Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  “You fled Los Angeles because you are afraid of failing,” I said. “You have no idea who killed Ellen Cole and don’t know where to start looking.”

  “I know I’m not going to find the answer by staying in Los Angeles and questioning everyone who was remotely involved with either Ellen Cole or Trevor Fleming.”

  “Isn’t that how you usually investigate a crime, by asking questions, learning new information and spotting contradictions?”

  Monk shook his head. “I solve it the first time I visit the crime scene. I see something that isn’t right, and by trying to make things fit, I figure out how the murder was really committed.”

  “You saw lots of things that weren’t right at Ellen Cole’s house.”

  “But not the thing,” he said.

  “And you think you will see it here?” I said. “We’re hundreds of miles away.”

  “I’ve already seen it,” Monk said. “I just haven’t realized it yet.”

  It all made sense to me now. “You’re worried that you never will,” I said.

  “It’s happened before,” Monk said quietly.

  He was talking about his wife, Trudy, and the car bomb that killed her. He didn’t know who killed her or why.

  He’d failed her.

  For a while that failure crippled him. And the person who helped him through that nightmare and showed him how to reclaim his life was Sharona, and now he was terrified that he was going to fail her, too.

  “You’ll see the thing that isn’t right,” I said. “I know you will.”

  “How can you be so sure?” he asked.

  “Because you’re Adrian Monk,” I said, “and I have faith in you.”

  “I wish you didn’t,” Monk said.

  “You have to have faith in something,” I said.

  “I do,” Monk said. “But I don’t think Formula 409 is going to solve my problems.”

  Even though Julie couldn’t play soccer with her broken arm, she wanted to attend the Saturday-morning practice at Dolores Park to show her team spirit. I think she also wanted to get maximum exposure for her cast-vertising campaign. It worked out great for me, because Monk wanted to talk with the priest at Mission Dolores, which was only two blocks away from the park.

  The mission was founded by the Spaniards in 1776 to proselytize the Indians, five thousand of whom succumbed to a measles epidemic brought by the same people who came to save them from their heathen ways. The adobe church that stands today was built in 1791 by the Neophytes, a fancy word for Native Americans who’d survived the epidemics and become Christians. The four-inch-thick walls had withstood the ravages of time and the 1906 earthquake, so I figured the church could withstand Adrian Monk.

  I wasn’t going to tell him about the measles epidemic, even though it happened hundreds of years ago, or else he wouldn’t have stepped into the church. He might even have had to move out of San Francisco entirely if he learned about it.

  Julie and I had an early breakfast before picking up Monk in the rental car. I dropped Julie off at the park; then Monk and I continued on to the church, getting there in the middle of morning mass.

  The church was long and narrow and crowded with parishioners, all of whom faced the gilded baroque altar and the priest in his white robes and green vestments.

  There was an old woman arriving ahead of us, shuffling slowly into the church. A deacon in his midthirties stood at the door and greeted us with a polite nod and a smile.

  As we filed in, the old lady dabbed her fingers in the bowl of holy water at the doorway and crossed herself and kissed her fingers afterward.

  Monk gasped and motioned to me for a wipe. I gave it to him and he held it out to the woman.

  “Take this,” Monk said. “Quick.”

  “What for?” she said.

  “The water, of course,” he said. “Didn’t you see all the people who stuck their filthy hands in it?”

  “It’s okay, young man,” she said. “It’s blessed.”

  “But it isn’t disinfected,” Monk said.

  “God has cleansed it,” she said.

  “You’re old and your resistance to infection is weak,” Monk said. “You should gargle immediately with a strong mouthwash before the deadly germs you slathered on your lips invade your aged body.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” she exclaimed as she turned her back on him and huffed away.

  “That lady has a death wish,” Monk said, turning to look at me just as I dabbed my fingers in the water and crossed myself. I’m not religious, but I figure it never hurts to take whatever blessings you can get.

  Monk thrust the wipe into my hands. “Are you insane, woman?”

  “Mr. Monk, please,” I whispered. “We’re in a church.”

  “We’re in a hot zone for disease,” Monk said. “Someone’s got to save these people.”

  “I think that’s what Father Bowen is trying to do,” I said, glancing past Monk to see the priest at the altar shooting us a stern, reproachful look. He might as well have been God. I felt my bowels freeze.

  Monk marched past me back to the bowl of holy water, took a deep breath, then plunged his hands inside. Wincing as if he’d stuck his hands in battery acid, Monk began scooping water from the bowl and heaving it out the front door.

  The deacon, shocked, stepped in front of Monk and blocked the doorway. “What are you doing?”

  “Emptying this cesspool,” Monk said.

  “That is holy water,” the deacon said. “It sanctifies us.”

  “It sickens you,” Monk said. “You’ll thank me later.”

  “No, I won’t,” the deacon said. “This water is a remembrance of our baptism. It cleanses us of our sins and purifies our souls as we enter the presence of the Lord.”

  Monk was about to scoop out some more water, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

  “If you really want to purify people,” Monk said to the deacon, “dispense hand sanitizer.”

  “Mr. Monk,” I whispered, “people have been sanctifying themselves with holy water for thousands of years.”

  “That explains the black death, among other things,” Monk said. “Wipe. Wipe. Wipe.”

  I handed him three wipes, as ordered, and he began scrubbing his hands as if he was sanding them.

  “This is unbelievable,” he said.

  It certainly was. He was completely oblivious to the attention he’d drawn to us, but I wasn’t. I smiled at everyone who was glaring at us, trying to make silent amends for Monk’s disruption and disrespect.

  The parishioners were filing out of the pews and lining up in the center aisle to take communion. I was suddenly jarred by a horrifying premonition of what was to come. I knew I had only a few seconds to avert disaster.

  “We should go,” I said to Monk, while trying to hustle him to the door. “We can come back later.”

  “Why should we go?” Monk said, jerking his arm free. “Father Bowen is expecting us. We have questions to ask.”

  “Let’s wait outside until the mass is over,” I said. “We’ll talk to him then.”

  “I’m getting really tired of you yanking me around,” Monk said.

  “I’m sorry.” I held up my hands. “Please, Mr. Monk, do it for me.”

  Monk shrugged and started to turn back toward the door. But as he was taking his first step, Father Bowen spoke.

  “The body of Christ,” Father Bowen said.

  Perhaps it was the mention of a body that caught Monk’s attention. Perhaps it was simply hearing someone speak.

  Whatever the reason, Monk looked at the altar just as Father Bowen placed a wafer from the basket of hosts on a parishioner’s tongue.

  The parishioner, a young woman, swallowed it, said, “Amen,” then stepped aside to the eucharistic minister, who offered her the chalice of consecrated wine. The parishioner took a sip. Then the minister wiped the rim with a linen cloth, rotated the chalice a tiny bit and offered it to the next person in line.

  M
onk stared in shocked disbelief as Father Bowen placed a wafer on a man’s tongue. The man then moved to the minister with the chalice and took a sip of wine.

  “Did you see that?” Monk said to me.

  “We can talk about it outside,” I said.

  Monk watched as another person, a balding man with a scraggy beard, opened his mouth for the wafer. Just as Father Bowen was about to place the wafer on the man’s tongue, Monk yelled: “That’s enough!”

  Everyone froze. I wanted to crawl under a pew and hide. The nightmare was happening just as I’d envisioned it moments earlier. Why couldn’t I have foreseen this an hour ago?

  “What has gotten into you people?” Monk asked the entire congregation.

  “The love of God,” the scraggy-bearded man said.

  “First you all stick your fingers in the same bowl of water. Now you’re letting this man”—Monk motioned to Father Bowen, a gray-haired man in his fifties who seemed to have aged ten years since we stepped into the church— “stick his fingers in your mouth without washing his hands first? Two seconds ago his fingers were in that other guy’s mouth. Didn’t you see that? Are you all blind?”

  “This is holy communion,” Father Bowen said.

  “This is a public health emergency,” Monk said. “How can you all sip from the same glass of wine? Who knows how many infectious diseases the people in this room are carrying?”

  “We are becoming one with Jesus, who was sacrificed on the cross to atone for our sins,” Father Bowen said. “Millions of people around the world do this each and every day.”

  “It’s a miracle that there are any Catholics left,” Monk said. “I’m locking down this place until the health department gets here. You’re all under quarantine. We can’t let the contamination spread.”

  Father Bowen turned to one of the ministers, handed him the basket of hosts and spoke in a whisper that we couldn’t hear. Then Father Bowen faced Monk again.

  “Let’s talk outside,” he said and motioned us to follow him out into the cemetery. “We’ll still be within the mission’s walls.”

  “I can’t believe what’s happening,” Monk said to me in bewilderment as we headed toward the side exit. “Ever since Sharona came back, the world just hasn’t been the same.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Mr. Monk Hears a Confession

  Father Bowen seemed surprisingly calm, considering that he was facing the man who’d just ruined his morning mass. We stood beside the statue of Father Junipero Serra, who founded Mission Dolores and twenty others throughout California. Father Serra, who was only five feet tall, would have had to stand on a stepladder to be eye to eye with his own statue.

  “I’m sorry if our religious practices are in conflict with your own personal beliefs,” Father Bowen said. “But as long as you are in our church, I must insist that you respect our rituals.”

  “Germs don’t,” Monk said.

  I was definitely glad I hadn’t mentioned the measles thing to Monk.

  “Surely you didn’t come here because you’re concerned about the spread of disease,” Father Bowen said.

  “I am always concerned about that,” Monk said.

  “We came here to talk about Ronald Webster,” I said. “This is Adrian Monk.”

  “Ah, yes,” Father Bowen said. “The police warned me you’d be coming.”

  “Warned?” Monk said.

  “That was a poor choice of words,” Father Bowen said. “They alerted me. And of course I am glad to help in any way I can.”

  “You can start by wearing sterile gloves when you handle those wafers,” Monk said.

  “I meant regarding Ronald Webster,” he said. “I was shocked to hear about his death.”

  “What shocked you the most?” Monk said. “His death or how he died?”

  “I was told that he drowned at Baker Beach,” Father Bowen said. “Was there more to it than that?”

  “It’s a nude beach,” Monk said.

  “And he was attacked by an alligator,” I said.

  “An alligator?” Father Bowen said. Now he was really shocked—so shocked, in fact, that he had to take a seat on a bench.

  “And he was nude,” Monk said. “Everybody was.”

  “How did an alligator get on the beach?” Father Bowen asked.

  “We don’t know,” Monk said. “Aren’t you curious about why Ronald was naked?”

  “Not really,” Father Bowen said.

  “Was that because Ronald often liked to run around naked?” Monk said.

  “No,” Father Bowen said.

  “Then why doesn’t his nudity interest you?” Monk asked.

  “Because he was killed by an alligator,” Father Bowen said. “I’ve never heard of that happening in San Francisco before.”

  “What kind of person was Ronald Webster?” I asked.

  “Conscientious, soft-spoken and devoted to God,” Father Bowen said.

  “And kind of dull,” I said. “Or so we’ve heard.”

  “He wasn’t the outgoing type, if that’s what you’re saying, ” Father Bowen said. “But he was a good man. He worked very hard at that.”

  “Why?” Monk asked.

  “Why what?” Father Bowen replied.

  “Why did he have to work so hard at it?”

  “We all do, Mr. Monk,” Father Bowen said.

  “But he worked harder than most,” Monk said, “didn’t he?”

  “Perhaps,” Father Bowen said, shifting position on the bench.

  “Why did he have to do that?” Monk said. “There must have been a reason.”

  “Being a good person is an end in and of itself,” Father Bowen said. “It allows you to be blessed in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “He must have wanted that blessing very badly to come to morning mass every single day,” Monk said. “And you obviously knew the strength of that devotion or you wouldn’t have been so worried when he didn’t show up one morning that you called his shoe store looking for him.”

  “I’m concerned about the well-being of all my parishioners, Mr. Monk.”

  “If that was true,” Monk said, “you wouldn’t let them all drink wine from the same glass.”

  I spoke up, eager to change the subject. “What can you tell us, Father, about Ronald Webster’s relationship with his family and friends? About his past?”

  “He didn’t talk about those things,” Father Bowen said, shifting again in his seat. “We mostly discussed issues of faith.”

  I’m not a shrink or an expert on human behavior or even an astute observer of body language, but I got the distinct impression that our rather tame questions were making Father Bowen uncomfortable.