Floors: (10 page)

He had an idea about how he could accomplish the task without having to carry the little robot around all
day, and he was thinking about just that when his walkie-talkie came to life.

“Leo, get to the basement, pronto!”

It was his dad, who rarely sounded frantic about much of anything lately.

“I see you have a Phillips screw driver in your bag,” said Blop, who had burrowed his way inside the satchel. And then he carried on about the origins of a great many tools as Leo ran down the maintenance stairs to the basement.

L
eo found a cardboard box and a few old rags in the maintenance tunnel on the second floor on his way to the basement. He made a detour into the lobby to make a handoff.

“You don’t mean it,” said Remi, staring into the box. “You
can’t
mean it.”

“Oh, but I do,” said Leo. Blop was in the box, staring up at Remi with uncharacteristic silence.

“You’re the best friend
ever
!” said Remi. Suddenly, standing next to a boring door all day didn’t bother him. He had a robot, a
real
robot, to keep him company.

“Just keep him talking, and stay away from Ms. Sparks,” Leo instructed. Ms. Sparks knew the routine,
but it didn’t make her any less annoyed by Blop’s endless chatter. She’d only go for it if Remi kept the robot outside, like a pet that hadn’t been housebroken.

“
Best
day in the history of my
life
!” said Remi. They were standing just outside the door together, where Remi had placed the cardboard box on the ledge of a window next to the entryway.

“Keep your radio on,” said Leo, heading for the basement. “In case I need you.”

“You got it, partner,” said Remi.

Blop had begun yammering on about the meaning of friendship in all its facets, but the moment Remi said the word
partner
, the robot made a few noises — a
blip
, a
zing
, a
whir
— and looked at Remi.

“What do you think of Batman and Robin?”

Remi lit up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

“It asked me a question!”

Leo was already in the lobby, his two-way radio buzzing with demands, as he yelled over his shoulder.

“Get used to it.”

When he entered the basement, Leo thought the police, the fire department, and the county health inspector had all showed up at one time. Every color of light was spinning and flashing on the wall, the siren was going off, and streams of red ticker tape were pouring
out of Daisy’s mouth like an endless grocery store receipt.

“Leo!” yelled Clarence Fillmore. “The hotel is sick!”

At first this struck Leo as an odd thing to say, but the more he looked at the call center, the more he had to agree: The Whippet Hotel had come down with something really bad.

“What do we do?” Leo yelled over the blaring siren.

“We have to convince everyone to stop pulling rip cords,” said Clarence Fillmore, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Every guest room had a red ball hanging from a red rope. On the wall near the ball was a red button. To send a distress signal, a guest had to grab the ball and pull the cord while simultaneously pressing the red button. The rope and the button were too far apart (and the rope too high) for a child to make trouble. Apparently, from the looks of the call center, all the guests in the hotel were pulling their rip cords and pressing the buttons in their rooms at the same time, over and over again.

All Leo could think about was how Ms. Sparks would use this to try to fire his dad. She’d say it was his fault the hotel was falling apart.

“You take Ms. Pompadore — you’re good with her — and I’ll take Captain Rickenbacker. Let’s start there.”

The first thing they had to do was get the siren to stop wailing, which would mean getting at least one guest to stop pulling on his rip cord.

The call center had an old-fashioned-looking bank of buzzer buttons across the middle under Daisy’s head. Clarence pushed the button for LillyAnn Pompadore’s room and Leo for Captain Rickenbacker’s, hoping they’d let go of their rip cords long enough to answer the calls.

Mercifully, the siren stopped wailing in the basement boiler room as both guests picked up at once, their voices distant and crackly.

“The Pinball Machine has gone berserk!” yelled Captain Rickenbacker. “It’s trying to kill me!”

“WET FLOOR, HINEY CAN’T SWIM!” was all Ms. Pompadore would say, although she said it so loudly that both Fill mores leaned back as if a strong wind had blown into the basement.

“At least the siren stopped,” said Leo, and the moment he said so, the siren began sounding again.

“You’ve jinxed us,” said Leo’s father, looking at the call center lights flashing like mad.

Fifteen minutes later, Leo and Clarence Fillmore had everyone calmed down. The call center was still blinking red, but at least they could quietly assess the damage.

“Leaks first, then every thing else,” said Leo’s dad, staring at the strips of ticker tape and wondering how they were ever going to get it all fixed.

Leo was just about to encourage his father — they’d figure it out, he was sure — when the door to the basement opened and the shadow of Ms. Sparks’s towering beehive leaned into the room.

“You’re on thin ice, Mr. Fillmore. I hope, for your sake, you can get things under control around here.”

“Absolutely, Ms. Sparks. Leo and I have it handled. No need to worry.”

“Why am I not consoled?” she said, looking at the Fill mores’ bunks as if she couldn’t imagine having to live in such primitive quarters. She slammed the door shut and Leo listened as her high-heeled shoes clanked up the concrete steps to the lobby.

“I’ll fix the water pump, you mop up the rooms,” said Clarence.

“Then I’ll take the duck elevator to the maintenance tunnel on four and fix the electrical panel. It’s the same panel for the robots and the Pinball Machine.”

“Perfect! We’ll meet back here in an hour to wrestle the boiler into shape.”

Leo and Clarence loaded their tool belts and bags with every thing they could imagine needing, and then Leo called Pilar on the maintenance line and asked her to switch on the wet / dry vac system on all floors and break out the mops.

The siren started wailing again as voices blared into the basement.

“Let’s get out of here before she blows!” Clarence joked, and he and Leo were off, fixing things on every floor.

In all the excitement, Leo wasn’t able to get his hands on the blue box, which just about drove him half crazy with anticipation. He knew it would lead him somewhere secret in the hotel, but he couldn’t rightly
go exploring while the Whippet was in the fight of its life. He’d never known the hotel to suffer so many calamities, but then again, Merganzer D. Whippet was forever tinkering with every part of the building. A hundred and one days without him at work might have finally caught up to the quirkiest hotel in New York.

“Yo, Leo.”

Remi was calling on the two-way radio as Leo entered the maintenance tunnel and started up one of the ladders toward the wet rooms.

“I’m kind of busy at the moment, Remi,” Leo said, trying to climb the ladder with one hand as he held the radio.

“Blop caught wind of the water leaks and he’s worried about the other robots,” Remi reported. “He keeps banging his head against the cardboard box.”

Leo rolled his eyes. “He’s a tricky robot; don’t let him fool you. He’s just trying to get back to the room so he can bother Mr. Bump. Try talking about race cars. He likes that.”

“If you say so,” said Remi. “He also taught me about hot-water heaters and hotel boiler rooms. He must have heard Ms. Sparks talking about how nobody had hot water. This little dude is
smart
.”

Leo wished Remi would leave him alone so he could concentrate on getting his work done.

“He said when the boiler stops sending hot water, it usually means it’s about to blow a gasket. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

A light went off in Leo’s brain as he realized Blop might be right. The boiler might start to leak, a lot. The boiler was in the basement, and so was the blue box.

“Remi, listen carefully,” said Leo, jumping off the ladder into the tunnel on seven. “I need you to do something for me, but it’s going to mean leaving the front door. Can you do that?”

Leo walked down the tunnel to a hidden door that opened into the hotel hallway and headed for the maintenance closet, where Pilar would be waiting with the wet / dry vac.

“Sure I can help! Ms. Sparks cancelled her errands, but now she’s running around all over the place, so I’m sure I can sneak off. Apparently the hotel is falling apart. I’m the least of her problems.”

“There are two boxes under my cot in the basement.”

“The
secret
boxes,” Remi said, with great emphasis on the word
secret
.

“Yeah, those.” Leo couldn’t help shaking his head. “Take the blue one and put it in the duck elevator for safekeeping. No one else goes in there.”

“Me and the Blopster are on the prowl,” said Remi. “Consider it done!”

Pilar was already pushing her maid’s cart away from the closet when Leo rounded the corner.

“What’s happening to the Whippet?” she asked with concern in her dark brown eyes.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s sick,” Leo answered.

“Or sad,” said Pilar. “I think it misses Mr. Whippet.”

Leo didn’t know about that, but there was no getting around the fact that the hotel was in real trouble.

Leo headed for Ms. Pompadore’s room as the two-way radio flared to life again.

“She’s gonna blow!” he heard Remi’s voice scream, followed by Blop describing water survival techniques. “The giant black boiler is shaking and steaming — I think it might start blowing bolts and shooting water all over the basement at any moment! I have to get Blop out of here — it’ll fry his circuits if he gets wet!”

Blop began to disagree, saying he was a fine swimmer, which was utter nonsense.

“Did you get the box?” Leo asked.

“Who are you talking to?” Ms. Pompadore questioned, and Leo quickly turned the radio off, stuffing it in the pocket of his overalls. She looked at him as if he were hiding something.

“Just boring maintenance talk, Ms. Pompadore. I should have this cleaned up in no time,” he said, trying to change the subject as Hiney growled and begged to be put on the floor. There was only an inch of water confined to the main bathroom, but Ms. Pompadore wouldn’t let the poor thing down. “It’s a little funny, don’t you think?” asked Leo, trying to lighten the mood under Ms. Pompadore’s steady gaze. “I mean, this being the Room of Ponds and Caves and all.”

“I fail to see the humor,” she answered. “Water belongs in the sink, the toilet, and the ponds. Not on my bathroom floor.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Leo.

“I suppose next you’ll be telling me I ought to have bats landing in my hair because there are caves in my room.”

“No, ma’am,” Leo said, although he did think that sounded kind of logical.

Ms. Pompadore moved away and Hiney barked about a thousand times while Leo worked the wet / dry vac. He knew he should call his father and send him to the basement in case the boiler was pouring water all over their room, but Leo wanted to make sure Remi had safely moved the blue box first. He finished mopping up, put the wet / dry vac away, checked the fourth
floor electrical panel, and practically dove down the stairs on his way to the basement. Before he could get there, his dad radioed him.