MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  He had, in other words, talked himself into accepting the delay Esther’s idiotic notion of being given away would require. He would give in to her little whims with a brave little smile. After the knot was tied, the situation would, of course, be different. She would be the one pouring his drinks, and lighting his cigarettes and, as his wife, of course, it would be out of place for her to keep reminding him that cigarettes are bad for the health.

  The telephone rang. Henri Flambeau’s heart jumped. He wondered who in the world it could be. There was no way, he reasoned, that any of his ex-wives could know how to find him here, and start bothering him again over alimony and child-support payments. On the other hand, it was entirely possible, he realized, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that some busybody of a desk clerk with nothing better to do with his time could have come across his name on the blacklist of the Greater Montreal Hoteliers & Motel Keepers Association. This was not the moment to get thrown out of the motel.

  “I will take that, Mon Petite Chouchou,” Henri said, jumping up and dashing to the telephone. “Hello,” he said, and then, “What do you mean, who am I and what am I doing in Esther’s room?” He then handed the telephone to Esther, with a little bow, and a very Gaulic kiss of her hand. “For you, Mon Petite Chouchou,” he said. “It is the hospital operator again. Perhaps your friend the doctor will not be able to tear himself away after all.”

  Esther, her face falling, took the telephone.

  “Is something wrong, Hazel?” she asked. A little smile crossed beneath M. Flambeau’s neatly trimmed, carefully old-Grecianed pencil-line mustache.

  “Is something wrong, mon cherie?" he inquired.

  “I’ll get right on it, Hazel,” Esther said. “By the time they get here, I’ll have everything arranged for. Thanks for the call.”

  “Is something wrong, Esther?” Henri Flambeau asked again, barely disguised hope in every syllable.

  “I’ve got to get right over to the hospital,” Esther said. “Something’s happened to Framingham’s nose.”

  “What hospital? Who is Framingham?”

  “Montreal General,” Esther said, walking into the bedroom for her purse.

  “And Framingham?”

  “He’s sort of a friend of mine,” Esther said. “I’ll get back here as soon as I can.”

  “But, Mon Petite Chouchou," M. Flambeau said. “This is our wedding day!”

  “There will be time for that later,” Esther said. “Duty calls!”

  “Surely they have nurses as well qualified as you at Montreal General.”

  “Far be it from me to suggest that your local nurses are incompetent, Henri,” Esther said. “But that’s not the same thing as saying they’re as competent as I am.”

  “But to leave me on our wedding day!” Henri said.

  “Adieu,” Esther said, rather pleased with the way she was already picking up French. “I shall return!”

  And with that, she was gone.

  Although Esther, who was rather unfamiliar with Montreal, was unaware of this, one could practically expectorate from the balcony of the Jean Claude Killy Suite of the Vieux Montreal Howard Johnson’s Motel onto the Greater Montreal General Hospital. When she stepped into a taxi in front of the Vieux Montreal and gave instructions to the driver (“Montreal General, and step on it!”), the driver turned and inquired, “Madame is ill?”

  “No, Madame is not ill. Do I look ill?” Esther snapped.

  “Madame looks like an American tourist,” the driver replied. “Is that so?”

  “That is so,” Esther said.

  “Montreal General Hospital, it is,” the driver said, and sped off. An hour later, after having exposed the American tourist to most of the sights in the old town (including the Maisonneuve Monument, the Seminary of St. Sulpice, Jacques Cartier Square and the Lord Nelson Monument) and many of those in the new (including the Museum of Fine Arts, McGill University, the Stone Towers, the Victoria Bridge and the Mount Royal Tunnel), the cab pulled up in front of Greater Montreal General Hospital. The driver was pleased, for he had obviously made a great personal contribution to Canadian-American mutual understanding and it had cost his passenger only $16.50, plus tip.

  The pilot of Babcock Number Six had meanwhile flown to Montreal and landed. It had been his intention simply to fuel up the airplane and then get on the telephone and call Burton Babcock & Company to find out what he was supposed to do. His instructions had been to fly to Spruce Harbor, there to await Mrs. Babcock. He had, frankly, been rather relieved when he had been denied landing permission. He took pride in the appearance of his airplane and if he had gone into Spruce Harbor, even if he had made it down all right, there was no question in his mind that the airplane would be mud-spattered.

  The flight from Spruce Harbor to Montreal had not been uneventful, however. An idiot in another airplane had followed him to Montreal, so closely that he could see the copilot, a remarkably ugly bald-headed man with thick glasses and bad teeth, staring at him from the cockpit window.

  He decided, after landing, that while he would indeed make every effort to establish contact with Mrs. Babcock, he would do so only after he had taken something, say three or four martinis, to calm his nerves. There was a limit to the sacrifices he was willing to make for Burton Babcock & Company, and he had reached it. Just as soon as he had given orders to have the plane refueled, he stepped outside the transient aircraft building and hopped into a taxicab.

  Ten seconds later, the ugly, bald-headed man in the thick glasses ran out onto the sidewalk after him, followed by a wheezing fat man.

  “Now what?” the fat man asked, breathlessly. “We’ve lost him.”

  “You forget that you’re with Don Rhotten,” the ugly chap said. “America’s Most Beloved Young TV Newsperson, and paid-up member of the Television Newspersons’ Association. Finding him and, through him, your buffalo poisoner, will be no problem at all.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, the first thing to do is get a hotel room,” Don Rhotten said. “Do you suppose this strange town has a Howard Johnson’s?”

  “How is getting a room in a Howard Johnson’s going to help us find that pilot and Mrs. “Buffalo-Poisoning” Babcock?”

  “Most Howard Johnson Motels, Dummy,” Don Rhotten said, “have telephones. All I have to do is pick up the telephone, and they’re as good as found.”

  “How?”

  “Why, I just tell our bureau chief here to find them, that’s how,” Don Rhotten said. “You didn’t really expect me to go out and look for them myself, did you? My god, that would be betraying the Anchorperson’s oath. We never do anything as crude as running down our own stories. There are little people who do that for us.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Don,” Taylor P. Jambon said.

  “I’m Don Rhotten. I always know what I’m doing,” He flagged a taxicab. “Take us to the nearest Howard Johnson’s,” Don Rhotten ordered. “And if you drive slowly and safely I’ll give you my autograph. Instead of a tip, of course.”

  “The nearest Howard Johnson’s is the Vieux Montreal.” the driver replied. “But I’ll have to charge you extra, if that guy’s going along.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t know what that stuff he’s eating out of the can is, but I’d hate to tell you what it smells like.”

  “You refer, sir,” Taylor P. Jambon said, “to Taylor P. Jambon’s most recently discovered gustatory goodie. This happens to be Old Wild Beanos.”

  “If you get in my cab with that stuff, Fatso, you’re going to have to buy me an aerosol can of Smell-Be-Gone.”

  “Damn the expense!” Don Rhotten said. “Don Rhotten is on assignment. I’ll buy you a case of Smell-Be-Gone. What are expense accounts for, anyway?”

  Chevaux Petroleum’s 747 jumbo jet, with Horsey, Hot Lips, Abdullah, Sitting Buffalo, Uncle Hiram and Josephine Babcock aboard was ten minutes behind Mr. Rhotten’s aircraft.

  For Horsey de la
Chevaux, going to Canada posed something of a problem. It was one of the very few countries in the world (Russia being another) in which Chevaux Petroleum, International did not operate. Although the Canadian government made overtures on the average of once every two weeks, suggesting that Canada would welcome the formation of a Canadian subsidiary of Chevaux Petroleum, and seemed perfectly willing to make any number of concessions tax-wise, Chevaux Petroleum had always flatly turned them down.

  Horsey had never forgiven the Canadians for what they had done to his relatives. The Louisiana Cajuns are descendants of the French who were expelled from Canada by the British; Cajun itself is a bastardization of the term Canadian. When the secretary of state himself had gone to Horsey and told him, bluntly, that it would greatly assist Canadian-American relations if he would begin operations north of the border, Horsey’s reply had been succinct and to the point: “Screw ’em. Let them find their own oil!”

  While Horsey was sure that the Canadian government would now be perfectly willing to offer to him whatever courtesies and privileges they could (and he suspected that he was going to need all the courtesies and privileges he could get if he was to get Esther away from the French-Canadian bureaucrat and into the arms of Uncle Hiram), he was equally sure that there would be strings attached. If they did him favors, he would have to do them a favor, and that meant starting up a Canadian subsidiary. He had privately vowed not to do that.

  He came to the decision, also privately, that he would do nothing until he had to. If necessary, he would back down, but not until he had to.

  He underestimated two of his friends, both in their understanding of his feelings in the matter, and in their own influence within Canada. No sooner had the 747 become airborne from Spruce Harbor than the Reverend Mother Emeritus and His Royal Highness, Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug, excused themselves from the poker game with the announcement that it was necessary that the daisies be sprinkled. Horsey was not suspicious; as much as the two of them had socked away, he had expected this sort of bona fide excuse to leave the game.

  His Royal Highness, however, did not go to the gentlemen’s rest facility. He made his way instead to the flight deck, where he sought out the flight engineer.

  “Hey, ‘Your Nibs,’ how are you?” the flight engineer said.

  “Your mother wears army shoes,” His Royal Highness said, benignly. He pinched the flight engineer’s cheek fondly and handed him a small printed card.

  “Esteemed sir (or madame),” the card read. “I regretfully do not speak your language. Would you be so kind as to call (collect) the number I am pointing out to you? May Allah make his face to shine upon you! Sincerely, Abdullah ben Abzug.”

  The flight engineer looked where Abdullah was pointing: “Canada: The Royal Hussidic Embassy, Montreal, 398-3400.”

  “You want the embassy, Abdullah?” the flight engineer said. “You got it.” He picked up the microphone. “Montreal area control. Let me have a landline please. Get me Montreal, 398-3400.”

  He handed His Royal Highness the headset once the number began to ring.

  “The Royal Hussidic Embassy,” the voice said, in precise Oxfordian diction.

  The flight engineer could not, of course, understand what His Nibs was saying, for the Abzugian language, as has been previously reported, consists in the main of grunts, snorts and wheezes, with a belchlike sound for emphasis. All that the flight engineer knew was that His Nibs grunted, snorted, wheezed and belched for thirty seconds or so, and then handed him the headset back, looking pleased and relieved.

  “Up yours!” His Nibs said. He handed the flight engineer an uncut ruby, no more than thirty or forty carats, and added, “wear it in good health!”

  “I can’t take this, Your Nibs,” the flight engineer replied, handing it back. His Royal Highness looked disappointed. He took it back, smiled, pinched him on the cheek again, and handed him an emerald of about the same size. Then, before this could be returned, he quickly left the flight deck.

  As he went through the door, the Reverend Mother Emeritus came the other way.

  “Can you get me a telephone number in Montreal, Larry!” she asked. “I don’t want Horsey to know about it.”

  “You got it, Hot Lips,” the flight engineer said.

  “Montreal Missionary Temple,” a light and somewhat lisping voice announced. “GILIAFCC, Inc., God loves you. Brother Bobbie speaking. I love you, too.”

  “Bobbie, guess who this is!”

  “Reverend Mother Emeritus, is that really you?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Get out your pencil, Bobbie,” the Reverend Mother said. “I’ve got a long list.”

  Ten minutes behind the Chevaux 747 were, of course, the Borscht Belt Fly Now & Pay Later Airways aircraft and the Air Force Congressional VIP Flight aircraft carrying, respectively, Sydney Prescott, Lance Fairbanks, Brucie (who was, to Sydney’s undisguised disgust, airsick again) and Congressman and Mrs. Alamo Jones. Mrs. Jones, quite naturally, had ordered the pilot to inform the United States consul in Montreal that they were about to be honored with the in-the-flesh presence of Congressman Jones, and that all necessary arrangements (such as arranging for, and paying for, hotel accommodations and rental cars) should be made as a matter of the highest priority.

  One of the first things a junior foreign-service officer learns is that whenever a Congressman leaves either his home district or our nation’s capitol he makes this sacrifice only as an official duty, and thus expects not only the taxpayer to pick up the tab, but the foreign service to serve as sort of a private congressional travel agency.

  So when the very junior foreign-service officer learned that Montreal was about to be honored with the presence of Congressman Jones, he looked him up and found that on a scale of 435, the congressman ranked, influence-wise, somewhere around thirteenth from the bottom. The Vieux Montreal Motel, offering as it did such a splendid view of Greater Montreal General Hospital from its off-street windows, was under that happenstance just the thing for the congressman and his party. The Vieux Montreal did not offer room service. Congressmen, as a class, the young officer had learned, went absolutely bananas with room service while traveling in the public service. It was important, therefore, the junior foreign-service officer had learned at the foreign-service school,* that access to room service be limited to only those congressmen who could influence one’s promotion, or the promotion of one’s immediate superior.

  (* Specifically, in course 201.011. Intermediate Practical Diplomacy III: Intergovernmental Relationships, Especially with Congress.)

  “One of your economy rooms, Charles,” the junior foreign-service officer said to the manager of the Vieux Montreal Motel. “And if this one does any boozing, you’d better advise him beforehand that our counterpart* funds are exhausted and he’ll have to pay for it himself.”

  (* Counterpart funds, being as it is one of the more imaginative ploys of our government, deserves explanation. From time to time, foreign nations, either struck by conscience or, more ordinarily, stuck with an excess of nonnegotiable currency (San Sebastian bananarios, for example, or imperial Russian promissory notes), use these funds as token payments on their indebtedness to the United States of America. The funds are not, however, deposited in the U.S. treasury, but rather retained by the U.S. embassy in the “repaying” country. They are then used to pay the bills of congressmen and other governmental officials who find themselves serving their country on alien shores. Since the money actually repaid is frequently less valuable than the shoe boxes in which it is packed, and unacceptable to hotel keepers, bartenders and so on, the American ambassador makes a like, or counterpart amount of real (i.e., American) money available to our traveling solons. This arrangement permits our congressmen to truthfully announce that not one taxpayer’s dollar went to pay for, for example, his evening at the opera, the cashmere sweaters he sent all his relatives, or the little souvenir gift he gave his interpreter for all her
courtesies and kindnesses to him.

  As the two were chatting on the telephone, Henri Flambeau was leaning on the railing of the balcony of the Jean Claude Killy Suite, a pencil-thin cigar in one hand, a snifter of brandy in the other, thinking happily of the bangtails at Hialeah he would shortly see.

  The sound of approaching sirens reached his ears, causing him to hastily toss down the brandy in his glass, and to move away from the railing to a position where, if by any chance the officers of the law had been dispatched by any one of his wives or the judge of Domestic Relations Court making good his no-child-support slammer-time threat was seeking him, he could take a flying leap off the balcony and make his escape.

  But the sirens were not for him. Peering through the wrought-Old World-cast aluminum railing, he saw a rather astonishing sight. Four Royal Canadian Mounted Police in their famous red coats aboard Kawasaki motorcycles, preceded the longest, blackest Rolls-Royce Henri had ever seen. A thickly embroidered flag flew from the Rolls’ front fender. He had never seen anything like it. There was a gold-embroidered pair of crossed scimitars.* Above the scimitars was a gold-embroidered representation of what looked like an oil-well drilling rig and, above that, a gold-embroidered dollar sign.

  (*Scimitars are those curved swords one sees in motion-picture epics dealing with the Sahara Desert and the Arabs.)

  Two Cadillac limousines followed the Rolls-Royce, and four more Royal Canadian Mounted Police brought up the rear. The Rolls-Royce pulled up to the door of the Vieux Montreal, and the two Cadillac limousines pulled up behind it. From the rearmost limousine a tall, rather bony-featured chap in a frock coat, striped trousers and beret emerged and ran to the Rolls-Royce.