March 16
Here was your Henry lineup for last night:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – Code Four Carlin
Henry 3 – X-Ray
Lee called off. We are not entirely sure why, but it certainly is his prerogative as an International Henry Unit, to do so, so it’s no big deal.
Carlin works the hotel one night a week on my weekend, and he knows his way around so it was not a complete surprise to find him in the 13th-floor plumber’s office killing time when I reported there for my first 10-10. He was really surprised to see someone opening the door, too.
What was interesting, more or less, was seeing the office with the lights on. The window doesn’t have curtains and it’s Vegas so there’s enough light filtering in to see your way around and I like sitting alone in dark rooms, so I had never bothered to turn the lights on before.
While the International Henry Units passed a routine night, the casino was hopping. Two wingnuts stole one of our golf carts and immediately crashed it in the employee parking lot. One guy was hooked up, but his partner got away. I don’t really know all the details. I was in PBX on 482 basking in the glow of princesses Maria and Silvia, but evidently, Jeffrey had one of them stopped and was trying to handcuff him but he got away and the cuffs went flying and still haven’t been found. Judy was laughing at him in the briefing room after work and I gathered his actions weren’t straight out of the Reid/Malloy handbook and didn’t reflect great credit on either himself or MCSD.
The EDR is closed for four days so they can redo the floor. Well, it’s being closed on graveyard; the royalty on day and swing shifts can’t be inconvenienced like that, of course. The salad bar and buffet line have been moved into the hall and we are obliged to eat in the two break rooms, which I don’t like at all.
The joke, of course, is that instead of replacing the floor they should be replacing the food.
Here is your Henry lineup for tonight:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – Lee
Henry 3 – X-Ray
The big news is there is a change to Friday’s schedule. I am not in the hotel. I am not in the casino, either, so I will let you wonder exactly what my assignment is. Dispatch? Outside? Some other assignment? Hold onto your hats and find out!
March 19
I spent the past two nights in dispatch. Junior is on vacation, so I got to pick up a couple of nights.
Each dispatcher has a monitor from which he can select any one of the 250 or so cameras he wants to view. My favorite is the one in the room at the bottom of the linen chute, which is where maids throw dirty linens. It goes down the chute, which is curved at the bottom, and comes out on a long table
I’ve never been to the linen room – I’m not even entirely sure where it is – and it’s hard to tell how big the room is, but it appeared to be half full of linen and it was plain it was backed up in the chute.
Like you probably would, I found myself wondering how far it was backed up, so I sent Michaels to find out. I told him it didn’t need to be done right now, and was secondary to his other highly important duties, but if he could do so in the course of his routine patrols, his place in heaven was assured. Michaels, in typical Michaels fashion, got right on it and reported in fairly short order that the backup was all the way up to six, but not quite at seven.
Later I was working a camera and came across a couple going at it in Houdini’s Lounge. After watching them for a while I sent the new ‘girl’ Teri, whom we’ve nicknamed Spike, after her the way she keeps her hair, to tell them to go get a room. I mean, we have over 3000 rooms here at Monte Carlo and all of them are designed to handle two people who want to get busy; you don’t need to do it in the bar.
Ted, who was Mary 1, had a really funny line. After I had sent Spike over Ted gets on channel 2, which is always monitored in dispatch.
“Did you want them to break it up or change the angle?” he wondered.
Rich had a funny, too. I was sitting in the smoking break room wrapping up 482 with Rich and Spike (who approves of her nickname) when Spike looks at her watch and announces she has to go to the can before heading back to the floor and resuming her Charlie unit duties.
“One of us really should go and see which bathroom she uses,” Rich said after she left.
Boy, the EDR was at its worst tonight, absolutely the worst employer-provided meals since the Gulags. You could’ve played handball with the chicken fingers, the egg rolls were cold and tasted like a sponge and whatever the beef dish was was gray and everything was old and 90 percent gone besides. It was so bad Ted even requested the med bag.
