Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  I knew he was about my age, but he looked to me like a frightened child with his arched eyebrows, ruffled hair and pouty lips.

  There was something undeniably East Coast about his features and bearing, though if you asked me to pick out something specific, I couldn’t tell you. He had the same look as all those guys on The Sopranos, though without any of the subdued malevolence. What I saw in his face was sadness, fear and confusion.

  We picked up our phones and openly stared at each other. He was studying my face as if searching for landmarks. I was scrutinizing his for glaring signs of guilt.

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “I’m Natalie Teeger,” I said. “I work for Adrian Monk.”

  “Monk?” He seemed to inflate with hope and relief. “That’s terrific. Whew. I knew Sharona wouldn’t let me down. Is he going to help me?”

  “You have to convince me first,” I said.

  “Why? I’m Sharona’s husband. Isn’t that enough? Besides, Monk owes her plenty for—” He stopped, seeing the answer on my face. “She didn’t ask Monk to help me, did she? She really thinks I did it, that I could kill somebody.”

  I nodded. And then he began to cry.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mr. Monk’s Assistant Makes a Discovery

  There’s something about seeing a man cry that makes me feel like I should avert my eyes. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it this time.

  I stared at Trevor and openly studied each stinging tear on his face, each pained grimace, each tortured heave of his chest. I haven’t seen many men cry, but when they do, there’s a nakedness about it that I think is even more intimate and revealing than sex.

  I’ve only seen my father cry once. I was nine years old when it happened. I was heading to his study to show him a drawing I’d done of our dog. The doors weren’t closed all the way, and something made me stop and peek through the crack before I went in.

  He was alone at his desk, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. At one point, he dropped his hands and I saw his tear-streaked cheeks. But I saw much more. I saw vulnerability. I saw fear. And I saw shame.

  He didn’t see me and I never said a word about it to him. I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now, what he was crying about. But I’ve never forgotten that moment or what it felt like. The only thing that comes close to it is the uncertainty and fear that I feel whenever there’s an earthquake and the once-solid ground below my feet turns to Jell-O.

  As I sat in that visitors’ room, I wondered if that was what Dad felt like and if that was what Trevor was feeling now.

  When I looked into Trevor’s face, I saw everything that I saw in my dad’s face that night. Try faking that. It isn’t easy to do unless you’re somebody with an Oscar or an Emmy statuette on your mantel.

  Trevor’s tears lasted two minutes, maybe three, but I could see that they startled and humiliated him. He got control of himself with two big, deep breaths and a grimace. Then he looked around to see if anyone else witnessed the momentary crack in his masculine shell, but there were only me and the guard in the room, and if the guard saw anything, he didn’t acknowledge it.

  I didn’t bother pretending that I hadn’t seen him cry or the vulnerability that it exposed. I’m not that good an actress, anyway.

  He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his denim jailhouse shirt. “I didn’t kill Ellen Cole,” he said.

  It was the first time anyone had mentioned the poor woman’s name to me.

  “Then why was her stuff in your truck?” I asked.

  “Someone is framing me,” Trevor replied.

  “Who would want to do that?”

  “Whoever caved her head in with a table lamp,” he said. “That’s who.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted her dead?” Of course he couldn’t. If he could, he would have told someone by now. It was a stupid question, but I didn’t know what else to ask. I was just fumbling along.

  “I don’t know. I mowed her lawn, pulled her weeds and trimmed her shrubs,” Trevor said. “That’s as deep as our relationship went.”

  “Then why were your fingerprints all over her house?”

  “She was always asking me in to do little tasks for her,” he said. “ ‘Could you reach this? Change this bulb? Help me move this dresser?’ ”

  “Was she an old woman?”

  He gave me a look. “Don’t you know anything about this case?”

  “Frankly, no,” I said. “I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to ask.”

  “She was in her thirties, but she was short, kind of slight. Plus she was flirting, not that I’d ever act on it. I’m a happily married man.” He winced, as if feeling real pain. “At least I was. Or thought I was. What do you do for Monk?”

  “What Sharona used to do,” I said, “only not as well.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he wants her back,” I said. I owed Trevor something real from me for his tears. “So why doesn’t Sharona believe you?”

  “That’s the worst thing about this, worse even than being in here,” Trevor said. “I’m a screwup. I know that. I’ve lied to people. I’ve used people. I’ve disappointed everyone in my life, especially her. But this isn’t me. I couldn’t kill anybody.”

  “If you were such a screwup,” I asked, “how did you and Sharona get back together?”

  “A few years ago, I came out to San Francisco to make a play to get Sharona back,” he said. “But it was just so I could show my rich uncle Jack that I was domesticated again. He’d cut me off when Sharona walked out on me. Problem was, I’d accumulated some gambling debts and needed him to bail me out.”

  “Which he wouldn’t have done unless he thought the money was going to your wife and kid,” I said. “You were just using them as props.”

  “Yep. Sharona figured that out the day we were supposed to move back east. She sent Benji to her sister’s place, and when I showed up with the moving truck, she really gave it to me. Then she asked me if I wanted to give Benji a call and tell him how I’d manipulated them or if I was gonna leave that to her, too. You want to guess what I chose?”

  “You made her do it,” I said.

  He nodded, ashamed. “That night, and every day after that for the next few weeks, I kept imagining their conversation, and the look of disappointment on my son’s face, and it made me sick. I couldn’t stop puking. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror no more. So I decided to change.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got a job in New Jersey waiting tables, and another one dry-cleaning, and paid off my debt. And after that, I sent every cent I could back to Sharona,” he said. “It was only a few bucks, but I wanted her to see the cash flowing the other way for once. I finally got some guts and called Benji. He didn’t hang up on me, so I copped to what I did and apologized. I called back every week and then twice a week. And then one day, Sharona and I started talking again, too.”

  “And one thing led to another,” I said, letting my voice trail off.

  “I really wanted us to work this time, more than anything else in the world. And I really thought that it was working and that Sharona knew that I wasn’t the same guy anymore. Then Ellen Cole got killed and I found out I was wrong. It was all a lie. Sharona never had any faith in me, never really trusted me again. She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t want to know. That’s worse than giving me the needle, you know?”

  I knew.

  I got back to the Bay Area in time to take Julie around to a few places in the neighborhood that night after all.

  When we got home, she had a check for thirty dollars from Sorrento’s Pizza in her pocket and an advertisement to glue to her cast. Anyone who ordered a pizza and said they had heard about the restaurant from Julie’s cast would get a ten percent discount. If the sales were good, Sorrento’s would pay for a second week of cast-vertising (a term my daughter coined and that we’ve trademarked).

  That deal wasn’t good enou
gh for my daughter. She stunned me by negotiating an escalator clause. If Sorrento’s made five hundred dollars in sales as a result of the advertisement, her rate would go up to fifty dollars for week two.

  “Where did you learn to negotiate like that?” I asked her as we were leaving the restaurant. She’d even managed to finagle two slices of pizza for us to nibble on during our walk home.

  “Deal or No Deal,” she said.

  "The game show with the bald guy and the briefcases full of money?”

  “It’s quality TV,” Julie said.

  She now had a strong incentive to do more than just walk around, showing off her cast. I had a feeling she’d be aggressively drumming up business for Sorrento’s all over campus. I just hoped that she wouldn’t provoke the principal into shutting down her business before it even got started.

  After all, if Sharona got my job, we’d have to live on those pizza slices and the advertising dollars.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mr. Monk Takes the Case

  It was my neighbor’s day to carpool the kids to school, so that meant I could get a few extra minutes of sleep and that I didn’t have to get dressed right away. I could even laze around in my bathrobe and pajamas for a half hour after Julie left and before going to work.

  Which is exactly what I did, enjoying a second cup of coffee and reading the San Francisco Chronicle in peace. I was about to go take a shower when there was an insistent knock at the door.

  It’s surprising just how much personality and character a knock can have. Without even going to the door, I knew that whoever owned those knuckles was irritated, impatient and in a hurry. So just to piss off whoever it was even more, I took my time getting to the door. I walked around the couch twice and the coffee table once just to drag things out.

  I peered through the peephole and was surprised to see Sharona standing on my front step. I didn’t have to open the door to know why she was at my door the first thing in the morning. There was no sense avoiding her and pretending I wasn’t home or was already in the shower. She knew where I’d be going later anyway and I figured this was a confrontation I’d rather not have in front of Monk.

  So I opened the door wide and invited her in without even saying hello.

  “Yes, I went down to LA and I talked to your husband in jail,” I said.

  She marched right past me. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that he might be innocent,” I said, slamming the door. “I’m surprised the thought hasn’t occurred to you, too.”

  “You don’t know him and you don’t know me,” she said. “Stay out of my life.”

  “Stay out of mine,” I said.

  “I’m not in it,” she said.

  “You are when you start messing with my livelihood,” I said.

  She stared at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that no one was allowed to see Adrian Monk without clearing it with you first. Should I have given you my references, my fingerprints and a urine sample, too?”

  “Don’t play innocent with me,” I said. “You didn’t just ‘happen’ to be in Mr. Monk’s neighborhood yesterday. We both know what’s really going on here.”

  “You are seriously nuts,” she said. “I have known Adrian for years. I was visiting a dear friend.”

  “So dear that you’ve been hiding from him since you returned to San Francisco. But then we showed up in your ER and you discovered that Mr. Monk isn’t pissed at you anymore. And lo and behold, the next morning, you’re at his door with breakfast and whining about how long your hours are and how you wish you had a better job. My job.”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” Sharona said. “You aren’t the least bit qualified to be caring for Adrian. Do you have any medical training? How about psychiatric experience?”

  I got right up into her face, though it’s hard to be intimidating in a pink bathrobe and bunny rabbit slippers.

  “You’re right. I am totally unqualified. That just goes to show you how desperate he was for help after you abandoned him,” I said. “I’m the one he leaned on and I didn’t have any experience dealing with someone with his problems. If you think that was easy for me, you’re deluding yourself. But here’s what I’ve learned from it. He doesn’t need a professional nurse anymore. All he needs is someone who cares about him, which clearly you don’t.”

  “I will not apologize for choosing to have a life,” she said. “I know I hurt Adrian and I want to make it up to him.”

  “By taking my job,” I said.

  “He offered it to me,” she said.

  “Because you manipulated him into it by telling him your sob story.”

  “I told him what’s happening in my life,” she said. “It happens to suck right now. That’s the way it is. But that doesn’t matter. He knows as well as I do that I can take better care of him than you can.”

  “This isn’t about helping Mr. Monk,” I said. “You’re looking out for yourself. It’s all about you.”

  “You think you’re any different? You didn’t go see Trevor because you think he’s innocent. You’re trying to save your precious job,” Sharona said. “You’re hoping that Adrian can prove Trevor didn’t do it so that I’ll reunite with my husband and go away again.”

  “You’re right. That’s exactly what I want,” I said. “What I don’t get is why you don’t want the same thing.”

  “Trevor is a liar,” she said. “He always has been.”

  “He’s your husband. He’s the father of your child. Now you’re abandoning him when he needs you the most,” I said. “But then, abandoning people who need you is your specialty.”

  “Trevor did this to himself,” Sharona said.

  “You can save him,” I said. “You don’t have to lose him.”

  “I’ve done it before,” Sharona said. “I’m not doing it again.”

  “You have no idea how lucky you are,” I said. “I would have given anything for the chance to save Mitch.”

  I burst into tears. And I mean burst, shocking myself and probably Sharona, too.

  The next thing I knew, Sharona was holding me, my face was pressed against her shoulder, and I was heaving with sobs. I was overcome with grief as sharp as the day I got the news that Mitch was dead.

  I don’t know how long we stood there like that with me crying my guts out, but when I finally stopped, and all the tears were gone, I didn’t give a damn anymore. Let her have Monk. Let her have my job. I didn’t have the strength to fight. I was weak from a sorrow I thought I’d finally managed to bury.

  “I’m sorry,” I said and I went to the kitchen to look for some tissues.

  I couldn’t even find a napkin. I ended up having to settle for a Brawny paper towel.

  Sharona followed me into the kitchen. Oddly enough, the fight seemed to have gone out of her, too.

  Without asking, she sat down at the table and I poured us both cups of coffee. I took a seat across from her. There was a long, strangely comfortable silence that lasted for a few minutes.