MASH 08 MASH Goes to Hollywood Read online

  Scanned by Booksnut

  98% Proof-ed read by Booksnut for paragraph breaks, spelling and italics

  M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans (V2)

  Note: footnotes have been moved from the bottom of paper copy to below relevant paragraph and italicized.

  Involved in the theatrical caper are:

  BORIS KORSKY-RIMSAKOV: by his own admission the world’s greatest opera singer, and an Official National Treasure of the French Republic.

  DON RHOTTEN (pronounced Row-ten): America’s favorite young TV newscaster, who is totally unrecognizable without his wig and teeth.

  STEVEN J. HARRIS: probably the largest and ugliest state trooper alive, with a genius for delivering babies without benefit of a medical license.

  ZELDA SPINOPOLOUS: a deliciously shaped biologist with no taste for the theater even though she has some spectacular talents—for example, she can revolve her left eye while keeping the right one stationary!

  MASH GOES TO HOLLYWOOD is an original POCKET BOOK edition.

  M*A*S*H Goes to Hollywood

  Further misadventures of M*A*S*H

  Richard Hooker

  And

  William E. Butterworth

  Pocket Book edition published April 1976

  M*A*S*H GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

  POCKET BOOK edition published April, 1976

  This original POCKET BOOK edition is printed from brand-new

  plates made from newly set, clear, easy-to-read type.

  POCKET BOOK editions are published by

  POCKET BOOKS,

  & division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.,

  A gulf+western company

  630 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, N.Y. 10020.

  Trademarks registered in the United States

  and other countries.

  Standard Book Numbers 671-80408-1.

  Copyright, ©, 1976, by Richard Hornberger and William E. Butterworth, All rights reserved. Published by POCKET BOOKS, New York, and on the same day in Canada by Simon & Schuster of Canada, Ltd., Markham, Ontario.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Books in the MASH Series

  MASH

  MASH Goes to Maine

  MASH Goes to New Orleans, January, 1975

  MASH Goes to Paris, January, 1975

  MASH Goes to London, June, 1975

  MASH Goes to Las Vegas, January, 1976

  MASH Goes to Morocco, January, 1976

  MASH Goes to Hollywood, April 1976

  MASH Goes to Vienna, June, 1976

  MASH Goes to Miami, September, 1976

  MASH Goes to San Francisco, November, 1976

  MASH Goes to Texas, February 1977

  MASH Goes to Montreal, June, 1977

  MASH Goes to Moscow, September, 1977

  MASH Mania, February, 1979

  In fond memory of Malcolm Reiss, gentleman literary agent

  June 3, 1905-December 17, 1975

  —Richard Hooker and W. E. Butterworth

  Chapter One

  At three-fifteen one bright spring afternoon, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce, fellow of the American College of Surgeons and chief of surgery of the Spruce Harbor, Maine, Medical Center was standing at the window of his office idly sipping a martini when he saw an official vehicle of the state of Maine pull off the highway and roll to a stop before the Emergency door.

  The vehicle was a state police car. More precisely, a state police station wagon. It had STATE TROOPER painted on the doors and a large, chrome-plated device with flashing blue lights and a police whooper mounted on the roof. The lights were not flashing, and the whooper was not whooping, and the vehicle had been moving very slowly, as if the driver wanted to ensure a smooth ride.

  Dr. Pierce removed the toothpick, on which two olives were neatly impaled, from his martini glass. He slid one of the two olives off onto his thumb and replaced the toothpick and remaining olive in the glass. He then flipped the olive resting on his thumb into the air, as a boy would shoot a marble. Then, skillfully balancing the martini glass so as not to lose a drop, he quickly maneuvered his head under the airborne olive as it, responding to the theorem that what goes up must come down, reached the apex of its trajectory and began to descend. His head tilted back: his mouth opened; the olive disappeared into his mouth; his mouth closed. He returned his attention to the Emergency entrance, sipping again at his martini.

  The driver’s door of the state trooper station wagon opened, and an officer of the law got out. He was a very large officer of the law. Dr. Pierce estimated that he must weigh about 230 pounds and that he was at least six-feet-four-inches tall. He was also, Dr. Pierce realized, facing the fact squarely, one of the ugliest human beings he had ever seen. He was built on the lines of a gorilla, including the arrangement of the nose, eyes, and mouth. When he put on his Smokey-the-Bear hat, it sat atop his massive skull like a fly on an ice-cream cone.

  Dr. Pierce finished his martini as he watched the enormous, ugly trooper walk to the rear of the station wagon, open the door, and slide in. He then disposed of the second olive as he had the first, never taking his eyes from the station wagon except for a brief flicker of diversion to locate the airborne olive.

  The trooper reemerged from the station wagon carrying a small, pink, blanket-wrapped bundle. He carried it with infinite tenderness, and a smile, incongruously tender, softened (if not much) what could only be described as his frightening countenance. Then (if this is possible), even more incongruously, he tiptoed toward the Emergency entrance, his lips forming what could only be the sound Mrs. Pierce had so often made to the fruit of the Pierce union: Coochy-coochy-coo!

  Dr. Pierce turned from the window. He set the empty martini glass in the confidential drawer of his filing cabinet, slid the drawer closed, walked to his desk, and dialed the number of the hospital telephone and paging system operator.

  “Hazel,” he said, “this is Hawkeye. Got any idea where Trapper John is?”

  “Probably asleep in Intensive Care,” Hazel replied. “Things have been slow up there.”

  “See if you can find him,” Hawkeye ordered. “Have him meet me in Emergency right away.”

  “Got an emergency?”

  “No,” Dr. Benjamin Pierce replied. “We’re gonna fool around with the nurses a little.”

  He hung up the telephone and started out of his office, pausing only long enough to pull up his necktie, slip into a white medical tunic, and liberally spray the interior of his mouth with a substance guaranteed to mask what its manufacturer euphemistically referred to as that “telltale party smell.”

  Dr. Pierce, having begun his professional day at shortly after six that morning with the excising of a kidney and having gone from that, with brief respites for coffee and doughnuts, through what are known as six other surgical procedures, had not intended to go forth among the patients and staff of Spruce Harbor Medical Center anymore that day. The breath killer was necessary not to hide the fact that he’d had a belt, with the implication that he was an afternoon drinker (which he readily admitted), but rather as a kind gesture toward those still on duty who would smell the booze and feel deprived and jealous.

  As he marched down the corridor, the public address system, starting with a dulcet little chime, came into action.

  “Dr. McIntyre,” the voice purred. “Dr. McIntyre. Please report to Dr. Pierce in Emergency.” Hawkeye winced. “Dr. McIntyre,” the voice purred again. “Report to Dr. Pierce in Emergency.”

  Dr. McIntyre’s full name was John Francis Xavier McIntyre, M.D., and he too was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He entered the left-hand door to the Emergency Room at a dead run, his hair somewhat mussed, his
green surgical shirt buttoned incorrectly, and looking as if he had just been roused from a sound sleep. He had.

  He spotted Dr. Pierce, who walked slowly into the Emergency Room from the right-hand door.

  “What’s the emergency?” Dr. McIntyre inquired.

  “There is no emergency,” Dr. Pierce replied. “You have leapt to a conclusion.”

  “You’ve been drinking,” Dr. McIntyre accused.

  “How dare you make such a shocking allegation?”

  “I can smell the Booze-Be-Gone,” Dr. McIntyre said, triumphantly. He looked around the room. “Where’s the intern and the nurse?” he asked.

  “In just a moment or two,” he said, “the nurse will wheel in a lady who has recently become a mother.”

  “How do you know?”

  Dr. Pierce raised his hand, like a traffic policeman, in the “stop” gesture.

  “The infant, I daresay,” he said, “is at this very moment being examined by Whatsisname, that splendid budding physician, the intern.”

  “What are we doing here? Is something wrong with the kid? Or the mother?”

  “I would be very surprised if anything was,” Dr. Pierce replied. “A complete examination, of course, is in order and will take place. But to judge from surface appearances, mother and child are doing very well.”

  “Hawkeye, what’s going on?”

  At that moment, the door sprang open from outside and a hospital cart was wheeled in by two student nurses as the registered nurse on duty hovered by. The cart held a dark-haired woman, wide-awake, who smiled softly.

  “Congratulations, Madame DeBois,” Dr. Pierce said.

  “What was it this time, Antoinette?” Trapper asked.

  “ ’Nudder boy,” the mother said.

  “That makes seven?”

  “Six. The last was a girl,” she said.

  “Pardon me,” Dr. Pierce said. “Everything went well, I guess?”

  “No trouble at all, except wit’ Pierre,” she said.

  “What happened to Pierre?” Pierre was M. DeBois, her husband.

  “He got drunk again,” Antoinette said. “Every time, he do dat.”

  “Why not?” Dr. Pierce said. “And I gather that Dr. Smith just happened by at the right time?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Dr. Smith.”

  “We’ll put you in bed overnight, Antoinette,” Dr. Pierce said. “Just routine. I’m sure that if Dr. Smith had run into trouble, he’d have sent a little note or something. We’re looking at the baby now, and when we make sure that he’s all right, we’ll have a little look at you.”

  “Tank you, Hawkeye,” Antoinette said. “Comment ce va, Trapper?”

  “Just fine, Antoinette,” Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre, F.A.C.S., said. Hawkeye nodded, and the cart was rolled further into the hospital. Then he led Trapper John into an examination room, where, after putting mouth masks on, the two of them watched the intern on duty perform an examination of the newborn infant. With two senior members of the medical staff, both of whom had a certain reputation for saying crude and impolite things in rather pungent language to junior members of the medical staff, the examination was lengthy, detailed, and careful.

  Finally the intern looked up and smiled nervously.

  “And what is your diagnosis, Doctor?” Hawkeye inquired. There followed a four-minute vocal dissertation concerning the infant’s health and the factors on which the diagnosis was based. In layman’s language, it was a healthy kid who had entered the world without difficulty.

  “And your prognosis, Doctor?” Trapper inquired, when that dissertation had been completed. This dissertation required only about two minutes. The bottom line was that the kid faced no medical problems of any significance.

  “We concur, Doctor,” Trapper and Hawkeye said in unison.

  “And if you could spare a little of your valuable time,” Hawkeye said.

  “Perhaps it would be a good idea to examine the mother,” Trapper finished.

  The three of them trooped into the hospital proper, marched down the corridor to Antoinette’s room, and, with the assistance of the registered nurse on duty and with Hawkeye and Trapper John watching carefully, the intern performed a postparturition examination of the mother. The diagnosis and prognosis again were quite favorable. Mother and infant were reunited, and mother began to nurse baby boy.

  “I’m delighted, of course,” Hawkeye said, “but with Dr. Smith in attendance, not surprised. If he had run into a little problem along the way, I’m sure that he would have sent us a little note, giving us the benefit of his profound medical judgment.”

  “Like always,” Trapper John said.

  “Which brings us to the bureaucratic necessity of a signature for the birth certificate,” Hawkeye said.

  “Somewhat difficult to obtain from the attending physician,” Trapper said, “since the good Dr. Smith is not here.”

  Hawkeye took Trapper John’s arm and led him down the corridor. The enormous ugly state trooper was standing by the Emergency Room coffee maker.

  “How’s the baby?” he asked.

  “Just fine,” Hawkeye said.

  “And the mother?”

  “Just fine,” Trapper said.

  “We were about to hoist a wee cup to toast the baby’s arrival,” Hawkeye said. “Perhaps you would care to join us?”

  “Thanks just the same, Doctor,” the trooper said. His voice was very deep and had the timbre of a ten-penny nail being dragged across a slate blackboard. “But I’d better be getting along.”

  “I think,” Hawkeye said, with a new and surprisingly firm tone in his voice, “that it would be a very good idea, officer, if you joined us. I have a message for Dr. Smith.”

  “Whatever you say,” the trooper said, caving in immediately and somewhat nervously. Trapper John looked surprised. While Hawkeye Pierce was a tall healer, of good, even stocky, build, he looked positively wraithlike beside the state trooper. The trooper, in other words, was the one whom logic would dictate would be giving the orders and Hawkeye doing the jumping, rather than the other way around.

  But the enormous, ugly trooper, holding his Smokey-the-Bear hat in his hands, docilely followed Hawkeye back down the corridor to his office. Trapper John followed. Hawkeye locked the office door and marched to the file cabinet.

  “Dr. McIntyre will, I feel sure,” he said, “have a martini. I will have a martini. I would be happy to make you a martini, Officer, a martini for which I am justly famous in medical circles. On the other hand, if you are not a martini fancier, I can offer you scotch, rye, and an incredibly potent potable known as Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon, presented to me in case lots by a grateful patient. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Nothing, thank you, Doctor,” the enormous, ugly state trooper said.

  There followed a period of silence as Dr. Pierce concocted, with infinite care and precision, martini cocktails for himself and Dr. McIntyre. As he carefully added the precise amount of vermouth, he looked very much like an advertisement for a drug company, showing a dedicated pharmacist in the practice of his profession.

  He handed a martini to Dr. McIntyre, who nodded his thanks, sipped it, nodded his approval, and then smiled. He said nothing. The truth of the matter was that he hadn’t the foggiest idea what was going on between Hawkeye and the enormous, ugly state trooper. But Hawkeye and Trapper John had long been closely associated in the practice of medicine, starting with their assignment, long years before, as surgeons to the 4077th “Double Natural” Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) in Korea. He was willing, in other words, to indulge his pal in whatever he was up to, at least until he found out what was going on.

  Dr. Pierce then opened the CONFIDENTIAL drawer of the filing cabinet and extracted a gallon bottle bearing the label OLD WHITE STAGG BLENDED KENTUCKY BOURBON.

  The drawer was, in fact, filled with a half-dozen gallon bottles of the whiskey.

  He poured a water glass half full of bourbon, looked at the eno
rmous, ugly state trooper, and then filled the glass the rest of the way up. He handed it to him.

  “I have the feeling you’re going to need this,” he said. “You may consider it a prescription medication, if you have mental reservations about saucing it up while in uniform.”

  The enormous, ugly trooper took the water glass, drank half of the contents down at a gulp, shrugged, and then downed the rest of it. Hawkeye obligingly refilled the glass.

  “That’s one of the nice things about being a doctor,” Hawkeye said, thoughtfully. “You can prescribe booze.”

  “Indeed,” Trapper John agreed.

  “And there are other benefits,” Hawkeye went on. “You get to wear one of these white coats, just like a barber.”

  “They come in two colors,” Trapper observed. “White and green.”

  The enormous, ugly state trooper drank the second glass of Old White Stagg, this time without a pause, and Hawkeye filled it up again for him.

  “Given a little time,” Hawkeye said, “I could probably fill up the inside of a matchbook with a long list of the joys and special privileges of being a doctor.”

  The trooper looked at him uneasily.

  “Not the least of which, of course, is the satisfaction that comes from placing into a mother’s arms her newborn child.”

  The trooper’s face turned white.

  “In terms of satisfaction, that’s almost as pleasant as knowing that your skill with a needle and catgut has saved a man’s foot, after he has taken a mighty whack at it with a forester’s ax,” Hawkeye said.

  The trooper, if anything, looked even more pale.

  “But here we sit, chatting pleasantly,” Hawkeye went on, “and we haven’t even been formally introduced. I, of course, am Dr. Pierce. And this funny-looking fellow is Dr. McIntyre. And you, of course, are Trooper Steven J. Harris. Otherwise known as Dr. Smith. Isn’t that so?”

  The enormous, ugly state trooper set the whiskey glass down, exhaled, and looked at Hawkeye.