MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal Read online

  “Tell them you have just learned of a serious threat to the nation’s well-being and future security that requires you to be in New York City, together with your wife and a member of your staff, just as soon as an air force Sabreliner can get us there.

  “I’ll do that,” the congressman said. “What’s the threat, Ida-Sue, if you don’t mind my asking? And which member of my staff?”

  “The threat, Dummy, is that if it gets out that my daughter or your crazy Uncle or, god forbid, both of them, are running around with a crew of New York weirdos in a lavender Winnebago with a Pansy Power! bumper sticker on it, I’ll never get to be First Lady of this great land of ours.”

  “Right you are, Ida-Sue,” Alamo replied. “And the member of my staff?”

  “Raise your right hand, Dawkins,” Ida-Sue said. “You are about to enter the service of the United States Congress.”

  “That’s Hawkins, ma’am,” he said.

  “The first thing you’re going to have to learn, Perkins, is that you don’t argue with me. I’m a congressman’s wife, and we’re never wrong. Try to keep that in mind.” And so it came to pass that when Sydney Prescott got off the Boston-New York shuttle and taxied to her offices high above Park Avenue, she found Lance Fairbanks (born Elroy Finley,) her chief of photographic services, rather beside himself with excitement.

  “Sydney,” he greeted her, waving his yellow silk hankie excitedly. “You’ll never guess in a million years who’s waiting for you in your office!”

  “O.K., I give up,” Sydney said. “A word of warning, Elroy...”

  "Lance, please!”

  “Lance,” she corrected herself. “Momma’s had a trying day, Lance, and I’m in no mood to look at another of your models, no matter how handsome he is.”

  “Nothing like that!” Lance said. “We have a Congressman, that’s who!”

  “Whoopee!” Sydney said. “Tell him I gave at the office and get rid of him.”

  “And you’ll never guess what he’s going to do to you,” Lance went on.

  “If he’s like the rest of Congress, I can make one hell of a guess,” Sydney said, and pushed open the door to her office. The glower on her face turned to an instant smile when she saw the Honorable Alamo Jones. Whatever else could be said about Ms. Prescott, she knew a good-looking man when she saw one, and Alamo Jones was physically a prime example of his gender, if beginning to show a bulge in the middle and the first hint of thinness on top.

  “I am Sydney Prescott,” she announced dramatically. “And to what can I attribute this unexpected pleasure?”

  “Howdy, ma’am,” Alamo Jones said. “The Honorable Alamo Jones at your service, ma’am.”

  “Oh, I do hope so!” Sydney said.

  “And I am Ida-Sue, Mrs. Alama Jones,” Ida-Sue said.

  “I was afraid it would turn out to be something like that,” Sydney Prescott said. “Well, let’s get right to it. I’m a busy woman.”

  “We have reason to believe that you have knowledge of our daughter,” Ida-Sue said. “Where is she?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” Sydney Prescott replied, quite truthfully.

  “And/or,” Ida-Sue went on, “of my poor crazy Uncle Hiram.”

  “Never heard of him, either,” Sydney said.

  “And I suppose you never heard of Wild West Beanos, either?” Ida-Sue went on, thickly sarcastic.

  “Au contraire,” Sydney said. “That means, ‘Oh, yes, I do.’ Wild West Beanos are another of my brilliant thoughts, advertising-wise. One might say, indeed, that I am the mother of Wild West Beanos.”

  “Aha!” Ida-Sue said, triumphantly. “Then you admit it!”

  “Admit what?”

  “That you were at the old T Bar X,” Ida-Sue went on. “In a lavender Winnebago with a Fruit Power! bumper sticker.”

  “I believe that was Pansy Power! Ida-Sue,” Alama Dave said.

  “Shut up, Alamo,” Ida-Sue replied.

  “I think you might be making reference to my chief of photographic services, Lance Fairbanks,” Sydney Prescott replied. “He has a van that fits that description. And your handsome husband was right, as I’m sure he nearly always is. The bumper sticker does read Pansy Power!”

  “See there, Ida-Sue?” Alamo Dave said.

  “I told you to shut up, Alamo,” Ida-Sue said. “O.K., Ms. Prescott, where is my daughter and/or my poor crazy Uncle Hiram?”

  “Apparently, madame, you have never heard of advertising privilege,” Sydney Prescott said. “While I’m not saying, one way or the other, whether I have any knowledge of your daughter and/or your poor crazy uncle, if I did, hypothetically speaking, wild horses couldn’t drag it from me.”

  “How would you like to be presidential press secretary?” Ida-Sue responded.

  “How would I like to be what?”

  “You heard me. Presidential press secretary, in the glorious tradition of Ron Nesson, and that Baptist Preacher, whose name at the moment escapes me, but who served the previous president from Texas so well?”

  “You’re trying to suggest that your husband is going to seek the highest office in the land.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” Ida-Sue said.

  “You’ve got my vote, Handsome,” Sydney said.

  “Mine, too,” Lance Fairbanks said. “And I’ve got just oodles of friends!”

  “I shall try to be worthy of your trust and confidence,” Alamo said.

  “Shut up, Alamo,” Ida-Sue said.

  “And what does all this have to do with your daughter and your poor crazy uncle and me?” Sydney Prescott said.

  “We have reliable information that you know something of their whereabouts,” Ida-Sue said.

  “You mean to say you’ve lost them?” Sydney asked.

  “Certainly someone in your profession can understand how important my husband’s image is,” Ida-Sue said.

  “I don’t have to take that!” Sydney Prescott snapped. Then, more softly, “Oh, you mean the advertising profession. How foolish of me! Yes, of course. But, professionally speaking, I’d say your husband has a very nice image, indeed.”

  “Then you can appreciate the damage it would do to his ambitions, and to your own, presuming you would like to go down in the history books as the first female presidential press secretary, if it came out that Alamo’s daughter had run off with a parachute freak, and that his Uncle Hiram had run off with a religious nut?”

  Realization began to dawn.

  “Tell me more about the parachute freak,” Sydney Prescott said.

  “All I know is that my baby, Scarlett Rose-Marie, was last seen taking parachute instruction from a Green Beret HALO technician name Bubba. Now, what kind of behavior is that for a University of Texas Marching Band Pompon Girl, I ask you?”

  “A former UTMBPG, Ida-Sue, to be precise,” Alamo Jones said.

  “Shut up, Alamo! She didn’t mean it, she couldn’t have meant it, when she said she was turning in her pompons. After all, it’s a family tradition.” She turned to Sydney Prescott and explained. “I’m a former UTMBPG myself, you know. They still talk about my rah-rah-rahs and my splits.”

  “I’ll bet they do,” Sydney said. “In your opinion, Ida-Sue …”

  “Mrs. Jones to you, if you please!”

  “In your opinion, is this parachute freak just a passing fancy, or is your daughter contemplating marriage . . . or even a somewhat less formal arrangement a deux?”

  “Oh, my god!” Ida-Sue said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. That explains everything. Scarlett’s parachute freak is after her money! He’s nothing but an airborne gold digger!”

  “I think I just may be able to help you,” Sydney Prescott said. “And keep your daughter from marrying this gold-digger parachuter. It will be expensive, money-wise, however.”

  “Cost be damned!” Ida-Sue said. “You just get my Scarlett back to waving the pompons and send me your bill.”

  “Now tell
me about your poor crazy uncle,” Sydney Prescott said.

  “He’s in his fifties,” Ida-Sue replied. “But it’s hard to tell, because he has hair to his shoulders and a dirty gray beard to his belly button.”

  “Ida-Sue, I thought you said the last time you saw him, he was wearing a derby, carrying an umbrella, clean-shaven, and dressed like an Englishman,” Alamo said.

  “I was obviously beside myself with anxiety,” Ida- Sue said. “If you think about it, Uncle Hiram in a necktie, much less a suit, and not to mention a derby hat, staggers the imagination.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Alamo said.

  “I’m always right, dear, you just keep forgetting that,” Ida-Sue went on. “He is supposed to be in the company of a religious nut called the Reverend Mother Emeritus.”

  “Got it,” Sydney Prescott said.

  “And he’s probably got Sitting Buffalo, his faithful Indian companion, with him,” Ida-Sue went on. “So what you have to look for is a dirty bearded old man, a dirty old Indian, and a female religious nut. That shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Sydney Prescott said. “Just the moment I cash your check for my expenses.”

  Chapter Ten

  “It is so good of you, Mr. Framingham,” Josephine Babcock cooed, extending her hand, “to tear yourself from your busy schedule to help me with my problem.”

  “Nonsense, dear lady,” Matthew Q. Framingham VI said, bowing and kissing her hand. "The Framingham Foundation stands ever willing to assist in whatever manner possible any widow, not to mention the widow of a Framingham Foundation Fellow!”

  “May he rest in peace,” Josephine said.

  “I was afraid for a moment that I had the wrong VIP lounge,” Matthew said. “A rather odd-appearing female came out of this room just now. Did you see her?”

  “I believe she was here to clean the ashtrays,” Mrs. Babcock replied.

  “That’s odd,” Matthew said. “She asked me where she could catch the New York shuttle.”

  “To get to the point, Mr. Framingham,” Mrs. Babcock said.

  “I have engaged the Ambassadorial Suite at the Ritz-Carlton for our meeting, Widow Babcock,” Matthew said. “I thought perhaps you might be good enough to partake of a small luncheon with me while we discuss the problem of your son.”

  “I am a little hungry,” Josephine confessed. “Although I had hoped we could go to meet Dr. Pierce and Dr. McIntyre immediately.”

  “Haste makes waste!” Matthew said, solemnly.

  “If I could only convince my Precious Babykins of that profound truth!” Mrs. Babcock said, as Matthew led her out of the VIP waiting room and into the Framingham Foundation’s Rolls-Royce.

  “A lovely motorcar,” Josephine Babcock said, as the Rolls rolled from Logan International Airport to the Ritz-Carlton.

  “Do you really think so?” Matthew asked, visibly surprised.

  “You don't think so?” she asked.

  “If I may speak in confidence, Mrs. Babcock,” Matthew said, “frankly, no.”

  “You don’t like a Rolls-Royce?”

  “The housekeeper is supposed to use the Rolls-Royce,” Matthew said. “But when I went to the garage to pick up the Cadillac—we have a 1967 Cadillac—she had, against my express orders to the contrary, taken it to the A&P, leaving this thing for me.”

  “But why should she do something like that?”

  “She said that she simply cannot stand being laughed at in the A&P parking lot when, for example, she can’t get the trunk open, or when the fool thing simply refuses to run. Be that as it may, she had no right to take the good car when I, in my official capacity as executive secretary of the Framingham Foundation, required safe and reliable transportation. I shall speak with her harshly at the first opportunity.”

  “Isn’t that odd?” Josephine said. “I have the same trouble with mine.”

  “You have a Rolls?”

  “Three, actually,” Josephine said. “I’ve found that’s the only way I can be reasonably sure one will be working when I need one.”

  “Good thinking!” Matthew said. “Actually, lest you get the wrong idea, Widow Babcock—that is, that we toss money around at the Framingham Foundation— this one was a gift.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “A rather amusing story, actually,” Matthew said. “Mr. Justice Canady . . . you know him, of course? Formerly of the Massachusetts Supreme Court?”

  “By reputation,” Josephine said.

  “A Framingham Foundation Fellow, like your late husband,” Matthew went on.

  “May he rest in peace,” Josephine said.

  “Well, Mr. Canady happened to be in Las Vegas, on Foundation Business,” Matthew said, “together with myself, and Mr. Fritz W. Fenstermacher, F.F.F.”

  “As was my beloved late husband,” Josephine said.'

  “May he rest in peace,” Matthew said. “Well, making her little joke, just prior to his departure from Boston, Mrs. Justice Canady said, ‘Now, dear, don’t you gamble away our life’s savings on the crap tables while you are in Las Vegas.’

  “The Judge, as we call him, assured Mrs. Canady that gambling was the furthest thing from his mind. It was duty to the Framingham Foundation that called him to Las Vegas.”

  “The Mr. Fritz W. Fenstermacher to whom you refer,” Josephine inquired. “Is he the Fritz W. Fenstermacher, who is chairman of the board of Fenstermacher Breweries?”

  “Indeed,” Matthew said.

  “I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him,” Josephine said. “At the last meeting of the Chairmen and Chairpersons of the Board Association.”

  “It’s a small world, isn’t it?” Matthew offered, philosophically. “Well, as I was saying, our business* in Las Vegas was accomplished in a shorter period of time than we had anticipated.”

  (* The “business” to which Mr. Framingham referred here, and which has no relationship whatever to business as in “financial business” or “wholesale business” or the like, has been detailed at some length, for the insatiably curious, in M*A*S*H Goes to Las Vegas (Pocket Books, New York).)

  “Nose to the grindstone,” Josephine replied. “That sort of thing?”

  “Quite,” Matthew said. “And so Mr. Justice Canady, with an idle moment to while away, dropped a quarter in one of those machines with the handle and the little windows with oranges and lemons ...”

  “I believe they’re called slot machines,” Josephine offered helpfully.

  “I believe they are. Well, he won. That is to say, he invested a quarter and the machine gave him back, if memory serves, $16.75.”

  “How fortunate for him,” Josephine said.

  “Well, being not only opposed to gambling in any form ... which is a tenet of Framingham Theosophical Foundation, you know …”

  “So I have been informed,” Josephine said, “by my late husband, may he rest in peace, of course.”

  “Well, then, you see Mr. Justice Canady’s problem. All he had wanted to do was to see the little oranges and lemons in the windows, and now he had $16.75, which he was forced to consider ill-gotten gambling gains.”

  “I see his problem,” Josephine said.

  “So he immediately began to reinsert quarters into the machine, in an attempt to get them back in, don’t you see.”

  “That seems to have been the thing to do under the circumstances,” Josephine said. “And did he succeed?”

  “The machine was apparently out of order, for every other time he put a quarter in the slot and pulled the handle, it gave him back another $16.75. Within a matter of minutes, he had a hat full of quarters.”

  “How dreadful for him!”

  “Well, one of the employees came over and confirmed that the machine was malfunctioning. He hung an out-of-order sign on it. The Judge asked what he should do with his ill-gotten gambling gains, and was directed to the cashier’s window. He gave them the hat full of quarters. They insisted he take, in return, a stack of little round thi
ngs bearing the logotype of the establishment.”

  “Chips, I believe they are called,” Josephine said.

  “I believe so,” Matthew went on. “Well, Mr. Justice Canady didn’t know what to do with them. He couldn’t take them home, he realized, as a souvenir, for that would require answering the questions Mrs. Canday would naturally ask regarding how he had come by them.”

  “I understand,” Josephine said. “So what did he do?”

  “As he walked back toward the lobby, he passed a table. In the reasonable presumption that it had been placed there by some worthy charity, he discreetly laid the stack of chips on the table, and walked on toward the lobby.”

  “Good thinking on his part,” Josephine said.

  “Before he reached the lobby, however, he was intercepted by an employee of the establishment with the somewhat incoherent announcement that double zero had won, and what did he want done with his chips. He replied, of course, that he wanted nothing done with the chips, and again resumed his walk toward the lobby.

  “And again, the employee intercepted him and told him that double zero had won again, and this time he would have to do something with his chips, for he had somehow exceeded something called the table limit.

  “ ‘But what I am to do with the chips?’ he inquired.

  “At that point, a third party entered the conversation. A Mr. Porky Pig, leader of a musical ensemble known as Porky Pig and the Swine that had a professional engagement at the hotel, and who announced that he had had a little bad luck, and was consequently willing to exchange his automobile for the Judge’s chips.

  “Mr. Justice Canady has always taken an interest in youth, even barefoot bearded youth in eye shadow and, simply to assist this young chap, turned over the chips to him. He then put the matter from his mind.

  “Two weeks later, after we had returned to Massachusetts, an employee of Mr. Pig delivered the automobile, this very Rolls-Royce, to Mr. Justice Canady’s home, saying both that Mr. Pig was a man of his word, and that he had had one hell of a time finding the Judge. He left the car, so to speak, as a motherless foundling on the Judge’s doorstep. Since the Judge not only had a perfectly satisfactory automobile, a 1939 Packard, he had no need for an additional car, and turned it over to the Framingham Foundation. I’ve thought of selling it, of course, but I’m afraid that would be bad form. One doesn’t sell gifts, does one?”