Mr. Monk on the Couch (6 page)

CHAPTER SIX

O
ne of the guys in the Tyvek suits turned to us, seemed to freeze for a moment, then quickly took off his mask and goggles and peeled back his hood to reveal a youthful, freckled redhead with an electrifying smile.

“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re Adrian Monk.”

He came toward us, taking off his gloves and holding out his right hand to Monk.

“I’m Jerry Yermo,” he said, shaking Monk’s hand.

“My pleasure.” Monk glanced at me, which was my signal to get him a wipe.

“No, no, allow me,” Jerry said, snapping his fingers at the other man. “Gene, bring Mr. Monk some wipes. This is such an incredible honor. I have been following your work for years.”

Gene was a stocky guy who didn’t bother to remove his mask and goggles. He brought over a huge canister of disinfectant wipes and offered it to Monk, who tugged a wet tissue out and cleaned his hands.

“The honor is mine, Mr. Yermo,” Monk said. “This is the first time I have ever seen a hotel room cleaned properly.”

Monk finished with the wipe. I reached into my purse for a baggie, but before I could take it out, Jerry whipped out a red plastic bag with a big biohazard emblem on it and offered it to Monk instead.

“Call me Jerry, Mr. Monk.”

“It’s Adrian to my friends.” Monk smiled as he dropped his wipe into the bag.

Jerry sealed the bag and handed it to Gene, who deposited it in the biohazard container on the cart, then grabbed a paint scraper off the cart and went back to work in the hotel room.

“When I said that I’ve followed your work, Adrian, I meant it literally,” Jerry said. “I’m a crime scene cleaner. I’ve been to the scene of just about every murder in San Francisco that you’ve investigated but, sadly, long after you’ve gone. I’ve always hoped that one day I’d get the opportunity to meet the great man himself.”

“Excuse me, Jerry,” I said. “But I don’t understand why you’re here. This isn’t a crime scene.”

“After a murder, suicide, violent crime, or any serious accident where bodily fluids have been spilled, a licensed and certified cleaner has to be called in to properly remove, package, and dispose of all contaminated material—furniture, carpeting, drywall, equipment, you name it—in strict accordance with all applicable OSHA, federal, state, and local health regulations. Then we disinfect, deodorize, and decontaminate the scene before restoring it to its original state.”

Monk was visibly moved. “You’re a true American hero. I wish the law required licensed professionals like you to clean up wherever people have been. This city is awash in bodily fluids.”

“I don’t know that I’d go that far, Adrian. But I agree that bodily fluids and other contaminants from injury, death, decomposition, not to mention the regular excretions, expulsions, and ejaculations of the living, certainly spread farther, soak deeper, and are more dangerous to public health and safety than the general population realizes.”

“Amen, brother,” Monk said. “It’s a disgusting world that we live in.”

“Tell me about it,” Jerry agreed. “In some cases, our work requires us to strip a place down to the studs and replace everything. But this time, since we’re only dealing with the postmortem evacuation of bladder and bowels and initial decomp, and no blood spatter or brain matter, we’ve only had to remove the bedding, mattress, and the carpeting for incineration and simply disinfect everything else.”

“You should be taking notes, Natalie,” Monk said. “This is what you should be doing in your house every week.”

“Including the removal and incineration of my linens, mattress, and carpets?” I asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Monk said. “You can do that monthly.”

“No one has died in my bed, Mr. Monk.”

“Yet,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time until someone does if you don’t do something about your slovenly habits.”

I looked at Jerry. “He’s exaggerating.”

“I’m sure your bedroom is very clean and lively,” Jerry said, then winced. “Forgive me, that didn’t come out at all the way I intended.”

I couldn’t help smiling at his discomfort. “It’s okay, Jerry, I understood what you meant. Did you find anything when you cleaned the hotel room?”

“We find strange stuff all the time,” Jerry said, eager to change the subject from his faux pas. “We were cleaning up after a guy who blew off his head with a shotgun, and when we ripped out the blood-and-brain-matter-stained drywall behind him, we found a wedding dress sealed in plastic underneath the insulation. Another time, when we were mopping up after the decomposing corpse from an old lady’s unattended death, we found twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and bonds that she’d saved under the floorboards.”

“Did you find anything even remotely that interesting this time?”

“I can tell you exactly what we found. We take notes in case the police come back to us.” He took a notebook out of his back pocket and flipped it open. “Forty-seven cents, a gum wrapper, a used condom, a bottle cap, three pens, assorted unidentified pills, six paper clips, a safety pin, a Tic Tac, a 7-Eleven receipt, and toenail clippings.” He closed his notebook and stuck it back in his pocket. “It was normal detritus, most of it under furniture, slightly less than the usual accumulation for a hotel room with a lot of occupants.”

“So are you done here?” I asked.

“We’ve still got to disinfect, deodorize, lay some new carpet, and replace the mattress.”

“May I observe you in action?” Monk asked.

“I’d be honored, Adrian, but I knew it was going to be just a simple, two-man job, so I didn’t bring any extra protective gear with me today.”

“That’s okay, Jerry. Natalie can run back to my apartment and get mine.”

“You have Tyvek coveralls, a respirator mask, and goggles?” Jerry asked.

“Who doesn’t?” Monk said, then glanced reproachfully at me. “That is, if you’re a civilized person.”

“This isn’t much of a job, and we’re almost done. I have a better idea,” Jerry said. “The next time you’re at a murder, stick around until we get there and you can join the crew for the cleanup.”

“That would be amazing,” Monk said. “If we’re lucky, someone will get killed today.”

“You’re a real humanitarian, Mr. Monk,” I said.

“No, I’m not,” Monk said and pointed at Jerry. “But he is. You’re doing God’s work.”

“Thank you,” Jerry said. “Speaking of which . . .”

He reached for his hood, pulled it over his head, and gave us a little salute before putting on his mask and goggles and going back into the room.

It looked like I’d have to come back later for my stylized TV-detective flashbacks of Jack Griffin’s last days.

Monk watched Jerry Yermo go and then looked at me. “That’s a hell of a man.”

“You don’t know anything about him,” I said.

“I know he’s single,” Monk said, then stood there with one eye closed for a long moment before opening it again.

“Was that supposed to be a wink?”

“You’ve never seen a wink before?”

“Winks are quick,” I said. “That was more like a nap with one eye closed.”

We went back downstairs. I stopped by the front desk, told the clerk to hold the room key for 214 under my name, and crossed the lobby toward the front entrance.

“You didn’t respond to my subtle suggestion,” Monk said. “Was it too subtle?”

“Jerry isn’t my type,” I said.

“Why not?”

“He spends his day scrubbing up gore.”

“So you have a problem with clean, decent, upstanding men who do God’s work,” Monk said, then gestured to the men in the lobby. “I suppose you’d prefer one of them.”

“Those men are indigent, drugged out, mentally ill, and elderly.”

“Well, that’s the alternative.”

“No, it’s not. There’s a wide variety of men in the world besides Jerry Yermo and them.”

“That explains why you’re alone,” Monk said. “You live in fantasyland.”

“Then that makes us neighbors,” I said and walked outside to the street.

 

I dropped Monk off for his weekly appointment with Dr. Neven Bell, his psychiatrist, and took the box of Griffin’s possessions with me into McDonald’s, where I bought a cup of their cheap coffee and pretended I was in Starbucks.

I went to a table and started sorting through Griffin’s meager possessions, making an inventory in my notebook, along with my observations and any questions that occurred to me.

His wallet was in an evidence baggie and contained a few crisp twenties, his fake California driver’s license, and a faded slip from a fortune cookie that read, “You will lead many lives.” I sniffed the wallet. It smelled of leather, varnish, and fish.

The crisp twenties suggested to me that he’d exchanged his pesos for American dollars somewhere. The smell of varnish and fish on his wallet backed up Monk’s deductions that Griffin led a seafaring life. Which raised the first question that I jotted down on my list:

If so, perhaps it was with somebody that he’d crewed for in the past, maybe even an American. If I could find that boat, and that person, that could be a significant lead. But there were marinas and ports all along the Southern California coast and tens of thousands of boats.

I set that baggie aside and pulled out another one, which contained a gray ID card with a passport-type photo of Griffin on it. He had a fuller face and a scraggly mustache and short beard.

The card was written in Spanish on one side and English on the other and identified Griffin as a temporary resident and listed his date of birth as October 19, 1955. I assumed the document was a forgery and the birth date was probably a lie.

Next I pulled out the old leather binocular case with a thin shoulder strap. It reminded me of Mr. Spock’s tricorder.

I pulled out the binoculars, which were heavy and black and in mint condition. I made note of the brand and model—a Jackson/Elite Clipper Model 188—and two serial numbers I found on the front bridge. I knew nothing about binoculars, but based on their bulkiness, the styling, and the materials, as well as the total lack of any integrated electronics, that they were at least thirty years old.

Perhaps it was all he could afford.

On the other hand, perhaps he’d owned that particular pair of binoculars for years. If so, the fact that he’d taken such great care of them, and brought them with him from Mexico, suggested they held some emotional significance for him.

I rummaged through his shaving kit. All the toiletries were typical brand-name items, the kind that could be found at any local supermarket or drugstore.

I moved on to his collection of a dozen paperback Westerns, all of which were new, English-language titles published in the last few months. I figured he’d probably picked them up off the rack wherever he’d bought his toiletries.

He must have loved Westerns. Of all the things he could have done in his final days, he chose to hole up in a dive hotel room in San Francisco, reading them.

Maybe Western novels were hard to come by in Mexico and represented a pleasure that he’d been denied. Or maybe they, like the binoculars, represented something else to him.

There was one more item in the box, and it was in an evidence baggie for protection—it was the snapshot that Griffin was holding in his hand when he died.

I studied it again and made a list of everything I could see in the picture and what information I might glean from each item.

There was the nurse.
Try to date and trace her uniform? Her shoes? The watch on her wrist?

There was the little girl.
Try to date the bike? Her clothes? Her shoes?

There was the house, which appeared to have been recently built at the time the photo was taken. The black address numbers 9-2-8 were glued on a white plastic light that was mounted on the brick trim beside the garage. That design detail, and the style of the house, screamed 1970s to me.
If it’s a tract home, can I trace the style to a particular developer and then, perhaps, to a place and a date?

There were potted plants out front, waiting to be put into the fresh dirt.
Could the plants tell me where the house is?

There was the car in the driveway. The license plate wasn’t photographed, but I could tell the car was a Ford Country Squire, metallic blue with faux wood paneling on the exterior.

I looked at my list and frowned. I was going to need help with the research.

I wrote that question down, too, as if that would help me find the answer.

Monk never had to make up lists. He absorbed the details that he saw and heard and then noticed the one thing that was missing, was out of place, or didn’t fit where it was supposed to. And that’s how he solved his cases.

But I wasn’t Monk. I’d have to develop my own detecting technique. I just wished that I knew what it was. And that thought gave me the last question for my list.

CHAPTER SEVEN

D
r. Neven Bell’s office in North Beach, with its wood paneling and leather furniture, was so aggressively masculine, I half expected the balding shrink to emerge from his office in a silk bathrobe, a cigar in his mouth, and his arms around two Playboy bunnies.

But Dr. Bell was no Hef. His standard attire leaned more toward cable-knit sweaters and corduroy pants. He greeted me in the waiting room, where Monk was busy organizing the magazines on the coffee table by name and publication date.

“What kind of person leaves a mess like this?” Monk said. “Your patients need serious psychiatric help.”

Dr. Bell ignored Monk and smiled at me. “Adrian tells me you’re taking on a case.”

I glanced over at Monk. “I didn’t think he noticed.”

“I notice everything,” Monk said.

“But you haven’t shown much interest in it,” I said.

“That’s because I have none,” he said.

I handed Dr. Bell the snapshot of the nurse and the little girl. “What do you make of this?”

Dr. Bell glanced at the photo, then looked up at me. “What do you make of it?”

“Please don’t psychoanalyze me,” I said. “Analyze the picture.”

“I can’t,” Dr. Bell said. “The meaning of the picture depends entirely on the interpretation of the person who is looking at it. What I see is irrelevant. Each of us is going to see something different.”

“It’s not an abstract painting,” I said. “It’s a straightforward photograph. What’s there is there. We all see the same thing.”

“Really?” Dr. Bell turned to Monk and held up the picture. “Adrian, what’s the first thing you notice when you look at this?”

Monk glanced quickly at the picture, then returned to his magazine sorting. “The house isn’t symmetrical.”

Dr. Bell turned to me. “Did you see that?”

“No,” I said.

“I rest my case,” Dr. Bell said. “What do you see in the picture?”

“I made a list,” I said, reaching into my purse for the notebook.

“That’s not what I meant,” Dr. Bell said, then held up the picture in front of my face. “What do you see? Don’t think about it. Tell me the first thing that pops into your mind.”

“I see a nameless man desperately holding on to a faded memory as he dies alone in a dark hotel room.”

Dr. Bell handed the photo back to me. “That’s not in the picture.”

“But that’s what I see,” I said.

“Then that’s where you have to start.”

“What does
that
mean?”

Monk joined me. “Now you know how I feel after every session. One of these days, Dr. Bell might actually offer a solution instead of spewing enigmatic poppycock.”

“If you believe our sessions aren’t helpful to you, Adrian, why do you keep coming back?”

Monk rolled his shoulders and shifted his weight. “Sometimes I just need to hear myself think.”

“You don’t need me for that,” Dr. Bell said. “You could talk to your brother, Ambrose, for instance.”

“I can’t talk to him,” Monk said.

“Why not?” Dr. Bell asked.

“He’s crazy,” Monk said.

“He’s agoraphobic,” Dr. Bell said.

“Which is another word for crazy,” Monk said. “How else would you describe someone who is afraid to leave the house we grew up in?”

“Agoraphobic,” Dr. Bell said. “But I thought you told me that he went on a road trip in a rented motor home with you and Natalie not so long ago.”

“Yes, but we had to knock him out with drugs and abduct him first,” Monk said.

Dr. Bell looked at him incredulously. “You took him against his will?”

“Of course we did. He wouldn’t leave the house otherwise,” Monk said. “Because he’s crazy.”

“You didn’t mention that.” Dr. Bell crossed his arms under his chest and took a decidedly disapproving posture.

“I told you he was crazy two minutes ago. Don’t you listen to anything I say?”

“I’m talking about the kidnapping, Adrian.”

I cleared my throat. “Mr. Monk is covered by doctorpatient privilege, am I right?”

Dr. Bell turned to me. “You helped him do this?”

“Nobody is pressing charges,” I said.

“Ambrose thanked us later,” Monk said.

“Really?” Dr. Bell said, clearly dubious.

“He enjoyed the trip so much that he bought the motor home we had rented,” I said. “He likes the idea of leaving home without leaving a home, so to speak.”

“He’ll probably still have to be drugged to get from his house to his motor home,” Monk said. “But he’s got an assistant to help him with that now.”

Dr. Bell looked at me sternly. “You’re dispensing narcotics now?”

“Oh no, not me,” I said. “One Monk is more than I can handle. Ambrose has hired a young woman we met on our road trip. She was a researcher for an investigative reporter named Dub Clemens, who passed away. She’s also going to help Ambrose with his work. Ambrose writes owner’s manuals and technical guides. Up until now, he mostly interacted with the outside world through—”

I had a sudden realization and stopped myself short. I knew where to go to decipher the mysteries of the snapshot, and maybe a few other things, too.

“Thank you, Dr. Bell,” I said. “I think we’ve had a major breakthrough.”

Dr. Bell smiled. “Great. I’ll send you my bill.”

“I hope you’re not referring to his poppycock about ‘starting with what you feel,’ ” Monk said. “Because what you feel is probably indigestion.”

“I’m visiting your brother,” I said. “Care to join me?”

 

Ambrose Monk lived in Tewksbury, a Marin County community that was across the bay from San Francisco and was so liberal, so thoroughly mired in the 1970s, I felt like I should remove my bra and light a joint as soon as I crossed the city limits.

The Monk family home, a well-preserved Victorian, was perhaps the only property in town that didn’t have an outdoor hot tub, and I’m including city hall, the library, and the churches in that statement.

We hadn’t been back to see Ambrose since we’d returned from our road trip. The restored motor home, fixed up after our little adventure, was parked in his driveway, and it gleamed. It was a class C, one of those strange vehicles that looked like a Ford truck that backed into a camper and then got stuck. There was a Harley-Davidson motorcycle beside it.

Monk scowled at the motorcycle as we walked up to the front door. “Our front yard looks like the parking lot of a biker bar.”

“Have you been to many biker bars with just one motorcycle and one RV parked out front?”

“This is how it starts,” Monk said. “Before you know it, the Hells Angels will be camping here for the winter.”

He knocked on the door.

“Listening to rock-and-roll music way too loud,” he added.

He knocked again.

“Smoking marijuana joint cigarettes,” he added.

He knocked again.

“And applying scary skull tattoos on each other that don’t wash off,” he added.
“Ever.”

He knocked again.

“Where is he?” Monk asked.

“Maybe he stepped out.”

“He’s afraid to step out,” Monk said. “He’s in the house all the time.”

“I know,” I said. “I was joking.”

He turned to face me. “What’s humorous about saying he stepped out when we both know that he would never step out?”

“It’s the contradiction that creates the humor.”

“That’s not humor. This is humor: A Japanese woman experiences discomfort in her eye, so she goes to see a qualified ophthalmologist. After a thorough examination, the doctor tells the Japanese woman that she has a cataract. She says, ‘No, I don’t. I have a Lincoln Continental.’ ”

I stared at him. “That’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is. Here’s why: Some Japanese immigrants have trouble speaking English or do so with a heavy accent. She confuses a Cadillac with a cataract. She believes he is talking about American luxury automobiles when, in fact, he is telling her that she has an opacity on the lens of her eye that’s inhibiting the passage of light, causing a loss of visual acuity. It’s the miscommunication that creates the hilarity.”

“Natalie is right,” a woman said. “It’s not funny.”

We turned just as Yuki Nakamura, Ambrose’s assistant, opened the front door. She was barefoot, wet, and wearing a bathrobe.

She was in her twenties, with long black hair that went midway down her back, where I knew, and Monk didn’t, that she had a snake tattoo coiled around her spine.

“The joke is racially insensitive and perpetuates a nasty and ugly stereotype,” Yuki said. “Besides, it’s dated. They haven’t made Lincoln Continentals in years. When did you hear that joke? In 1975?”

“Actually, it was April 27, 1972, at 3:14 p.m.,” said Ambrose, stepping up behind Yuki. “Dad told it to us as an example of a joke.”

“A knee-slapper, to be specific,” Monk said. “Which means it was a very good one.”

They kept talking, but I have no idea what they said because I’d stopped paying attention. I was too distracted by the fact that Yuki and Ambrose were both wearing bathrobes and nothing else. And they were both dripping wet.