Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu (28 page)

I knew it. That explained why everyone was back at work and in such good spirits—but not why we were having this closed-door conversation.

“That’s terrific,” Monk said.

“For the rank and file,” Stottlemeyer said. “But not so much for you. Part of the deal requires the department to promote from within for any detective-grade openings and above.”

Monk nodded. “So I’m not a captain anymore. I can live with that.”

Stottlemeyer sighed and looked at me. I got the feeling he was asking me for my support. Or was it my forgiveness? Before I could work it out, he shifted his gaze back to Monk.

“I hate to say this, Monk. But you aren’t a cop anymore, either,” Stottlemeyer said.

Monk didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The heartbreak was written all over his face and in the way he slumped his shoulders.

Stottlemeyer looked at me again, but he didn’t find whatever he was hoping for. What he got was my disgust. How could they do this to Monk after everything he did for them? If the union had the mayor over a barrel it was because
Monk
put him there. And this was how they thanked him? Some family.

Then again, maybe it was the mayor’s doing. Maybe yanking Monk’s badge and shattering his dream was the mayor’s way of getting back at Monk for his own public humiliation.

But the police let the mayor do it.

“You have to pass the psychological evaluation and meet all the reinstatement qualifications that the mayor let you skip over,” Stottlemeyer said. “But even if you did all that, with this hiring freeze in place you still couldn’t get in. I’m sorry, Monk. I truly am.”

“Did you even fight for him?” I said.

“Who am I going to fight, Natalie? I wasn’t in the negotiating room. I didn’t make the deal, and I certainly don’t have the power to change any of the terms. I’ve got no standing in this.”

“Thanks a hell of a lot,” I said.

“That isn’t fair,” Stottlemeyer said. “This isn’t my doing.”

“You’re
doing
nothing, and that’s worse. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”

I glared at Disher in the squad room. He felt my anger and turned away. There was no reason he should get out of this untouched. They were all culpable.

Monk cleared his throat, tipped his head toward the squad room and asked quietly, “What about my team?”

“They’re out, too,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Do they know?” Monk asked.

Stottlemeyer nodded. “I told them before you came in. They’ve already turned in their badges.”

Monk reached into his pocket and took out his badge, handing it to Stottlemeyer without even looking at it.

“I feel terrible about this, Monk.”

“Me, too.” Monk shuffled out of the office.

I stepped in front of Stottlemeyer. “This is wrong, Captain. You know it is.”

“Be realistic, Natalie. The men out there may have forgiven him because he caught a cop killer, but Monk and the others are still scabs. Nobody is going to reward them for crossing a picket line, whether there actually was one or not. That’s just the way it is.”

“It sucks,” I said.

“It does,” Stottlemeyer said. “But let’s be honest—it’s not like we didn’t see this coming from the start.”

He was right. We all saw it—me, Dr. Kroger, and Stottlemeyer—but it didn’t make the reality any easier to accept, or what they’d done to Monk any less wrong. It didn’t have to happen the way we knew it would.

Monk did his job, he proved himself as a cop and a leader and probably saved some lives along the way, and it didn’t matter to anyone. The police and the politicians used him and gave him nothing in return. In fact, he was supposed to be grateful that nobody harbored any hard feelings toward
him
.

Can you believe that? How about his feelings? Didn’t they matter to anyone?

Apparently not.

I walked out and found Monk talking to Chow, Porter, and Wyatt.

“I wasn’t expecting my badge back,” Porter said. “But it’s damn nice to go out a winner. Thank you for that, Mort.”

“It’s Monk,” Sparrow said.

“Where?” Porter said, looking all around.

“He’s right in front of you, Grandpa,” Sparrow said.

Porter looked at Monk as if seeing him anew. “Are you still afraid of milk?”

“Terrified,” Monk said with a smile.

Chow spoke up. “Thanks to you, Monk, we scored a major victory against the alien shadow government. They can try to bury what we’ve discovered, but the truth has a way of bubbling to the surface. I’ll make sure that it does.”

She handed Monk a tiny electronic device that looked like an iPod crossed with a flashlight.

“What’s this?” Monk asked.

“You use it to scan for bugs,” Jasper said. “It’s like a radar detector for audio or video surveillance devices.”

“You have one of those?” I asked.

“Of course,” Jasper said. “Don’t you?”

I was beginning to wonder if he’d become as nutty as Chow, but then he winked at me and I felt a lot better.

“You’re going to be under surveillance now by the Omega Agency for the rest of your life,” Chow said to Monk. “Consider it a badge of honor.”

“I will,” Monk said.

Wyatt stepped forward and scowled at Monk. “You’re a wuss.”

“Yes,” Monk said. “I am.”

“But in some ways, you may just be the bravest man I’ve ever known.” Wyatt handed Monk a bullet.

“What’s this for?”

“It’s the bullet you saved me from using,” Wyatt said. “Even though it never tore through your flesh, it still feels to me like it’s yours.”

“Thanks,” Monk said.

“Come visit us sometime,” Wyatt said.

“Us?” Monk asked.

“The three of us are opening a detective agency,” Chow explained. “There will always be a job there for you if you want it.”

“I’m a lone wolf,” Monk said. “A rebel. A rogue. A loose cannon.”

“I thought I was too,” Wyatt said. “But things change.”

“I’m not a big fan of change,” Monk said.

“Then this is a good thing,” Wyatt said.

“What is?”

“Not getting your badge back,” Wyatt said.

“Think of all the changes there would have been in your life.”

Monk thought about it for a second, and then his entire demeanor changed. He stood up straight. His eyes widened. He smiled. The disappointment he was feeling seemed to completely evaporate.

“You’re right,” Monk said. “Whew, what a relief.”

Mad Jack Wyatt, messenger of happiness and enlightenment, and without firing a shot. Who would have believed it?

The three detectives started to leave. I grabbed Jasper by the sleeve and gestured to Sparrow and Arnie to step to one side with me for a moment.

“Let’s stay in touch, okay?” I said.

“Sure,” Jasper said.

“That would be great,” Arnie said.

“We’ll have lunch,” Sparrow said.

What they meant was,
We’ll never see one another again.
“No, I mean it. I have a job I thought nobody understood. But then I met you. We’re all basically doing the same thing. We’ve got a natural support system here. It would be a shame not to take advantage of it now. We can really help one another.”

“Jasper is already helping me,” Sparrow said with a lascivious grin. Jasper blushed. Arnie glanced meaningfully at me.

“I don’t need that kind of help, Arnie.”

“I’m a happily married man,” he said indignantly.

“Good,” I said. “Let’s keep it that way.”

“We’ll stay in touch,” Jasper said, and this time it felt like he meant it.

I almost mentioned my brilliant idea of forming our own union, the International Association of Detectives’ Sidekicks, but I didn’t want to scare them off.

The three of them walked out, Sparrow and Jasper hand in hand, following the detectives they worked for. But I knew that the relationship between each of them was more than employee and assistant, like it was for Monk and me and, I suppose, Stottlemeyer and Disher, too.

We all needed assistance, even the assistants.

I didn’t know if I’d ever see them again, but it was comforting to know they were out there if we needed them.

There are some things in life that I’m pretty sure everybody hates to do, regardless of their sex, race, religion, or nationality—like flossing your teeth, cleaning your bathroom, and attending traffic school. You could pick anybody off the street and they’d agree that those tasks suck.

Everybody, that is, except Monk.

He flosses his teeth hourly. He cleans his bathroom several times a day. And even though he doesn’t drive, he insisted on going with me to traffic school, which was fine with me. I would have made him go with me anyway.

The only reason I had to take the class was so I could burn off the totally bogus speeding ticket I got driving him around during the Blue Flu. It was Monk’s fault I got the ticket, so the least he could do was endure the eight hours of torture with me.

The class was held not far from my house, in a storefront that used to be a mom-and-pop travel agency, until the Internet drove them out of business. The walls that were once decorated with pictures of exotic, faraway places were now covered with various road signs and posters urging people not to drink and drive. Three rows of folding chairs were lined up facing a simple, gunmetal gray desk, two file cabinets, and a dry-erase board.

As soon as we arrived, Monk started rearranging the chairs into four rows with an even number of them in each. I shrugged my silent apologies to my fellow students as they stood around and waited impatiently to take their seats.

I wanted to sit in the back, where I hoped to get a little sleep, but Monk insisted we sit in the front row.

“I don’t want to miss anything,” Monk said.

“I’d like to miss it all,” I said.

“Then you won’t learn from your mistakes.”

“People don’t come here to learn, Mr. Monk. They come here to take their punishment.”

“Punishment?” Monk said. “This is a perk.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Double yellow lines, crosswalks, and left-turn-only lanes. Speed limits, traffic lights, and clearly defined parking zones. It’s beautiful. It’s perhaps the finest expression of our humanity.”

I stared at him. “Traffic lanes and stop signs.
That’s
what you think expresses the best of mankind?”

“It’s peace, order, and equality,” Monk said. “If only sidewalks and hallways had lanes. It would mean an end to the chaos.”

“What chaos?”

“Have you seen how people walk?”

He tipped his head toward the happy people passing by out on the sunny street outside. That was where I longed to be, and the class hadn’t even started yet. It didn’t seem like chaos to me. It seemed like freedom.

“They go to and fro, every which way; nobody walks in a straight line anymore,” he said. “Everybody is weaving and dodging, trying to avoid a collision. Some are running; some are strolling. It’s anarchy. But if we all had to walk in lanes, travel at a set rate of speed, and signal our intentions, it would revolutionize society. I daresay it could even lead to world peace.”

I looked into his eyes. I thought I saw tears.

This was supposed to be a miserable experience for
both
of us. It wasn’t right that I would be spending the day in agony while he was in bliss. I was tempted to do something really evil, like take off my belt and miss a loop or two on my pants when I put it back on, just to drive Monk insane for the next eight hours. But I would only be torturing myself, since I was the one he’d be pestering all day.

I was still trying to come up with a way to make this experience as hellish for him as it was going to be for me when a door opened in the back of the room and in walked our teacher with the bearing, imperiousness, and dour solemnity of a Supreme Court justice. He was in his fifties, wore a tweed jacket and a bow tie, and carried a copy of the California Vehicle Code as if it were some kind of sacred text.

Monk stood. I yanked him back down into his seat.

The teacher set the California Vehicle Code on his desk and turned to the classroom.

“I am Mr. Barnaby Merriman, your traffic school instructor. You are traffic offenders. You are here because you didn’t respect the laws of the road. If it were up to me, you’d all be serving time in jail. Instead, thanks to the mercy of the court, you are here in my classroom. You will not leave here today until I am satisfied that you not only
know
the law; you
embody
it.”

Monk applauded. Merriman glared at him.

“Are you trying to be funny?” Merriman asked.

“No, sir,” Monk said. “I am in complete agreement with you.”

“So why did you break the law?”

“I didn’t.” Monk motioned to me. “She did.”

“I was speeding,” I said. “Twenty-eight miles per hour in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone. Lock me up and throw away the key.”

Merriman shifted his gaze back to Monk. “So why are
you
here?”

“Personal enrichment,” Monk said. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to really explore the California Vehicle Code.”

I thought Merriman would assume Monk was a smart-ass and throw him out of the classroom. But he didn’t. He must have seen the genuine excitement in Monk’s eyes.

“Very well,” Merriman said. “But no funny business.”

“Absolutely not,” Monk said as if he were taking a vow. He despised funny business.

We began by taking a multiple-choice traffic law quiz, and then we went over the answers in detail, one by one, with the teacher. The first question was:

 

 

If a person is crossing in the middle of the block, you must stop your vehicle: