June 17
So I’m minding my own business, on stakeout near the pool doors, when Junior gets on the horn.
– Control, to a 10-8 outside unit.
Dispatch will seldom ask for a specific outside unit because they generally don’t know which are 10-8 and which are in the garage. As it was, Ted was in the garage and Jo(s)e was farting around somewhere and I beat him to the punch.
– Mary 2’s 10-8, sir.
– Copy that. 85 to Valet 2. Property damage. See the valet driver, space 440. Get the camera, too.
Valet 2 is the second level of the parking garage. I have no clue where space 440 is, but I have the lights going and I am waved down by Ray, a former swing shift officer who betrayed the brethren and went to valet last week because they make more money than we do. His supervisor, Chris, was also there.
Ray had a funny line waiting:
“All right, who had six days in the How-Long-Will-It-Take-Ray-To-Bang-A-Car pool?”
I told him I had had four days in the pool and most had fewer than three before getting to work. I had Ray fill out a voluntary statement and Jo(s)e showed up to remind me to take pictures of the vehicle’s license plate as well as the damage Ray had wrought, which I didn’t know because this was the first report of this type I’ve done.
When it was all done we schlepped to the CSO so 77Charles could do a pupilometer to make sure Ray wasn’t stoned to the gills.
After work, I was in the briefing room looking over the schedule and I had a devil of a time finding my name. I first looked at the outside lineup:
Mary 1 – Ted
Mary 2 – Redneck Randy
Mary 3 – Dee (OT from dayshift)
Baker 1 – Jo(s)e
(An almost interesting tidbit here is that Ted will be calling off so he can get a head start on vacation. Rich and I spent not too much time discussing whether they went with an OT Mary unit because they knew this because Ted’s been blabbing about it for a month.)
I checked the hotel lineup, and nothing doing there, either, though get a load of the shocker in the three-hole:
Henry 1 – OMP
Henry 2 – Dougie Fresh
Henry 3 – JK, Boy Dispatcher
OK, the plot thickens a bit. Turns out John had requested one last night in the hotel before he left.
So where the hell am I? I scanned the Charlie units and I wasn’t there. My name was in the last place I looked. Here is your dispatch lineup for tonight:
David 1 – Junior
David 2 – moi
God bless all of you.