Mr. Monk Helps Himself

by Hy Conrad

  Now Ambrose and Yuki were on a prolonged honeymoon, circling the country in an RV, which was acting as Ambrose’s temporary home. He might not step outside the RV for an entire year, but at least he’ll be able to look out and see the world.

  Before they left, I remember talking with Yuki one evening over a few glasses of wine. “We’re naturally going to buy things,” Yuki said, sounding a bit concerned. “What’s the point of traveling if you don’t buy things?”

  “Sure,” I agreed wholeheartedly. “Half of traveling is the shopping. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is space. Have you seen that RV? There’s no room for anything. We’d have to rent a trailer or tie things to the roof.”

  “You could just mail them home,” I suggested.

  “And have them pile up on the front porch?”

  “Or you could mail them to me. Or to Mr. Monk.” That’s what I was calling him back then.

  “Good idea,” said Yuki.

  That was about the extent of the conversation. And that was the inside information I had that Monk didn’t. I never really thought of it again, not until after Monk told me about his brother’s early fascination with mimes and The Big Book of Clowns and Mimes appeared on his doorstep, connecting the dots for me.

  “Obviously, that’s her handwriting,” Monk said, getting all mentally caught up.

  “The packages weren’t addressed to you. Yuki addressed them to your brother: Mr. A. Monk. She must not have thought about the possible confusion.”

  “Why didn’t she put in a note? Or let one of us know what she was doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, only half lying.

  “And you figured this out on your own?”

  “Yes, Adrian. On my own. You can thank me anytime. Without me, you’d be running to the captain right now, trying to get a task force to track down the clown mafia.”

  He nodded in full agreement. “You’re right. I owe you an apology.”

  I waited a few seconds. “And?”

  “Not now. I’ll catch you later.”

  Instead of apologizing, Monk had me call Yuki, just to confirm and say hello. He couldn’t call himself. It’s not that he wasn’t fond of her; he wasn’t. But more than unfond, he was a little intimidated. Not to mention perplexed by how a young, strong rebel could have fallen so completely for his middle-aged brother, whose idea of death-defying adventure was a walk around the block.

  I found Yuki and Ambrose in Key West, where they had lucked into a trailer park not far from the center of town. The love birds seemed extremely happy with their long honeymoon, even though Ambrose had never left the RV, not so far. “Oh, I just got another tattoo,” Yuki added. “Tell Adrian not to worry. It’s someplace he’ll never see.”

  “I’m not sure he wants to hear that, either.”

  “What don’t I want to hear?” Monk asked. “No, don’t tell me. Ignorance is bliss.”

  Yuki confirmed my theory and apologized for not including notes—a real apology, not an IOU. “Things are so hectic every day, I didn’t think about reminding you.”

  Hectic? I thought. What could be hectic about lazily driving around in an RV?

  “Sorry, Nat. Gotta go. Ambrose is going crazy with the chickens. He doesn’t think a city should allow chickens roaming the streets.” She covered the phone but I could still hear. “Honey, no. You can’t run them over. It’s against the law.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Mr. Monk Sends in the Clowns

  Monk wouldn’t be wearing a wire on this one. Not that his track record with wires was all that great. Even the tiniest microphones would make him feel off-balance and tilt him to one side. Plus there was the matter of the annoying wires and the tape itching against his skin. It would be like trying to mic the princess from “The Princess and the Pea.”

  In this case, the police couldn’t be directly involved. That would constitute an illegal search. So when Monk showed up at the house on Sacramento Street, he was on his own, a private citizen invited through the door. His only backup would be a cell phone, a small red clamshell lent to him by Ellen for good luck. If Monk got into trouble, he would have to call.

  Stottlemeyer, Devlin, and I were parked in my trusty Subaru across the street, feeling pretty helpless. We hadn’t even been able to check out a surveillance van. All three of us had binoculars, although they wouldn’t be of much use.

  John Harriman had come out to meet Monk on the front porch, wearing a 49ers sweatshirt and a pink paper hat. We caught a glimpse, just before slumping down in our seats. Devlin giggled.

  The stockbroker seemed startled. “Smith, where’s your costume?”

  “I don’t have a car, so I’m going to have to change here.” Monk pointed to his red-and-white roller suitcase, bought especially for the job. It was filled with costume, shoes, wig, and makeup, all borrowed from the late Dudley Smith. Everything Monk would need to become J. P. Tatters, even though we’d solemnly promised he’d never have to open it.

  “Right,” said Harriman with a shake of his head. “I think Alicia mentioned that.” He reopened the front door. “How’s the downstairs powder room?”

  As soon as the door was open, the sound of screaming kids wafted down the hallway. One particularly shrill voice dominated. “Daddy! Daddy!”

  “Coming, sweetie,” Harriman shouted back.

  “Where’s Mommy? Mommy said she’d be here.”

  “Mommy is far away. She’ll be home next week.” Harriman raised his voice. “Marina, please settle the children.”

  “Yes, Mr. Harriman. I do my best.” Marina was Bulgarian, Monk deduced, between forty and fifty, and, from the timbre of her voice, on the verge of quitting.

  “I want Mommy here. It’s my birthday.”

  Harriman turned to Monk and whispered with great force, “I need you to take care of these monsters. Now.”

  “I need to leave,” Monk said, then corrected himself. “I mean, I need to change outside. Last time, I used the garage.”

  “Used the garage?” Harriman studied him with some interest.

  “So I can ring the bell and make an entrance,” Monk explained. “We don’t want to spoil the illusion.”

  “Where’s the clown?” the same shrill voice shouted. “J. P. Tatters. J. P. Tatters.”

  A dozen other shrill voices took up the chant. “J. P. Tatters. J. P. Tatters.” To Monk, they must have sounded like French peasants chanting for the head of Marie Antoinette.

  “All right, all right,” Harriman said. “Make it fast.” Reaching into the Chinese bowl just inside the door, he grabbed a set of keys and used one to unlock the pedestrian door next to the double-bay garage doors.

  We watched from the lip of the car windows as Monk walked his rolling bag in. “He’s inside,” Devlin said. “Good luck, Monk.”

  “Good luck,” Stottlemeyer and I said in unison.

  We settled into our car seats, expecting a nail-biting wait of five to ten minutes. Maybe longer. But we were pleasantly surprised when one of the two garage doors shuddered and began to roll up.

  “Way to go,” Stottlemeyer whispered. And then he looked off to his left. “Damn.”

  What had grabbed his attention and dampened his spirits was a black Mercedes sedan slowing down and turning into the newly opened bay.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “I’ll run the plates,” Devlin said, reaching for her phone.

  “Don’t bother,” said the captain. “I caught a glimpse. It’s the wife.”

  And then, as quickly as it had rolled up, the door rolled down.

  • • •

  Monk’s memory of what happened next is a bit sketchy. Blunt-force trauma to the head can do that.

  He thinks he’d been in the closed garage for just a minute. He’d barely had time to adjust to the normal grunge and disorder of a typical garage—a hunter green SUV in the one bay, the other one empty—when he heard the gears grind and the second door begin to rise.
<
br />   Alicia Harriman didn’t see him at first. A tall woman, very thin, very blond, and suspiciously free of wrinkles. She emerged from the Mercedes and retrieved a wrapped box with a pink bow from the backseat. Only then, as she was walking around the rear of the car, did she notice the man, stooped over and rolling a red-and-white suitcase toward the pedestrian door.

  “You. Stop,” she demanded without an ounce of fear. “Who are you?”

  Monk stopped and stood. “I’m J. P. Tatters.” He realized his mistake the second the words left his mouth.

  “No, you’re not,” said Alicia.

  “I am,” Monk insisted, and tried to smile. “Technically. The original J. P. Tatters died. I’m his brother. Carrying on the tradition.”

  “Died?” she asked. Her brow would have furrowed if it could have. “What did he die of?”

  “No one knows,” Monk improvised. “Some clown disease.”

  “Wait a minute.” Alicia took a step closer. “You’re Adrian Monk.”

  “People say I look like him.”

  “No, you’re that police detective. What are you doing in my garage?”

  With all the publicity Monk gets in this city, we’ve been lucky that more bad guys haven’t recognized him. Our luck just ran out.

  “I told you, I’m the clown for what’s-her-name’s party.”

  ‘No, you’re not. You were snooping. Are the police outside—is that it? I saw a car parked across the street.”

  “No, no,” Monk stammered.

  “Is John in trouble?” Alicia whispered, her face clouding with disappointment. “I knew it.”

  “No, he’s not in trouble,” Monk lied.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Monk. My husband does stupid things. What is it this time? Insider trading? Did his crazy partner talk him into something?” She seemed genuinely upset.

  “No, no,” Monk repeated. But his protest was interrupted by a familiarly shrill voice.

  “Mommy, is that you?” It was coming closer.

  In a second, Monk was at the connecting door to the rest of the house, pushing the little thumb lock. Just in time, too. The doorknob jiggled and turned. “Mommy? Are you home?”

  Alicia looked at the door, then at Monk. “Yes, sweetie, I’m home. Surprise!”

  A squeal erupted. “Mommy, Mommy. I knew you’d come.”

  “Happy birthday, sweetie. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Why is the door locked?”

  “Because I have a surprise for you. A birthday surprise.”

  “Is it a clown? Is it J. P. Tatters? I love J. P. Tatters. He’s so funny.”

  “Go back to the party, sweetie. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Yay …” And the squealing voice faded along with her galloping footsteps.

  Monk stood staring at the door, trying to figure out how to get out of this mess, when he was hit over the head by what was later determined to be a wooden baseball bat.

  His last thoughts before passing out were, “At least I don’t have to be a clown. Death is better.” Or so he told me.

  In the minutes after the garage door rolled down, we sat in the Subaru, discussing our options. Should we just wait it out? After all, Monk, despite all his Monk-ness was an ex–police detective, with my number on his speed dial.

  Should we knock on the door politely? Should we draw our weapons and demand to be admitted? Should we have Devlin jimmy the lock to the pedestrian door, which would be an illegal and desperate move, but might save his life? Stottlemeyer suggested we anonymously call in a fire. There was a firehouse a few blocks away. They could be here in no time.

  We kept giving Monk an extra minute. Another extra minute. Devlin got out and circled the house, scaling the fence on the right, then coming back over the picket fence on the left. “Nothing,” she reported as she got back in. Nothing but the screams of a dozen kids and the pleading voice of the Bulgarian housekeeper.

  “Should we call in a domestic disturbance?” she asked.

  We were all leaning toward the fire call when the pedestrian door to the garage opened and the staggering figure of J. P. Tatters emerged onto the driveway.

  Stottlemeyer gasped. “Oh, my God. What have they done to him?”

  It was a horrifying sight: the yellow fright wig, the red nose, the black-painted stubble, the hobo clothes that Monk had insisted on washing and starching and ironing for no logical reason except that he might have foreseen just such a nightmare scenario. The starched tatters, springing out at all angles, could have been the basis for a new series of horror movies.

  Stottlemeyer turned to me. “This’ll put him back years. Natalie, get Dr. Bell on standby.”

  No one followed him out of the house. All on his own, he walked uncomfortably, self-consciously to the sidewalk. Then, instead of crossing the street, he made a right turn, picked up a little speed and headed for the corner.

  I canceled my call to Dr. Bell, revved the Subaru, put it in gear, and made a quick three-point turn in a neighbor’s drive. By the time we turned the corner, the stumbling clown was halfway down the residential block. Luckily it was a one-way street, so driving up beside him wasn’t a problem.

  Captain Stottlemeyer leaned out the window. “Monk?” But he kept on walking, even faster now. He had already crossed another street and was onto the next block. “Monk!” Why wasn’t he stopping? Or speaking? “Monk!”

  I looked over from my driving and saw the one thing that Stottlemeyer didn’t. “It’s not him,” I shouted. Sure, this guy was about the same size and same build and covered nearly head to foot in horrible distractions. But I could tell.

  The clown must have heard me, because he started running now. It took all of us a second to get over the shock. Then Devlin was out of the car and chasing him down. Halfway along the next block, the clown made a sharp right, heading up a driveway, probably into someone’s backyard. Devlin followed.

  We sat there, Stottlemeyer and me, trying to make sense of it. It didn’t take long for us to realize the only explanation. “Back to the house,” Stottlemeyer shouted. “Now!”

  I stepped on the gas and almost ran the next stop sign.

  I knew I needed to take a right. But the next street was one-way, which meant I had to take Broadway, which was always busy. The next possible right was Octavia, but that put me straight into Lafayette Park, where I had to take a left until Gough. The streets in this city can be so maddening.

  By the time I got back in front of the Sacrament Street house, the damage had been done. The garage door was open again and the Mercedes was gone. Stottlemeyer drew his badge and pounded on the front door. “Police.”

  A beefy Bulgarian woman with brassy blond hair finally answered. “Police?” she said, examining the held-up badge. “Good. Arrest me. For anything. I go peaceful.”

  We stormed our way past her into the Armageddon that used to be a living room. Crepe paper hung in shreds from the ceiling. So did the head of a shattered donkey piñata. Hard candies littered the floor, along with donkey legs and the detritus of two dozen unwrapped presents.

  The perpetrators of this chaos, from the sound of it, were all over the house now, thumping over our heads and running past the doorways like aliens in a high-voltage video game, except that we, the players in the midst of it, weren’t equipped with AK-47s.

  “Where are the Harrimans?” Stottlemeyer barked.

  “They gone,” Marina said. It was almost a wail. “Mrs. Harriman come in for two seconds. It makes the kids all crazy. Then they go to garage, mister and missus. I don’t know what happens in garage. But they drive off. They drive off and leave me with the crazies.”

  “Where’s the clown?” I asked.

  “What clown?” Marina said. “The clown don’t come. You think things would be like this with good clown?”

  “So no one else came in from the garage? No one?”

  “No one. Do you come to arrest me? Please arrest me.”

  Devlin sprinted through the living room door, he
r service revolver drawn. She was breathing heavily.

  “He got away.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Mr. Monk’s Vanishing Act

  One thing good about Captain Stottlemeyer: He knows crowd control.

  Right away he sent Devlin and me to round up the kids, then ordered Marina to start making calls. Within ten minutes, the mothers started coming in their SUVs. Within half an hour, we were down to two resident little monsters: Celine and her slightly older brother, Thaddeus. Stottlemeyer then doled out a hundred dollars from his own wallet and told Marina, politely but firmly, to drive them over to the Swensen’s Ice Cream Parlor on Hyde Street. His treat.

  “Ice cream?” Marina complained. “No. no. They have too much sugar now. Look at them.”

  Stottlemeyer didn’t have to look. He could hear them through the walls. “This is a police matter, ma’am. Keep them out for an hour. Give them a salad if you want. But personally I’d recommend a double scoop of Sticky Chewy Chocolate.”

  Once they were safely out the door, the three of us split up and made an illegal search from attic to basement to every corner of the garage. No Monk or hint of Monk.

  “Is this a crime scene?” I asked, my heart in my throat.

  “Technically, no,” said Devlin.

  “What do you mean, no? Adrian’s been kidnapped.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Stottlemeyer.

  “Excuse me?” Alicia Harriman had just walked in through the connecting door between the garage and kitchen. That’s the trouble with hybrid cars. Half the time, you can’t hear them. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are my children? Where’s the party?”

  Trying to explain something like this to someone who obviously knows more than we do … that’s above my pay grade. I let the captain take the lead, and he made an executive decision.

  “I’m Captain Leland Stottlemeyer of the San Francisco police. We got a call from Adrian Monk from this address.” He pretended to check his notes. “Mr. Monk is a police consultant. He also works on the side as a clown.”

  “A detective and a clown?” she asked, cocking her head curiously.

  “It’s not as rare as you think,” said Devlin with a straight face.