Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu (27 page)

He wasn’t the only one whimpering. So was Monk, who was on his knees at the edge of the dock, gagging over the water.

I went to him and gently stroked his back until his gagging subsided. He was in misery.

Stottlemeyer snatched up Gruber’s gun, then called for backup and an ambulance on his cell phone, but that wasn’t necessary. The gunfire had drawn a crowd in the park, and I could already hear sirens coming.

“It’s all over, Mr. Monk,” I said.

“I know,” he rasped. “You can find my will in the top drawer of my nightstand.”

“You’re going to be fine.”

“Don’t humor me,” he said, shivering. “Can’t you see I’m in my death throes?”

“You were great, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said, keeping a careful eye on Gruber. “I knew you’d make a move, and I just waited for it.”

“I wish Wyatt had been here,” Monk said. “At least he would have had the decency to shoot me.”

Monk didn’t want the paramedics to treat him. He didn’t want to move at all, for fear the motion would make him vomit again. He suggested we call the medical examiner and a mortuary instead and have them wait in the parking lot until he expired.

“It shouldn’t take long,” he said.

Even for Monk, this seemed extreme. He was being a big baby. If Julie was even slightly nauseous, she’d throw up as casually as some people sneeze and feel better right away. Me, I’d rather be nauseous for hours than throw up. But still, it wasn’t a big deal. Everybody throws up in their lives. Surely this wasn’t Monk’s first time.

“Mr. Monk, aren’t you overreacting a bit?” I said. “Haven’t you ever vomited before?”

He gave me a withering look. “If I had, we’d be having this conversation over my grave.”

I got the sentiment of the remark even though the logic didn’t quite track.

Despite Monk’s protests, Stottlemeyer instructed the paramedics to take him to the hospital anyway. Monk gagged a couple more times on the gurney and on the drive to the hospital.

By the time we got to the ER, he was convinced that he was seconds away from death. Monk demanded to sign a DNR form while he was still lucid.

The doctors started an IV drip to restore the fluids he’d lost, and gave him an injection of something to stop his queasiness. The doctor told me that it was possible Monk experienced some seasickness, perhaps even some stomach poisoning from something he ate, but it was more likely that his symptoms were self-induced, the result of a panic attack. He said I could take Monk home as soon as he’d calmed down.

It didn’t take too long for Monk to relax. I don’t know whether it was the drugs, the fact he was no longer on the pier, or the fatigue, but within an hour he was back to his usual self. He sat up on the gurney in the exam room and discussed his ordeal, now that it was safely in the past.

“I’ve only been that close to death once before,” he said, “when I was buried alive in a coffin.”

“I remember that,” I said.

“When I was in the coffin, I saw visions of Trudy,” Monk said. “It was like she was with me, preparing me for my journey to the other side. This experience was different.”

“For one thing, you weren’t dying,” I said. “You were just sick to your stomach.”

“I saw a long tunnel with a bright light at the end,” Monk said. “It may have been God.”

“Or a train,” I said.

“I guess it just wasn’t my time,” Monk said.

“You’re probably right,” I said.

“I’ve learned a very important life lesson from this,” Monk said. “I’ll take Dramamine before going on the high seas again.”

“You were ten yards from the shore, Mr. Monk.”

“I was on the water,” Monk said.

“The pier is secured to posts that are driven deep into the floor of the bay,” I said. “You weren’t actually on the water.”

“I was in the Pacific Ocean,” Monk said. “It was
The Perfect Storm
on a dock.”

Stottlemeyer came into the exam room. “How are you feeling, Monk?”

“Lucky to be alive,” he said.

That much was true. Monk may not have been in any danger of dying from seasickness, but a bullet in the head had been a real possibility for a while.

“There are a lot of cops who’d like to shake your hand,” Stottlemeyer said. “But don’t worry: I told them not to.”

“Thank you,” Monk said.

“How is Gruber doing?” I asked.

“He’ll live to serve a nice, long life sentence,” Stottlemeyer said. “Ballistics matched the bullet recovered from Officer Milner to the gun Gruber held to Monk’s head.”

“Case closed,” I said.

“Was there ever any doubt?” Monk said.

“There’s still one thing that’s bothering me,” Stottlemeyer said. “Was Officer Milner’s wife really in the dark about what he was doing, or did she lie to us?”

“It doesn’t matter. Her husband was killed,” I said. “She’s suffered enough.”

“But let’s say Monk didn’t have his brainstorm,” Stottlemeyer said. “If she knew the truth and didn’t tell us, Gruber would have gotten away with murder and literally sailed off into the sunset.”

“Then it’s a good thing Monk figured it out,” I said.

That was when we had a visit from a very unexpected guest. Mayor Smitrovich stormed in, slamming the door behind him. All those veins were bulging on his forehead again, which reminded me of those people in the movie
Scanners
who could make someone’s head explode just by thinking about it.

“Tell me you didn’t just shoot the man I announced on television was a great citizen and a shining example of what it means to be a San Franciscan,” the mayor said to Stottlemeyer.

“I did,” Stottlemeyer said proudly.

“The man I gave two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of taxpayer money to reward him for his courage?”

“That’s the one,” Stottlemeyer said.

“What possessed you to do
that
?”

“He murdered a police officer,” Stottlemeyer said. “He also put a gun to Monk’s head.”

The mayor turned his fury toward Monk. “How could you let this happen?”

“Would you have preferred that I didn’t solve the murder?” Monk said.

“Are you absolutely sure that he’s guilty? Isn’t it possible that you may have made a horrendously stupid mistake?”

“No,” Monk said.

“But this simply isn’t possible,” the mayor said, almost pleading. “How could the man who turned in a serial killer end up being a murderer himself? It
can’t
be true.”

“Fate is a funny thing,” I said.

“I’m not laughing,” the mayor snapped at me.

“I am,” Stottlemeyer said. “But only a little. It’s more like a chuckle.”

“The picture of me shaking that cop killer’s hand and handing him a check is going to be spotlighted on every newscast, newspaper, Web site, and blog in the country.”

“Maybe the world,” I said.

Mayor Smitrovich pointed accusingly at Monk. “You knew all about what Gruber and Milner were doing before the press conference. You set me up.”

“No, I didn’t,” Monk said.

“Don’t play dumb with me. You’ve been shrewdly manipulating events from the start.” The mayor glanced at Stottlemeyer. “You were working hand in hand the whole time with your good friends in the police union. And I fell for it.”

The mayor was even more paranoid than Cindy Chow, and just as adept at weaving complex conspiracy theories. I couldn’t decide which of their paranoid conspiracies was the most insane: her belief that extraterrestrials and the CIA were conducting mind-control experiments on unsuspecting people, or his notion that Monk was a political mastermind who had intentionally tricked the mayor into giving a murderer a $250,000 reward. One thing was clear: Both the mayor and Chow should be heavily medicated at all times.

“I won’t forget this, Monk,” the mayor said, the implied threat quite clear.

“I doubt the voters will, either,” Stottlemeyer said.

The mayor scowled at all of us and left even angrier than he’d been when he arrived. If his head was going to explode, for his sake I hoped it happened while he was still in the hospital.

Monk sighed. “It’s so sad.”

“How do you figure?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“He still doesn’t realize that the podium was his undoing,” Monk said.

 

The police department dominated the news that night and the following morning.

The Tuesday-night newscasts all led with the story that Bertrum Gruber, the hero who led police to the Golden Gate Strangler, had killed police officer Kent Milner; and, as Mayor Smitrovich predicted, footage of the press conference was used to illustrate the story. They also reported that police and city negotiators were working through the night at an undisclosed hotel to reach a deal in the ongoing labor dispute.

The front page of the Wednesday-morning edition of the
San Francisco Chronicle
led with a two-column picture of Mayor Smitrovich and Bertrum Gruber shaking hands over the $250,000 check. But this time the news was a bit different. Mayor Smitrovich had managed to spin the story in a more flattering and totally fraudulent light.

 

I scanned the rest of the article, looking for a quote from somebody in the police department refuting the mayor’s lies. There wasn’t one.

I’m not a politician or a conspiracy theorist, but I had a feeling there was a good reason the police chose not to contradict the mayor’s account of events. The mayor’s embarrassment may have given the police considerable leverage in the negotiating room.

All of this was swirling around in my mind as I drove Monk into headquarters on Wednesday morning for another day at work. The first thing I noticed was that the place was full of cops. It seemed like most of the force had recovered from their bout of Blue Flu.

The homicide squad room was packed with detectives, leaving no room for Monk’s team, who’d been relegated to standing room in the back. But Chow, Porter, and Wyatt weren’t being ostracized. They were talking animatedly with their fellow cops and sharing laughs.

Disher spotted Monk and yelled out over the din of conversation, ringing phones, and general office hubbub, “There he is!”

Suddenly all the detectives rose to their feet, faced us, and applauded. Monk was startled and embarrassed by the attention.

Stottlemeyer stepped out of his office, and the applause died down so he could speak.

“We all wanted to thank you for what you did for Officer Milner,” Stottlemeyer said. “He may have been a flawed individual, but he was still one of us.”

“I would have done the same thing for anybody,” Monk said. “No murder should go unpunished.”

Batman couldn’t have said it better. But Monk didn’t stop there.

“Whatever I accomplished I owe to my team of detectives, Cindy Chow, Frank Porter, and Jack Wyatt,” Monk said. “You can thank me by showing them the respect and appreciation they deserve.”

The assembled detectives turned and gave Monk’s team a round of enthusiastic applause. I whispered to Monk, “Great speech, Mr. Monk, and you didn’t need any notes. Speaking in front of an audience isn’t so hard.”

“This isn’t an audience,” Monk said, clearly touched. “This is family.”

Stottlemeyer motioned Monk and me into his office and closed the door behind us after we came in. He didn’t invite Disher to join us, nor did the lieutenant try to worm his way in.

That wasn’t a good sign.

Monk didn’t seem to share my trepidation. He was still moved by the standing ovation.

“That was really something,” Monk said.

“Yes, it was,” Stottlemeyer said. “Nailing that cop killer erased a lot of hard feelings toward you and your team.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” Monk said. “Now we can all work together in harmony.”

“Not quite,” Stottlemeyer said, taking a seat on the edge of his desk. “We had the mayor over a barrel on this Gruber thing, so our union reps used that to our advantage in negotiations. They were able to close a deal last night that’s pretty close to what we wanted.”