by Lee Goldberg
That’s when Stottlemeyer came into the room behind me, a newspaper under his arm, and spotted the clean desk.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“You know better than to leave Mr. Monk alone with a mess,” I said. “Where were you?”
“Answering the call of nature,” he said. “Though in this case, it was more like a scream.”
That was more than I needed to know. “We were just leaving, weren’t we, Mr. Monk?”
“Yes,” he said, as he sidestepped Devlin and made a beeline to me.
I handed him the box, I picked up the suitcase, and we walked out.
“Do you think she’d really shoot me?” Monk asked.
“Definitely,” I said. “She’s very irritated.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t floss,” Monk said. “If I had those gums, I’d shoot myself rather than waste the bullet on somebody else.”
I drove back to the Excelsior Hotel with Monk. I wanted another look at the room where Jack Griffin died. I was hoping that maybe I’d see something that I’d missed the first time around or intuitively glean some new understanding just by being in the room again.
Detectives on TV do that all the time. They go back to the crime scene, stare intensely at this and that, and then have incredibly stylized and revealing visions of what the victim was doing before he died.
I figured there was no reason that couldn’t work for me, too.
On the way there, I expected Monk to start complaining, to remind me that I worked for him, not the other way around, and that I was wasting valuable time that he could be spending on something important, like vacuuming his ceiling.
But he remained silent.
I found his silence more aggravating than his complaining. I wanted him to ask me questions, to make me justify my actions, because I wanted to hear the answers myself. Maybe then I’d understand what I was doing and why I was doing it, beyond hoping I’d be blessed with some cool, TV-detective flashbacks of my own.
The same group of vagrants that was hanging out in the Excelsior lobby on Sunday was still there, making me wonder if they’d ever left. The same clerk was on duty, too, eating a Hot Pocket and surfing the Internet on a laptop that was covered with stickers from various bands.
We approached the cage. “I’d like the key to room 214.”
The clerk looked over at Monk, then back at me. “You want it for an hour or for the day?”
“I’m working with the police and I want it for the week,” I said. “The week that Jack Griffin paid for and still has left.”
“He’s dead,” the clerk said.
“He paid for it,” I said. “He gets it. Or would you prefer to refund us what he paid for the remaining week and I’ll pass it on to his next of kin?”
The clerk scowled. “Fine. You can have the room. But I don’t have the key. I gave it to the cleaning crew.”
That got Monk’s attention. “Is it being cleaned right now?”
“Yeah,” the clerk said.
Monk tugged on my sleeve. “Let’s go see.”
The only thing Monk liked more than cleaning something himself was telling others how to do it. I wanted to go up, too, but for a different reason—I was afraid that the maid might dispose of any potential evidence.
Evidence of what, though, I wasn’t sure.
So we hurried up the stairs to the second floor, where there was an enormous red drum marked “biohazardous waste” on a cart equipped with a wet vacuum, humidifiers, and assorted cleaning equipment and supplies parked outside of the open doorway to room 214.
Two men wearing white, hooded Tyvek coveralls, filtered respirator masks, goggles, and matching yellow rubber gloves and boots emerged from the room carrying a soiled mattress that was wrapped tightly in transparent plastic sheeting and sealed with duct tape.
The two men leaned the mattress against a wall and paused to take a break.
Monk broke into an enormous smile. “This is the finest hotel in San Francisco.”
CHAPTER SIX
Mr. Monk Meets a Fan
One of the guys in the Tyvek suits turned to us, seemed to freeze for a moment, then quickly took off his mask and goggles and peeled back his hood to reveal a youthful, freckled redhead with an electrifying smile.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re Adrian Monk.”
He came toward us, taking off his gloves and holding out his right hand to Monk.
“I’m Jerry Yermo,” he said, shaking Monk’s hand.
“My pleasure.” Monk glanced at me, which was my signal to get him a wipe.
“No, no, allow me,” Jerry said, snapping his fingers at the other man. “Gene, bring Mr. Monk some wipes. This is such an incredible honor. I have been following your work for years.”
Gene was a stocky guy who didn’t bother to remove his mask and goggles. He brought over a huge canister of disinfectant wipes and offered it to Monk, who tugged a wet tissue out and cleaned his hands.
“The honor is mine, Mr. Yermo,” Monk said. “This is the first time I have ever seen a hotel room cleaned properly.”
Monk finished with the wipe. I reached into my purse for a baggie, but before I could take it out, Jerry whipped out a red plastic bag with a big biohazard emblem on it and offered it to Monk instead.
“Call me Jerry, Mr. Monk.”
“It’s Adrian to my friends.” Monk smiled as he dropped his wipe into the bag.
Jerry sealed the bag and handed it to Gene, who deposited it in the biohazard container on the cart, then grabbed a paint scraper off the cart and went back to work in the hotel room.
“When I said that I’ve followed your work, Adrian, I meant it literally,” Jerry said. “I’m a crime scene cleaner. I’ve been to the scene of just about every murder in San Francisco that you’ve investigated but, sadly, long after you’ve gone. I’ve always hoped that one day I’d get the opportunity to meet the great man himself.”
“Excuse me, Jerry,” I said. “But I don’t understand why you’re here. This isn’t a crime scene.”
“After a murder, suicide, violent crime, or any serious accident where bodily fluids have been spilled, a licensed and certified cleaner has to be called in to properly remove, package, and dispose of all contaminated material—furniture, carpeting, drywall, equipment, you name it—in strict accordance with all applicable OSHA, federal, state, and local health regulations. Then we disinfect, deodorize, and decontaminate the scene before restoring it to its original state.”
Monk was visibly moved. “You’re a true American hero. I wish the law required licensed professionals like you to clean up wherever people have been. This city is awash in bodily fluids.”
“I don’t know that I’d go that far, Adrian. But I agree that bodily fluids and other contaminants from injury, death, decomposition, not to mention the regular excretions, expulsions, and ejaculations of the living, certainly spread farther, soak deeper, and are more dangerous to public health and safety than the general population realizes.”
“Amen, brother,” Monk said. “It’s a disgusting world that we live in.”
“Tell me about it,” Jerry agreed. “In some cases, our work requires us to strip a place down to the studs and replace everything. But this time, since we’re only dealing with the postmortem evacuation of bladder and bowels and initial decomp, and no blood spatter or brain matter, we’ve only had to remove the bedding, mattress, and the carpeting for incineration and simply disinfect everything else.”
“You should be taking notes, Natalie,” Monk said. “This is what you should be doing in your house every week.”
“Including the removal and incineration of my linens, mattress, and carpets?” I asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Monk said. “You can do that monthly.”
“No one has died in my bed, Mr. Monk.”
“Yet,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time until someone does if you don’t do something about your slovenly habits.”
I lo
oked at Jerry. “He’s exaggerating.”
“I’m sure your bedroom is very clean and lively,” Jerry said, then winced. “Forgive me, that didn’t come out at all the way I intended.”
I couldn’t help smiling at his discomfort. “It’s okay, Jerry, I understood what you meant. Did you find anything when you cleaned the hotel room?”
“We find strange stuff all the time,” Jerry said, eager to change the subject from his faux pas. “We were cleaning up after a guy who blew off his head with a shotgun, and when we ripped out the blood-and-brain-matter-stained drywall behind him, we found a wedding dress sealed in plastic underneath the insulation. Another time, when we were mopping up after the decomposing corpse from an old lady’s unattended death, we found twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and bonds that she’d saved under the floorboards.”
“Did you find anything even remotely that interesting this time?”
“I can tell you exactly what we found. We take notes in case the police come back to us.” He took a notebook out of his back pocket and flipped it open. “Forty-seven cents, a gum wrapper, a used condom, a bottle cap, three pens, assorted unidentified pills, six paper clips, a safety pin, a Tic Tac, a 7-Eleven receipt, and toenail clippings.” He closed his notebook and stuck it back in his pocket. “It was normal detritus, most of it under furniture, slightly less than the usual accumulation for a hotel room with a lot of occupants.”
“So are you done here?” I asked.
“We’ve still got to disinfect, deodorize, lay some new carpet, and replace the mattress.”
“May I observe you in action?” Monk asked.
“I’d be honored, Adrian, but I knew it was going to be just a simple, two-man job, so I didn’t bring any extra protective gear with me today.”
“That’s okay, Jerry. Natalie can run back to my apartment and get mine.”
“You have Tyvek coveralls, a respirator mask, and goggles?” Jerry asked.
“Who doesn’t?” Monk said, then glanced reproachfully at me. “That is, if you’re a civilized person.”
“This isn’t much of a job, and we’re almost done. I have a better idea,” Jerry said. “The next time you’re at a murder, stick around until we get there and you can join the crew for the cleanup.”
“That would be amazing,” Monk said. “If we’re lucky, someone will get killed today.”
“You’re a real humanitarian, Mr. Monk,” I said.
“No, I’m not,” Monk said and pointed at Jerry. “But he is. You’re doing God’s work.”
“Thank you,” Jerry said. “Speaking of which . . .”
He reached for his hood, pulled it over his head, and gave us a little salute before putting on his mask and goggles and going back into the room.
It looked like I’d have to come back later for my stylized TV-detective flashbacks of Jack Griffin’s last days.
Monk watched Jerry Yermo go and then looked at me. “That’s a hell of a man.”
“You don’t know anything about him,” I said.
“I know he’s single,” Monk said, then stood there with one eye closed for a long moment before opening it again.
“Was that supposed to be a wink?”
“You’ve never seen a wink before?”
“Winks are quick,” I said. “That was more like a nap with one eye closed.”
We went back downstairs. I stopped by the front desk, told the clerk to hold the room key for 214 under my name, and crossed the lobby toward the front entrance.
“You didn’t respond to my subtle suggestion,” Monk said. “Was it too subtle?”
“Jerry isn’t my type,” I said.
“Why not?”
“He spends his day scrubbing up gore.”
“So you have a problem with clean, decent, upstanding men who do God’s work,” Monk said, then gestured to the men in the lobby. “I suppose you’d prefer one of them.”
“Those men are indigent, drugged out, mentally ill, and elderly.”
“Well, that’s the alternative.”
“No, it’s not. There’s a wide variety of men in the world besides Jerry Yermo and them.”
“That explains why you’re alone,” Monk said. “You live in fantasyland.”
“Then that makes us neighbors,” I said and walked outside to the street.
I dropped Monk off for his weekly appointment with Dr. Neven Bell, his psychiatrist, and took the box of Griffin’s possessions with me into McDonald’s, where I bought a cup of their cheap coffee and pretended I was in Starbucks.
I went to a table and started sorting through Griffin’s meager possessions, making an inventory in my notebook, along with my observations and any questions that occurred to me.
His wallet was in an evidence baggie and contained a few crisp twenties, his fake California driver’s license, and a faded slip from a fortune cookie that read, “You will lead many lives.” I sniffed the wallet. It smelled of leather, varnish, and fish.
The crisp twenties suggested to me that he’d exchanged his pesos for American dollars somewhere. The smell of varnish and fish on his wallet backed up Monk’s deductions that Griffin led a seafaring life. Which raised the first question that I jotted down on my list:
Did he smuggle himself into the U.S. on a boat?
If so, perhaps it was with somebody that he’d crewed for in the past, maybe even an American. If I could find that boat, and that person, that could be a significant lead. But there were marinas and ports all along the Southern California coast and tens of thousands of boats.
How could I find the boat that Griffin was smuggled in on?
I set that baggie aside and pulled out another one, which contained a gray ID card with a passport-type photo of Griffin on it. He had a fuller face and a scraggly mustache and short beard.
The card was written in Spanish on one side and English on the other and identified Griffin as a temporary resident and listed his date of birth as October 19, 1955. I assumed the document was a forgery and the birth date was probably a lie.
Who or what was Griffin hiding from?
Next I pulled out the old leather binocular case with a thin shoulder strap. It reminded me of Mr. Spock’s tricorder.
I pulled out the binoculars, which were heavy and black and in mint condition. I made note of the brand and model—a Jackson/Elite Clipper Model 188—and two serial numbers I found on the front bridge. I knew nothing about binoculars, but based on their bulkiness, the styling, and the materials, as well as the total lack of any integrated electronics, that they were at least thirty years old.
Why would he buy old binoculars instead of a smaller, more powerful, and lighter-weight model?
Perhaps it was all he could afford.
Did he buy them in a secondhand shop here? If so, where? And what did he need them for? What did he want to look at?
On the other hand, perhaps he’d owned that particular pair of binoculars for years. If so, the fact that he’d taken such great care of them, and brought them with him from Mexico, suggested they held some emotional significance for him.
What did the binoculars mean to him? Why bring them to San Francisco?
I rummaged through his shaving kit. All the toiletries were typical brand-name items, the kind that could be found at any local supermarket or drugstore.
I moved on to his collection of a dozen paperback Westerns, all of which were new, English-language titles published in the last few months. I figured he’d probably picked them up off the rack wherever he’d bought his toiletries.
He must have loved Westerns. Of all the things he could have done in his final days, he chose to hole up in a dive hotel room in San Francisco, reading them.
Maybe Western novels were hard to come by in Mexico and represented a pleasure that he’d been denied. Or maybe they, like the binoculars, represented something else to him.
There was one more item in the box, and it was in an evidence baggie for protection—it was the snapshot that Griffin was ho
lding in his hand when he died.
I studied it again and made a list of everything I could see in the picture and what information I might glean from each item.
There was the nurse. Try to date and trace her uniform? Her shoes? The watch on her wrist?
There was the little girl. Try to date the bike? Her clothes? Her shoes?
There was the house, which appeared to have been recently built at the time the photo was taken. The black address numbers 9-2-8 were glued on a white plastic light that was mounted on the brick trim beside the garage. That design detail, and the style of the house, screamed 1970s to me. If it’s a tract home, can I trace the style to a particular developer and then, perhaps, to a place and a date?
There were potted plants out front, waiting to be put into the fresh dirt. Could the plants tell me where the house is?
There was the car in the driveway. The license plate wasn’t photographed, but I could tell the car was a Ford Country Squire, metallic blue with faux wood paneling on the exterior.
What year was the car? Was the metallic blue color a special-order option? Could that help me track the owner?
I looked at my list and frowned. I was going to need help with the research.
But where was I going to get it?
I wrote that question down, too, as if that would help me find the answer.
Monk never had to make up lists. He absorbed the details that he saw and heard and then noticed the one thing that was missing, was out of place, or didn’t fit where it was supposed to. And that’s how he solved his cases.
But I wasn’t Monk. I’d have to develop my own detecting technique. I just wished that I knew what it was. And that thought gave me the last question for my list.
What is my technique?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mr. Monk and the Knee-slapper
Dr. Neven Bell’s office in North Beach, with its wood paneling and leather furniture, was so aggressively masculine, I half expected the balding shrink to emerge from his office in a silk bathrobe, a cigar in his mouth, and his arms around two Playboy bunnies.