February 27
Here was your Henry lineup for last night:
Henry 1 – OMP
Henry 2 – moi
Henry 3 – Special Ed
Ed still hasn’t colored his hair, so there’s still a lot of gray, except up top where his last application of shoe polish is valiantly holding out.
I was greeted with the Batman theme song when I walked into the briefing room and I was called Batman on the radio and there were other bat jokes, but otherwise, no one seemed to remember the episode from last night. To show my good humor in the matter, when on my way to a call I would announce I was on the way to the bat poles.
Schempp really pissed the crew off. It was 0654, a few minutes before quitting time, when dispatch got on the horn and had the nerve to ask Schempp to go and unlock the steakhouse so the porters could go in and clean it. We don’t own the steakhouse, it’s leased out, so the porters don’t have a key for it.
Schempp actually refused the assignment! I am not making that up! The radio traffic went like this.
– Control, Charlie 6.
– Charlie 6, wrapping up the day.
That in itself was a sign Schempp wasn’t exactly raring to go.
– Charlie 6, 85 to the podium, grab the grand master key and unlock the steakhouse.
There was a pause while Schempp decided whether he would accept his assignment.
– Uh, that would take seven minutes, and there are only six left.
By now Special Ed and I are headed down from the hotel.
– Henry 2, we’re heading down. The Henry units will take it.
I was only half kidding; if Schempp wouldn’t do it, I would. As it was, Bi-Bob ended up doing it.
In the briefing room afterward someone said something to Schempp about it and he tried to wave it off with a smartass comment but I wasn’t letting him off that easy.
“Jesus H., Schempp,” I said. “It’s not as if they asked you to perform one of the labors of Hercules, they just needed a goddamn fucking door unlocked.”
This put him on the defensive because Schempp, like me, is former Navy so he knows when GD and effing are used like this matters are not Code 4 and he tried to laugh it off again which pissed me off more, so I ignored him.
Special Ed and I had a great debriefing session. We did have a welfare check, but that was harmless enough and we were otherwise able to pass a leisurely final 45 minutes in the 12th-floor maid’s room. Ed, who was also working day shift, took the opportunity to rearrange his socks. He announced the bottom of his socks were a tad damp while the tops of his feet remained dry, so he was going to take off his socks and turn them over. I asked if that wouldn’t be uncomfortable, since that would place the heel of his socks on the top of his foot, and he said no, he does this all the time.
March 2
X-Ray has taken to calling us International Henry Units. This brilliant moniker stems from the welfare check a couple of weeks ago where we made entry into an empty room and I said “hotel security’ and he said “Henry units!” as if we were some top-secret government agency. Since seeing that guy in cow clothing, he has also been saying Moo a lot.
X-Ray and I were standing in the 4th-floor maids room (there were no chairs) last night when water started coming through the overhead. He was passing along some info on a lost property squeal he had caught while I was at 482 and for which I would be doing the report.
Being International Henry Units we knew immediately, of course, that water coming through the overhead isn’t normal, so we spring into action. I go up to five and there is water spewing out of a hose that is connected to some sort of device maids use to mix cleaning solvents. It’s coming out at a pretty good clip, too, so I grab a fuzzy bathroom mat, use it as a shield because I can’t be bothered to get wet, put it on top of the spigot and turn the water off at the main connection. We get engineering and housekeeping up there to deal with it and all us International Henry Units have to do is stand around and look official, which is our only real talent anyway.
Here is your Henry lineup for tonight:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – X-Ray
Henry 3 – Lee
Why Lee and X-Ray are being swapped is anybody’s guess. We’ve stopped trying to figure 77Dwayne out. X-Ray disapproves, saying he enjoys the late lunch Henry 3 takes and he doesn’t trust the middle floors anyway. Lee likes the Henry 2 slot, so they’ll end up switching, so what the hell. The International Henry Units transcend 77Dwayne.