by Lee Goldberg
“We’re confirming that he didn’t leave the office around lunchtime.”
“He was in the office until five and then he went home.”
“Why so early?” I asked.
“He always does that on webinar days, since he has to come in earlier than usual. On most days, he doesn’t come in until ten a.m.”
Monk turned to me. “We’re done here.”
I smiled at Trina. “Thank you for all of your help.”
“If there’s anything more that I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask,” she said. “Do you need a parking validation?”
“We took the train,” I said, then pointed to my badge. “But this is all the validation we need.”
We walked out and headed for the stairs in silence. The interview with Trina Fishbeck had been a waste of time and we both knew it. We’d learned nothing we hadn’t known already.
As we made our way back to Penn Station, a blue and white NYPD police car roared past, the siren making that distinctive rapid wail that sounded like the Enterprise firing its lasers. I wished the Summit police cars could do that instead of just their loud, sustained wail.
There was something thrilling about seeing and hearing one of those NYPD patrol cars. They were as much a part of New York as the Empire State Building, the subway, and corner hot dog vendors.
And that’s when it suddenly hit me.
I was in New York City!
Of course, I knew that. I’d felt it walking from Penn Station to Goldman’s office. And yet it wasn’t until that moment that it really sank in.
I looked around anew, breathing in the sights and sounds of the Big Apple, reinforcing that I was really, truly there.
It seemed foolish not to take advantage of the rare opportunity and go see Times Square, walk through Central Park, and stroll through Greenwich Village.
But then I remembered I was a cop on duty and that I was with Adrian Monk, two situations that severely limited my possibilities.
Visiting New York for fun would have to wait until I had a day off, if I even got one, before going back to San Francisco.
So I settled for grabbing a hot dog from the first vendor I came across.
This, naturally, horrified Monk.
But I managed to shut out his whining and complaining about what I was doing, so successfully in fact that I can’t even recount it here for the record.
I slathered the hot dog with cheese, mustard, ketchup, and onions and ate it as I walked, well aware that I was messing up my face and making Monk hyperventilate, and I didn’t care.
I was a uniformed police officer eating a hot dog in New York City.
That’s what mattered.
If someone had told me a week earlier that this would be happening to me, I never would have believed it.
It was an experience I wanted to savor and remember.
And feeling the mustard on my cheek, and tasting the hot dog in my mouth, made it real.
Listening to Monk’s complaints would have just made it annoying. I could experience that at home.
26
Mr. Monk and the Puzzle
We were early for the train, so I stopped by a shop that sold food, novelties, and periodicals in Penn Station to get the New York Post and something to drink for the ride back to Summit.
On those rare occasions when I visited New York, I always grabbed the Post. I loved its snarky, sensationalistic headlines and admired how it managed to accurately and thoroughly report the news but with the colorful, scandalous attitude of a sleazy tabloid, which put it in sharp contrast to the more staid and stuffy New York Times.
The Post’s story on the ongoing problems in Summit perfectly epitomized that precarious editorial balance. It got all the facts right, but the tone was undeniably snide and smirking, pointing out that there was so much government corruption in Summit that pretty soon every city employee would be behind bars and recently transplanted San Franciscan Randy Disher would be the only one left to do every job.
At least the article recognized that none of the town’s woes were Disher’s fault. But I wondered how charitable the media would be once word got out today that Lindero and Woodlake, while guilty of burglary, were innocent of murder and that a killer was still on the loose.
Browsing through the Post reminded me of how dull it was living in a one-newspaper town. I used to enjoy reading the original old evening edition of the San Francisco Examiner, which cast itself as the mischievous-bad-boy alternative to the snooty and musty morning-edition San Francisco Chronicle, with which it reluctantly shared publishing facilities and a joint Sunday edition.
Then again, I liked sneaking peeks at the National Enquirer to see what celebs it was outing as “flabulous” with unflattering bathing suit pictures in any given week. It made me feel better about my own losing battle with age and cellulite.
I went up to the counter with the newspaper, along with a can of Diet Coke and a Milky Way bar to clear my palate.
Monk joined me and set a bottle of Fiji water and a Rubik’s Cube on the counter beside my stuff. I glanced at him.
“I’m not your mother,” I said. “You can buy your own drinks and games.”
“My wallet burned in the fire,” Monk said. “I have no cash.”
I’d forgotten about that.
“Okay, this is my treat, but don’t get used to it. I can’t afford to support us both.”
“Welcome to my world,” Monk said.
I handed my credit card to the cashier, an unshaven African-American guy with a head as black and shiny as a bowling ball, and he rang up the purchases.
“Do you have a gift box for the Rubik’s Cube?” Monk asked him.
The cashier reached under the counter and handed Monk a wrinkled plastic bag with a grocery store logo on it.
“That’s not a box,” Monk said.
“It’s all I’ve got,” he said.
“It’s not even a fresh bag,” Monk said. “It’s used.”
“I’m conserving our natural resources,” he said. “I’m going green.”
“Then shouldn’t you be offering customers paper bags?” Monk asked.
The cashier reached under the counter again, pulled out a stuffed brown-bag-lunch bag, emptied out a sandwich, a hard-boiled egg, and an apple onto the counter, and handed the empty bag to Monk. “Happy now?”
“Never mind,” Monk said. He picked up the cube and the water and walked out.
I took the plastic bag, dropped my candy bar and newspaper into it, and thanked the cashier for his help.
We headed for the Dover Line track and our train to Summit. I gestured to the cube in Monk’s hand.
“There’s something different about that Rubik’s Cube,” I said.
“This one is corrected,” he said.
“Corrected?”
“The original Rubik’s Cube has six individually rotating faces made up of nine squares, divided into three rows of three, each square painted in one of six colors. When those rows are properly aligned, it creates a cube with six faces, each with a different solid color.”
“I’ve seen a Rubik’s Cube before,” I said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s all threes,” Monk said, “which makes it repulsive.”
“And yet they’ve sold tens of millions of them around the world.”
“This one is a vast improvement,” Monk said and held up his cube. “It’s called Rubik’s Revenge, though a better name would have been Rubik’s Correction.”
“That doesn’t have quite the same zing as ‘revenge,’” I said. “So what makes this superior to the original?”
“This one has six faces made up of sixteen squares, divided into four rows of four, which adds up to fifty-six squares, eight corners, and twenty-four edges displaying two colors each. All even numbers.”
“Not all,” I said. “There are eight corners that show three different colors.”
He stopped abruptly, turned around, and marched back the way we had come.
I hurried after him.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To return this,” he said. “I’m not going to give Ellen Morse a defective product.”
I stepped in front of him, cutting him off.
“It’s not a defect, it’s an odd number inherent in every single one of those puzzles and Ellen Morse isn’t going to care. She’s going to love it.”
“Because she adores crap,” Monk said.
“Because it’s sweet that you thought of her.” I looked past Monk to the ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES screen. “We don’t have time to return it anyway. Our train is here.”
He reluctantly turned back and we got on the train. On the ride to Summit, he scrambled the cube and solved the puzzle twice. I read my New York Post and tried not to show my irritation. I could spend my entire life working on that cube and never solve it.
When we walked out of the train station, instead of heading left on Springfield Avenue toward police headquarters, Monk took a right, in the direction of Ellen Morse’s store.
Monk shielded his face with his hand, as if Poop were shining a bright light at us, and turned his back to the storefront when we got there.
He handed me the Rubik’s Cube. “Could you please go in and give this to her with my compliments?”
“No,” I said. “You do it.”
“I can’t go in there,” he said.
“You were in there before and came out unscathed.”
“I’m scathed,” Monk said.
“I don’t see any scathing.”
“It’s emotional and psychological at the moment, but only because the physical effects haven’t metastasized yet.”
“But you’re willing to send me in there.”
“You seem to have a natural immunity,” he said, “perhaps gained from long-term exposure.”
“So you’re saying that I lead an unsanitary, disgusting life.”
“My God, you’re finally getting the message. How many years has it taken?” Monk said. “Perhaps now you can begin the road to recovery.”
“Gee, thanks. Since you’re being so kind to me, I’ll compromise. I’ll go in and ask her if she’ll come out and chat with you.”
“Okay,” Monk said. “But ask her to wash her hands first.”
I didn’t bother to respond to that. I went into the store just as a woman was coming out, carrying some dung-paper greeting cards. I wondered if she was sending them to friend or foe.
Morse smiled when she saw me. “Hello, Natalie. Where’s Adrian?”
“He’s on the sidewalk, a safe distance away. He’d like to talk with you but he hasn’t bought into your circle-of-poop philosophy enough yet to overcome his revulsion of everything in this store.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t expect him to change completely overnight,” she said. “But I was encouraged by his willingness to keep an open mind on the matter.”
“I was shocked,” I said.
“I think you underestimate him.”
“I think I underestimated you.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” I said.
She took a deep breath and came closer to me. “Did I say or do something to offend you last night?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question, besides knowing that I didn’t want to tell her the truth. So I took the easy way out.
“Oh no. I’m sorry if I came across that way,” I said. “I was just jet-lagged, frustrated, and angry at the world. It was nothing personal. I had a wonderful time.”
“That’s good to hear, because I was afraid that maybe you thought I was making moves on your man and resented me for it.”
“My man?” I laughed. “Whatever gave you that idea? There’s no romance whatsoever between us. He’s my boss and my friend and that’s as far as it goes.”
“You don’t want it to go further?”
“Hell no,” I said.
“I’m surprised you’re so vehement about it,” she said. “Is it because he already has someone special?”
“Nope, there’s no one else,” I said. “He’s just not my type.”
“That’s a shame,” she said, but without much conviction. “He’s really a remarkable man.”
“Well, Mr. Remarkable is waiting outside to talk with you,” I said. “If we keep him waiting much longer, he might start painting lines on the sidewalk to keep people walking on the proper sides.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said.
I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, because she made the comment as she was headed for the door. But it was obvious that she was attracted to Monk. I was very curious to see how he would respond. He wasn’t accustomed to women being interested in him and, to be honest, neither was I, though I had tried to set him up with a crime scene cleaner once. That didn’t work out so well.
When we got outside, we found Monk helping a man parallel park his Range Rover. Monk had his tape measure out and was standing between the huge car and the MINI Cooper behind it.
“Two and three-quarters inches more,” Monk said. The man turned off the ignition and put the car in PARK. Monk knocked on the window. “You aren’t done yet.”
The driver got out and locked the car with his key fob remote. He was in his fifties and looked like he’d just come from the golf course.
“Thanks for your help, Officer, but it’s fine,” the man said.
“You’ve still got two and three-quarters inches to go,” Monk said.
“I don’t think so,” the man said, stepping onto the sidewalk in front of us.
“It says so right here.” Monk held up the tape measure. “Your car is unevenly parked.”
“It’s fine,” the man said and strode into the Buttercup Pantry café.
Monk took out his ticket book.
“You’re not honestly going to ticket him,” I said.
“He’s parked haphazardly,” Monk said.
“Let’s let him off with a warning,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because Ellen is here to talk with you and we’ve got to get back to the station.”
Monk seemed to notice Morse for the first time and immediately got flustered. He put his ticket book back.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Morse,” Monk said. “I got caught up in my duty.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said. “But if you don’t start calling me Ellen, I’m going to be hurt.”
“I have something for you.” Monk stepped over to the café and picked up the Rubik’s Cube that he’d set down on one of the outdoor tables. “I got this for you in New York City.”
He presented it to her in both hands, like it was a rare and fragile object. She took it from him with the same grace.
“Is this a Rubik’s Cube?” she asked.
“I hear that some people find the puzzle challenging,” Monk said.
“But you don’t,” she said.
“I just like looking at it. I find all those squares soothing and thought you might, too.”
“Thank you, Adrian,” she said.
“I need to be honest with you,” he said. “There’s a defect.”
“Eight corners with three colored faces,” Morse said.
Monk gave me a nasty look, then turned back to her. “I’m ashamed to say I’ve never noticed that until today.”
“But you have such an incredible eye for detail,” she said.
“I suppose that I get lost in the beauty and simplicity of the squares and it blinds me to everything else,” Monk said. “I won’t mind if you throw it out.”
“Never,” Morse said. “I will treasure it.”
“You don’t mind the defect?” Monk asked.
“I’m touched by the gift but even more by the sentiment that came with it,” she said and kissed Monk on the cheek. “I’d better get back. There’s no one minding the store.”
And we all know how attractive ossified poop is to shoplifters, I thought.
Morse smiled and wa
lked back to the store. Monk stood still, eyes wide, and stared at her as she went.
“Why did she do that?” he said.
“Because you told her that you think that she’s beautiful despite whatever faults she may have.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said.
“Yes, you did,” I said and walked past him on my way to the police station.
Men are such idiots, I thought. But then I realized from the look on Monk’s face that this time I had actually said what I was thinking out loud.
27
Mr. Monk as It Happened
We found Disher in his office, looking weary and frustrated as he sorted through a mountain of paperwork.
“How did it go in the city?” he asked.
“We met an agent from Homeland Security,” I replied. “She used some slick facial recognition software and had no trouble finding Joel Goldman on surveillance camera footage arriving at and departing from Penn Station when he said he did.”
“So Goldman may end up being responsible for the murder,” Disher said, “but we’ve proven without a doubt that he didn’t commit it himself.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Monk said.
“I would,” Disher said. “I had a tech-savvy buddy in the crime lab in Frisco look at the webinar. He says the video hasn’t been touched. Joel Goldman was at his desk, in front of that wall, looking into that camera.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” Monk said.
“A man can’t be in two places at once, Monk. And I can tell you for certain that he doesn’t have a twin brother.”
“You checked?” I said.
“Of course I did. How do you think I became the chief of police? I also had Officers DeSoto and Corbin talk to Goldman’s neighbors to see if they saw anything going on that morning. Turns out one of ’em saw a beat-up, rusted-out brown van parked on the corner by Goldman’s house around noon and a couple of guys in painter’s overalls and caps hurrying out of the backyard.”
“That’s a good lead,” I said. “Did the neighbor get a look at their faces?”