Mr. Monk Gets Even (6 page)

Monk shook his head. “It’s a trick. He’ll try to escape.”

“He’s too fat now to just slip away and he’ll certainly be in no shape physically to try anything after being gutted, but even so, we both know how clever he is. That’s why I insisted on handling security at the hospital,” Stottlemeyer said. “And that’s why I want you there with me tomorrow when he arrives.”

“You can count on it,” Monk said.

• • •

Julie had been to Ambrose’s house in Tewksbury, a small town in Marin County, many times in her life. And whenever she visited, the house and its single occupant were always exactly the same, as if frozen in time.

Inside, the place was meticulously maintained, all the décor and furnishings treated as if they were on permanent display in a museum. The living room was filled with rows of file cabinets containing every piece of mail that had ever arrived at the house and neat piles of newspapers going back decades. Monk’s childhood bedroom looked exactly as it was the day he went off to college.

And Ambrose Monk, who’d left the house only four times in decades, always greeted his occasional guests wearing a long-sleeve flannel shirt, a sweater vest, corduroy slacks, and Hush Puppies loafers, and stood a few steps back from the screen door, as if afraid he might get sucked out if he wasn’t very careful.

So it came as a shock to Julie when Ambrose answered the door that Sunday morning wearing a tuxedo.

“Salutations,” Ambrose said. “What a distinct pleasure it is to see you both.”

Julie stepped in and gave him a hug. “You look very dashing, Ambrose. You were born to wear a tuxedo.”

That’s when she looked over his shoulder and noticed something extraordinary: The living room was empty.

Monk walked past them both into the living room, where outlines of everything that had been there before were burned by decades of sunlight into the hardwood floors as permanent shadows.

“You got rid of the file cabinets,” Monk said.

Ambrose walked to the edge of the entry hall but not quite into the room. “Ever since Dad abandoned us when we were kids, I’ve been saving all the mail that came for him. But now that he’s come back, and we know where he is, Yuki convinced me I should ship it all to him so he doesn’t have to come here to go through it.”

“He must have loved that,” Julie said.

“I’m a good son,” Ambrose said, proving that, like his brother, he had no ear for sarcasm.

“What about the newspapers?” Monk asked.

“I donated them to the library. You can find just about all of the articles online now anyway.”

Monk rolled his shoulders. “Everything is changing so fast.”

“I thought you’d be happy about this, Adrian. You’ve been complaining about my files and newspapers for thirty years.”

“But I’ve never seen the room empty before,” Monk said. “Not even when we were growing up.”

“That’s because no one ever got married in here before,” Ambrose said.

“What have you done with the couch, the coffee table, and the two matching chairs?”

“I sold them,” Ambrose said. “On Craigslist.”

Monk staggered back as if he’d been struck. “How could you?”

“We’re redecorating.”

“Why?”

“Because Yuki lives here now,” Ambrose said.

“So?”

“It has to be her house now, too.”

“I still don’t understand,” Monk said.

“Our home should reflect her taste and mine, though almost all the existing furnishings were selected by Mom.”

Monk shook his head. “Mom had an incredible eye for balance and symmetry. The couch, table, and chairs were part of a set. They were perfect. How could you possibly improve on that?”

“Aren’t you being a bit hypocritical?” Julie said. “You moved out of here and into an apartment with Trudy that you two furnished yourselves.”

“We bought the same living room furniture that was in this room,” Monk said.

“Oh,” Julie said. “I never noticed.”

“That’s because it was in the center of the hedge maze created by all those file cabinets and newspapers,” Monk said. “You can see the outline of it over there.” He pointed to the shapes burned into the floor. “That’s all that’s left of them.”

“Except for the copies in your house,” Julie said.

“It’s not the same,” Monk said.

“You just said that it was,” Julie said.

“You’re missing the point,” Monk said.

“Yes, I am,” Julie said, then turned to Ambrose. “So, where’s Yuki?”

“She’s out. She didn’t want to see me in the tuxedo before the wedding,” Ambrose said. “She presumed that I’d be irresistible in this attire, though I do have a flannel shirt that she finds particularly erotic.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Monk said.

“It’s a natural part of life, Adrian.”

“Disgust?” Monk said.

“Sexual attraction.”

“Shh,” Monk said, waving his hand. “What’s the matter with you? Do you have Tourette’s or something?”

Ambrose shook his head. “The tailor, Morris Abish, is waiting for you upstairs, Adrian.”

Monk sighed and shuffled past Ambrose. “Now that you’ve gutted the place, what are you going to do next? Tear down the house?”

“Now that you mention it, we are talking about doing some remodeling—”

Monk held up his hand, interrupting his brother. “I don’t want to hear any more. A man can only take so much.”

He started up the stairs, but took only a few steps before a short, balding man in his sixties, wearing a three-piece suit and a length of yellow measuring tape draped around his neck like a doctor’s stethoscope, appeared on the landing. His face was flushed with anger.

“What have you done?” Abish said, pointing at Ambrose with a piece of chalk.

“My sentiments exactly,” Monk said.

Ambrose looked at himself from top to bottom. “What? Did I miss some chalk?”

“That’s what I am talking about,” Abish said. “You brushed off all my chalk marks!”

“Of course I did,” Ambrose said. “I couldn’t answer the door in filthy clothes.”

Monk nodded. “It’s a relief to know you still retain some shred of human decency.”

“Now I have to do all the measurements again,” Abish said, glowering at them both. “Get up here, you two, and make it snappy.”

Monk and Ambrose did as they were told.

Julie headed to the kitchen to help herself to Ambrose’s stash of Pop-Tarts, but before she could get to the pantry, she glanced out the window above the sink and saw Yuki stepping into the RV that was parked in the driveway.

Julie hadn’t spent much time with Yuki, who was only a few years older than she was and had long black hair almost all the way down her back. But Julie was intrigued by Yuki because she’d spent some time in prison for killing a man (something Monk never tired of reminding Ambrose), had a snake tattoo coiled around the base of her spine, and rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

To say that Yuki and Ambrose appeared to have very little in common was an understatement. But if you looked below the surface, you’d see that they were both very much alike. They were outsiders, quirky and troubled individuals who didn’t fit into conventional society, so they cut themselves off from it, living in worlds of their own.

Now they had each other.

Julie stepped outside and knocked on the open door of the RV. “Permission to enter?”

Yuki leaned out. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans and was holding a soapy sponge.

“Oh, hello,” Yuki said. “I was so busy cleaning I didn’t even notice that you’d arrived.”

“It’s a shame Mr. Monk wasn’t able to hear that,” Julie said. “You would have scored big points with him.”

“I don’t need Adrian’s approval,” she said.

“Why are you cleaning the motor home?”

“I’m getting ready for our honeymoon.”

Julie nodded. “I can see how going from the house to the driveway would seem like a big getaway for a guy who almost never leaves the house.”

“We’re driving across the country.”

“You’re kidding.”

Yuki tossed the sponge in the sink and sat down on the steps of the motor home. “We might not ever leave the RV, which is sort of the point of a honeymoon anyway, but at least he’ll see the country through the windows.”

Ambrose and Yuki met during his first and only trip in the motor home, though Monk and Julie had to slip drugs into his food and abduct him to pull it off—but that’s another story. The upshot is that the trip worked out fine for him. Ambrose fell in love with Yuki and ended up buying the motor home that we’d rented on the off chance he’d ever summon the courage to venture out again.

“How long will you be gone?” Julie asked.

Yuki shrugged. “Who knows? We’re in no hurry. Ambrose can write his owner’s manuals from anywhere.”

“I can’t believe he’s going to do this.”

“He hasn’t done it yet,” Yuki said.

“He will,” Julie said. “He’s in love. Maybe you can finally cure him of his agoraphobia.”

“It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll take him as he is,” Yuki said. “At least if he never leaves the house, I won’t have to worry about losing him.”

Julie laughed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“People adapt but they don’t change,” Yuki said. “They stay who they are. Anybody who expects anything else of a person is setting themselves up for disappointment.”

“Ambrose is adapting a lot for you.”

“I know,” Yuki said.

“Mr. Monk would never do that. He doesn’t adapt for anybody,” Julie said. “He expects everyone else to adapt to him.”

“He’s with Ellen Morse even though she sells crap.”

“I wouldn’t say that he’s
with
her. They hang out. But that’s only because they don’t talk about her work at all. He pretends that side of her life doesn’t exist.”

“So he’s deluding himself,” Yuki said. “That’s an adaptation.”

“Or a mental illness,” Julie said.

“We’re all a little crazy,” Yuki said, getting up again. “That’s what makes life fun.”

“Or in the case of working for Mr. Monk,” Julie said, “a living hell.”

“You’re beginning to sound just like your mother.”

“Oh God, anything but that!” Julie said.

She said that in mock horror, of course.

At least I hope it was.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mr. Monk and the Whale

M
onk would have preferred to go to a nuclear power plant, or slog through a sewer, or visit a trash dump, or even step into Ellen Morse’s Poop shop, than to walk into a hospital.

That’s because hospitals are full of sick people, and he spent every waking minute of his life trying to avoid getting an infection or catching some horrible disease.

Stottlemeyer refused to let him come in wearing a full-on hazmat suit with its own air supply, so Monk was forced to settle for scrubs, rubber gloves, a surgical mask, and protective goggles.

He looked like a surgeon preparing to go into the operating room. But in his mind, he might as well have been a naked man walking into a village stricken with Ebola.

The fact that he was there at all was a testament to the risk he felt Dale the Whale posed to society. Monk, Julie, and Stottlemeyer stood at the loading dock on the first floor, looking out at the street. They could hear the sirens of the approaching prison motorcade.

“I don’t like this at all,” Monk said.

“Really?” Stottlemeyer said. “I hadn’t noticed. You hide it very well.”

“Letting Dale out of prison for any reason is a big mistake,” Monk said.

“No pun intended,” Julie said.

“Of course not,” Monk said. “I never pun. Why would I pun?”

“Never mind,” Julie said. “Forget I said it.”

“This is no time for puns,” Monk said.

“You can relax. I’ve got officers stationed at every entrance and exit,” Stottlemeyer said. “Nobody comes in or out of the building, much less into the OR and recovery room, without getting screened. Besides, Dale is far too big to be snuck past anyone. It’s going to take a forklift just to get him into the building.”

Stottlemeyer gestured to the forklift, which was on the other side of the loading dock, a cop at the controls.

“He won’t need a forklift after all the fat has been removed,” Monk said.

“He’s having hundreds of pounds of fat ripped from his body. It’s major surgery that could actually kill him,” Stottlemeyer said. “So it’s not like he can just leap off the table and run out of the building.”

“Someone could help him out,” Monk said.

“He’d have to get past us first,” Stottlemeyer said. “And that’s not going to happen.”

The motorcade rolled into the parking lot. It was a moving truck escorted by two cop cars and four motorcycle cops. The moving truck backed up to the loading dock.

Two prison guards, one of them cradling a shotgun, emerged from the cab of the truck and came around to the back. One of the guards stepped forward, unlocked the rear latch, and rolled up the back door to reveal Dale the Whale in all his corpulence, spread out and handcuffed to a queen-size bed that was bolted to a pallet. He wore a bright orange prison jumpsuit that made him look like a deflated hot-air balloon.

Julie let out a gasp and immediately covered her mouth in embarrassment.

“Ah, how I will miss that gasp of awe at my fleshy magnificence,” Dale said with theatrical pomposity, even as he struggled for breath.