MASH 09 MASH goes to Vienna

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

“We’ll be waiting,” the duchess said.

  As shocking a revelation as this might be to the reader, the cold truth is that Mr. Schwartz had not told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the Dowager Duchess of Folkestone vis-à-vis the arrangements he had to make.

  He had implied that he had to make arrangements for the filming of the APPLE plea, starring Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington and Wee Baby Brother. Those arrangements were going to pose no problem at all. That would be simply a matter of going to a studio, making up Miss Worthington to look as much like Whistler’s Mother as possible, and making the film. They would do that tomorrow.

  The arrangements he really had to make concerned the live telecast Don Rhotten would make, via satellite, which would be shown on “Waldo Maldemer and the Evening News With Don Rhotten.”

  This would be because it was live, a one-shot. That is to say, there would be no room for error, because it would be live. There is a six-hour difference between Vienna and New York; when it’s midnight in Vienna, it’s 6 P.M. in New York.

  That meant that the live coverage would have to be shot at the conclusion of the “Welcome Back to Vienna, Unser Lieber Boris Official Banquet.” That could have posed certain problems, for the singer had a certain reputation for making things difficult for the television media, but the singer’s manager (an Arab, for God’s sake!) had given his solemn word that the Maestro was personally interested in the good works of APPLE and in Mr. Rhotten personally, and said that Mr. Schwartz could expect absolute cooperation.

  If Mr. Schwartz wanted to have the singer, Senator Cacciatore and whoever else Mr. Schwartz might possibly want on the sidewalk in front of the Drei Hussaren Restaurant at exactly midnight, they would be there, at exactly midnight.

  The theme of the spontaneous news report was to be that Don Rhotten, relentlessly scouring the world for the news, had discovered that Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore; Senator J. Ellwood Fisch; America’s most beloved thespian, Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington; and Mr. Taylor P. Jambon, famous gourmet and animal lover, were also in Vienna. He would interview them to find out why.

  Senator Cacciatore would say that he was in Vienna with Mrs. Cacciatore to go to the opera, where his good friend Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov (who was even more popular among the senator’s constituents than Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin) was performing.

  Senator Fisch would say that he had come not for the cultural enrichment of the Opera but because he wanted to do what he could to help his favorite charity, APPLE, in all its many good works. That would lead into Mr. Taylor P. Jambon, who would tell all the viewers of “Waldo Maldemer and the Evening News With Don Rhotten” of Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington’s generous sacrifice of time and talent to make television appeals for APPLE.

  “And that, of course, would lead into Miss Worthington herself. She would modestly downplay her generosity, saying that she was privileged to do what she could for APPLE.

  At the last minute, Seymour had an inspiration.

  “Get on the horn, Taylor P.,” he said, “and tell that nun we’ll need the cat outside the restaurant at five minutes to midnight.”

  “What for?”

  “You’re the famous animal lover, aren’t you?” Seymour said. “You’re going to have that pussycat on a leash, Taylor P.”

  “I am like hell!” Taylor P. said.

  “Oh, yes, you are, Chubby,” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “It’ll look great on the tube.”

  “You know I can’t stand animals,” Taylor P. said.

  “We all have to make little sacrifices from time to time.”

  “What sacrifices are you making?” Taylor P. countered.

  “I’m giving up one whole percent of the take, aren’t I?” Seymour said.

  “I’d forgotten about that,” Taylor P. said. “O.K. Providing the animal trainer is there, too.”

  “O.K., you got it,” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “Get on the horn.”

  Taylor P. Jambon reached for it, but before he could touch it, it rang. He recoiled.

  “Pick it up and say ‘hello’, dummy,” Seymour G. Schwartz said.

  “Hello, dummy,” Taylor P. Jambon said into the telephone. He looked stricken. “Just a minute,” he said and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “It’s the Vienna Police,” he said. “They want to know do we know a Don Rhotten and a Senator Fisch.”

  “Give me that,” Seymour G. Schwartz said, grabbing the phone. “Who is this?”

  “Oberinspektor Gruber of the Vice Squad,” the voice said. “You know a couple of drunks named Don Rhotten and Senator Fisch?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “We got them in the drunk tank,” Herr Oberinspektor said. “The one with all the teeth wanted us to call the U.S. ambassador, but I didn’t want to bother His Excellency with a couple of drunks.”

  “You have been hoodwinked. Inspector,” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “The very idea that J. Ellwood Fisch, a United States senator, and Don Rhotten, America’s most beloved television journalist, would be, as you said, intoxicated ...”

  “And chasing girls up and down Kärntnerstrasse,” the oberinspektor added.

  “... simply is beyond credibility,” Seymour said. “Whatever the names of your common drunks are, they’re not Fisch and Rhotten. Good day to you, sir,” he said huffily and broke the connection with his finger. “Get me the American ambassador in a hurry,” he said. “This is an emergency!”

  It took a few minutes to get the ambassador on the line. He wasn’t at the embassy. He was finally located in the Drei Hussaren Restaurant.

  “Mr. Ambassador,” Seymour began, “we have a little problem. There’s apparently been some sort of innocent little misunderstanding.”

  “What kind of misunderstanding?”

  “The cops have got Senator Fisch and Don Rhotten in the slammer,” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “I’ve got to have both of them out and sober by midnight.”

  “Those must be the two drunks I saw chasing the hookers up and down Kärntnerstrasse when I came down here. One great big one with a lot of teeth and the other a bald-headed runt. You’re not trying to tell me those two lushes were a United States senator and beloved Don Rhotten?”

  “I’ll meet you at the jail, Mr. Ambassador,” Seymour G. Schwartz said, “and explain everything there.” He hung up. “I’m going to get them out of the slammer,” he said. “You go through the luggage and find another wig for Don.”

  In the Drei Hussaren, the ambassador sought out Franz Schubert von und zu Gurkelhausen.

  “Franzl,” he said, “I got a little problem.”

  “Problem, schmoblem, if I’m peeling potatoes, you’re peeling potatoes.”

  “How are your connections with the police?” the ambassador asked.

  “I wish I had never heard of Walt Disney World,” the deputy chief of protocol said. “All this trouble for a lousy ride through the Magic Forest!”

  An hour later, after having dropped off Senator Fisch and Mr. Rhotten at the Royal Austro-Hungarian Steam Baths in the custody of several of Vienna’s Finest, Mr. Schwartz returned to the Bristol Hotel. He found Mr. Taylor P. Jambon sitting in the lobby talking to four young people. Mr. Jambon was glowing.

  “What are you up to, Jambon?” Seymour snapped.

  “I was just having the most pleasant chat with these fellow countrymen,” Taylor P. Jambon said.

  “Whoopee!” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “Aren’t you going to ask me how things turned out, you-know-where, with you-know-who?”

  “Of course,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “How did everything turn out you-know-where, with you-know-who?”

  “O.K.,” Seymour said. “No thanks to you. Both of them will be here, thoroughly steamed, in time for the you-know-what.”

  “Steamed? I thought that was the problem.”

  “Soused was the problem, steamed was the cure,” Seymour said.

  “You must be Mr. Seymour G. Schwartz,” one of t
he four young Americans said. He extended his left hand, his right arm being in a cast, to be shaken. “My name is Dick Wilson, Mr. Schwartz, and as something of a TV news buff, I’m one of your greatest fans.”

  “You don’t say?” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “Always pleased to meet my fans.”

  “This is Woody,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “And Beverly and Joanne.”

  “How do you do?” Seymour G. Schwartz said.

  “We’re all fans of yours, Mr. Schwartz,” Beverly said.

  “You’re a fine-looking group of young people,” Seymour replied.

  “Under other circumstances, we would be proud and honored to buy you a drink,” Dick Wilson said. “Especially since Miss Jones has just consented to be my bride.”

  “Under what other circumstances?” Seymour asked. A little snort after all he’d gone through, seemed to be a splendid suggestion.

  “There are topless females in the bar,” Woody said. “With really remarkable mammarian development,” Dick Wilson said.

  “Dick, darling!” Joanne Pauline Jones, U.S.N., said, icily.

  “A professional judgment, darling,” he said.

  “The sort of thing innocent young people such as ourselves,” Woody said, “should not be exposed to.”

  “Topless females, huh?” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “You’re right, of course. Mr. Jambon and I will look into the matter.”

  “Truly shocking!” Taylor P. Jambon said. “Well, it was nice chatting with you, but Mr. Schwartz and I must get to the bottom of this.”

  Seymour and Taylor P. walked quickly toward the bar. Dick Wilson went to the house phones and gave a room number.

  “They just went into the bar,” he said. “I’d estimate five minutes.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Four minutes and thirty seconds later, Taylor P. Jambon and Seymour G. Schwartz walked back into the lobby. Each had a female by the arm. The females were not, to split a hair, actually topless. One of them, who introduced herself as the Baroness d’Iberville, had, as the nice young man said, a really remarkable mammarian development. It gave every indication that it would momentarily escape from an undergarment visibly under great stress.

  The other, who said her name was Esmeralda Hoffenburg and that she was a ballerina, was not so generously endowed, but what she had was concealed only by a blouse with the translucency, say, of a spiderweb.

  They were the kind of girls that Taylor P. and Seymour liked. Within thirty seconds of the first timid look exchanged between them, Esmeralda had said that she had always had a weakness for short, stout men, and the baroness had confessed that bald men with thick glasses were almost a fetish with her.

  By the time the first drink had been served, the ice had been broken, and Esmeralda had said, giving Taylor P. a playful little poke in the ribs, “I’ll bet you’re the kind of man who likes home movies, aren’t you?”

  “Home movies?” Taylor P. said. “What kind of home movies?”

  “You know,” she said, nudging him again.

  “Oh, that kind of home movies,” Taylor P. said. “I sure do.”

  “What about you, Sy-Baby,” the baroness asked. “Would you like to come up to our room and see our home movies?”

  “Oh, yes,” Seymour G. Schwartz breathed.

  “Well, what are we wasting time in here for?” Esmeralda said.

  “And afterward, maybe we can fool around a little,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “How about that?”

  “You devil, you!” the baroness said, jabbing him, this time rather painfully, in the ribs.

  Grinning bravely, Taylor P. Jambon staggered out of the bar with her and through the lobby and up in the elevator.

  The two couples entered a suite, the blinds of which had been drawn. Taylor P. winked at Seymour. Seymour winked at Taylor P.

  “And now, if you boys will excuse us just a minute, we have something we want to show you,” the Baroness said.

  “Oh, boy!” Taylor P. Jambon said.

  The girls went through a door, and it closed after them.

  “Kill the lights, and roll the film!” a voice said.

  “There’s that voice again,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “It must be a PA system or something.” -

  The lights dimmed. The beam of light from a projector flashed on.

  “Hey, Seymour,” Taylor P. said. “Look! It’s the senator and Don. They’re in the bar downstairs!”

  “Shut up, Taylor P.” Seymour said. “I want to see the movies.”

  Five minutes later the lights went on.

  “Hi, there, Mr. Jambon,” Hawkeye said. “Fancy meeting you here!”

  “Who is this guy?” Seymour G. Schwartz said.

  “His name is Hawkeye,” Trapper John said, “and he’s a doctor.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Finest kind,” Hawkeye said. “But I’ll confess. I’ve always wanted to be a newswriter.”

  “A newswriter?” Seymour said, brightening. “Now, I’m sure that if we just talk this over, we can work something out.”

  “Is that what they call an understatement, Hawkeye?” Trapper John asked.

  “That’s what they call an understatement, Trapper John,” Hawkeye replied. This is what happened:

  Twenty-five minutes of “Waldo Maldemer and the Evening News With Don Rhotten” (that is to say, nine minutes of news and sixteen minutes of what are jovially known as messages) had been aired before Waldo Maldemer faced the camera, jiggled his jowls, looked solemn, and announced, “We have Don Rhotten, our roving foreign correspondent, standing by in Vienna. How’s things in Vienna, Don?”

  The engineer pushed a button. Don Rhotten, looking somewhat pale and washed out, appeared on a screen behind Waldo Maldemer’s head.

  “There’s a lot of big news from Vienna tonight, Waldo,” Don Rhotten said. “And here’s the big news first: Lieutenant (j.g.) Joanne Pauline Jones, U.S.N., of Wrappinger’s Creek, Iowa, announced her engagement tonight to Dr. Richard Wilson, up-and-coming apprentice chest- cutter of Spruce Harbor, Maine.”

  There was a round of applause at this, and the cameras gave the viewers a panning shot of a dozen people clapping, stamping their feet and whistling through their teeth. The view showed that they were gathered in what appeared to be a park.

  “That really isn’t the big news we expected, Don, ho ho!” Waldo Maldemer in New York said.

  “I’m getting to that, I’m getting to that,” Don Rhotten said impatiently. “Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore was supposed to be with us tonight,” he went on. “But events beyond his control won’t permit that.”

  “What happened to the senator, Don?” Waldo Maldemer asked.

  “I wish you hadn’t asked that, Waldo,” Don Rhotten said.

  “Why not, Don?”

  “If you have to know, Waldo, he got in a fight with Senator Fisch.”

  “Senator Cacciatore got in a fight with Senator Fisch? How did that happen, Don?”

  “Senator Cacciatore found out about APPLE, Waldo,” Don Rhotten said, “and he punched Senator Fisch for getting him mixed up with it.”

  “Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore punched Senator Fisch?”

  “Right on the end of his nose,” Don Rhotten said. “He bled all over his boiled shirt.”

  “Have you got any more details, Don?”

  “So Senator Fisch punched him back. Got him in the eye. That’s why he won’t come on camera, Waldo. He’s got a really first-class shiner.”

  “Well,” Waldo said, in his famous fatherly way, “that’s certainly understandable. You said he found out about APPLE. What’s APPLE, Don? Have you got that information for our viewers?”

  “It’s what was APPLE, Waldo,” Don Rhotten said. “It went out of business tonight.”

  “Well, that’s big news, all right.”

  “Mr. Taylor P. Jambon, the famous gourmet and animal lover, announced that he was turning over all the assets to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. And tha
t he was going to turn over all his income from his broadcasts for the next year to SPCA, too.”

  “That’s certainly generous of Mr. Jambon,” Waldo Maldemer said. “I wonder why he did that?”

  “Don’t ask Waldo,” Don Rhotten said. “Trust me, don’t ask.”

  “All right, Don,” Waldo said. “But we seem to be having some confusion, Don. What’s the spectacular event?”

  “What spectacular event, Waldo?”

  “Harley Hazardous and Trench Coat Wally Michaels called in before and said there would be something really spectacular tonight from Vienna, Don.”

  “They did?” Don Rhotten looked confused. “I didn’t even know they were here.”

  “They’re there, Don. And they promised us something everybody would love.”

  “I wonder what that could be?” Don Rhotten mused.

  “Now, big fella!” a voice off camera said.

  “You got it!” another voice responded. The next thing the viewers saw, live from Vienna by satellite, was a very large, fully bearded gentleman in perfectly tailored white tie and tails advancing on Don Rhotten from the rear. He grabbed him by the waist, picked him up easily, and held him over his head. Then, with no more effort than a lesser man would expend shooting a basketball, he threw Don Rhotten into the fountain.