July 5
Here was your Outside lineup for last night:
Mary 1 – Guy
Mary 2 – moi
Baker 1 – Redneck Randy
It’s a tough time on graveyard. Judy may well be out for a while with her husband’s illness and the latest rumor is that OMP is merely marking time till he takes his dirt nap. Rich, turning uncharacteristically sentimental, said he’d go to OMP’s funeral if it was in the smoking break room during 482.
It was so slow last night all three of us responded to a boring, routine call as if it were the Watts riots. It was about 0515 or so, in the short term parking lot, where there was some very minor damage to a Lincoln Navigator, which may have been caused by a Ford Taurus. Or not. There were some white marks on the Navigator, but they looked kinda old. I called Redneck Randy in for a consultation.
“As far as I can tell,” he said. “I think you’re right.”
“As far as you can tell? I thought you rednecks were experts on bodywork?”
“In causing it, yeah.”
July 6
Here was your Outside lineup for last night:
Mary 1 – Guy
Mary 2 – moi
Baker 1 – Redneck Randy
They say they die in threes, so it ain’t looking good for OMP, although we didn’t have any news last night, so he may be getting better. Sykes from day shift died Wednesday from complications during open-heart surgery, and Hirsch went last week, so somebody’s clock is ticking.
A big sinkhole in front of the valet entrance to the garage livened matters up a bit last night. It actually started about 2230, and got bigger as the night wore on and a backhoe almost fell in, its tires going halfway in before the driver expertly got himself out using one of those hydraulic leg deals. It’s always nice seeing something done really well and this was pretty interesting to watch.
Guy, whose only real talent is taking command of the routine, was in his element, taking charge of traffic control around the sinkhole even though Monte Carlo was all but deserted, insisting that all three of us mobilize like a presidential motorcade was coming through. We even broke out the flashlights with those cool orange cones on the end so there was no doubt which way the occasional taxicab was to go. Guy and Redneck Randy even skipped their 482’s for this.
It was a bit overdone if you ask me. Sure, it did shut down access to valet pickup, meaning taxis had to pick up and drop off in the same location, but cabbies are adaptable and one competent officer could’ve handled this himself.
July 7
Here was your Outside lineup for last night:
Mary 1 – Guy
Mary 2 – moi
Baker 1 – Jo(s)e
It was completely dead slow until the sinkhole was fixed just before 0300. I bravely took the first, tentative drive over the repair in the Mary – 2 truck, and, when it didn’t collapse, Guy bravely proclaimed the repair code four and life returned to normal.
The big news is that OMP is returning to work tonight. The word is he had a defibrillator put in and what that has to do with balls the size of cantaloupes isn’t immediately clear but the report is he’s good to go, or at least as good to go as OMP is going to get.
July 8
Here was your Henry lineup – yes, your Henry lineup! – for last night:
Henry 1 – X-Ray
Henry 2 – moi
Henry 3 – White Sox Metzger
Evidently the supervisor who talked to OMP mistook “my balls are still the size of cantaloupes” for “I’ll be at work Friday night” because OMP wasn’t there and X-Ray was bumped up to Henry 1, and with White Sox Metzger getting in everybody’s way at Henry 3 they wanted power in the two hole, so I got the call.
The hotel wasn’t hopping last night, but the International Henry Units did steady business all night. X-Ray’s the go-to guy in the hotel now, as we all knew he would be, and it was a pleasure to stand back and watch take complete command at this one noise complaint where a guy was fighting with two girls. Like all top Henry units, X-Ray is very laid back and always in control.
“Okey-dokey,” he said, after he got the preliminaries out of the way. “You guys need to shut it down right now. You don’t want us to have to come back.”
All three knew when the tablets were being read from Mt. Sinai: there was no more trouble from that room. X-Ray has got to be the only man on the planet who can use ‘okey-dokey’ with authority.
And even though we were running around most of the night, as you might expect, I found time to visit all the old stomping grounds: the 29-336 storeroom, the maids training room on 3 and, of course, the maintenance offices on 13 and 17.
