MASH 08 MASH Goes to Hollywood Read online

  “So what’s wrong with that?”

  “There is no Dr. Smith,” Trapper said. “The cop was trained by the army as a medic. He’d been doing all this. Including delivering babies.”

  “For free,” Hawkeye said. “It took me a long time to catch on, because he’d really been doing a good job.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “For one thing, practicing medicine without being a doctor is a no-no,” Trapper said.

  “So I did some snooping around,” Hawkeye said. “And Trapper and I just found out that the guy is working as a cop so that he can save money to go to medical school.”

  Horsey tossed the wad of bills back.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “If you guys think he’ll make a good doctor, that’s good enough for me.”

  “If it’s O.K. with you, Horsey,” Hawkeye said, “I’ll pass this money through the Framingham Foundation. That way he won’t know where it came from.”

  “Sure,” Horsey said. “Let me know when you need some more.”

  “You’re a good man, Horsey Chevaux,” Trapper John said.

  “Lissen,” Horsey said. He was actually blushing furiously. “Anytime I can make a doctor out of a cop, I’m happy.”

  “So what are you doing in Spruce Harbor?”

  “I was in Alaska,” he said. “I got a couple of holes on the North Shore. Then Boris called up. Says he’s going to Hussid, and if I ain’t got anything better to do, I should come on over and play a little poker. So I remembered what Mary said about liking king crab, so I got some king crab and told the pilot to refuel here. You guys want to come to Hussid? It’ll be like old times.” *

  (* Colonel de la Chevaux and Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the opera singer, were comrades-in-arms during the Korean War. Both were hospitalized for treatment of wounds received in combat at the 4077th MASH, where Dr. Pierce and Dr. McIntyre were the attending physicians. The details of that relationship have been chronicled for posterity in a highly acclaimed, splendidly written book, M*A*S*H GOES TO NEW ORLEANS (Pocket Books, New York, 1975).)

  “The offer is tempting,” Trapper said.

  “But Trapper and I have a little work to do around here,” Hawkeye said. “We are about to start a series of conferences with some of our professional brothers who have chosen to be associated with the teaching branch of the medical profession.”

  “It’s only going to be for a couple of days,” Horsey said. “I got to be in Caracas, Venezuela, on Friday. No trouble at all to drop you back here on the way.”

  “Thank you, Horsey, but no,” Trapper said. “You said something about king crab?”

  There came a loud, even imperious, knocking at the door.

  “Go away!” Hawkeye called. “Can’t you see the do not disturb sign is illuminated?”

  “Dr. Pierce,” a somewhat nasal, rather effeminate voice said, “it is I, T. Alfred Crumley, the hospital administrator.”

  “Go away, T. Alfred Crumley,” Trapper called. “Go wash a bedpan.”

  “And the chief of staff is with me!” T. Alfred Crumley added.

  “You out there, Charley?” Hawkeye called.

  “I’d like to see you, Benjamin,” a dignified voice replied. There were few people in the world who dared to call Benjamin Franklin Pierce, M.D., F.A.C.S., “Benjamin.” One of them was the chief of staff of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center, Charles W. Barclay, M.D.

  “Just a minute,” Trapper called. With what can only be described as amazing grace, the martini glasses, pitcher, ingredients, and gallon of Old White Stagg vanished into the confidential drawer of the filing cabinet. An imposing array of medical documents, including three large X rays (specially prepared for just such an eventuality), were arranged around the room, mouths were sprayed with Booze-Be-Gone, and the door opened.

  “We were in consultation,” Dr. McIntyre said. “I hope this is important.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t,” T. Alfred Crumley said, sort of quivering in righteous indignation.

  “You want I should wait outside, Hawk . . . Dr. Pierce?” Horsey asked.

  “Not in your condition,” Hawkeye said. “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  “Benjamin,” Dr. Charles W. Barclay said, “Mr. Crumley has come to me with a story that I find hard to believe.”

  “Is that so?”

  “He reports that you have been placing international telephone calls and charging them to his personal number.”

  “He said that?” Hawkeye said.

  “And I have all the details, Doctor!” Crumley said. “You’re trapped this time.”

  “What details do you have?” Trapper asked, innocently.

  “You just fifteen minutes ago placed a call to a Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux at the royal palace in Hussid.”

  “You’re sure of your facts?”

  “I’m sure of everything!” Crumley hissed. “I even found out where Hussid is! It’s nine-thousand miles away, and the toll is eighteen dollars a minute!”

  “Well, there you go,” Trapper said.

  “Dr. Barclay,” Hawkeye said, “may I present Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux? Colonel Chevaux, Dr. Barclay.”

  “Mr. Crumley,” Trapper said, gently, “as I’m sure you know, psychiatry has made giant steps in the treatment of hallucinatory conditions. Have you ever considered having a little chat with our own Dr. Wilson?”

  “Obviously, Benjamin,” Dr. Barclay said, “there has been a little misunderstanding. I deeply regret the intrusion.”

  “I just hope that we’ll be able, all of us pulling together, to help Mr. Crumley,” Hawkeye said.

  “What would we ever do without him?” Trapper asked, piously.

  “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Colonel,” Dr. Barclay said.

  “Likewise,” Horsey replied. Trapper waited until the door had closed again.

  “We were talking, I think, about king crab?” he said.

  Chapter Three

  Waldo Maldemer (pronounced in the French manner, Mahl-duh-mare) and Don Rhotten (pronounced in the Netherlandish, or Dutch, manner, Row-ten) were unquestionably among the most valuable assets of the Amalgamated Broadcasting System.

  They were broadcast journalists who appeared each evening on the ABS Evening News for half an hour. As the result of contractual negotiations involving sixteen lawyers, two press agents, and Mr. Rhotten’s mother, Hermione, in fact, the correct title of the program, as shown before and after each telecast, was “Waldo Maldemer and the Evening News with Don Rhotten.”

  Waldo Maldemer was a jowly gentleman in his late middle years, given to smoking a pipe and possessed of massive eyebrows that he could raise a full two inches to wordlessly express his displeasure with the news. Don Rhotten projected the image of a somewhat younger, more aggressive newsman, the image of nature buttressed with some mechanical assistance, including caps for his teeth, contact lenses featuring Paul Newman blue eyes, a large wardrobe of hairpieces, and a nylon-cloth device with a lot of cords, which, when pulled tight, served to give his midsection the appearance of being a good deal less low-slung and bulgy than was the case.

  Waldo Maldemer, in the quaint cant of the trade, “gave” the news and Don Rhotten the “comment.” In both cases, what they read over the air with an aura of absolute confidence that was the envy of their competitors was prepared for them by a small army of anonymous real journalists, enticed away from honest employment on newspapers and wire services by the higher wages of what has come to be called the electronic media.

  Freed, so to speak, from the mundane drudgery of searching out the news, the two were thus also free to devote their off-the-air time to such pursuits as addressing groups of potential sponsors of the program and advising presidents of the United States and other such bureaucrats on the conduct of national affairs.

  All they had to do, in other words, to earn the $210,000 (Maldemer) and $185,000 (Rhotten) annual compensation paid them by a grateful Amalgamated Broadcastin
g System was to show up fifteen minutes before air time with a fresh shave and reasonably sober. To ensure that this in fact happened, both gentlemen were normally surrounded by a large staff who bore such titles as producer, executive producer, assistant executive producer, and senior executive producer and whose function it was to see that Waldo Maldemer had no more than three shots of Old Macintosh Scotch Whiskey before he took his position before the cameras and that Don Rhotten’s wig, caps, and contacts were in place. (There had once been a horrible blunder: Don Rhotten had forgotten his contacts. When his turn came to comment upon the news, all he saw on the TelePrompTer was a bunch of squiggly lines. Since he had, of course, no idea whatever what the subject of his comments was, much less the comments on his subject, there followed a full fifty seconds of dead air time, which is to television broadcasting quite as shaming as, say, a minister of the gospel getting caught whooping it up in a house of ill repute.

  The staff had other functions, too, of course. Don Rhotten certainly couldn’t be expected to either keep track of, or maintain, his supply of hairpieces, and there was an assistant executive producer for that function. Waldo Maldemer, confidante and golfing partner of presidents and chiefs of state, certainly could not be expected to answer his own telephone, and there was an assistant executive producer for that, too.

  There were two large members of the staff whose function it was to protect the electronic journalists from the unwanted adulation of their fans. For reasons that only an experienced practitioner of abnormal psychiatry could possibly understand, both Waldo Maldemer and Don Rhotten were constantly under a sort of attack by a legion of fans whose sole aim in life it seemed to be to touch their heroes. Waldo Maldemer wasn’t nearly as distressed by this phenomenon as Don Rhotten, possibly because Waldo did not have to avoid jerking movements of the head. When Don Rhotten moved his head too quickly, the wig would shift, either giving him an abnormally high forehead or moving the other way, blinding him.

  At just about the time that Dr. Hawkeye Pierce and Dr. Trapper John McIntyre drove Col. Horsey de la Chevaux to Spruce Harbor International Airport where the colonel, full of Maine beer, Kentucky bourbon, and Alaskan king crab boarded a Chevaux Petroleum International 747, in other words, at just about the time that Waldo Maldemer and Don Rhotten were about to face the ABS television cameras, a strange apparition appeared in the corridor leading to the dressing room of Studio 17, ABS. (Studio 17 was a “permanent set” in the ABS Building. It was designed to look like a newsroom. There were genuine-looking, phony teletype printers, maps of the world, large numbers of unconnected telephones, and other such impedimenta. Plus, of course, desks for both Mr. Maldemer and Mr. Rhotten. Seven otherwise unemployable relatives of ABS executives were on the payroll. When Waldo and Don were on camera, they picked up telephones and mouthed imaginary conversations, looked at the teletype printers with rapt fascination, and so on. The newsroom itself, where the teletype printers actually printed and the telephones worked and where the army of formerly legitimate journalists prepared scripts for Messrs. Maldemer and Rhotten, was in the second subbasement of the building. It was a dark, ugly room with battered furniture and could not, of course, be exposed to public view.)

  It was a small human being, about five-feet-two-inches in height and weighing no more than 120 pounds, including a wristwatch with seven dials that must have weighed at least five pounds. This creature was wearing a dark blue jacket, sort of cut on the Mao Tse-tung-Nehru pattern, except that it had twelve large brass buttons arranged in double rows. The trousers were light yellow in color and close fitting. Since the legs were rather slight, the appearance was of a blue bottle suspended on toothpicks. There was an enormous amount of hair, sort of a spectacular Afro, except that the hair was blond and the wearer’s face pasty-pale, negating any African connection. The most obvious conclusion to draw was that the gentleman had that very moment removed his finger from a light socket. There was also a very large set of round eyeglasses.

  The creature marched down the corridor directly toward the powder-blue door with the large gold star and the words “DON RHOTTEN” painted on it. The junior assistant associate executive producers standing guard outside Mr. Rhotten’s dressing room quite naturally believed that the creature was a fan who had somehow managed to evade the security guards elsewhere in the building and was now about to assault Mr. Rhotten with some outrageous request, such as for an autograph. Autographs were never given away. The selling of autographs was a nice little sideline of Don Rhotten Enterprises, Inc., nearly as profitable as the Don Rhotten Sweat Shirts and the Dandy Don Doll, which came in a box with six complete sets of costumes, plus a scale size model microphone and television camera.

  The junior assistant executive producers stepped in front of the little man, barring his way.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “I doubt it,” the little man said. There was a harsh, unfriendly quality to his voice. Had the timbre of his voice been different—specifically, had it been deeper— it would have been menacing. But the timbre of his voice was not deep at all, and the result was that he sounded like a belligerent canary.

  “This area is not open to the public,” one of the junior assistant associate executive producers said.

  “Sorry about that,” the other one said.

  “The public?” the little man squeaked. “The public? Do you have no idea whom you are addressing, you cretin?”

  There was no reply. Canary-like or not, there was a tone of assurance, of self-confidence in the little man’s tone that kept the junior assistant associate executive producers from picking him up and throwing him out.

  “I am,” the little man, drawing himself up to his full five feet and two inches, said, “Wesley St. James, that’s who I am!”

  The junior assistant associate executive producers paled. The larger of them turned and pulled open Don Rhotten’s powder-blue, gold-star-adorned door. The smaller made a gurgling noise as he bowed. He was trying to frame a suitable apology and not quite making it.

  Wesley St. James was Don Rhotten’s closest friend, closer even than the Hon. Edwards L. Jackson (Farmer-Free Silver, Ark.), third-ranking member of the House Committee on Sewers, Subways, and Sidewalks. More importantly, Wesley St. James was in the industry, which is to say that he was also part of the thrilling world of television broadcasting.

  Wesley St. James (it was pronounced Sin-jims) was in the entertainment end, as opposed to the news end, although it could of course be argued that Don Rhotten, on occasion, provided a lot of laughs himself and that, to tell the truth, most St. James Productions actually made strong men weep.

  The words “A WESLEY ST. JAMES PRODUCTION” were, in the cant of the trade, “rolled on the drum” before and after such productions as “Life’s Little Agonies,” “The Globe Spinneth,” “Guiding Torch,” “One Life to Love,” and “All These Children.”

  He was known in the trade as the “Napoleon of the Soaps,” but that term didn’t do him full credit. St. James’ Games, a wholly owned subsidiary of St. James Productions, was responsible for the telecasting of such widely popular game programs as “Grovel for Gold,” “Humiliation!”, and the hottest thing on the current roster of shows, “Win Your Operation!”, in which a panel of nonpartisan physicians, social workers, and clergymen decide which of three seriously ill participants would get an operation, absolutely free of charge, based (without regard to race, sex, religion, or national origin) on the participant’s relating of the agony he was presently suffering.

  The name of Wesley St. James was well known, but not St. James himself. His operation was based in Hollywood, California, and he rarely appeared on the East Coast and even more rarely in the ABS Building itself.

  It was well known that Don Rhotten and Wesley St. James, two of the brightest stars in the ABS television heavens, were good friends and that they went back together a long way in broadcasting. Just how far back and where, however, was somewhat vague. Two very highly priced public relations
experts spent much time and a good bit of money to obscure the facts.

  The truth, known only to Mr. Rhotten, Mr. St. James, and Mr. Seymour G. Schwartz, senior executive producer of Don Rhotten Productions, Inc., was that all three of them went back to a 1,000-watt, two-camera television station in South Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mr. Schwartz, who had entered broadcasting after the unfortunate failure of Sy Schwartz’s Salon, a gentleman’s hairdressing operation some years before its time, had then been known as Uncle Ralph. Every Saturday morning, Uncle Ralph and His Furry Friends, Big Bunny (P. Dudley Rhotten) and Little Bunny (Wesley St. James, then known as Wladislaw Synjowlski), had entertained the kiddies from nine to eleven thirty. Seymour wore a fright wig, straw hat, and overalls. Don and Wesley wore bunny suits. Seymour got a lot of laughs beating them over the head with plastic watermelons and baseball bats.

  They moved upward, to a 10,000-watt, three-camera station in the university city of Rolf, sometimes known as the Oxford of Iowa, and it was there that Lady Luck touched them with her magic wand.

  The anchorman (and only employee) of the Rolf station’s news operation had dallied too long in the Elite Café. When he was finally located, he was rather, as Wesley St. James would say, “in his cups.” Aside from the cameraman and the studio engineer, there was no one around to deliver the evening news but Seymour G. Schwartz (Uncle Ralph), Wladislaw Synjowlski (Little Bunny), and P. Dudley Rhotten (Big Bunny).

  The show, as they say, must go on. It couldn’t go on, however, with Seymour G. Schwartz, of course, because everybody knew him as Uncle Ralph, and all the kids would be expecting him to squirt Big and Little Bunny with a hose or wallop them with a dead fish, and no attention would be paid to the news. Wladislaw Synjowlski was out. The reason he was playing Little Bunny was because he sounded like a little bunny. Fate pointed its fickle finger at P. Dudley Rhotten.

  P. Dudley Rhotten, au naturel, was not something to set feminine hearts aflutter. It didn’t matter normally, of course, because you couldn’t see him in his bunny suit. But he had to get out of the bunny suit to deliver the news. That left exposed a bald, rather bumpy head, shamefully naked except for a thin, bathtub-like ring of hair at the level of his ears. His teeth looked like a “before” photo in the Journal of Corrective Dentistry, and his eyes, sort of an off-yellow, were magnified by thick eyeglasses, giving him a somewhat guppylike appearance.