“Shut up, Matthew!” Hawkeye said firmly.
“It’s OK, Hawkeye,” Boris said. “Matthew has got it bad for some stripteaser. One good look at her jugs, and he was swept off his feet.”
“Both of you,” Trapper John screamed, “shut up! Right now!”
“For a year,” Matthew moaned on, “I have thought of nothing but her. I dreamed of the moment when I could return to San Francisco for another glimpse—”
“Matthew!” Hawkeye screamed.
“It’s all right, Hawkeye,” Barbara Ann Miller said.
“It is like hell,” Trapper John said. “Shut up, Framingham, or I personally will turn you into the world’s ugliest soprano!”
“For a week now, I have quite literally scoured the world for her,” Matthew went on. “Dreaming of nothing but the moment when I could again see my beloved Betsy Boobs.”
“Well,” said Dr. Sattyn-Whiley, who wasn’t entirely aware of what was going on, “I must say that’s an appropriate name for a stripper. Had quite a pair, did she?”
“You shut up, too, Doc,” Hawkeye said.
“And when I find her,” Matthew concluded, tears running down his plump cheeks, “what is she doing? She’s holding hands with another man, that’s what she’s doing!”
Since the only female aboard the aircraft holding hands with anyone was Barbara Ann Miller, Dr. Sattyn-Whiley was forced toward a certain conclusion, one that threw, so to speak, a new factor into his plans for the immediate future. What little doubt he was able to retain vanished when Matthew went on. “And on the wrist of the hand she’s holding hands with is the watch I gave her! Oh, the perfidy of woman, not to mention the perfidy of fate!”
“I find this hard to believe, Barbara Ann,” Dr. Cornelius E. Sattyn-Whiley said, “but I believe that drunk is speaking about you.”
“My friend may have had a little nip or two,” Boris said, “but let me tell you, Shorty, when he’s talking about strippers, he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Thank you, Boris,” Matthew said, modestly. “Betsy Boobs!” he cried. “How could you do this to me?”
“Am I correct in inferring that that drunk is known to you, Miss Miller?” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said.
Barbara Ann Miller didn’t reply. She stood up and fled into the cockpit.
Hawkeye and Trapper John sat with their hands over their faces.
Dr. Sattyn-Whiley got to his feet and marched down the aisle.
“Wait, I want to talk to you, Cornie,” Hawkeye said.
“In just a moment,” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said.
“Now!” Trapper John said.
“In just a moment, Doctor,” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley repeated, and kept on marching down the aisle.
“I would have a word with you, sir,” he said to Matthew Q. Framingham.
“A fellow boob-fancier, are you?” Matthew Q. Framingham said, bravely fighting back his tears. “Hail fellow, well met! Sit down and have a libation with us. Misery, to coin a phrase, loves company. And I saw that she spurned your attentions, as, indeed, she spurned mine.”
“Would you mind standing up, sir?” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley asked. When Mr. Framingham evidenced a little difficulty getting to his feet, Dr. Sattyn-Whiley helped him. Then he drew back his right fist and let him have a good one in the right eye. Mr. Framingham fell backward into Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov’s lap, the force of his flight sending his skull back against Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov’s head. There was a sound like that of a watermelon being dropped from the balcony into the orchestra pit, and then it was obvious that both Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov and Mr. Framingham were no longer among the conscious.
This fact, however, was not immediately apparent to Dr. Sattyn-Whiley. “If you ever again so much as whisper that lady’s name aloud, fat mouth,” he said, “I shall return and get the other eye and all your teeth!”
At that moment, the door to the cockpit was flung open. Barbara Ann Miller was standing there. It was obvious that she had been crying, but there was a look on her face that had nothing to do with sorrow.
“Hawkeye, you better listen to what’s coming over the radio!”
“Put it on the speakers!” Hawkeye called. She turned to the pilot, and he threw the appropriate switch.
“This is Buffalo area control,” the radio said, “with a warning to all aircraft in the area. A Learjet, marked Double-O Poppa, apparently flown by a madman, has just done a split-S and two barrel rolls over Niagara Falls. All aircraft are warned to stay out of his way.”
“Dad!” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said.
“St. Louis, here we come!” another voice said over the radio, removing any last doubts.
“Why would he want to go to St. Louis?” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley inquired.
Simultaneously, Hawkeye and Trapper John described an enormous arch with their hands and arms.
“Oh, no!” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said. He put his hand to his forehead and said “Ouch!”
“What did you do to your hand?” Barbara Ann Miller asked.
“Nothing at all,” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley protested through a wince.
“The first thing a surgeon must learn,” Hawkeye said, “is that he must save his hands for the practice of his profession, and never, never use them as fists.”
“In other words, Cornie,” Trapper John said, “you should have hit old fat mouth with a champagne bottle.”
“Let me see it,” Barbara Ann Miller said, taking it in her own hands.
“I don’t care what your course was,” Hawkeye said to the pilot. “Head for St. Louis. Maybe we can talk some sense into him.”
Over the radio came the strains of the “Fighter Pilot’s Lament.” The singer seemed to be anything but unhappy.
Chapter Thirteen
Dr. Frank Burns, after first installing Sweetie-Baby on the cable cars, rushed off to attend to his pressing business. He was so excited at the prospect of seeing his beloved Margaret again that he threw caution to the winds and flagged down a taxicab.
He found the First Missionary Church and Temple of the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc., just where the Mark Hopkins bellboy had said he would find it, just off Market Street, under the sixth and final arrow shot from the Reverend Mother Margaret’s bow.
He would have found it anyhow, he told himself, or it would have caught his eye, and he would have known what it was. It wasn’t every day that you saw a thirty-foot statue of someone being welcomed into heaven, outlined in neon, and with provision for floodlighting at night, sitting atop a six-story circular building painted lavender.
Getting into the building itself posed something of a problem. The streets surrounding the First Missionary Church were so crowded with people that half a dozen of San Francisco’s finest, on horses, were having trouble maintaining order.*
(* Although Frank Burns could not have known this, there were also two of San Francisco’s finest, in civilian clothes, keeping a sharp eye on the building. If two Knob Hill swells like Colonel C. Edward Whiley and his son, Dr. Cornelius E. Sattyn-Whiley, were out on a three-day drunk, the odds were fifty-fifty that they would, for one reason or another, show up at the GILIAFCC, Inc., First Missionary Church and Temple.)
“God bless you, my son,” Frank Burns said, in lieu of a tip, as he left his taxicab.
“Screw you,” the cabdriver, in the familiar jocular manner of San Francisco cabbies, replied. “You cheap son of a blap.”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” Frank Burns instantly replied, “but names will never hurt me.”
And then, with the confidence of someone who knows where he is going and why, Frank Burns marched up the wide stairs to the main entrance. His eyes fell on a life-size cut-out of the Reverend Mother Emeritus, her arms widespread and holding a banner reading “Welcome, Sinner!” and he was so enthralled with what we will tactfully refer to her as her muscle tone that he didn’t see the large chap (he was, in fact, a tackle of the San Francisco Gladiators) guarding the door until he ran into him.
“An
d just where do you think you’re going, little man?” the security person said. Frank Burns noticed that he sort of lisped.
“I’m here to see Hot Lips ... I mean, the Reverend Mother.”
“Have you an appointment?” the large lisping tackle asked, sort of pursing his lips.
“Actually, no,” Frank Burns said. “But I’m sure that she’ll be delighted to see me.”
“Huh-mff,” the tackle huh-mflfed, rather nastily. “I would tell you you’d have to buy a ticket like everyone else, but the tickets are all gone.”
“The Reverend Mother and I are old friends,” Frank Bums protested. He then remembered his reversed, or clerical, collar. He pointed to it. “Would I lie about something like that?”
“Of course you would,” the tackle lisped. “Now are you going to leave peacefully, or would you like me to help you?”
Frank Burns took out his wallet and produced his identification.
“I am Dr. Frank Burns, M.D.,” he said. “A Fellow of the American Tonsil, Adenoid and Vas Deferens Society. I demand to be admitted.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” the tackle said. “I’m going to let you speak with Brother De Wilde. Brother De Wilde is Reverend Mother’s executive secretary, and he’ll know whether you really are a friend, or are what I think you are.”
He stepped out of the way, opened a door, and pointed down a corridor.
“Go down there,” he said. “Knock on the door and ask for Brother De Wilde.”
Frank did as he was told. After he knocked, a steel door opened to reveal another security person quite as large and ugly as the first, and smelling of the same Essence d’Amour.
“Well, little man?”
“Dr. Frank Burns, M.D., to see Brother De Wilde,” Frank said firmly.
This security person took Frank by the arm and led him down another corridor to a closed door. On the door was lettered “REVEREND MOTHER EMERITUS. Knock and remove headgear before entering.”
The security person knocked.
“Oh, God, now what?” a soft and pleasantly lilting voice replied. “What is that?” Frank could tell that the lady, whoever she was, was obviously overwrought.
“There’s a Reverend Doctor out here to see the Reverend Mother,” the security person replied. Frank noticed that he lisped even worse than the first one.
“Well, show him in, for God’s sake!” the pleasantly lilting voice replied. Frank Burns put on his well-rehearsed face, the one he felt gave an aura much like the one Robert Young gave off on television —that of the wise and friendly but-don’t-cross-me practitioner of the healing arts.
The door was opened for him and he marched in. He looked around for the secretary with the pleasantly lilting voice. All he saw was a small, balding male in tight trousers and a yellow shirt, who seemed to be totally surrounded by a cloud of My Sin.
“You’re this Reverend Doctor person?” the little man said in a pleasantly lilting voice.
Frank nodded.
“Well,” the little man said, “get to the point, dear. Jimmy de Wilde is busy, busy, busy. Are you one of ours, or did you choose this unfortunate moment in time and space to decide to come out of the closet?”
“I am Dr. Frank Burns, M.D.,” Frank said. “I am an old friend of the Reverend Mother, and since I happened, by the wildest coincidence, to be in the neighborhood, I thought I would just drop in and say hello.”
“No offense, sweetie,” Jimmy de Wilde said, “but that’s as lousy a story as I’ve heard in some time, and believe you me, I hear some corkers in here. Anyway, the Reverend Mother’s not here yet. We’re just about to go meet her plane. Nice try!”
“I know she’s not here,” Frank replied, desperate. “She telephoned me and said that I should come here and tell you to take me to meet her.”
“That’s a little better,” Jimmy de Wilde replied. “Not good enough, of course, but better.” He reached over to the desk, picked up a little silver bell, and rang it. In response to the delicate tinkle, the security person came back into the office.
“Throw this imposter out!” Jimmy de Wilde said. “But remember what I told you! No more broken arms!”
Frank Burns ran behind the coffee table. The security person advanced on him. Frank looked desperately around the room.
“Look there,” he cried, with enormous relief. “There’s my picture on the wall!”
“Just hold in that position a second, Bruce,” Jimmy de Wilde said. “What picture?”
“That one!” Frank Bums said. “That’s me.”
“What’s you?”
“The fellow wrapped in the plaster of Paris cast,” Dr. Burns replied.
“I’ll be damned,” Jimmy de Wilde said. “It is you. What happened to you, anyway, dear—get run over by a tank?”*
(* The photograph on the Reverend Mother Emeritus’ wall had been taken on the famous March 13 referred to previously, shortly after Dr. Burns had been discovered covered to his neck with plaster of Paris and with his arms wrapped around the 4077th MASH flagpole. The Reverend Mother Emeritus had kept it to remind herself of the tempting powers of Satan and the wages of sin.)
“You could put it that way,” Dr. Burns said. “But that proves I’m what I am.”
“I know what you are,” Jimmy de Wilde said. “The question is whether or not you’re lying.”
“If I wasn’t a very, very good friend of the Reverend Mother’s,” Frank said, “would she have my picture on the wall?”
“You may have a point,” Jimmy de Wilde said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take you to the airport with us. If the Reverend Mother Emeritus is glad to see you, you’re home free. If she’s not, I’ll give you to Bruce here, and this time I won’t ruin his fun by telling him not to break your arms. What could be fairer than that?”
“Oh, Jimmy,” Bruce said. “You have the wisdom of Solomon.”
“Thank you, Bruce,” Jimmy de Wilde said. “It’s very nice of you to say so. Now put this person in the station wagon. I’ll be out in just a minute. I have to have a last-minute chat with Police Commissioner Ohio.” When Jimmy de Wilde placed his call to Police Commissioner Boulder J. Ohio’s unlisted number, the call was automatically relayed to the radio-telephone in the commissioner’s official limousine, which he had just had returned to him from the Chinatown Precinct, and which was still full of rice and the distinctive aroma of something Commissioner Ohio didn’t like to think about.
“Is that you, Commissioner?” M.* de Wilde inquired, very warmly. “Jimmy de Wilde here.”
(* It was only fair, Jimmy de Wilde had some six months before decided, that if the ladies could insist on using the designation Ms., which left their arrangements something of a question, he, and others like him, should have the same privilege. Hence, he insisted on the prefix M., which was pronounced "Mmm.’’)
“Hello, there, Mmm de Wilde,” the commissioner replied. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Oh, how nice! And I think about you, too. But business before pleasure, as I always say. We’re about to leave for the airport. Is there anything you want to tell me?”
There was a good deal the commissioner wanted to tell Jimmy de Wilde. But he thought, The little pansy’s right again. Business before pleasure.
“There are a few little things that have come up,” the commissioner replied.
“Nothing, I hope, that will interfere with the Reverend Mother’s agenda?”
“We’ll try to let nothing interfere,” the commissioner said. “But let me fill you in, just for your general information, Mmm de Wilde.”
“Shoot, you great big hunk of man, you!” Jimmy de Wilde replied.
“Well, I’ve just heard that there will be some other VIPs at the airport,” the commissioner said.
“You promised me we could have the whole airport to ourselves!” Jimmy de Wilde said. “You remember what happened last year, when that planeload of Alabama Baptists came back from Japan just as the Reverend Mothe
r got here!”
“I have no control over this, Mmm de Wilde,” the commissioner said. “There’re two foreign dignitaries arriving, in separate planes, and some guy from the State Department who’s coming to officially greet them.”
“Who?”
“The son of the President of San Sebastian’s due in first,” Commissioner Ohio said. ‘“Then the guy from the State Department, and finally the President of San Sebastian himself.”
“Well, you could just send them off to some remote comer of the field, couldn’t you?”
“We’ve already made arrangements to do that,” the commissioner said, “so I don’t really anticipate any problems. There is one more thing, however, I think I should tell you about.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a crazy pilot loose.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It just came in from the Federal Aviation Agency,” Commissioner Ohio said. “Some guy in a stolen airplane. Started out on the East Coast. First he did a barrel roll in the gorge at Niagara Falls, and then he flew two loops around the arch in St. Louis.”
“What do you mean, he flew loops around the St. Louis Arch?”
“Just what I said,” the commissioner replied. “He flew under it, and then over the top. In circles, you see? He went around it twice.”
“And what has that to do with us?”
“Nothing, I hope,” the commissioner replied. “The last we heard, the Air Force had fighter planes chasing him around the Grand Canyon, trying to force him to land.”
“And if they don’t succeed, you think he’s coming here?”
“I’d bet he’s headed for Los Angeles,” the commissioner said. “Theres a lot of fruits and nuts down there—no offense, Mmm de Wilde.”
“Just watch it!” Jimmy de Wilde said. “You don’t suppose there’s any chance that he would come here and try to fly under the Golden Gate Bridge, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” the commissioner said.
“Why not?” Jimmy de Wilde pressed.
“Well, just between you and me, Mmm de Wilde, he may be crazy, but we don’t think he’s crazy, if you get my meaning.”
MASH 11 MASH Goes To San Francisco Page 17