux, literally fall into the back seat.
“It’s something of an emergency,” Dr. Waldowski added.
“Take us someplace where we can get a beer,” Mr. Mulligan said. “And hurry it up!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, gentlemen,” the chauffeur said, turning to look over his shoulder at his passengers. He got one look at the look of pained outrage on Mr. Mulligan’s face and hastily added, “I mean I can’t do it in under three minutes flat.”
He put the limousine in gear, and it raced away from the airplane.
The Archbishop of Swengchan and Dr. Hawkeye Pierce appeared at the head of the stairs in time to see the limousine race olf.
“I wonder where they’re going.” the archbishop said.
“If I was in his line of practice,” Dr. Pierce replied, “I’d make housecalls too.”
“How perceptive of you, Hawkeye,” the archbishop remarked, “to know that somewhere out there is someone with an aching molar.” He turned and looked into the aircraft. “Boris,” he said somewhat sharply. “Put the baroness and Miss Hoffenburg down. The ladies are riding with me.”
Boris did as he was told, pouting just a little. Faces somewhat flushed, eyes sparkling, the Baroness d’Iberville and Esmerelda Hoffenburg joined the archbishop. One lady on each arm, the archbishop descended the stairs and entered the second limousine.
“Let’s go, Prince Charming,” Hawkeye said to Boris. “Your pumpkin awaits.”
“You have a most bourgeois sense of propriety, Doctor,” Boris said. “If I hadn’t kissed the ladies good-bye, they would have sulked all day, and you know it.”
Hawkeye took his arm and led him to the limousine waiting in line for them.
“I thought Hot Lips was going to be here,” Boris mused.
“She’ll be along,” Hawkeye said.
“Where did Dr. Yancey, the sainted guru of Manhattan, Kansas, go?” Boris asked. “And why don’t we go with him?”
“You don’t want to have Dago Red worrying, do you?” Hawkeye said.
“Where’s my little Arab?” Boris asked. He looked up at the airplane, rolled down the window, and sought the attention of His Royal Highness Prince Hassan ad Kayam by putting his fingers into his mouth and emitting a piercing whistle. “Let’s go, Hassan!” he shouted. “How dare you keep me waiting?”
In a moment, His Royal Highness came bouncing down the stairs and got into the limousine.
Finally, Trapper John appeared with Col. de la Chevaux and Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa. They came down the stairs and got into the first limousine. The police escort, a Ford sedan at the head of the line, turned on its blue flashing lights and moved off slowly. It had been decided that while a police escort was certainly in order for someone of the international distinction of His Eminence the Archbishop of Swengchan, screaming sirens and whooping whoopers would be a bit undignified. The procession looked, as a consequence, like a funeral cortege that had misplaced the vehicle carrying the dear departed.
As the last car passed through the cyclone fence surrounding the airport, the controller in the tower received word from Chevaux Petroleum Sixteen, a 747-type aircraft, that it was thirty minutes from Miami and required landing instructions and a veterinarian.
“Say again all that about a veterinarian.”
“Miami, Chevaux Sixteen. Please have a veterinarian standing by. One of our goats is about to be a mother.”
And in the terminal building itself, an employee of the Winter Palace, in mufti rather than in his authentic personal-serf-to-the-czar uniform, dropped a dime in a telephone slot, dialed the hotel’s unlisted number for Senor Salvador Gomez y Sanchez, and informed that gentleman that the archbishop and his party had arrived and were en route to the Winter Palace.
Salvador called Doña Antoinetta in the penthouse, and she came down to the lobby. To her standard ankle-length black dress with wrist-length sleeves she had added, in deference to the archbishop, a lace mantilla over her head. She had also replaced her everyday crucifix with a much larger one reserved for occasions like this.
As the first limousine appeared on the curving drive to the main entrance of the Winter Palace, Doña Antoinetta stepped outside to greet her guests. Salvador, Juan, and Carlos followed her outside and fined up respectfully behind her.
The first limousine stopped. The doorman pulled open the door. Monsignor Pancho de Malaga y de Villa stepped out.
“Archbishop Mulcahy?” Doña Antoinetta asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Pancho replied, gesturing toward the cars following.
Col. de la Chevaux got out of the first limousine. He hitched up his pants and, with remarkable accuracy, got rid of some excess tobacco juice in a conveniently located potted palm.
“Horsey!” a small voice, Spanish-accented, cried, and Juan Francisco Gomez y Sanchez, who had been in the hotel swimming pool when a bellboy had told him about what was going on at the front door and who was consequently wearing nothing but swimming trunks, rushed around
his aunt and jumped into Col. de la Chevaux’s arms.
The second limousine stopped. An Arab gentleman, in his full robes, stepped out. He couldn’t possibly be the archbishop, Doña Antoinetta realized. Archbishops, even Chinese archbishops, didn’t go around carrying jeweled daggers.
The Arab gentleman was followed by the largest male human being Doña Antoinetta had ever seen, larger even than the very large male human being who had twenty-five years before crushed her to his hairy chest with arms of steel and pressed his burning lips to hers and subsequently stolen her pearl of great price. (She found this somewhat disappointing, frankly. Giving up one’s virtue to the largest, strongest male human being one has ever encountered is not quite the same after he becomes the second largest male human being one has ever seen.)
She was so startled by the extraordinary size of this large male human being before her that it took her a moment to take a closer look at him. He was wearing a large, pearl white fedora, the brim up on one side and down on the other. He had a full beard. He wore a navy blue cape, fixed at the collar with a golden rope. On his ring finger he wore an enormous diamond ring. Under the cape he wore a black suit and shirt; the collar of the latter was quite hidden by the cape and his full beard. As he emerged from the car, he said, in a voice whose resonance gave her little chills, just one word: “God!”
Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov had planned to add, “I’m glad that trip is over. I felt like a goddamned sardine in there with you two,” but he had been stilled by a look from Hawkeye.
Now it was his turn to be startled. A large woman, a little long in the tooth but not at all bad-looking, dressed, to judge by the mosquito net around her head, to go to a funeral in a swamp, was advancing on him.
“Your Eminence!” she said, grabbing his hand and attempting to kiss what she thought was a bishop’s episcopal ring.