The Wesley St. James Productions crew, which had been flown in from the West Coast (en route to Maine) to make the test, was not disturbed by the frightening apparition that limped onto the sound stage. They simply, and with good reason, concluded that there had been a slight administrative mixup, and that the testee was being tested for one of the St. James Games. St. James Games, in the interests of what was known as “audience identification,” conducted a year-round search for the grotesque, ludicrous, and pathetic. In their judgment, this freaky broad was sure to win a place on a St. James game, most likely “Money for Your Misery.”
“All right, honey,” the director said. “When I call ‘roll ‘em,’ I want you to look right at the camera and read what’s written on the thing over the camera. It’s called the idiot board, but don’t you mind that.”
“Right,” Zelda replied.
“Roll ’em,” the director replied.
Zelda, her mouth hanging slackly open, her shoulders hunched forward, peered intently at the idiot board (this was no show business schtick; she could hardly see the device through her thick granny glasses) and proceeded to read it, as slowly as she could, mispronouncing as many words as she thought she could get away with. When she had finished reading the few lines (“Hello there, I’m Daphne Covington, and I’m going to be visiting you every weekday on the new Wesley St. James Production, “The Code of the Deep Woods.” in which I play the role of Carol Nobleheart. Please watch!”) she removed the granny glasses and did her schtick, learned at the age of thirteen from good old Oscar Whaley. First her eyes crossed, both pointing at her nose. Then the left eye slowly began to revolve. It was enough to turn the stomach of a strong man.
“Cut!” the director called, enthusiastically. “Thank you very much, Miss Spinopolous. That was fine. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from St, James Games very shortly.” He turned to his chief engineer. “Rewind the tape,” he ordered, “and get ready for transmisson to New York. The big shots are waiting for it.”
Zelda Spinopolous literally skipped off the sound stage. She went to the dressing room smiling happily to herself. This television nonsense was a dead issue. She would soon be left alone with her microscope and her protozoa cultures. No one in his right mind would put someone like that on the tube.
While it is true that when the tape was run in the executive projection room there were some murmurs of disapproval, and even some groans when she rolled her left eye, there never was any question of nipping the television career of Miss Daphne Covington in the bud. After all, how many actresses who could roll their left eye were the only daughters of Chef Pierre, whose advertising budget represented somewhere between 18 and 23 percent of ABS’ advertising revenue?
“We’ll shoot her through a soft-focus lens ...” one ABS biggie said.
“Why don’t we just shoot her?” another biggie asked. “That would seem to be the kindest thing to do.”
“Ernie, you’re not thinking like a team player,” the vice-president for advertising said, gently. “Rethink that.”
“And we’ll get somebody to dub her voice,” the first biggie said.
“Take a telegram,” the vice-president for advertising said to his secretary. “Miss Daphne Covington, Chicago. All of us here at ABS were deeply affected when we viewed your test. Welcome, welcome to the happy television family of ABS.”
Miss Covington was not the only reluctant thespian. Trooper Steven Harris of the Maine state police had to have a little chat with the governor before he put his signature on the contract.
The governor, as it happened, was an old friend of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce, chief of surgery of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center. He had just taken a call from the secretary of state when his secretary informed him that Dr. Pierce was on the line.
“O.K., Hawkeye,” the governor said, grabbing the phone, “score one for the chancre mechanic. You really had me fooled.”
“Fooled about what, Your Most Bureaucratic Majesty?” Hawkeye replied. “I just called to ask for a favor.”
“That wasn’t you on the phone just now?”
“Boy scout’s honor,” Hawkeye said. “I just this minute came into the office.”
“It sounded like something you’d think up,” the governor said. “Would you believe that the secretary of state was just on the phone?”
“I’d believe anything of the secretary of state,” Hawkeye said. “You want to tell me about it?”
“No,” the governor said. “I can’t stand that cackling laugh of yours. What’s on your mind, pecker checker?”
“I want you to fire one of your state troopers,” Hawk- eye said.
“No,” the governor said immediately. “What we hire them for is to keep maniacs like you off the highway. What did he get you for?”
“As a matter of fact, he’s a friend of mine,” Hawkeye said. “This is really in his best interests.”
“I really hate to ask this, but do you want to tell me what the problem is?”
“Well, Ludwell, it’s like this ...” Hawkeye began.
“I’ve asked you not to call me that, Hawkeye,” the governor said.
“I won’t ever again, if you promise to fire the cop,” Hawkeye said.
“It’s that important to you, is it?” asked the governor, who loathed his first name quite as much as Hawkeye loved it.
“Let me tell you the situation,” Hawkeye said. He then proceeded to tell the governor most of the details of the Wesley St. James Productions offer of $1,000 a week for Steve Harris’ services as a television thespian. He left out, of course, any reference to Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov. He merely related that Mr. St. James had become very impressed with Trooper Harris when Harris had come to his aid in the deep woods and that, “in the opinion of a friend of mine with some experience with theatrical contracts,” the contract, “as amended by my friend,” was written so that Harris could earn enough money to pursue his medical education even if not a single foot of film was shot.
The only little problem was that Harris refused to sign the contract. The loggers in the deep woods and their families needed him, he said, and besides, he had sort of enlisted in the state police and felt that turning his uniform in would be letting the side down. The obvious solution was to fire him.
“You pose quite an ethical problem, Hawkeye,” the governor said, thoughtfully. “On one hand, I am deeply sympathetic to your position. We certainly need . . . especially when we consider people like you . . . medical doctors with a deep devotion to people, and I realize that about the best possible way to get the money to pay for their education is from those expletive deleted television people. On the other hand, however, I have an obligation to the rest of the state troopers. think what having a boob-tube idiot dressed in one of their uniforms is going to do to their morale. They’ll be ashamed to be seen on the highways.”
“Ludwell, I hate to press you,” Hawkeye said. “I see your problem, Ludwell, but, Ludwell, under these circumstances, I feel, Ludwell…”
“You win,” the governor said. “I’ll call him in right now.”
“Thank you, Your Most Bureaucratic Majesty,” Hawkeye said. “I knew I could count on you in a pinch.”
“Are you going to see Trapper John anytime soon?” the governor asked.
“In just a couple of minutes,” Hawkeye replied. “We’re going to jerk a gall bladder.”
“Tell him,” the governor said, “to go [scatological reference deleted].”
“That’s a physiological impossibility,” Hawkeye replied. “May I inquire as to the reason for your displeasure with Dr. McIntyre?”
“He sent the results of my Wasserman test to my home.”
“Negative, I trust?” Hawkeye asked.
“I didn’t take a Wasserman test,” the governor replied.
“Then there must be some mistake.”
“You want to try to explain that to my wife, Hawkeye?” the governor replied. “I’ve tried.”
“No probl
em at all,” Hawkeye said. “If you’ll spell her first name for me, I’ll see that you have the report . . . positive ... of her Wasserman in the morning mail. You’re a politician, you should be able to take it from there.”
“God,” the governor said, with awe, respect, and sincerity in every quivering syllable, “you really are a devious, Machiavellian scoundrel, Hawkeye. I’m glad you didn’t go into politics. That’s spelled M,Y,R,T,L,E.”
“Nice to talk to you, Your Bureaucratic Majesty,” Hawkeye said. “Knowing that people like you are in high elective office almost ... not quite, but almost ... restores my faith in our political system.”
The governor broke the connection with his finger and got his secretary on the line.
“Call the head of the state police and tell him to have a Trooper Steven J. Harris report to me immediately,” he said. “And then call the warden and ask him what kind of a prison he’s running if he can’t find one lousy Abzugian ambassador in his slammer.”
“He called while you were speaking with Dr. Pierce, Governor,” his secretary reported. “He says he’s got three Lebanese, four Chinese, one South African, two Turks, and a Bohemian. But no Abzugian.”
“Tell him to keep looking!” the governor snapped and hung up.
Three hours later, as the governor was rehearsing, in the governor’s private wash room mirror, the look of righteous indignation he was going to give his wife at the breakfast table, the telephone rang.
“It’s about time you called,” he snapped. “You have found the Abzugian, I hope?”
“It’s me, Governor,” his secretary replied. “There has been no word from the warden.”
“I told you not to put any other calls through,” the governor said. “I have enough trouble with Washington because of that potato chip senator of ours. I don’t want them laughing at me because I can’t find their Abzugian for them.”
“This isn’t a call, Governor,” she said. “Trooper Harris is here, with orders to report to you.”
“Send him in.”
The governor was a persuasive man, with long experience in getting people to change their minds when their minds were firmly made up. It took him two-and- a-half hours before he finally got Steven J. Harris to admit that his leave of absence from the state police was in the best interests of medicine, the state of Maine (including the Maine state police), daytime television drama, and the world in general and would, in addition, keep Dr. Pierce from ever again referring to the governor by his Christian name.
“But I’m going to make one lousy actor, Governor,” Steven Harris said. “You know that as well as I do.”
“Who’ll be able to tell?’ the governor said. “And now I’d like to ask another favor of you.”
“You politicians never really get enough, do you?”
“This is a rather delicate matter, Trooper Harris,” the governor said, sitting up straight in his chair, “involving the very future of our nation.”
“I have a personal policy, Governor,” Harris replied, “of never making political contributions.”
“Would you be surprised to hear that the secretary of state telephoned me earlier today?”
“After what’s happened to me in the past couple of days, nothing would surprise me,” Harris replied.
“Here’s the bottom line,” the governor said. “And what you hear within this room, you leave within this room. Kapish?”
“Yes, sir,” Trooper Harris said. He could tell the governor was quite serious.
“I don’t know the whole story myself, Harris,” the governor said, “but the Abzugian ambassador has been arrested.”
“What did he do?” Steve asked. “And while we’re at it, what’s an Abzugian ambassador? It sounds like something my friend Boris would think up.”
“It’s a country. The secretary of state himself assured me of that. He called up and asked me, in the interests of the nation, to pardon this character.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” the governor said. “But I went along. Here’s the pardon. By the authority invested in me as Governor of Maine, I herewith grant full and absolute pardon to His Excellency Sheikh El Noil Sniol the Magnificent.”
“That was a very nice thing for you to do, sir,” Harris said.
“I thought so,” the governor replied. “But there’s one small problem.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You know that nebbish O’FIaherty?’
“You mean Warden Patrick O’FIaherty, sir?”
“That’s him. Would you believe that he can’t find this Abzugian character in his slammer? Now I ask you, how many Abzugians can he possibly have in the slammer? It’s not as if I asked him to find and spring one Irishman, from all our Irishmen, or one Italian, from all our Italians. That would pose certain problems. But an Abzugian, especially one with a name like El Noil Sniol, you’d think he’d be able to lay his hands right on him.”
“Yes, sir,” Harris agreed, “you would. What is it you would like me to do, Governor?”
“On your way back to Spruce Harbor, how ’bout swinging by the slammer and finding this guy for me? Your governor would be grateful.”
“What do I do with him?”
“Take him to the Spruce Harbor slammer and leave him there. I’ll take it from there.”
“Yes, sir,” Trooper Harris said.
“Remember,” the governor said, “the motto of the Maine state police. We always get our man.”
Neither the governor nor Trooper Harris, of course, could have had any way of knowing that three hours before, two men had climbed out of a rented car before the stark gray walls of the state prison, pushed the door buzzer, and demanded entrance.
A somewhat bored guard finally appeared.
“Which one is the guard?” he asked. “And which the guardee?”
“My good man,” said Waldo Maldemer, “you err in your snap assessment of the situation. Neither of us is a guard, or alternatively, a guardee. We are, instead, representatives of that bastion of democracy and all-around boon to mankind, electronic media journalism.”
“No fooling?”
“I am . . . don’t I look and sound familiar? . . . beloved Waldo Maldemer, and this is my trusted associate, Edgar Crudd.”
“Am I supposed to recognize you? I mean, is your picture in the post office, or what?”
“My dear man,” Waldo said, getting a little red in the jowls, “the time for pretense is past. We know!”
“What do you know?”
“That Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov is being held within these gray prison walls.”
“Visiting hours are Saturday and Sunday and every other Tuesday, nine to three,” the guard said.
“We wish to see the warden,” Waldo said, somewhat huffily.
“The warden’s busy just now,” the guard said.
“In that case, I’ll rephrase,” Waldo said. “I demand to see the warden.”
“Wait a minute,” the guard said and slammed the little hole in the door. This somewhat discomfited Waldo Maldemer, who wasn’t used to having doors in prison gates slammed in his face, but there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it at the moment. He would bide his time until he got to the bottom of this story; then he would get him, and get him good. The whole Maine state prison system would get one of the world-famous Waldo Maldemer sneers. Probably a sneer, a raised eyebrow, and the final touch, the Waldo Maldemer inflection-of-voice. They would pay for slamming the slammer door in the face of Waldo Maldemer!
The guard, meanwhile, was on the telephone to Mr. Patrick O’Flaherty.
“Couple of kooks out here, Warden, looking for some guy with a really weird name.”
“What’s the name?”
The little door opened. “What was that name?”
“Waldo Maldemer,” Waldo Maldemer promptly replied.
“I mean the name of the guy who’s supposed to be in here.”
“Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov
,” Edgar Crudd said.
The door slammed shut.
“Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov,” the guard repeated the name to the warden.
“That’s a weird name all right, but it’s not the weird name I need,” the warden replied. “Tell them to get lost.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said. He had almost hung up when he heard the warden’s excited cry. “Hey, wait a minute!”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said.
“Could either of these guys pass for an Abzugian ambassador?”
“I couldn’t really say, Warden. I ain’t never seen an Abzugian ambassador.”
“Could either of them pass for any kind of ambassador?”
“The fat one with the low-hung jowls could,” the guard said, after a moment’s thought: “He’s got that sort of dazed look, and talks funny, using words nobody understands.”
“And the other one?”
“He’s more your undertaker type,” the guard said.
“Ask them to come in,” the warden said. “Take them to my office and get them something to drink. I’ll join you in just a couple of minutes.”
The whole left side of the gate of the prison opened.
“Sorry for the delay, gentlemen,” the guard said, making a little bow. “Would you please come in?”
“That’s better,” Waldo Maldemer said, and, with Edgar Crudd trailing along behind him, he marched into the state prison. The whole left side of the gate closed after them.
They were shown into the warden’s office and, following the warden’s orders, presented with a glass of Leprechaun’s Delight, the warden’s favorite Irish whiskey. And then that luminary himself joined them.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the warden said. He carefully sized each man up. “How can the state of Maine slammer be of assistance?”
“We wish to see Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov,” Edgar Crudd said.
MASH 08 MASH Goes to Hollywood Page 16
