January 21
Here was your Henry lineup for Thursday
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – Lee
Henry 3 – X-Ray
The big call came pretty early on. X-Ray was sent to a room because their neighbor had tattled on them for smoking in their room. X-Ray gets there and smells weed so he calls Lee for backup. I wrap up a call right then and I respond, too, because that’s the hotel way: you get each other’s back. It’s what we do. There are no other options. If X-Ray had seen a suspicious candy wrapper in the hall Lee and I would have been up there, no questions asked.
Right as X-Ray is about to knock on the door the door opens and four friendly looking Midwestern types, all about my age, wander out.
Let me tell you something, you’ve been smoking dope in your room and see three (3) security officers standing outside your door when you exit, there is a high degree of probability it is not a coincidence. One of them made some lame comment about whether we had the key situation worked out, but they knew: they were in as much trouble as we wanted to make for them; you could see they were all waiting eagerly to see how bad it was going to be.
Two of the guys looked like they were going to crap their pants. X-Ray is black and we both shave our heads and we may well have looked like the DEA to them. You could see visions of calls home for bail money and expulsions from the Optimist Club dancing in their heads.
X-Ray, as usual, deferred to me. I don’t know why he does this, but he remains respectful of his mentor. I told the guys we had a report of pot smoking in this room and they admitted it, doing everything but getting on their knees and weeping.
“All right,” I said. “Here is exactly what’s going to happen: we are going to enter your room and look around. We won’t search your bags, but any grass we do find we are going to flush down the toilet.”
All four of them nodded their heads vigorously and we were thanked by all of them because they were relieved they weren’t going to get thrown in the slammer and anally violated.
So we go in and look around. There’s a not very well rolled up joint and some loose grass on the desk and I scraped that onto a newspaper and took it to the can, where there was, inevitably, really, a Playboy next to the toilet.
“Officer X-Ray, will you watch me to ensure I don’t put this into my pocket?”
X-Ray laughed, but he was at the door because that’s MCSD policy; one of the guys was there, too, looking heartbroken.
I flushed the grass and exited the can.
“All right men,” I announced. “You guys are getting off easy. You could’ve stayed at a hotel that actually cares about enforcing Nevada state law, but it’s almost time for lunch. Try not to get caught again, cause if you do, X-Ray and I are going to have to run you and we don’t want that any more than you do.”
And then, as we are leaving, one of the guys holds one of those booklets from escort services that illegal immigrants pass out on The Strip. There is a young, pretty, naked girl on the cover and lots of naked women throughout.
“Hey,” he asked. “Do you know anything about these?”
I grabbed the booklet from him and took a cursory, professional glance through it.
“A little,” I said a few minutes later. “Honestly? They’re all thieves. They really just want to steal your wallet.”
“Seriously?” he asked. His tone seemed to indicate he thought these were legit business with high customer service standards.
I nodded solemnly. I hope they took my advice. It would blow for one of them to have to explain to his lovely wife exactly how he lost his wallet and why his cock has spots on it and has smoke coming out the end.