by Lee Goldberg
“Maybe the waiters are just snooty to you because they know you’re not paying for the drinks,” I said. “I’m not a nurse or anything, but should you be having alcohol after what happened to you the other night?”
Joe touched the bandage. “This? Ah, it’s nothing. I’ve been hurt worse.”
“You have?”
“I’ve got a nasty burn on my back from a fire a couple of years ago,” he said. “It’s not a pretty sight, which is why I wore a shirt to dinner.”
“I wondered why you did that,” I said.
He went on to tell me the story of how he got burned. To be honest, I don’t remember a lot of the details, except that it involved a blazing tenement, a staircase that gave way, and a narrow escape. As he told the story, his whole face lit up, and he got more and more animated, the words spilling out in an excited rush. It was a memory he didn’t mind reliving and a story he liked to tell, even though it was an experience that left him physically scarred for life.
I know that’s part of what you do on your first couple of dates: You tell stories about yourself that show you in a really great light, or that illustrate aspects of your life and your character that are important to you. But sometimes you reveal things about yourself that you didn’t intend.
The story certainly proved Joe was caring, brave, and heroic, but that’s not the message I took from it. What I got was that he liked fighting fires. No, he loved fighting fires. The risks meant nothing to him. The accident that happened years ago and the one that happened the other night were near-misses he was bound to experience again.
Just another day at the office.
He loved battling fires the way Mitch loved flying fighter jets. The reasons why I was attracted to Joe weren’t a surprise to me. He was great-looking, with a body I wanted to devour, and had a personality that reminded me of Mitch’s.
But the more he talked, and the more attracted I became to him, the more my anxiety intensified.
Was it fear of a new relationship? Or was it something else?
Our dinner was served, and Joe asked me about how I balanced single motherhood and working for Monk. I think he asked me because he wanted to eat his steak before it got cold, and he couldn’t do that and tell another rousing firefighting anecdote.
So now it was my turn to tell a story about myself that would show what a clever, funny, caring, strong, terrific person I was. My vague anxiety turned into a very clear and definable panic. What story could I possibly tell that would accomplish all that? I didn’t think I had one.
“I don’t think of it as balancing single motherhood with anything else. Julie comes first, before me, before anything. I just try to make it through each day without screwing up too badly.”
“How did you end up working for Monk?”
Okay, that was a good story. But unlike Joe’s stories of his harrowing brushes with death, it wasn’t one I enjoyed telling. I was much better at telling funny anecdotes about Mr Monk’s bizarre, obsessive-compulsive behavior, though I always felt guilty afterward, as if I were breaching a trust.
“Someone broke into my house late one night. I walked in on him and he tried to kill me. I killed him instead. The police couldn’t figure out why the intruder was in my house, so they called in Mr. Monk to help them investigate.”
Joe set down his fork. “You killed a man?”
I nodded. “I didn’t mean to; I was defending myself. I still can’t believe I did it. When you’re in a situation like that, I suppose instinct takes over. I did what I had to do to survive. I was lucky; there happened to be a pair of scissors within reach. If there hadn’t been, I’d be dead.”
I never thought of myself as capable of violence, certainly not of killing someone. It was a memory I tried to avoid. It scared me. It wasn’t so much the attacker himself, the fight, or the fact that I almost died that terrified me. The nightmare was imagining what would have happened to Julie if I were killed.
What would he have done to her? And if she escaped, what would her life have been like after losing both of her parents to violent deaths?
Maybe it was that fear that gave me the ability to fight back so hard, to kill rather than be killed. It gave me an edge I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
After that experience, I immediately enrolled Julie in tae kwon do class, despite her protests. I wanted to be sure that if she were ever attacked, her instincts would take over, and that her instincts would kick ass.
I could see that Joe wanted more details about the killing, but he was kind and perceptive enough not to ask. So he moved past that.
“Why was the intruder in your house?”
“Mr. Monk figured out he was after a rock in my daughter’s goldfish aquarium,” I said. “A rock from the moon.”
“From the moon moon?” Joe pointed up.
“Yeah, that moon,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
“You’re full of long stories.” He reached across the table for my hand. “I’d like to hear them all.”
His hand was big and warm and strong, and I couldn’t help imagining what it would feel like against my cheek, my back, my legs.
I became achingly aware of just how many long months it had been since I’d spent time with a man, if you catch my drift. And yet, the anxiety I felt was even stronger than my desire.
I’m a normal woman, healthy and still relatively young, and I’m not ashamed of or embarrassed about my needs, so that wasn’t what it was. Nor was it the prospect of bringing another man into my life. There had been other men since Mitch, and I hadn’t felt this same kind of apprehension then. And it wasn’t because of any reservations about the kind of man Joe was or how Julie would feel about him.
But the apprehension was there, and it wasn’t going away.
I was spared having to tell Joe another story by the trill of my cell phone. I reluctantly, and self-consciously, took my hand from his to answer the call.
I was certain the caller was Julie and that Monk had done something terrible, like reorganizing the drawers in my bedroom. I shuddered to think what he—and Julie too, for that matter—might have stumbled upon.
But it wasn’t Julie, and my bedroom secrets were safe. It was Captain Stottlemeyer calling.
“Are you with Monk?” he asked.
“Not at the moment,” I said. “Why?”
“I’ve got a murder, and I’d like Monk’s perspective on it. Can you get him down here?”
It wasn’t unusual for Stottlemeyer to ask for Monk’s help on a particularly puzzling homicide. Monk regularly consulted with the SFPD on a per-case basis, though nobody told me how much he got paid.
Stottlemeyer gave me directions to the crime scene. It wasn’t far from the restaurant, but I had to go back home and pick up Monk first.
“We’ll be there in an hour,” I said, and flipped the phone shut. “I’m sorry, Joe, but we have to go. There’s been a homicide, and the police want Mr. Monk’s help.”
“It can’t wait until dessert?”
“Think of that call as my fire alarm,” I said.
“Gotcha.” He waved to the waitress for the check.
One the way home, I explained my working relationship with Monk to Joe, who didn’t understand exactly what I did for a living. I told him my job was mostly helping Monk manage the everyday demands of life and smoothing his interactions with other people so he could concentrate on solving murders. And that I also handed out a lot of wipes and kept him hydrated with Sierra Springs, the only water he’ll drink.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Joe said as he walked me to my door.
“Most days, I don’t know either.”
He kissed me. A real, deep, passionate, toe-curling kiss. And I gave it right back to him. The kiss lasted only a minute or so, but when we un-clinched my heart was racing as if I’d just run a mile. It was a kiss that promised so much more, born of the urgency of our forced parting. For me, there was also a hint of melancholy. For some reason it felt to me like a kiss
good-bye, even though we’d be seeing each other at the dump the next morning.
But I didn’t have the time to sort out my feelings; I was in too big a hurry. I banged on the bathroom door to get Monk out of the shower. I told him Stottlemeyer needed him pronto at a crime scene. Then I called Mrs. Throphamner, who agreed to come over and watch Julie.
“I still expect to be paid for the hours I worked,” Julie said.
“But Mr. Monk never even left the shower,” I said. “You didn’t have to do anything.”
“Not my problem,” she said with a shrug.
I dug into my wallet and gave her a twenty because I didn’t have any tens or singles, just what the ATM spit out on my last visit. “Here. Credit my account with the balance for next time.”
Monk emerged from the bathroom perfectly coiffed and in a fresh set of clothes, as if he were starting a new day. Behind him the bathroom looked as if it had never been used. He shifted uncomfortably in his clothes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I still feel dirty,” he said.
“I’m sure that will pass.”
“So am I,” Monk said. “In a few years.”
“Years?”
“No more than twenty,” he said. “Or thirty. But I’m being conservative.”
I figured that worked out to roughly one year for each ton of garbage we had to sort through.
Monk spotted the flowers in the vase. “Who brought those?”
“Joe. Actually, he brought them for himself. He was afraid he might still smell from the dump,” I said. “Maybe you’d like them.”
Monk leaned down and sniffed the flowers, then stood up straight and started working that kink out of his neck, the one caused by a fact that doesn’t fit.
I was about to ask him what it was about the flowers that set him off when Mrs. Throphamner arrived and hurried to the TV.
“Forgive me, Murder, She Wrote is starting on channel forty-four,” she said. “I don’t want to miss the murder.”
“It’s okay,” Monk said, heading for the door. “We’re a little late for a murder ourselves.”
19
Mr. Monk and the Wet Ones
Captain Stottlemeyer was waiting for us on Harrison Street, where the 80 Freeway emptied into the city center in a tangle of off-ramps and overpasses. The wail of the cold wind and the roar of traffic overhead created a loud, bone-rattling shriek. It sounded as if the earth itself were screaming in pain.
The freeway passed over a weed-covered lot that was ringed by a corroded cyclone fence that had been peeled back in places. Stottlemeyer stood in front of one of the openings, with his hands deep in the pockets of his coat and his collar turned up against the biting wind. Behind him, forensic techs in blue windbreakers moved slowly through the lot, looking for clues.
The lot was strewn with discarded couches, soiled mattresses, and crude structures of scrap plywood, corrugated metal sheets, and cardboard boxes erected atop wooden shipping pallets. Shopping carts overflowing with bulging trash bags were parked in front of some of the makeshift shelters like cars in driveways.
“Sorry to drag you down here, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Where are all the people?” Monk asked.
“What people?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“The ones who live here.” He motioned to the neighborhood of cardboard tract homes.
“They scurried away like frightened rats after somebody discovered the corpse,” Stottlemeyer said. “A couple officers in a patrol car happened to be driving by when the mass exodus occurred. It piqued their curiosity, so they investigated. It’s a good thing the officers were around or it could’ve been weeks before we found the body, if ever.”
“Why’s that?”
“We don’t get in here much,” Stottlemeyer said. “And even if we did, the body is kind of out of the way.”
The captain beckoned us through the hole in the fence while he held open the flap. Monk hesitated a moment, then turned to me.
“I’m going to need the suit,” Monk said.
“What suit?” I said.
“The one I wore today,” Monk said. “I need it.”
“We returned the outbreak suit on the way home,” I said. “You insisted that it had to be incinerated.”
“I know,” Monk said. “I need another.”
“They’re closed,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Monk said. “We can wait.”
“They’re closed permanently, at least to you,” I said. “The owner was quite clear about that.”
“I’ll stay in the car while you go in.”
Stottlemeyer groaned. “Monk, it’s late. I’ve been working a sixteen-hour day. This is my third murder. I’m hungry, I’m cold, and I just want to go home.”
“Fine,” Monk said. “We’ll meet back here in the morning.”
He started to go, but Stottlemeyer grabbed his arm. “What I’m saying is that you can step through the fence on your own or I can throw you. It’s your choice.”
“I’d prefer a third option.”
“There is no third option.”
“How about a fourth? Because three isn’t really a very good number anyway.”
“How about I throw you in there now?”
“That’s a third option, and before you said there were only two,” Monk said. “How can we have a reasonable conversation if you’re incoherent?”
Stottlemeyer took a menacing step toward Monk.
“Okay, okay,” Monk said, waving Stottlemeyer away. “Give me a minute.”
Monk looked at the hole, looked at the lot, then looked at me. Then he looked at everything again.
“You have five seconds,” Stottlemeyer said in a tone full of violent intent.
Monk held out his hand to me and snapped his fingers. “Wipes.”
I gave him four. He used two to wipe down the pieces of the cyclone fence he intended to touch while stepping through. He used the others to protect his fingers as he touched the bits of the fence he’d just cleaned.
Monk took a deep breath and stepped through, then immediately jumped away from something on the ground with a yelp.
“What?” I asked.
“Bottle cap.”
He said it breathlessly, as if he’d narrowly avoided stepping on a land mine.
I climbed through the opening and Stottlemeyer followed, glaring at Monk.
“This way,” the captain said, and proceeded to lead us across the lot toward the freeway.
Monk yelped again. I looked at him.
“Candy wrapper,” he said.
“You spent the day in thirty tons of trash and you’re freaking out about a candy wrapper?”
“I’m unprotected,” Monk said. “And that’s a big, big candy wrapper.”
I turned my back on him and marched on through the weeds.
Monk stepped gingerly through the lot as if he were playing hopscotch on hot coals.
I don’t know what he was avoiding, and I didn’t really care. It could have been dog droppings or dandelions; to him they are both equally repulsive.
If I sounded irritable, it’s because I was. It was bad enough that I’d been yanked off a perfectly good date to go strolling through a urine-stenched homeless encampment to see some hideous corpse. Having to deal with Monk’s irrational anxieties on top of all that was asking way too much of me.
But if I’d been really honest with myself on that cold, windy night, I’d have known it wasn’t the lot, the murder, or Monk that was eating at me; it was the feeling I’d had when I kissed Joe and what it meant.
Stottlemeyer took us up the embankment on a well-worn path beneath the freeway to a cardboard lean-to wedged against the ground and the base of the overpass. There were two feet, clad in topsiders held together with duct tape, sticking out of the entrance of the lean-to. It reminded me of the Wicked Witch after Dorothy dropped the house on her in Oz.
“The victim is in there,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Ye
s, I see,” Monk said.
“Aren’t you going to go inside?”
“Not until my suit gets here.”
“Why don’t you just wear the damn suit all the time?” Stottlemeyer said. “Then you’ll never have to worry about breathing or touching anything ever again.”
“It would be awkward,” Monk said. “Socially.”
“Socially,” I said.
“I don’t like to draw attention to myself,” Monk said. “One of my great advantages as a detective is my natural ability to slip smoothly and unnoticed into almost any social situation.”
“But just think of all the money you’d save on wipes,” Stottlemeyer said.
Monk took out his key chain and aimed his pen-light into the shelter. The tiny beam revealed a man lying inside on his back. He was wearing at least a half dozen shirts and had a scraggly beard. Beyond that he was unrecognizable. His head was bashed in with a brick, presumably the bloody one left beside the body.
I turned away.
Before I met Monk I had managed to go through my life without ever seeing a dead body, without seeing people who’d been shot, stabbed, strangled, beaten, poisoned, dismembered, run over, or clobbered with a brick. Now I was seeing as many as two or three murder victims a week. I wondered when, or if, I’d finally get used to it, and whether I would be a better person if I never did.
“Is he a friend of yours?” Stottlemeyer asked Monk.
“Does he look like a friend of mine? Weren’t you here for the outbreak-suit discussion?”
“I won’t ever forget it,” Stottlemeyer said. “Still, I thought you might know him. That’s why I called you down here.”
“I’ve bathed more today than he has in the past ten years,” Monk said. “What made you think that we could possibly know each other?”
Stottlemeyer motioned to the edge of the embankment. Monk peered over the side and saw a few dozen sealed Wet One packets scattered among the weeds.
“You’re the only person I know who carries around that many Wet Ones.”
Monk looked at me and we came to the same realization at the same instant. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold wind.