MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal Read online

  “Well, for one thing, so far as I know, she doesn’t have a dime. She’s obviously after Precious Babykins for his money.”

  “Perhaps, forgive me, Madame Chairperson, she’s after his, you know, his body. Your Precious Babykins is one hell of a man, you know.”

  “Bite your tongue, you dirty-minded middle-aged sex maniac; my Precious Babykins is practically virginal.”

  “Of course, he is,” Syndey Prescott quickly backtracked. “I’d forgotten that Bubba was a Green Beret. Everyone knows that Green Berets are above that sort of thing.”

  “Bubba assured me of that himself,” Josephine replied. “But as his mother, I must honestly face the facts. He’s his father’s son, and his father, truth to tell, may he rest in peace, was a gloriously successful skirt chaser in his time. Before he met me, of course. But the genes are there, and one day, if, God forbid, it hasn’t happened already, Precious Babykins is going to find out just what happens to female hearts when they see that massive chest, those steely biceps and those pearl white teeth.”

  “Where did Precious Babykins meet this gold digger?” Sydney Prescott inquired.

  “Get this straight, Prescott,” Josephine said. “While he may be Precious Babykins to me, to you, he’s either Mr. Babcock or, perhaps, under those trying circumstances, Bubba.”

  “Got you,” Sydney Prescott said. “You were telling me where he met the gold digger?”

  “Presumably at a football game,” Josephine said. “Her one claim to cultural attainment is that she was a University of Texas Marching Band Pompon Girl.”

  “I’ve seen them on television,” Sydney Prescott said. “I remember when that sort of display was against the law.”

  “Times have changed, Prescott,” Josephine said.

  “And Bubba’s infatuation for the gold digger is pretty serious?”

  “Serious isn’t the word,” Josephine said. “He wants to marry her!”

  “That’s serious,” Sydney agreed. “What sort of a girl is she?”

  “I’ll let you decide for yourself,” Josephine said.

  “She’s got a shape like a Greek goddess, she could pass Ann Lander’s pencil test summa cum laude, and Bubba tells me she has all the makings of a first-class HALO jumper.”

  The term HALO was one with which Sydney Prescott was not familiar. The mental image that popped into her mind was of boy and girl angels cavorting in shameless abandon among the clouds.

  “A first-class HALO jumper?” she asked, just to be sure she’d heard right.

  “So he says,” Josephine said. “At this very moment, while the sand runs rapidly through the hourglass of the time we have remaining to stop this doomed union, Precious Babykins is jumping her, over and over again, at Fort Bragg.”

  “My God, it’s later than you led me to believe!” Sydney Prescott said.

  “Let me get to the bottom line, Prescott,” Josephine Babcock said. “I frankly find you to be one of the most loathsome creatures I have ever encountered. However, it occurred to me that anyone with a mind devious enough to get all these millions of crazy ladies of the women’s lib movement to start sniffing Old Billie Goat Snuff by the ton just possibly might be able to come up with some foul idea that would save my Precious Babykins from this blonde gold digger.”

  “How nice of you to say so, Madame Chairperson.”

  “If you can break this thing up, Prescott,” Josephine Babcock said, “I, which is to say, Burton Babcock & Company, would be very grateful. Very grateful indeed. Need I say more?”

  “Yes, I think you need to,” Sydney Prescott said. “Now that you mention it.”

  “I’ll give you the Cognoscenti cigarette advertising account for openers,” Josephine said. “That’s a 6.6 million-dollar account, you know.”

  “Put your worried mother’s heart to rest, Madame Chairperson,” Sydney Prescott replied. “Sydney Prescott will have this blonde digger on her way back to the University of Texas Marching Band and her pompons before you know it. Unmarried, of course.”

  “I had hoped to be able to count on you, Prescott,” Josephine Babcock said. “And now I think you’d be better running along. The executive secretary of the Matthew Q. Framingham Theosophical Foundation is also meeting me here.”

  “Really?”

  “My late husband, Precious Babykins’ daddy, may he rest in peace, was a Framingham Fellow,” Josephine said, with quiet, if evident, pride. “So you can see how embarrassing it would be for me if I were seen in your company.”

  Chapter Nine

  Rev. Mother Emeritus Margaret, of the God Is Love In All Forms Christian Church, Inc. was, if nothing else, a woman of the world. As such, although she liked him, she did rather question whether Hiram Jones’ professed love for Esther Flanagan was indeed sincere, or whether, as the Reverend Mother thought of it, Esther were just a passing fanny.

  She put his professed devotion to the test in the most meaningful way she knew. Accompanied by Colonel de la Chevaux, Sitting Buffalo and His Royal Highness, Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug (Teddy Roosevelt having been left behind in Colonel de la Chevaux’s suite in the Royal Orleans), she led Uncle Hiram on a tour of the French Quarter, starting out in Houlihan’s Saloon,* right across the street from the Royal Orleans, and working their way up Bourbon Street, down Royal Street, up Rue Toulouse and ending up in an establishment known as Lucky Pierre’s.

  (* Both the proprietor of Houlihan’s Saloon and high-ranking members of the GILIAFCC, Inc. ecclesiastical hierarchy flatly deny that Houlihan’s Saloon was named after former Maj. Margaret Houlihan, Nurse Corps, U.S. Army.)

  There would be, the Reverend Mother Emeritus knew, in her wisdom, at each stop along the route ladies of spectacular physical proportions and no high morals worth mentioning. She was further aware that because of previous visits to the same establishments by ol’ Abdullah, that he would be more than warmly welcomed back. Few French Quarter denizens were unaware that the bearded chap who spoke so little English was the fellow who had ridden through the Quarter in one of the picturesque horse-drawn buggies throwing diamonds and rubies at every female he saw who pleased his eye. Abdullah’s ride had earned him, among the French Quarter Professional Girls Marching & Chowder Society the nickname “The Pied Piper” for, by the time his wagon ride was over, more than four hundred “professional” denizens (as well as a number of amateurs and semiprofessionals) were following the buggy.

  The ladies turned out as the Reverend Mother Emeritus had predicted, but Uncle Hiram had shown far more interest in booze than in the broads. The Reverend Mother had next decided that perhaps her presence had a restraining influence on him and, on a rather flimsy pretext,* returned to the Royal Orleans.

  (* She announced that she was afraid Teddy Roosevelt would become lonely at the hotel, even though they had left him tied to the balcony outside Horsey's suite, so that he could watch what the Reverend Mother called the weirdos promenading on Bourbon Street.)

  When, at four a.m., only Colonel de la Chevaux had returned to the suite (he had, actually, been carried back by four of New Orleans’ finest), the Reverend Mother Emeritus came to the sad, if not unexpected, conclusion that Uncle Hiram had succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, and that his interest in Esther Flanagan was not, as she thought of it, sincere. She then went to bed.

  At seven in the morning, as was her custom, the Reverend Mother Emeritus broke her fast at the Cafe du Monde (six beignets, a cup of coffee and two inches of Remy Martin brandy) near Jackson Square. Halfway through the second beignet,* the sound of music came to her. It was, she was sure, the familiar, rather gravelly voice of Uncle Hiram, in not-at-all unpleasant counterpoint to Sitting Buffalo’s basso profundo. They were singing, “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad.”

  (* A beignet is a French, or holeless, doughnut.)

  She had been rehearsing the little sermonlike talk she intended to deliver to Uncle Hiram, telling him that he would have to repent before he could even hope to gain Est
her Flanagan’s heart, and it seemed to her that this was as good a time to deliver the sermonette as she could hope for.

  Following the sound of the music, she walked quickly up Rue Sainte Anne, turned right and found herself before the door to Lucky Pierre’s. Inside, she found His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug stretched out on the bar, and Uncle Hiram and Sitting Buffalo at the piano bar, the piano of which was being played by a rather nice-looking young fellow visibly on the point of exhaustion.

  The pianist, Frankie by name, knew the Reverend Mother Emeritus.

  “Thank God you’re here, Hot Lips,” he said. “Get me out of this!”

  In a moment, she saw the problem. Uncle Hiram’s trusty Colt .45 Single-Action Frontier revolver was lying on the piano. Every time the pianist started to stop playing, Uncle Hiram picked it up.

  “How long have they been here, Frankie?” the Reverend Mother Emeritus asked.

  “All night,” Frankie replied. “They wouldn’t leave, and they wouldn’t let me play anything but ‘I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad,’ ‘Miss You Since You Went Away, Dear’ and something called ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Flanagan.’ ”

  “O.K., Frankie,” the Reverend Mother said. “Play ‘Good night, Sweetheart’ and you can call it a day.”

  “Can you handle this guy, Hot Lips?” Frankie asked, somewhat doubtfully.

  “Trust me, Frankie,” the Reverend Mother said. “Have I ever failed you before?”

  Frankie segued into “Good night, Sweetheart” and Uncle Hiram, whose head was rather sagging over his glass, raised it, and then raised his trusty Colt .45 to point it at the pianist.

  “Play it again, Frankie,” Uncle Hiram said.

  “Put that thing down, Hiram,” the Reverend Mother, said.

  Uncle Hiram noticed her for the first time.

  “Evening, Reverend Mother, ma’am,” he said, politely. “Would you-all care to join in on a chorus of ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Flanagan’?”

  “Thank you, no, Hiram,” the Reverend Mother said.

  “How about ‘Miss You Since You Went Away, Dear’?” Uncle Hiram asked.

  “There won’t be time for that, Hiram,” Hot Lips said. “We’re going to take a little trip.”

  “Zat so?” he asked, curiously. “Where and when and why?”

  “We’re going to Maine,” Hot Lips said.

  “The hell I am,” Uncle Hiram replied. “Over my dead Texas body we are.”

  “Just as soon as we get some coffee into you, and you into the shower,” the Reverend Mother went on with that infuriating boundless patience and tolerance that is the earmark of certain members of the clergy.

  “The only thing I’m going to get into,” Uncle Hiram announced, rather belligerently, “is another bottle of this Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon.” He looked around for the bartender. The gentleman was nowhere in sight. In fact, with the exception of the party at the piano bar, and His Royal Highness snoring on the bar, the establishment was deserted.

  When he couldn’t see the bartender, Uncle Hiram decided he was in the back room and required summoning. He thumbed back the hammer of the Colt .45 and pulled the trigger, shattering the crystal chandelier over the piano.

  “To see Miss Esther Flanagan,” the Reverend Mother went on placidly.

  “Wake up the Arab, Sitting Buffalo,” Uncle Hiram said. “We’re off to Maine.”

  His Royal Highness had, in fact, been awakened by the sound of the chandelier pieces crashing to the floor. He was now sitting up on the bar.

  “Ah,” he said. “Hot Lips! Up yours, Reverend Mother!”

  “Up yours, Abdullah,” the Reverend Mother replied with a warm smile. “Now pay the bill, and we’ll all go to see the Sainted Chancre Mechanic and Trapper John.”*

  (* The Reverend Mother was quite aware that what few words of English the Sheikh spoke he had learned, at the knee, so to speak, of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the World's Greatest Opera Singer, who often spoke the picturesque phrases he had learned as a Browning Automatic Rifleman with the 223d Infantry. "Sainted Chancre Mechanic” was the fond appellation applied to Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce, F.A.C.S., by Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov.)

  His Royal Highness threw a five-hundred-dollar bill on the bar and raised his hand to the pianist. “You mother wears army boots, Frankie!” he cried fondly, and then threw him another five-hundred-dollar, bill. “Let’s get this goddamned circus on the road!” he said, finally, and marched out the door.

  “That’s my kind of an Arab,” Uncle Hiram confided to the Reverend Mother Emeritus, draping an affectionate arm around her shoulder. “Holds his booze almost as good as a Texan.”

  About an hour later, the telephone rang in the Spruce Harbor Medical Center.

  “Esther Flanagan, R.N. chief of nursing services, please,” the person-to-person operator said. “Margaret H. W. Wilson, R.N., chief of nursing instruction, the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing, is calling.”

  “Sorry, Esther ain’t here,” Hazel Schultz Heidenheimer said.

  “Your party, madame, cannot be reached at this time,” the operator reported to Nurse Houlihan. Nurse Houlihan was at the moment engaged in spraying a heavy stream of ice-cold water on Uncle Hiram, while Colonel de la Chevaux held him propped up against the stall shower in his suite.

  “In that case, I will speak with either Dr. B. F. Pierce or John F. X. McIntyre,” Hot Lips called. (The phone, equipped with one of those clever hands-off devices, was in the adjacent room.)

  “That you, Hot Lips?” Hazel inquired. “Sounds like you’re talking in a shower.”

  “How perceptive of you, Hazel,” Hot Lips replied. “And how is Ace?”

  “I am sorry,” the operator said. “If you persist in talking personally rather than professionally to the operator, I shall be forced by Ma Bell’s immutable rules to charge you whatever the tariff will allow.”

  “Damn the expense,” Hot Lips called out. “Get Hawkeye on the horn, Hazel, will you?”

  “He’s cutting, Hot Lips. He and Trapper John. Is it important? If it is, I’ll ring the operating room.”

  “No, not really,” Hot Lips said. “Just tell him that Horsey and I, Sitting Buffalo, Uncle Hiram, and Abdullah are going to be in the neighborhood, and we thought we’d just drop by and say hello. Tell him not to tell Esther. We’ll surprise her.”

  “You’ll surprise her all right,” Hazel replied. “She ain’t here. She’s in Montreal.”

  As she said this, however, Uncle Hiram groaned as the shock of the ice-cold water finally penetrated the thick clouds of booze. Hot Lips didn't hear the reply. “You get that, Hazel?” she called.

  “I got it,” Hazel said. “Just as soon as they’re free, I’ll tell them.”

  “Give my love to Ace,” Hot Lips cried out. Then, “Turn him around, Horsey, we’ll baste the other side awhile.”

  “If we have to do the same thing to Sitting Buffalo and Abdullah, we’ll be here all day,” Horsey protested.

  “They can sleep it off on the plane,” Hot Lips said. “But Hiram has to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when he first sees Esther again. First impressions count, you know.”

  “The first time Esther saw him, it was hard to tell him from his buffalo,” Horsey said. “The one tied to the balcony, I mean. Not the one with the feather.”

  “Think positively, Horsey!” Hot Lips chided him. “Now he looks like an English gentleman. A drunk, out-of-his-mind, soaking-wet English gentleman, maybe, but an English gentleman.”

  Ida-Sue and Alamo Jones received an interim report of the ongoing investigations into the mysterious disappearances of Miss Scarlett Rose-Marie Jones and Mr. Hiram Jones in the congressional suite of the Dallas Hilton Hotel. Chief Deputy Inspector Wilbur J. Hawkins of the Super Sleuth Private Detective & Anti-Cattle Rustling Security Services, Inc. personally delivered the report.

  “We have ascertained, beyond any shadow of a doubt,” Chief Deput
y Inspector Hawkins reported, “that Wild West Beanos, or at least the advertising agency for Wild West Beanos, are in this mysterious double disappearance up to their ears.”

  “What the hell is he talking about, Ida-Sue?” Congressman Alamo Jones inquired. “What the hell are Wild West Beanos?”

  “They are a variety of soja hispida, specifically soja hispida Babcockisis," Hawkins replied.

  “I’m sorry I asked,” Ida-Sue said. “What has this stuff got to do with my beloved baby daughter and crazy Uncle Hiram?”

  “I’m getting to that, ma’am,” Chief Deputy Inspector Hawkins replied. “We have learned that a photographic crew of the Wild West Beanos advertising agency, Sydney Prescott & Associates, visited your crazy Uncle Hiram at the old T Bar X.”

  “What the hell would an advertising agency be doing at the old T Bar X?” Ida-Sue inquired, not unreasonably.

  “We haven’t got that quite nailed down yet, Mrs. Jones,” Hawkins replied. “But we’re working on it. The only thing we know for sure is that the Sydney Prescott & Associates mobile photographic team was at the old T Bar X.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “They don’t get too many lavender Winnebagos in that part of Texas, ma’am,” Inspector Hawkins said. “When they do get one, one with a Pansy Power! bumper sticker, they remember it.”

  Ida-Sue looked thoughtful a moment.

  “And where is this Sydney Prescott & Associates outfit, Hawkins?”

  “In New York City, ma’am,” Hawkins replied. “Where else?”

  “Quite,” Ida-Sue said. “Alamo, get off your rear end and get on the horn to the air force.”

  “Certainly,” the congressman replied. “What do you want me to tell the air force, Ida-Sue?”