“Well, he should be cleared to read it. What’s wrong with that?”
“They wanted him to sign for it.”
“We have them here all the time. Two weeks after you sign for something, you get a coupon book from the Friendly Finance Company. You either send them a dollar a week for the rest of your life, or they’ll send the sheriff to foreclose on you.”
“Well, it’s strange enough that it bothers me, Jack. That’s why I called.”
“I can’t help you with the Bible, but I do have a ... an acquaintance ... in Paris I can call about the bishop.”
“Who’s that?”
“Well, I’d rather not say, Bob, but I think I can get results.”
“I understand perfectly, Jack,” Monsignor Moran said. “We all have our anonymous friends here and there to call on when we need them, don’t we?”
“I’ll call him right away and get back to you, Bob.”
“Appreciate it, Jack. Any time I can do anything for you...”
“Happy to be of service, Bob,” Monsignor Clancy said. He broke the connection with his finger, then dialed the overseas operator. Then, suddenly changing his mind, he broke the connection, too, and dialed another number. He knew this one by heart, from pained memory.
“God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Incorporated,” a lilting voice of indeterminate sexual persuasion announced. “Good morning!”
“Good morning,” Monsignor Clancy said. “May I speak with the Rev. Mother Emeritus Wilson, please?”
“Might I be so bold as to inquire who with such a sexy, masculine voice is calling?”
“Tell her Jack Clancy,” the monsignor replied.
“Perhaps I might be of service, Jack. Is there anything at all, anything at all, that I could do for you?”
“Just let me talk to the Reverend Mother Emeritus,” Monsignor Clancy said, reminding himself to judge not, lest ye be judged, and that Michelangelo himself had been a little light on his feet and yet had rendered the Church great service.
“Well,” the voice replied, “she’s busy, busy, busy, but I’ll tell her you’re on the line. No promises or anything.”
“Thank you,” the monsignor said.
In a moment a warm female voice came on the line. “Jackie-Baby, what a pleasant surprise!” she said. “What can l’il ol’ Reverend Mother do for you?”
“I need a little favor, Hot Lips,” the monsignor said.
“Name it,” she replied immediately. “I mean, what chance has ecumenism got if we don’t help each other out?”
The monsignor felt that there was such a thing as pushing churchly union too far, but he said nothing.
“Have you got friends in Paris?” the monsignor asked.
“Have I got friends in Paris? Is the Pope . . . certainly, I have friends in Paris. What’s the problem?”
“Probably nothing,” the monsignor said. “But the Chancellor of the Diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys, Bob Moran—he’s an old friend of mine —just called.”
“And?”
“It seems his bishop is lost in Paris.”
“Well, Jack, you know how it is,” the Reverend Mother said. “Maybe he wants to be lost. All work and no play, as I always say.”
“It’s nothing like that, I’m sure,” the monsignor said firmly. “He left his hotel in the cardinal-archbishop’s car for the opera, and that’s the last anyone’s heard of him.” After a moment, he added, “He was in his bishop’s formal dress, Hot Lips.”
“Well, that rules out, I suppose, a night on the town,” the Reverend Mother said. “Let me have his name, Jackie-Baby, and I’ll get right on it.”
“Patrick Michael O’Grogarty,” Monsignor Clancy said.
“Boy, you really have it sewn up, don’t you? You’re as bad as the New York Police Force.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Monsignor Clancy said.
“I’d hate to be an ordinary priest named Goldberg trying to get to be a monsignor, that’s what I mean, Jackie-Baby,” she said. “But no offense. I’ll get back to you.”
“I’d be grateful,” Monsignor Clancy said. Once he’d hung up, he had, briefly, second thoughts about involving Hot Lips and the God Is Love, etc., in the problem, but quickly realized it was better than calling up the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris and asking if he’d happened to run across a lost bishop.
Rev. Mother Emeritus Wilson pushed the button on her intercom.
“Jimmy, be a dear and get His Royal Highness on the horn for me, will you?”
“Which royal highness is that, Reverend Mother? The short fat one in Paris, or that gorgeous hunk of Arabian stallion in Abzug?”
“The Paris one,” she replied.
Five minutes later the intercom buzzed.
“Paris on three, Reverend Mother, but not His Royal Short Fat Highness.”
“Rev. Mother Emeritus Margaret H. W. Wilson here,” Hot Lips said to the phone. “Who’s this?”
“I have the honor to be Abdullah Yacim ben Mussid, first under-secretary and chief of missions of the Parisian embassy of His Most Islamic Majesty, the King of Hussid.”
“You’re the great big one with the scar on his left cheek and those sexy dark eyes?”
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Madame,” the chief of mission said somewhat icily.
“Oh, of course you have,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “This is Hot Lips, Abdullah-Baby.”
“Oh, Madamoiselle Hot Lips! Why didn’t you say so?”
“Just to keep the record straight, Abdullah-Baby, that’s Reverend Mother Emeritus Hot Lips. But you may, of course, just call me Hot Lips.”
“How many His Majesty’s embassy be of service to you, Hot Lips?”
“I was hoping to talk to Hassan,” she said.
“His Royal Highness, Reverend Mother Hot Lips, as I thought you knew, is en route to Miami, Florida.”
“I knew, of course, but that’s not until day after tomorrow. You mean he’s left already?”
“He went via Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Something to do with picking up Colonel Horsey and François Mulligan, I believe. Is there any way I might be of service?”
“As a matter of fact, Abdullah-Baby ...”
Chapter Eleven
“You sent for me, Sheikh Abdullah?” inquired Mustapha ben Shazam, chef du protocole and chief of security of the Royal Hussidic Embassy.
“You are aware of the close relationship between His Royal Highness and the infidel woman known as Reverend Mother Hot Lips?”
“Painfully aware, Sheikh Abdullah.”
“And of the standing order around here that whatever Reverend Mother Hot Lips wants, Reverend Mother gets?”
“Even more painfully, Sheikh Abdullah.”
“She’s thrown us a real can of worms this time, Sheikh Mustapha,” the chief of mission said.
“Oh?”
“Somewhere in Paris is another infidel, an Irish infidel, an official of the infidel church ... a bishop, I believe. The name is Patrick Michael O’Grogarty. We are to find him and send him home. He is lost.”
“Maybe he wants to be lost,” Sheikh Mustapha said, winking and twirling his mustache.
“I don’t care if he wants to be lost or not. If the Reverend Mother Emeritus Hot Lips wants him sent home, he gets sent home.”
“Your wish, of course, is my command,” Sheikh Mustapha replied.
“Where will you start?”
“I will drop by the Foreign Ministry, pick up the foreign minister, and take him along with me to the headquarters of the Gerdarmerie Nationale.”
“In that case, I’ll go with you,” the chief of mission said. “Call the airport and have them make a plane ready.”
“Your wish, of course, is my command,” Sheikh Mustapha said again.
“Keep that in mind, Mustapha,” the chief of mission said.
The commandant of the Paris Region, Gendarmerie Nationale, was surprised to see His Excellency the Foreign Minister
of the French Republic come marching into his headquarters. A bureaucrat of such exalted status as the foreign minister rarely made personal visits to the Gendarmerie Nationale. Usually, the commandant was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and told to come in an unmarked car and enter by the rear door. Or some minor underling would appear at the Gendarmerie Nationale. But rarely a high-ranking official, and absolutely never the foreign minister himself.
But when His Excellency introduced His Excellency Sheikh Abdullah Yacim ben Mussid, chief of mission of the Royal Hussidic Embassy, and his chef du protocole, he of course understood. After all, the Sheikhdom of Hussid supplied thirty-eight percent of the petroleum needs of la belle France, and Air Hussid, of all the world’s airlines, was the only one that had purchased Le Discorde aircraft—or could afford to fly them. That explained a good deal. La belle France was willing, even eager, to do practically anything to sell Le Discorde aircraft; the commandant himself had learned of an offer by the interior minister to have the Eiffel Tower turned into an outdoor billboard spelling out ALL THE WAY WITH T.W.A. if that airline would purchase, on a money-back guarantee basis, just one of the droop-nosed flying machines.
“And how,” the commandant said, rising to his feet and oozing Gallic charm from every sweaty pore, “may the Gendarmerie Nationale be of service to your distinguished self, M’sieu le Foreign Minister, and your handsome and charming friends?”
“Sheikh Abdullah seeks,” the foreign minister said —“which is to say, of course, that the source of thirty-eight percent of our petroleum seeks—an American prelate of the Church who is missing in Paris.”
“Sheikh Abdullah,” the commandant said, “put your mind to rest. If your distinguished prelate friend is in Paris, the Gendarmerie Nationale will find him! Would you by any chance have a description, or any other sort of a clue, on which we can build our search?”
“His name is O’Grogarty, Patrick Michael,” Sheikh Abdullah replied.
“Isn’t that interesting,” the commandant said. “We have a chap in our custody with a name very much like that: Patrick Michael O’Grogarty.”
“Perhaps it is the same man. The names are similar.”
“Oh, this couldn’t be your prelate. This one, we feel, is a high-ranking officer of the Irish Republican Army.”
“How can you be so sure that he’s not our man?” Sheikh Mustapha asked.
“I wouldn’t repeat the language he’s been using,” the commandant said. “Prelates don’t talk like that.”
“We of the Royal Hussidic Security Service never leave a stone unturned,” Sheikh Mustapha said. “I would like to see this chap.” He paused, twirled his mustache, and added: “Alone.”
“I will go with you, Mustapha,” Sheikh Abdullah said.
“Your wish is my command,” Sheikh Mustapha said. Three minutes later, a heavy steel door in subbasement three of the detention facility of the Paris Region, Gendarmerie Nationale (known popularly as the “New Bastille”), was pushed creakingly open. One middle-aged Irishman and two middle-aged Hussidians stared at each other with undisguised interest.
“Who are you?” Patrick Michael O’Grogarty asked.
“It is we who will ask the questions, and you who will answer them,” Sheikh Mustapha said. “Who are you?”
“I am Patrick Michael O’Grogarty, Bishop of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys.”
“Ha!” Sheikh Mustapha said.
“Ha!” Sheikh Abdullah said.
“Why won’t anyone believe me?’ Patrick Michael O’Grogarty asked rhetorically.
“Let me put it to you this way,” Sheikh Mustapha said. “If you came across, in the third sub-basement of the New Bastille, a red-faced Irisher wearing nothing but a T-shirt and polka-dot shorts, and he said he was the Bishop of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys, would you believe him?”
“They took my clothing . . . brand-new clothing, purchased only last week in Rome . . . and left me here like this,” Patrick Michael O’Grogarty replied.
“Just like that? Just snatched you off the street, stripped you, and threw you in the slammer? With no reason?” Sheikh Mustapha asked, dripping sarcasm from every sibilant syllable.
“A singer told them to,” Patrick Michael O’Grogarty said. “A singer accused me of singing off-key, of being drunk on stage, and of stealing a costume.”
“A singer? A singer? You expect me to believe that?”
“A great big man, with a beard. He was attempting to pick a fistfight with a priest, and when I tried to stop the fight, the next thing I knew, I was being grabbed by the cops.”
“A great big singer? With a beard?”
“Oh, I know you won’t believe me, but it’s the truth!”
Sheikh Mustapha and Sheikh Abdullah exchanged significant looks.
“Go get the foreign minister, Mustapha,” Sheikh Abdullah said.
“Your wish is my command,” Sheikh Mustapha replied, bowing deeply. He turned toward the door of the dungeon. “Hey, Foreign Minister!”
The foreign minister and the commandant came into the dungeon.
“Yes, Your Excellencies?” the foreign minister said.
“I wish to inform you, sir,” Sheikh Abdullah said, “as chief of mission of the Parisian embassy of His Most Islamic Majesty, the King of Hussid (may his tribe increase), that this red-faced Irisher is now under the protection of the Royal Husidic Embassy.”
“I don’t quite follow you, Your Excellency,” the foreign minister said.
“Unless you want to ride to work on a bicycle, you’d better not,” Sheikh Abdullah said. “Come along, Irisher!”
“You mean, I’m getting out?’
“Not only are you getting out, red-faced Irisher infidel, you are, through the boundless mercy of His Most Islamic Majesty’s Parisian embassy, going home.”
“I don’t want to go home,” Patrick Michael O’Grogarty said. “I want to go back to my hotel.”
“Don’t press your luck, infidel,” Sheikh Mustapha said.
FROM F.B.I. MIAMI
TO F.B.I. WASHINGTON
Reference your teletype re: Patrick Michael O’GROGARTY, ALLEGEDLY BISHOP OF GREATER MIAMI AND THE FLORIDA KEYS.
1. The agent in charge has personally assumed COMMAND OF THE INVESTIGATION, ASSISTED by Deputy Agent-in-charge Llewellyn Finklestein.
2. Following unusually suspicious behavior ON PART OF INDIVIDUAL DRESSED AS PRIEST AND REPRESENTING HIMSELF AS MEMBER OF staff, Diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys, telephonic surveillance was placed on premises allegedly those of Diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys.
3. A TOTAL OF FOUR HUNDRED ELEVEN (411) TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATIONS TO THE PREMISES ALLEGEDLY THOSE OF DIOCESE OF GREATER MIAMI and the Florida Keys WERE INTERCEPTED, RECORDED, AND ANALYZED BY THE AGENT IN CHARGE HIMSELF, WITH SOME ASSISTANCE FROM Deputy Agent-in-Charge L. Finklestein.
4. Two communications appear to have SOME BEARING ON THIS CASE. VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTS FOLLOW.
A. Call number one:
Answering party at premises allegedly those of Diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys hereinafter referred to as AP. calling party hereinafter referred to as CP.
AP: Chancellory of the Diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys.
CP: Monsignor ClancyN calling for Monsignor Moran.
AP: One moment please, Monsignor.
AP: Monsignor Moran.
CP: Jack Clancy, Bob.
AP: I’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOUR CALL.
CP: I JUST HAD A CALL FROM HOT LlPS.
AP: From who?
CP: My contact.
AP: I THOUGHT YOU SAID “HOT LIPS.”
CP: Your Bishop is on his way home.
AP: Everything is all right, then?
CP: Let’s say everything has apparentlyNturned out all right.
AP: Jack, you seem to be beating around the bush. Is there something I should knoW? Something you know and don’t WANT TO TELL ME?
CP: It’s sort of delicate, Bob. I don’t REA
LLY KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS.
AP: Tell me what?
CP: Well, according to the information I have, Bob, it seems your bishop was in THE SLAMMER.
AP: My bishop? In the slammer? That’s out OF THE QUESTION, IMPOSSIBLE.
CP: Probably some simple misunderstanding. All I can tell you is what I was TOLD.
AP: What, precisely, were you told?
CP: My contact here told me that her contact in Paris had just telephoned to say they found your bishop wearing NOTHING BUT HIS UNDERWEAR, IN THE New Bastille, but not to worry, that THEY HAD SPRUNG HIM, GIVEN HIM SOMETHING TO WEAR, AND WERE SENDING HIM HOME.
AP: Did you say “her”? You want to tell ME WHO YOUR CONTACT IS?
CP: I don’t really think you or YOUR BISHOP would want to know, Bob. Let me say THAT SHE’S A FRIEND OF MY ARCHBISHOP AND CAN BE TRUSTED.
AP: She didn’t say why my bishop was in THE SLAMM—WHY HE HAD BEEN UNJUSTLY ARRESTED?
CP: She didn’t have all the details. But apparently he’d had a few too many.
AP: Are you implying what I think you’re implying?
CP: One of the charges against him was COMMITTING AN OFFENSE AGAINST THE PEACE AND DIGNITY OF PARIS BY APPEARING DRUNK ON THE STAGE OF THE PARIS OPERA AND SINGING OUT OF TUNE.
AP: Oh, my—!
CP: But the charges have been dropped, Bob, so not to worry.
AP: What were the other charges?
CP: You don’t really want to know, do you, Bob?
AP: I don’t want to know, Jack. But I think it’s MY DUTY to FIND OUT.
CP: Well, there was something about STEALING A COSTUME.
AP: What kind of a costume?
CP: They didn’t say.
AP: Anything else?
CP: Not much.
AP: Tell me, Jack.
CP: Resisting arrest. But they’ve all been dropped, Bob, and he’s on his way home.
AP: Can I ask you something, Jack?
CP: Sure, Bob. Anything at all.
AP: If this had happened to your archbishop, HOW WOULD YOU HAVE HANDLED IT?
CP: I REALLY can’t IMAGINE MY ARCHBISHOP GETTING PLASTERED AND SINGING OUT OF TUNE ON THE STAGE OF THE PARIS OPERA, Bob.
MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami Page 12