MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “The ones where she tells her priest how she misbehaved,” Beebe said.

  “You taped her in the confessional?” Trapper John asked.

  “Certainly,” Beebe said. “You can’t use them in the courts, of course, but they’re sure fun to listen to.”

  “Over the side with them, Boris,” Trapper John said. “See if you can get the one with all the teeth to land on his head.”

  “I’m a U.S. senator! Do you realize what you’re doing?” Senator Fisch gargled as Boris upended the two intruders once again and carried them to the railing.

  “Two birds with one stone?” Trapper John inquired. “Bums away, Boris!”

  “Wait a minute,” Hawkeye said suddenly.

  “There is a time and a place for mercy,” Trapper John said. “But this isn’t it.”

  “I think these gentlemen may be able to help us with our problem,” Hawkeye said. “Put them down, Boris, but don’t turn them loose.”

  There were other people in the Winter Palace, of course, who were known in the quaint cant of the hotel game as “guests.”* While the Winter Palace, like all good Miami Beach hotels, offered a variety of things to do, from bathing in the Atlantic from the Winter Palace’s private beach (three hundred feet long and twenty-six feet wide at low tide, this “broad strand of sparkling white sand” was the boast of the Winter Palace and the second largest hotel beach in Miami) through bowling, roller skating, Ping-Pong, and finger painting under the professional guidance of an expert imported from the Catskill Mountains of New York, by far the most popular means of passing time for most guests was sitting around the lobby (the men in Bermuda shorts; the women in mink stoles) watching other guests.

  (* Guests are defined as “those entertained and/or housed by friends” by those who take their English seriously, with the implication that the entertainment and/or housing is free of charge (a cot in a windowless closet). Such was not the case in the Winter Palace, where “economy accommodations” began at $37.50 per diem and soared rapidly upwards from that floor.)

  More than two-hundred guests had been so engaged in the lobby of the Winter-Palace when the first contingent (Dago Red, Boris, Hawkeye, Trapper John, et al.) of the participants in the ceremony of the transfer of the holy relics had arrived.

  Most of the guests were of the Jewish persuasion, and thus not too conversant with the finer points and subtle innuendos of holy relics, or the transfer of same. But they all knew, of course, that an archbishop was a high-ranking Catholic of some sort, and since the highest-ranking Catholic of them all was friends with Golda Meir, they were willing to give the ceremony and its participants the benefit of the doubt, especially since the billboard in the lobby said that admission to the transfer ceremony would be free of charge.

  There were precious few places in Miami where one could witness a presentation involving a seventy-man (or at least seventy-person) a cappella choir, a fifty-five piece marching band with ceremonial goats, and an archbishop and a Reverend Mother Emeritus free of charge.

  Here and there among the guests was scattered an odd Christian, and these were immediately sought out and eagerly interrogated as to the meaning of holy relics; as to where, exactly, an archbishop ranked in the hierarchy; and as to what the theological significance of the ceremonial goats was. With the exception of a Mr. Charles Whaley, a hard-shell Baptist from Louisville, Kentucky, who knew even less about holy relics than his Jewish fellow guests did, the Christians rose nobly to the occasion. Both of these, unfortunately, had been at the grape, and some of the facts they recalled vis-à-vis the whole solemn business were the products of their imaginations rather than accurate recall of what they had been told, twenty years before, in Comparative Religion 101.

  The end result, however, was that ten minutes after the second contingent (the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc., Blessed Brother Buck Memorial A Cappella Choir and the Bayou Perdu Council, Knights of Columbus, Marching Band) had arrived, the harried reservations clerk was telling all corners that he was terribly sorry, but every seat in the Grand Ballroom had been taken.

  Finally, in desperation, the outer three rows of tables in the Grand Ballroom were removed, and folding chairs were brought in to seat those dedicated individuals whose threats of violence if no seats were forthcoming could not be dismissed as mere hyperbole.

  A two-seater F-104 jet fighter dropped like a bomb from its en-route altitude of forty thousand feet to make its approach to Miami International Airport. It flashed across the Atlantic Ocean, speed brakes out and screaming in the slipstream, dropped its gear, raced across Biscayne Bay, and, touching down on smoking tires on Miami International’s longest runway, popped the drag chute and rolled to a stop.

  A black-and-yellow-striped FOLLOW ME truck drove out to meet it. A person dressed in the standard U.S. Air Force off-grey high-altitude flying suit (incorporating the last word in anti-G-forces pressurization) and wearing headgear not unlike that worn by Neil Armstrong on the moon, climbed somewhat clumsily from the aircraft. Halfway down the little aluminum ladder the person climbed back up, reached inside the cockpit, picked up a half-gallon bottle of La Paisano genuine Neapolitan chianti and a dozen long-stemmed roses, and climbed down again.

  He got in the front seat of the FOLLOW ME pickup truck and, with some effort, pulled off the helmet. (It had become stuck on the person’s rather prominent ears.)

  “Take me to the Winter Palace,” the person said.

  “You oughta go easy on the grape, pal,” the driver said. “It really gets to you at high altitudes. You know I can’t take this truck off the field.”

  “Why not?” the person asked.

  “It’s against the law, that’s why not,” the driver said.

  “Don’t you tell Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore about the law!” the person retorted.

  “O.K., I won’t. I’m telling you.”

  “I’m Senator Cacciatore,” he said.

  “You’re kidding!”

  There is an unfair generalization made about those of Italian extraction that implies that when they become angry, they always become red in the face, splutter noisily, and wave their hands around. Senator Cacciatore became red in the face, spluttered noisily about the penalties for interfering with the passage of a U.S. senator, and waved his hands around.

  “Well,” the driver said. “You’re an angry Italian, all right.”

  “And you’re a bigot!” the senator said. “Now take me to the Winter Palace!”

  The driver looked up at the F-104. The pilot was holding a crudely lettered sign that said: “Believe it or not, that’s a U.S. senator.”

  The driver put the truck in gear and headed for the Winter Palace.

  At that very moment, across the field at the civilian passenger terminal, Delta flight 601, one-stop (Pascagoula, Mississippi) service from New Orleans to Miami, rolled up to the gate and opened its doors.

  One of its passengers, who had been sleeping rather soundly, was wakened by the somewhat chilling sound of breaking bones and spraining muscles as the other passengers stood in the aisle shoving at one another in the ritual pre-debarkation rite of passage. He looked out the window.

  “My God, where am I?” he asked.

  “We’re in Miami, Colonel,” Ace Travers said.

  “Miami? What are we doing in Miami? The last thing I remember was catching you boozing it up on my time in Ye Olde Absinthe House. What am I doing in Miami? More important, what are you doing in Miami? I recall quite clearly that I fired you.”

  “You hired me again, Colonel, on the way to the airport,” Ace replied.

  “Why would I do that, you boozer?”

  “Because you said we were in this together.”

  “In what together?”

  “Saving Hot Lips and Prudence from the Cubans and Yankees,” Ace said.

  “My God! How could I forget something like that? Ace, my boy, your colonel is grateful for your faithful service to your commanding officer in his ho
ur of need.” The colonel stood up, leaned over Ace, and made quite credible barking and growling noises.

  The other passengers, who had been completely jamming the aisle, immediately moved back between the rows of seats, some of them climbing over others in their eagerness to get out of the way.

  “A little trick from my active-duty days, Ace— learned it from a sheep herder in Greece,” the colonel said as he propelled Ace down the now empty aisle. “Have I ever spoken to you of my years following the flag?”

  “Yes, sir, you have,” Ace said.

  “I hope you paid attention,” the colonel said.

  They descended the stairs, rushed across the terminal, and got into a taxi. “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “That poses a certain problem,” the colonel said. “Where are we going, Ace? Where are they?”

  “I don’t know, Colonel,” Ace confessed. “Prudence’s note didn’t say.”

  “What’s going on in town?” the colonel asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Like unusual activity,” the colonel pursued.

  “There’s some kind of cockamamie male soprano choir at the Winter Palace,” the driver said. “That what you mean?”

  “The members of which are, shall we say, rather exquisitely graceful and reek of heavy cologne?” the colonel asked.

  “You got it, Jack,” the driver said.

  “Thank God, we’ve found them. Take us wherever you said, and hurry,” the colonel said.

  “Nothing personal, buddy,” the driver said. “Each to his own thing, as I always say. But just between us, I liked it better when your kind wore makeup and dresses. It was less confusing.”

  “Stop rambling and get going!” the colonel said. “And stop at the first liquor store we pass. I need something to cut the dust of the trail.”

  Dr. T. Mullins Yancey, standing atop the polished mahogany bar in the Miami Beach, Florida, clubhouse of the Casimir Pulaski Chapter, Worshipful Sons of Warsaw, concluded his little talk titled “Poles Are Made for Loving, Fact or Fancy?” to the enthusiastic applause of the assembled Worshipful Sons, and accepted their kind offer of another beer on the house.

  He climbed down off the bar, drained his beer, and extended the mug for another. He then addressed Dr. Walter Waldowski.

  “As soon as you finish arm-wrestling that fellow, Walter, I think we’d best be going. The others will be worried about us.”

  “How can we go?” Dr. Waldowski asked reasonably. “The Frog is out like a light.”

  Dr. Waldowski referred to Mr. François Mulligan, who was asleep on the floor, his massive head supported by a gleaming spitoon. Mr. Mulligan, to his surprise (he had entered the Worshipful Sons of Warsaw clubhouse rather reluctantly, despite Dr. Waldowski’s assurance that he was a member in good standing of the Hamtramck, Michigan [Ignace Paderewski], chapter and would be without question welcome here), had met three former comrades-in-arms. They had relived the joys of their youth, when they had been fellow U.S. Marines, from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, via Manila and Tokyo to Athens, Greece. Then the four of them had climbed onto the bar to sing, from memory, all six verses of the Marine’s Hymn, and Mr. Mulligan had been introduced to one of the greater contributions to American culture by its sons of Polish ancestry, the boilermaker.*

  (* There are, of course, boilermakers and boilermakers. However, the true Polish-American boilermaker, served in Miami and Hamtramck, is unique. It consists of a glass containing not less than four ounces of 120-proof imported Polish vodka (made from potatoes) and a larger glass containing not less than sixteen ounces of genuine Polish-American home brew that is still in the process of fermenting)

  Recognizing that the honor of the Knights of Columbus was at stake, François had matched his old comrades-in-arms drink for drink. One by one the others had dropped off, until François —muttering incoherently about some gone-but-not-forgotten love of his youth who, after he had, honest to God!, asked her to marry him, had stood him up and never showed up at the marriage license office—stood alone at the bar.

  It took two more boilermakers to finally put him out, to send him crashing to the sawdust even as his massive chest heaved with sobs and tears ran down his florid and somewhat hammy cheeks.

  Getting him up when the others decided to go was something of a problem, as Dr. Waldowski had suggested it would be. François , you will recall, was nearly as large as Boris. Finally the door was taken off the ladies’ powder room, and four Worshipful Sons of Warsaw (who had just entered the clubhouse and were in somewhat better condition than Dr. Waldowski and Dr. Yancey) rolled François onto it. Then all six gentlemen carried it and François outside and put him into the back of a Peerless Polish Pretzel van loaned by still another understanding Worshipful Son.

  The van proceeded to the Greater Miami Steam Bath, Massage Parlor & Health Club.* Here Mr. Mulligan was given the GMSB, MP & HC special, normally required only for politicians during national conventions. In a special canvas harness, he was hauled into an erect position and placed in a tiled stall. Streams of alternatively hot and cold water were played upon him with fire hoses until he regained consciousness.

  (* The Greater Miami Steam Bath, Massage Parlor & Health Club had been in business since 1929. The employees, while naked above the waist, were all large males, and their concept of massage was beating, kneading, and rubbing; they scorned the recently introduced techniques used in some places.)

  François was then taken to the steam bath, where he baked for fifteen minutes at two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. After this his skin resembled that of a genuine Maine lobster about to be served. Next he was thrown into a swimming pool in the azure waters of which floated hundred-pound lumps of ice.

  After he was pulled from the pool, he was laid out on a table in the massage room. While one massager (the practitioners of the art involved thought “masseur” was a term unfit for honest men) stood at his head, bending his arms in rather incredible directions, another stood at his feet, subjecting his legs to the same sort of abuse. Two more massagers worked on the rest of him, beating, kneading, pummelling, twisting, and punching with large, hard fists.

  The GMSB, MP & HC special was the source of the common phrase, “If it doesn’t kill you, it will cure you.” François Mulligan lived. Two hours after entering the GMSB, MP & HC, he was installed in the barbershop of the establishment, drinking a Black Pole* through a straw inserted between the folds of the barber’s towel covering his face.

  (* Black Pole: Three ounces each of coffee liqueur and Polish vodka, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, and the juice of half a lemon served over crushed ice.)

  While he’d been undergoing treatment, Mr. Mulligan’s clothing (the collar of his shirt had been somewhat soiled while he rested his head in the spitoon, and his suit had been rather fouled by the sawdust on the floor) had been cleaned and pressed.

  Finally, the towel was removed from his face. Liberal quantities of after-shave lotion were applied to his cheeks.

  “Well, François ?” Dr. Yancey solicitously inquired.

  “Goddamn, Doc,” François replied. “I feel like a new man. What’ll it be, back to the Worshipful Sons of Warsaw? Or shall we scare up some broads?”

  “We are going to the Winter Palace,” Dr. Yancey replied. “Walter has just been on the telephone. They expect us there. Somehow they got the idea that we were lost.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Salvador Gomez y Sanchez knocked respectfully, three soft raps of his knuckles, at the bedroom door of his sister, Doña Antoinetta.

  “Who is it?” she inquired in her soft voice. She seemed disturbed.

  “It is, dear sister, your brother Salvador,” Salvador replied.

  “What is it you want?”

  “His Excellency, Bishop O’Grogarty, is here.”

  “Oh, my God! What does he want?”

  “He wants to escort you to the Grand Ballroom, sister dear.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Is something wrong,
sister dear?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Get rid of him, Salvador,” Doña Antoinetta said.

  “I beg your pardon? It sounded just like you said, ‘Get rid of him.’ ”

  “Get rid of him, Salvador!” she repeated.

  “Yes, of course, sister dear,” Salvador said. His not to reason why, he decided. His but to trust in the wisdom of his saintly sister. “I’ll tell him you will join him in the Grand Ballrom.”

  “I don’t care what you tell him, just get rid of him!” Doña Antoinetta shouted. She sounded just a trifle hysterical.

  Salvador Gomez y Sanchez tactfully got rid of Bishop O’Grogarty, telling him that Doña Antoinetta was momentarily overcome by the notion of being close to a bona fide holy relic, and that she would join him in just a few moments on the stage of the Grand Ballroom.

  Then he ran back to Doña Antoinetta’s door and knocked again. There was no answer. He knocked again, and when there was still no answer, he gathered his courage, covered his eyes in case she hadn’t quite finished dressing, and stepped inside. When there was no sound, he spread his fingers and peeked through. Then he took his hand from his face and took a good look. There was no doubt about it; Doña Antoinetta was not in the room.

  Doña Antoinetta was at that moment getting off the elevator in the other wing of the Winter Palace. She wore a mantilla over her head again, veiling her face, and her long, rather graceful fingers clutched the large crucifix hanging on the gold chain around her neck. She bore a look of penitent determination on her face.

  Suddenly, she stopped. The door to the fire-escape stairs burst open, and two men staggered through it, looks of desperation on their faces. Doña Antoinetta slipped into a doorway so she wouldn’t be seen.

  “Thank God,” the older of the two men said. “The fortieth floor!”

  “I think,” the younger of the two men wheezed, “that we should have rushed the elevator operator and taken it away from him!”