MASH 09 MASH goes to Vienna

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  Chapter Seventeen

  Every family, some wise man once said, has its skeleton. In the case of the happy family of the News Department of the Amalgamated Broadcasting System, there were two skeletons. These were “Trench Coat Wally” Michaels and Harley Hazardous.

  No one knew how they come to be on the ABS payroll, and it was even more mysterious how they stayed on it.* Trench Coat Wally and Harley were hardly team players. Not only had they been heard to laugh out loud while viewing “Waldo Maldemer and the Evening News With Don Rhotten,” which was heresy tantamount to advocating pay television, but they had even turned their journalistic endeavors on their co-workers at ABS News itself. Their weekly program “One Hour,” aired on prime time Sunday evenings, had been the only television news show to air film of Don Rhotten and Congressman Edwards L. “Smiling Jack” Jackson emerging from the Casablanca, Morocco, bastille, for example.

  (*The truth of the matter, well hidden of course, was that while Michaels and Hazardous were doing a story on Manhattan massage parlors, early on in their careers, they had shot some very interesting film of an enthusiastic massagee who happened to be vice-chairman of the board of ABS. They had had the Journalistic foresight not to turn the film in. From time to time, however, when leaned upon, they showed it to the vice-chairman of the board. This always served to remind the vice-chairman (later the chairman) of the sacred obligation of television journalism to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, without fear of favor.)

  For reasons that no one but the chairman of the board understood, they had carte blanche to travel the world and do what they wished. Their film was sent to New York and aired, without censorship of any kind, on “One Hour.” Not only was this in keeping with the highest standards of TV journalism, the chairman of the board had concluded, but it kept them from nosing around massage parlors in New York.

  They worked independently, seldom meeting face to face. But as the same wise man who said that every family had it’s skeleton said, so do the paths of all men cross at one time or another. So it was at Schwechat that Harley Hazardous, en route from Moscow via Vienna to New Delhi, looked up from his frankfurter mit sauerkraut in the Transient Lounge to stare into a familiar face, this one stuffing itself with a sachertorte mit schlagobers.*

  (* A Viennese delicacy, 2,000 calories to the ounce, consisting of a layered chocolate cake buried in whipped cream.)

  It was, of course (you could tell by the trench coat), Trench Coat Wally Michaels, who was enroute from Teheran, via Vienna, to Tokyo.

  “Hello, there, Trench Coat Wally.” Harley Hazardous said. “What brings you to wherever we are?”

  “Well, as I live and breathe, if it isn’t Harley Hazardous himself,” Trench Coat Wally said. “It’s a small world, ain’t it?”

  “Where are you going?” Harley Hazardous asked.

  “Tokyo,” Trench Coat Wally replied. “Where are you going?”

  “New Delhi,” Harley Hazardous said. “Why are you going to Tokyo? I was there last week.”

  “And I was in New Delhi, let me see, day before yesterday. Why are you going there?”

  “I didn’t know,” Harley said.

  “Either did I,” Trench Coat Wally said.

  “It was bound to happen, I suppose,” Harley said. “Sooner or later, we were going to run out of exotic cities.”

  “Well, what do we do now?” Harley asked.

  “Jeez, I don’t know,” Trench Coat Wally replied. “What do you say we take a couple of days off?”

  “You mean it?” Wally asked.

  “Why not?”

  “Where did you say we are?”

  Harley Hazardous looked around for a sign and found one. “Wine,” he said.

  “That’s Wein, Harley; it means Vienna,” Trench Coat Wally said.

  “Oh!” Harley said, delighted. “I remember Vienna. Blond girls.”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s find a cab,” Trench Coat Wally said. “To hell with New Delhi.”

  “To hell with Tokyo,” Harley Hazardous said. “All work and no play makes Harley a dull boy.”

  Trench Coat Wally consulted a small notebook. “The best hotel in town is the Sacher.”

  “The Sacher it is,” Harley Hazardous said. They left the Transient Lounge, picked up their bags and looked for a cab. As they waited, they saw a fork lift truck unloading familiar wooden cases. They bore the familiar ABS logo-type, a human ear with a television camera sticking out of it.

  “That your equipment, Harley?” Trench Coat Wally asked.

  “Must be yours, Wally,” Harley replied. “I sent my crew ahead to New Delhi. I got in a poker game with Kosygin, and he didn’t want to quit.”

  “It’s not mine,” Trench Coat Wally replied. “I played a couple of rounds of golf with the shah and sent my crew ahead to Tokyo.”

  Their journalistic curiosity aroused, they examined the crates.

  FOR DON RHOTTEN

  HOTEL MAJESTIC

  VIENNA, AUSTRIA

  “I wonder what that Rotten Don’s doing in Vienna.” Harley Hazardous said.

  “I don’t know,” Trench Coat Wally said. “But if he’s going to be in Vienna, I want to be someplace else.”

  “Ordinarily, Wally,” Harley Hazardous said, “I would agree with you.”

  “You usually do,” Wally said modestly.

  “But, in an idle moment between Timbuktu and Pazarhdzik, Bulgaria, I had time to think.”

  “About what?”

  “You-know-who, Wally, is at that age when getting caught in a massage parlor is a matter of pride rather than embarrassment.”

  “You’re right,” Wally said.

  “I usually am,” Harley Hazardous said. “The obvious conclusion is that we need something else in our little vault to keep you-know-who in line.”

  “What’s the bottom line, Harley?”

  “Rotten Don is bound to do something here that would embarrass the network if it was on film,” Harley said.

  “As usual, Harley, you’re onto something,” Trench Coat Wally said. “But we don’t have any equipment.” Harley Hazardous was already prying open one of the crates. The first crate was useless. All it contained was Don Rhotten’s dressing table and spare toupees. The second crate, however, contained just what they wanted—a portable camera and a battery-powered tape recorder.

  “This’s going to be just like old times, Harley,” Trench Coat Wally said.

  “Yeah,” Harley agreed, “before we did our show on the massage parlors.”

  A cab appeared.

  “The Hotel Sacher,” Harley ordered, and in great good spirits they climbed in and were driven off.

  Thirty minutes later, having checked into the Hotel Sacher and needing sustenance, they ventured out onto Kärntnerstrasse. They carried with them, of course, the camera and the tape recorder.

  “Hey, Harley,” Trench Coat Wally said, hastily winding the camera, “look at that. A big guy with a tame tiger.”

  “That’s not news, Wally,” Harley said. “It’s obviously an advertisement for a circus.” But Harley turned on his tape recorder anyway, and they ran down the street after Boris, Dr. Yancey and Wee Baby Brother.

  The Maestro, of course, knew Vienna, and he headed unerringly for the restaurant he loved above all others, the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Paprika Goulash Parlor.

  Despite the presence of Wee Baby Brother (after all, he was the Maestro and entitled to an idiosyncrasy or two), he was greeted warmly by the proprietor and greeted him warmly in turn. He picked him up and spun him around. When he spun him around, he saw Trench Coat Wally with the camera to his eye.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said in faultless German, “is that a motion-picture camera of the type used by news media?”

  Herr Joseph Haydn Kramer, the proprietor of the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Paprika Goulash Parlor, paled. He knew the Maestro quite well, and he knew that when the Maestro simply oozed with charm and courtesy, a brawl followe
d as invariably as the dawn follows the night.

  “What did he say?” Harley Hazardous asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t speak German.”

  “Forgive me,” Boris said, this time in English, oozing charm. “I had the temerity to inquire if that device you hold before you is a motion-picture camera of the type used by the television news media?”

  “Why do you ask?” Trench Coat Wally said.

  “If it were, sir,” Boris said, putting the proprietor down and picking up Trench Coat Wally, “I would make you eat it.”

  “You put Trench Coat Wally down, you big ape!” Harley Hazardous said. Boris had been holding Trench Coat Wally with both hands. He let one hand go and used it to pick up Harley Hazardous.

  “You were saying, Little Man?”

  “What exactly is it you have against the television news media?” Trench Coat Wally asked, rather politely.

  “You look to me, sir,” Boris said, “as if you might be a friend and associate of Don Rhotten, America’s most beloved telecaster.”

  When in doubt, as Trench Coat Wally Michaels always said, “Tell the truth.”

  “Not really,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “As a matter of fact, I can’t stand him,” Wally plunged ahead.

  “Perhaps I have misjudged you,” Boris said and put him down. “And you, Chubby?”

  “I don’t like him either,” Harley Hazardous said. He was set back on his feet.

  “Sir,” Trench Coat Wally said, “if it could be arranged, how would you like to pick up Rotten Don Rhotten the way you just picked up me and my friend?”

  “Good thinking, Wally,” Harley Hazardous said.

  “Why would I want to do that?” Boris asked.

  “Possibly, you might wish to throw him someplace,” Trench Coat Wally said. “Maybe into the fountain in the park.”

  “I think I like you,” Boris said. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov.”

  While neither Trench Coat Wally nor Harley could truly be considered opera buffs, they recognized the name.

  “The opera singer?”

  “The world’s greatest opera singer, actually,” Boris said. “And this is my friend and fellow sociobiological scientist, Dr. T. Mullins Yancey, otherwise known as the Sage of Manhattan, Kansas.”

  As the men shook hands, Boris pointed at Joseph Haydn Kramer. “A bottle of your finest slivovitz,* Joseph!” he said. “And some glasses.”

  “My name,” Trench Coat Wally said, with becoming modesty, “is Wally Michaels, and this is my co-worker, Harley Hazardous.” Their program was, after all, watched by some forty-million people every Sunday night. It was reasonable to assume that his face and name would be known.

  “How do you do?” Boris said. “Tourists, are you?”

  “Not really,” Wally said gingerly.

  “The truth of the matter is, sir,” Harley said, “that we are television journalists ...”

  “Hold the slivovitz!” Boris bellowed.

  “Poor, struggling honest TV journalists,” Trench Coat Wally said, suddenly inspired, “denied our proper place by such as the likes of Rotten Don Rhotten.”

  “They’re all right, Boris,” Dr. Yancey said. “I watch them all the time.”

  “You have just been vouched for by the world’s greatest sex expert,” Boris said. “Serve the slivovitz, Joseph!” Wee Baby Brother, while all this was going on, had been sitting quietly, swishing his tail from side to side. Suddenly, he rose up on all fours and appeared to be staring (his head cocked from side to side) with rapt fascination at Harley Hazardous.

  “Nice pussy!” Hazardous said.

  Wee Baby Brother was not, in fact, staring at Harley Hazardous and didn’t pay him a bit of attention even after Harley snatched a Wiener schnitzel from the plate of a diner at the adjacent table and held it out to him.

  Wee Baby Brother’s sensitive ears had heard a familiar sound. He raised his head and barked.

  “What’s he doing? What’s he doing?” Harley inquired, rather faintly.

  “He’s barking,” Boris said. “He thinks he’s a dog.”

  “Isn’t that interesting?” Harley Hazardous whispered. “Nice doggie!”

  “Sit down, Wee Baby Brother,” Boris said, “and behave yourself.”

  Wee Baby Brother disobeyed. He raised his head and barked again. In a moment, the reason became apparent.

  The door to the restaurant crashed open. What looked to Harley Hazardous and Trench Coat Wally like five black bears came rushing in, dragging behind them three men, one of whom had his arm in a cast. Harley Hazardous looked at his hand, holding the Weiner schnitzel, and quickly dropped it.

  “No wonder he was excited,” Boris said as the largest of the dogs, snapping his leash, jumped over the table from which Harley had stolen the schnitzel and jumped in Boris’ lap. “Don’t be jealous, Prince,” he said. “Daddy loves you too!” He turned his head and bellowed. “Bring another bottle, and some more glasses!”

  “Dr. Yancey, I presume?” Hawkeye said, extending his hand. “Fancy meeting you here in the heart of darkest Austria.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Dr. Yancey said.

  “Trapper John McIntyre,” Trapper John said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Say hello to Dick Wilson, famous one-handed apprentice cutter.”

  “How do you do, Doctor?” Dr. Wilson said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” (This was something of an understatement.)

  “How did you guys find me?” Boris asked.

  “It was easy,” Hawkeye said. “We just walked out of the hotel, turned right, and asked the first man we saw had he seen a bearded monster with a tame tiger.”

  “I thought Horsey was coming, too,” Boris said.

  “He went out to the airport to meet Woody and Dick’s girlfriend,” Hawkeye said. He looked suspiciously at Harley Hazardous and Trench Coat Wally Michaels. “I don’t mean to insult you,” he said, “but has anyone ever told you you two look just like a couple of boob-tube sages?”

  “They’re all right, Hawkeye,” Boris said. “They can’t stand Don Rhotten, either.”

  “You mean it really is them?” Hawkeye asked.

  “In the flesh,” Boris said, and pointed at Harley Hazardous. “In this case, a lot of it.”

  “He’s here you know,” Trapper John said. “He was coming into the hotel as we left. He was disguised. But it wasn’t, you will recall, the first time I’d seen him without his wig, caps and contacts, and I recognized him right away.”

  “He didn’t say what he was up to, by any chance?” Trench Coat Wally asked.

  “He was awfully upset,” Hawkeye said. “Somebody apparently stole one of his cameras and one of his tape recorders.”

  “Nothing is sacred these days,” Trench Coat Wally observed.

  “But what’s he up to?” Harley Hazardous asked.

  “That’s really what we’re doing here,” Trapper John said. “He wants to take some film of Wee Baby Brother. We came to get him.”

  “Not on your life!” Boris promptly replied.

  “It’s for a good cause,” Trapper said. “That’s what Taylor P. Jambon told Angus. So it’s certainly something rotten. The problem is, what?”

  “APPLE,” Trench Coat Wally repeated. “The Association of Pup and Pussy Lovers in Earnest. That’s what it must be,” he said.

  “How can you be so sure?” Trapper asked. “That sounds like a perfectly respectable organization.”

  “Let me put it this way,” Trench Coat Wally said. “If the boss is Taylor P. Jambon and it’s being pushed by Rotten Don Rhotten, how could it possibly be honest?”

  “Good thinking, Wally,” Harley Hazardous said. “But what, exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” Wally confessed. “But my sniffer tells me that I’m onto a story.”

  “And your sniffer is never wrong, right?” Harley replied.

  “I’ve got the best nose
for news in the business,” Trench Coat Wally said. “You know that, Harley.”

  “The reddest, too, I’ll bet,” Trapper John chimed in. “But how are we going to foil their nefarious plot unless we know what it is?” Hawkeye asked.

  “I’ll make a deal with you guys,” Trench Coat Wally said. “If the big fella here promises to throw Don Rhotten into that big fountain so that we can get a picture of it…”

  “With or without his wig?” Hawkeye asked.

  “Maybe you could arrange it to have it come off in flight,” Harley Hazardous suggested.

  “You got it,” Boris said. “Now what are you going to do for us?”

  “We will put our joint journalistic noses to snooping out what Don Rhotten is up to,” Trench Coat Wally said. “Fair enough?”

  “You got a deal,” Boris said. “Let’s have a drink on it.” He bellowed: “Another bottle, Joseph!”

  “Are the first two gone already?” Dr. Yancey asked.

  “Might I be excused?” Dr. Wilson asked.

  “First door on the left,” Boris said. “It says ‘Herren’ on the door.”

  “That’s not what he means, Boris,” Hawkeye said. “I think he wants to go see if his lady friend is here.”

  “I think we’d all better be getting back,” Trapper John said.

  “I just got here!” Boris said. “I need sustenance.”

  “You can get sustenance at the dinner the Austrians are throwing for you. You just have time to dress.”

  “Tell them I’m not coming,” Boris said with finality. “I’d rather booze it up with you guys.”

  “The duchess is looking forward to it,” Hawkeye said, “and so are Hot Lips and Beverly. You’re going, Boris, and reasonably sober.”

  Meanwhile, back at the Bristol Hotel:

  “I’d like to thank you for getting us these rooms,” Seymour G. Schwartz said to Senator J. Ellwood “Jaws” Fisch.

  “Think nothing of it, sir,” the senator replied. “The Ad Hoc Committee’s paying for them.”

  “Generally,” Seymour G. Schwartz said, “it’s difficult finding rooms in hotels with six topless desk persons waiting around the lobby for something exciting to happen.” Don Rhotten, who had been staring with obvious approval at his reflection in the mirror, suddenly snapped to attention.