September 25
Here was your Henry lineup for last night:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – Eric the Twerp
Henry 3 – D-Dawg
Henry 4 – Butch
Usually, I enjoy being Henry 1 and getting off at 0600, but I have two adult baseball games to umpire at 0900, so it doesn’t really matter since I won’t be going to sleep after work anyway, but what the hell.
In the briefing room after work last night I told Twerp, a former Marine, that I didn’t want any of his shit in the hotel tonight. I wanted his shoes shined to such a high gloss that Chesty Puller himself would achieve and maintain a state of arousal, and, that immediately upon his arrival in the hotel, he should report to me so he can drop and give me 20.
He told me to go and get a date.
As Henry 1 though, I will miss the 0600 debriefing session, which is too bad. Last night Jose, Fred and I had a whole 45 minutes to ourselves in the 12th-floor maid’s room and Fred even turned the radio to a nice jazz station.
September 28
Oh baby, I really took the broom handle last night. Not only was I obliged to spend my usual, weekly night in the casino, but I had to grab my ankles, whistle ‘Dixie’, and perform Charlie 6 duties.
Charlie 6 takes it in the shorts because he doesn’t have any sit-down posts. He doesn’t have the podium or Eddie – 2 and he doesn’t have to relieve Eddie – 1 for 482.
In fact, Charlie 6 doesn’t do a whole lot of anything, because now that I think about it I didn’t have to but boxes down or do a pit drop or anything. Still though.
Here is your Henry lineup for tonight:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – Lee
Henry 3 – X-Ray
X-Ray is turning into a real find as a Henry unit. He’s got enough maverick in him to shake things up a bit (to foil criminals, he has a habit of walking his floors in random order) but unlike some of the New Breed, he’s respectful of the Henry units who came before him. He now gets multiple nights in the hotel, almost unheard of for a new guy, and he’s got a Henry 1 under his belt. He’ll go as far as he wants to in the hotel racket.
The big news, rumored for a while, is we are going to get new uniforms. We’re not sure what they are going to be, but we were told blazers have been ruled out. Currently, we wear a white, military-ish dress shirt and black dress pants. The shirt has permanent creases in it and two pockets with flaps and the left pocket even has a slot for your pen, which also doubles very nicely as an eyeglass holder. We also wear a badge and nametag.
The goal is to make us look less like cops, and while we are a classy joint and not a housing project, my own opinion is we don’t want to look like lounge singers, either.
The Monte Carlo is shooting for four-diamond status, however, and our new uniforms probably have something to do with that. I was snooping around a desk in a maid’s room up in the hotel one night and I came across a memo outlining what would have to be done for Monte Carlo to earn a four-star rating.
Most of it was little stuff, like having closets with doors and safes in every room and a lot of it was bathroom amenities and the like. I should’ve pilfered the memo because I actually found it rather interesting. Right now the top two floors are more or less four-diamond, but our regular rooms, which aren’t exactly fleabags, rate only three.