by Lee Goldberg
“Let’s not overreact,” I said sternly to Danielle, then turned to Monk. “Or do anything rash. I’m sure we can smooth this out with Mr. Slade in a way that everyone can live with.”
The phone rang. I answered it. It was Nick Slade, as if on cue. But before I could bring up our ethical dilemma, he spoke up.
“Another judge has been gunned down and we’ve been hired to investigate. The client specifically asked for Monk.”
“Who’s the client?” I asked.
“Salvatore Lucarelli,” he said.
“The mobster?”
“That’s yet to be proven in a court of law,” he said. “And the judge who was supposed to hear that case is the guy who was just killed.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought Judge Stanton, the judge who was killed in Golden Gate Park, was supposed to preside over that case.”
“He was,” Slade said. “Judge Carnegie was next in line, which makes Lucarelli the top suspect, which is why he wants Monk to prove that he’s innocent.”
“Mr. Monk will never work for Salvatore Lucarelli,” I said, glancing at my boss, whose ears seemed to perk up at the mention of the mobster’s name.
“You don’t know your boss as well as you think you do,” Slade said. “Monk has worked for Lucarelli before; that’s why he’s asking for him again now.”
I glanced again at Monk and, from the expression on his face, I knew that what Slade had said was true.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mr. Monk and the Godfather
I couldn’t believe that Monk had ever worked for the mob. But he had. He gave me all the details as I drove him down to the county jail in our new Lexus.
It had happened shortly before his previous assistant, Sharona Fleming, left him and I was hired. Someone walked into a barbershop that was a front for Lucarelli’s gambling and protection racket and killed everybody in the place.
Lucarelli and his men wanted revenge but he didn’t want to spark a mob war, so he snatched Monk off the street and pressed him into service to find out who was responsible for the massacre.
Monk took the job because he was terrified not to, and because the feds, who were staking out Lucarelli, saw this as a perfect opportunity to get a man on the inside.
The feds made Monk wear a tie with a listening device woven into it and sent him back into the heart of the San Francisco mob.
Monk caught the killer and discovered that the massacre had nothing to do with Lucarelli’s money-laundering operation, but that’s a long story that I’ll have to tell you about another time.
Monk averted a mob war but the feds were mad at him. It wasn’t because he failed to get any evidence against the mobster. What pissed them off was that Monk washed and ironed his wired tie, ruining it. If toilet seats on aircraft carriers cost four figures, just imagine what a transmitting tie must go for.
As we were nearing the jail on Seventh Street, I quickly filled Monk in on what Slade had told me. Judge Carnegie was gunned down while taking his dog on his daily morning walk. With Judge Stanton dead, Judge Carnegie was next up in the rotation to preside over Lucarelli’s trial, which made the mobster the prime suspect in both killings. Now Lucarelli’s trial was indefinitely delayed and the next judge in line was under police protection.
We parked the car and entered the county jail, a striking building with undulating curves of frosted glass and an enormous sheriff’s badge mounted on the exterior. It looked more like a shopping mall than a jail, but once we were inside, any pretense of being something else was dropped. It looked just like you’d expect a jail to look.
We went through the various security gates, a wearisome ritual that always reminded me of that long corridor of sliding, swinging, and dropping doors that Maxwell Smart walks down at the beginning of each episode of Get Smart. I think they did it in the movie, too.
Salvatore Lucarelli was already waiting for us when we entered the interview room. He was a droopy-faced, balding man with a double chin. He fit my image of someone’s kindly grandfather but not the most feared mob figure west of the Mississippi. There was no perceptible menace emanating from him.
He was dressed in a yellow jumpsuit, his arms and legs shackled to a chain that was locked to a metal loop imbedded in the concrete floor of the interview room. The light cast by the coiled energy-efficient bulbs gave his skin a sickly, jaundiced tinge.
Monk and I stood across from him, a table between us in case he broke his chains, lunged at us, and tried to tear out our throats with his dentures.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Monk,” Lucarelli said.
“I didn’t want to,” Monk said. “But I was afraid of what might happen to me if I didn’t.”
“I would never hurt you,” he said. “You have my respect.”
“But you’ve hurt others,” Monk said.
Lucarelli gave a noncommittal shrug and glanced at me. “I see you’ve got a pretty new assistant.”
“Is that a threat?” Monk said.
“You think I’d hurt her to get at you? What good would that do me? You’d be too angry and distracted to get anything done. It’s as ridiculous as the idea that I had anything to do with those judges getting killed.”
“Is it?” I said. “They were both going to preside over your trial. Now no judge wants to do it. Your attorney is already arguing that the jury pool and judicial pool are hopelessly tainted and that a fair trial would be impossible. It could be months before you get a trial, if ever.”
“And while all that goes on, I’m going to be in a cell not getting any younger,” he said. “If I wanted to rig the trial, I wouldn’t kill the judge; I’d get rid of the witnesses, or the prosecutor, or the people who are close to them. That way the trial would be over quick and I would be out.”
“Maybe that’s coming next,” I said.
“I was just giving you a hypothetical from my years of watching The Sopranos,” Lucarelli said. “I’m a restaurateur. All I kill are lobsters.”
Monk tilted his head and regarded Lucarelli. “If you’re guilty of these murders, I will prove it. And I will go to the police with what I find out no matter how much you pay Intertect.”
“I know. So ask yourself this, Mr. Monk,” Lucarelli said. “If I did kill those judges, why would I do something as stupid as putting you on the case?”
Judge Alan Carnegie lived in the Sunset District, which, like North Beach, has a name that belies the truth. There is no beach at North Beach anymore, and while there is a beach at Sunset, there’s very little sunlight.
The neighborhood, bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west, Golden Gate Park to the north, and the Twin Peaks to the east, was almost always shrouded in fog and it was no different that day.
The westernmost end of Sunset, where the judge lived, was a flat, sea-sprayed beach community composed of cafés, surf shops, bars, health food stores, bodegas, and low-slung, bleached homes of cinder block and perennially peeling wood.
The tourists all visit Haight Ashbury for a peek at the 1960s, but if you ask me, they’re going to the wrong spot. The sixties really live in the Sunset District, where just about everybody seems to be wearing sandals or flip-flops and faded T-shirts or sweatshirts. But like the name of the place, looks are deceiving. Many of the beach bums lead double lives as high-paid professionals in order to afford the luxury of a laid-back lifestyle.
I parked next to the police line on one of the residential streets. We got out of the car and shouldered our way through the crowd of reporters and lookie-loos. Let me re-phrase that-I shouldered my way and Monk cowered behind me in my wake, his arms tucked in close to his body so he wouldn’t brush against anyone.
I lifted up the yellow police tape, expecting to hear an officer yell at us, but no one did. Either they didn’t notice us crossing the line or, like the officers at Golden Gate Park, they hadn’t gotten the word about Monk.
Judge Carnegie was splayed on the sidewalk in an unnatural position, body and limbs bent at odd angles,
reminding me of a broken string puppet. I guess that’s what happens when you’re shot six times and collapse with no concern about how you land. Of course, he was way past being concerned about anything.
He was suntanned and his hair was colored a hue of brown not found in nature. He wore a sweatshirt, denim cutoffs, and sandals. I wondered if that was what he wore under his judge’s robes at the bench.
The judge had one end of a leash looped around his right wrist and it appeared, from his outstretched arm and the swath of blood on the sidewalk behind him, that his dog had dragged him for a few feet. The dog was gone.
Stottlemeyer and Disher were talking to some officers and forensic techs, so they didn’t immediately notice Monk until he was already crouching beside the body.
But once the captain saw us, he marched right over, his face flushed with anger, Disher in tow.
I moved to intercept him. “It’s not what you think.”
“You mean you haven’t violated a crime scene and that isn’t Monk over there examining the corpse?”
Now I felt my hackles go up. I didn’t even know I had hackles until then.
“We haven’t violated anything, Captain. We’re showing the same care and professionalism that we always have at crime scenes.”
“You were official consultants then; you aren’t now. You are civilians who aren’t permitted to cross a police line,” he said. “I’ve already warned you both about that. We don’t need Monk’s help right now, no matter how much he wants to give it.”
I glanced back and saw Monk studying the trail of blood. I wanted to buy him as much time as I could.
“He’s not giving away anything, not one tiny bit of information or insight,” I said. “He’s been hired by someone who appreciates his talents and treats him with the respect he deserves. In consideration of his years of loyal service, we’re hoping you might grant him a few minutes of access to the scene as a professional courtesy.”
“Don’t you think you’re laying it on a little thick?” Stottlemeyer said.
I shrugged. “It seems to me that you need reminding.”
“Who is he working for?” he asked.
“Me,” a voice said.
We turned to see Nick Slade approaching us. He wore a perfectly tailored Brioni jacket and slacks, his shirt open at the collar. He looked like money. And even if he didn’t, his ride certainly did. His Bentley convertible was parked at the police line and there were two dumbstruck officers ogling it as if it were a Hawaiian Tropic bikini model.
“Why do we even bother cordoning off our crime scenes?” Stottlemeyer said, shaking his head. “You’re looking good, Nick. Then again, you always do.”
“You could, too, if you accepted my job offers,” Slade said. “Nice tie.”
Stottlemeyer lifted his yellow-white-and-blue-striped tie. “The Continental. Genuine polyester. You can buy two for ten dollars at Wal-Mart. You could probably afford four of ’em.”
“I don’t know why you stay on the police force.”
“I like wearing a badge,” he said.
“If that’s all you want,” Slade said, “I’ll give you one.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah, it’s the number of figures on the paycheck,” Slade said. “It’s the freedom to do your job without the politics and bureaucracy getting in the way. It’s finally having all the resources you need to do it right.”
“Where’s the challenge in that?” Stottlemeyer said with a grin.
Disher cleared his throat. “I’ve never received one of your job offers.”
Slade turned to him, apparently noticing him for the first time. “Do I know you?”
“You will,” Disher said confidently.
“Because you’re on the verge of making headlines by cracking a major case?” Slade asked, reaching out for a handshake.
“Because I’m going to send you my résumé,” Disher said, gripping Slade’s hand as hard as he could. I could see the effort on his face. There was none on Slade’s. “Lieutenant Randall Disher, Homicide.”
“Nice to meet you,” Slade said, managing to sound both polite and dismissive at the same time. He glanced at Stottlemeyer and tipped his head towards Disher. “So this is your right-hand man?”
“And his left,” Disher said before Stottlemeyer could answer. “Don’t let my boyish good looks fool you or you’ll be making the same mistake as a lot of guys on death row. I’m a grizzled, battle-scarred hard-ass.”
“I didn’t know that you were looking for a job,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Like any man of action, I’m always open to new challenges,” Disher said, releasing his grip on Slade’s hand and shaking the circulation back into his own. “You get too comfortable and your edges dull. I like to keep my edges razor-sharp.”
“Why don’t you go sharpen them by telling those officers to stop drooling on Nick’s car and to make sure no one else slips past the police line,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I’ll gladly whip them into shape,” Disher said, and shot Slade a look. “The rank and file don’t just respect me; they fear me. You know how it is.”
Disher swaggered over to the officers. I think he was trying to appear tough but instead it seemed like he was suffering from a hemorrhoid flare-up.
Slade shook his head. “Please reconsider my offer, Leland. At Intertect, you’d be working with the very best people in the investigative field.”
“That’s obvious,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’ve hired Adrian Monk.”
Slade looked past Stottlemeyer to Monk, who was swaying from side to side and holding his hands out in front of him. I couldn’t tell if he was fighting sleep or trying to look at things from a different perspective.
“The guy is brilliant, way beyond my expectations,” Slade said. “You wouldn’t believe how many cases he’s solved for us in just one day.”
“I would,” Stottlemeyer said. “So who’s your client?”
Slade smiled. “Ordinarily, I’d give you a moving speech about client confidentiality, but you’ll find out who it is soon enough from your sources at the county jail. It’s Salvatore Lucarelli.”
Stottlemeyer mulled that over for a moment. “I forgot to mention another benefit of being a cop. You don’t have kiss up to mobsters for work.”
“He came to me. I’m like a lawyer, Leland. I don’t judge my clients. I just do the best job I can for them. He thinks he’s being set up and hired me to prove it. I either can or I can’t. I don’t see anything immoral, unethical, or criminal in that.”
“You know he’s responsible. Judge Stanton and Judge Carnegie were both going to preside over Lucarelli’s trial,” Stottlemeyer said. “And they were both executed gangland style.”
“By a woman,” Slade said. “When was the last time you heard of a mob boss hiring women to do his dirty work?”
“What makes you think it was a woman?” Stottlemeyer said.
“The same things that make you think so,” Slade said. “I know everything that you know, Leland.”
Slade looked over his shoulder at Monk, who circled the body, tilting and pirouetting like a ballerina on a music box.
“Maybe more,” Slade said. Stottlemeyer followed his gaze. “How about some quid pro quo?”
Stottlemeyer sighed, nodded his acceptance, and we all walked over to Monk. Disher joined us, too, trying to maintain his swagger.
“Hello, Captain,” Monk said. He had dark circles under his eyes and he looked even paler than usual.
“You look terrible,” Stottlemeyer said. “Are you sleeping?”
“I don’t think so.” Monk pinched himself. “No, I’m awake. I had my doubts for a minute. But thanks for checking. What can you tell me about what happened?”
“Not much more than what you see right here,” Stottlemeyer said, and nodded to Disher, who whipped out his notebook with an exaggerated flourish.
“Judge Carnegie took his dog out for a walk around eight a.m. today, as he does
every morning. About eight fifteen, neighbors reported hearing gunshots. When they came out, they found the judge on the ground and the dog dragging him. They tried to get to the judge but the dog started barking and snarling and wouldn’t let them near him. The first uniforms on the scene called in some officers from Animal Control, who were about to tranquilize the animal when the wife showed up. The dog calmed down and she took him away.”
Stottlemeyer shook his head. “The uniforms should have let Animal Control tranquilize the dog and prevented the wife from seeing her husband like that. Instead, they traumatized the poor woman. What the hell were they thinking?”
“They were a couple of rookies,” Disher said.
“Who are going to get their heads handed to them by me as soon as we’re done here,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Were there any witnesses to the shooting?” Monk asked.
Disher shook his head. “But it was probably the same hooded shooter. One of the bullets went through Judge Carnegie’s body and was recovered by the forensics unit. Just from eyeballing it, the ballistics expert is pretty sure the slug came from the same gun that was used to kill Judge Stanton. They’ll confirm it once they get the bullet back to the lab.”
Monk rolled his shoulders. “Why would the killer use the same gun?”
“Because it’s his gun,” Disher said.
“Her gun,” Monk corrected.
“Lucarelli is sending a message,” Stottlemeyer said. “He wants to be absolutely sure that we all know the killings are connected and that there will be more to come if we don’t let him walk. For a man his age, the minimum prison term for his crimes might as well be a life sentence. He’ll die behind bars.”
“Where does Judge Carnegie live?” Monk asked.
Disher pointed over Monk’s shoulder. “At the end of the street, just around the corner.”
Monk glanced back at the body. So did I. And I immediately realized what the bloody swath on the sidewalk meant.
“The dog was trying to drag his master back home,” I said. “My God, that’s heartbreaking.”
Monk looked back at Disher. “Did anyone hear anything besides the gunshots?”