by Lee Goldberg
CHAPTER FIVE
Mr. Monk and the Bartender
Mill Valley is a bedroom community across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in woodsy Marin County. For much of the seventies and eighties, the town was known primarily for the swinging that went on in those bedrooms, hot tubs, and any other place any number or combination of consenting adults gathered.
The only thing notorious about Mill Valley now was how expensive the homes were. Everything started at a million. I couldn’t even afford a birdhouse there.
Bill Peschel lived with his daughter, Carol Atwater, her husband, Phil, and their two children in a three-bedroom, ranch-style house on a street with landscaping so manicured and sidewalks so clean that they brought a smile to Monk’s face.
Stottlemeyer was leaning against the hood of his police-issued Crown Vic at the curb and chewing on a toothpick when we arrived. I parked alongside the gleaming Mercedes SUV in the driveway and got out. On the back window of the SUV was an inscription in stickered white letters that read, IN LOVING MEMORY OF CLARA PESCHEL.
I don’t understand the point of those automotive memorials. How does buying yourself a nice car celebrate the memory of a loved one? I almost always see those memorials on sports cars or supercarrier-sized SUVs. Does making your Porsche or Hummer a rolling grave marker for your dead family member somehow justify the gas-guzzling indulgence? Or are those memorials actually for people the driver has killed with his car?
To me, those memorials are even stupider than the yellow BABY ON BOARD warning signs, which imply you might have considered smashing into the car if you weren’t alerted that an innocent child was a passenger.
The SUV had one of those signs, too. And two child seats in the back.
“Clara was Bill’s wife,” Stottlemeyer said, following my gaze.
“So why dedicate a car to her?” I asked.
“Maybe her daughter bought it with her inheritance and wanted to acknowledge the gift,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I think it’s weird,” I said. “So who is this guy we’ve come to see?”
“Bill was one of my most reliable snitches,” Stottlemeyer said. “He used to own a dive bar in the Tenderloin. He sold out ten years ago, retired to Sarasota, and then, after his wife died, he moved back here to live with his daughter.”
Monk squatted beside the lawn and admired the neatly trimmed, bright green grass. “I’d like to get the name of their gardener.”
“But you don’t have a yard,” I said.
“I’d just like to compliment him on his fine work,” Monk said.
I turned to the captain. “Do you visit Bill often?”
“I try to make it out here once a month or so.”
“Are you this close to all your snitches?”
“His tips helped me solve a lot of big cases,” Stottlemeyer said. “I might not be a captain today if it weren’t for him.”
I looked at Monk. “Did you know him?”
“I didn’t use confidential informants,” Monk said.
“You didn’t need to,” Stottlemeyer said.
I pointed at him. “There, that’s exactly what I was talking about last night.”
“You saw each other last night?” Monk asked.
I ignored him and pressed my point. “You make self-deprecating remarks like that about your investigative abilities all the time. It reveals your feelings of insecurity and inferiority.”
“I prefer to think of it as stating the facts in a dispassionate and totally candid manner,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Monk. “Yes, we had coffee last night.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I like coffee and getting together with my friends,” the captain said. “It’s something human beings do, Monk. It’s called socializing. You ought to try it sometime.”
“With other people?” he said.
“That’s the idea,” I said.
He shook his head. “That’s how communicable diseases are communicated. Socializing should be done only under the strict supervision of a doctor in a sterile environment.”
“Sounds like fun,” Stottlemeyer said, and headed for the door.
It sounded like the creepy pictures I’d seen of Thanks-giving at the Monk household when he was a child. The dining room table, the floor, and the seat cushions were covered with protective plastic. His mother served them turkey cold cuts with a pair of tongs that she held with rubber-gloved hands like either the meat or the children were radioactive.
“More important, it’s sanitary,” Monk said, and we trailed after the captain.
Stottlemeyer rang the bell and the door was opened by a woman who had the harried look that defines early motherhood. Any mother can recognize it, because she’s looked the same way. It’s a mix of weariness, confusion, and exasperation that comes from trying to do fifteen things at once while taking care of your inexhaustible, demanding, and uncontrollable kids.
Carol Atwater was in her early thirties, thin but bordering on chubby, still carrying a few of those stubborn pregnancy pounds. She was dressed in designer-label casual clothes that were too expensive to really be casual in.
“Hello, Captain,” she said.
“Please, Carol, call me Leland,” he said, then tipped his head towards us. “These are my friends Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger.”
“I have to warn you, things are a little crazy here this morning,” she said. “Actually, it’s been that way ever since Dad moved in.”
“Anything I can do to help?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“You’re doing it just by being here and getting him off my back for a few minutes,” she said, stepping aside to let us in. “It’s great when you or some of the other cops come by. I can only sit around drinking with him for so long.”
“I hear you,” Stottlemeyer said.
I wasn’t sure that I did. I’d known her for only five seconds, but she already didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d hang out with her dad having cocktails all day.
“Dad is where he always is,” she said, gesturing ahead of us.
The entry hall led into a family room that was cluttered with children’s toys. There was a fireplace, a big-screen TV mounted on the wall, and an overflowing toy box in one corner. A pair of French doors opened to the backyard, where I could see a swimming pool ringed by a wrought-iron fence and the sprinklers watering the impossibly green lawn around it.
A baby girl in a T-shirt and diaper sat on a blanket in the center of the room and teethed happily on a plastic doughnut. She was smiling and drooling all over herself. I wanted to steal her and take her home with me.
Monk kept his distance, as if the child were a ferocious dog.
The family room was separated from the open kitchen by a long counter with four bar stools in front of it.
Bill Peschel stood behind the kitchen counter, drying some glasses with a towel. He looked to me to be in his late sixties or early seventies. He wore an apron over his sunken chest and broad belly. Tufts of hair sprang from his nearly bald head like patches of dry, overgrown weeds. His nicotine-stained teeth were almost the same color as his weathered skin.
Behind him, on the opposite counter, was a row of unlabeled bottles filled with water. He motioned us over with a sweep of his bony arm.
“Howdy, folks, come on in,” he said. “There’s plenty of room up here at the bar or you can help yourself to a table.”
He motioned in the general direction of the baby.
Carol lifted up the baby, sniffed the diaper, and made a face.
Monk gasped in horror. “Are you insane?”
“Did that old drunk wet herself again?” Peschel said. “Show her the door, will you please, Bev? She’s scaring away the customers.”
The way he said it, he might have been joking. But I had a feeling he wasn’t. For one thing, he called his daughter Bev and her name was Carol.
“I’m going to go change the baby and see if I can put her down for a nap,” Carol said.
>
“Take your time,” Stottlemeyer said to her, then sat down on one of the stools and smiled at Peschel. “I’d like a gin and tonic, please. My partner here will have a beer.”
“You can’t do that, Captain. You’re on duty and I don’t drink,” Monk said. “The only alcohol that passes my lips is in mouthwash and I spit it right out again.”
Stottlemeyer shushed Monk with a wave of his hand.
“Stuck with another rookie?” Peschel asked Stottlemeyer.
“Afraid so,” Stottlemeyer said.
Peschel took a coffee mug from amidst the baby bottles in the dish strainer, filled it up with water at the sink, and set it down in front of Monk, who seemed very confused.
“Drink up, Boy Scout,” Peschel said. “Put some hair on your chest.”
“I don’t want hair on my chest, among other places,” Monk said. “But this isn’t a beer. It’s tap water.”
Peschel grinned at Stottlemeyer. “The kid talks tough, but I don’t see him drinking it. You want a chaser with that?”
“He’s fine.” Stottlemeyer glared at Monk, trying to get him to play along. But make-believe wasn’t something Monk was good at.
I sat on the stool beside Monk, took a sip from his mug, and wiped away the imaginary foam from my lips. “Tastes fine to me.”
Peschel smiled. “Are you a working girl, honey?”
“No,” I said. “Just thirsty and lonely.”
“I’ve got nothing against your trade,” he said. “But whatever you score in here, I get a ten percent commission.”
He winked at me and moved down the counter to Stottlemeyer.
“How’s business?” the captain asked him.
“Slow.” Peschel reached for one of the unlabeled bottles of water behind him and poured a splash into a glass, then added a shot from another bottle. He put a napkin down in front of Stottlemeyer and set the glass on top of it. “Besides that drooling old drunk, hardly anybody has been in tonight.”
“So you called me down here for nothing,” Stottlemeyer said. “Except some refreshment.”
“I didn’t say that.” Peschel set a bowl of animal crackers in front of Stottlemeyer and leaned close. “Hy Conrad was in here the other night, shooting his mouth off. He was bragging about the Jewelry Mart smash-and-grab.”
“That’s small-time stuff. I’m in Homicide now.” Stottlemeyer nursed his drink as if it packed a punch. “That kind of news isn’t worth the cost of this watered-down booze you serve.”
“I’m just getting warmed up,” Peschel said. “What if I told you a fancy lady came in here looking for someone to kill her rich husband and make it look like an accident?”
“Why would she come to you?” Monk asked.
“I’ve been tending bar here for a long time,” Peschel said. “I know people who know people.”
“In a residential neighborhood?” Monk said. “That can’t be legal. Do you have a liquor license to be selling alcohol out of your home?”
“I was tending bar here while you were still sucking your mama’s teat,” Peschel said.
The blood drained out of Monk’s face. “I never did that. What a disgusting, horrible thing to say. Captain, arrest this man.”
Stottlemeyer motioned to me to get Monk out of there. I tugged Monk’s sleeve.
“I saw some crooked pictures in the hall,” I said. “Maybe you could straighten them.”
“I’d like to straighten him,” Monk said, as I hooked my arm in his and led him away. “He’s crazy.”
Peschel called after me, “Don’t forget my commission, sweetheart.”
Once we were in the entry hall, out of earshot, I said, “Mr. Peschel’s got Alzheimer’s or something like that. He thinks he’s still a bartender and that this is the tavern he used to own. You have to play along.”
“I don’t know how,” Monk said.
“Well, for one thing, you don’t contradict him.”
“Then how is he ever going to learn the truth?”
“He’s not, Mr. Monk. This is his truth.”
“How sad.” Monk glanced at him, then back to me. “At least he still knows who he is.”
That was when I realized why Stottlemeyer had dragged me here. It wasn’t to help him. It was for me, to put my troubles in perspective.
Peschel knew who he was-he had a vocation that defined him-but in every other way, he was lost. He didn’t know where he was in time or space or even who he was with. All he knew was that he was a bartender. But I’m sure he would have traded that certainty for all the other connections that made his life rich and that he didn’t have now. I had everything Peschel didn’t. So what did I have to complain about?
I guess Stottlemeyer was trying to tell me to be thankful for what I had. Maybe he was trying to tell me I was a self-indulgent whiner. Or was there an entirely different message for me in all of this?
CHAPTER SIX
Mr. Monk’s Life Is Changed Forever
While I was thinking about why Stottlemeyer had brought me to meet Peschel, Monk had worked his way down the hall, methodically straightening the pictures that I couldn’t tell were actually crooked.
I caught up with him passing the open door to a boy’s bedroom. I peeked inside. The boy had a bed that looked like a racing car, there were plastic racing tracks all over his floor, and every flat surface was covered with toy cars of different sizes. I pegged his age at about five or six, based on his toys and the pajamas that were on the floor.
The next room across was his sister’s. The walls were covered with pictures of cartoon characters and there were stuffed animals on the floor around her crib.
Carol stood at the changing table, closing the adhesive on the fresh disposable diaper that she’d put on her squirming baby.
“Your daughter is adorable,” I said. “It’s such a wonderful age.”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I am looking forward to the day when I can sleep again and wear blouses that don’t have puke on the shoulders.”
“At least she isn’t asking you if she can get a tattoo,” I said. “And you can cuddle her all you want without her trying to escape.”
“Would you like to hold her?”
I reached out my arms. “Desperately.”
“You should put on gloves first,” Monk said. “And a face mask. We all should.”
“Why?” Carol asked.
“The baby,” Monk said.
“The baby will be fine,” Carol said.
“It’s not the baby that I’m worried about,” Monk said. “It’s the rest of us.”
“I’ll risk it,” I said.
Carol lifted the baby into my arms. The child had that wonderful infant scent of talcum powder, baby formula, and pure lovableness that makes me instinctively feel warm all over. I looked into her bright eyes and playfully rubbed noses with her and was rewarded with a big, toothless smile.
Monk cringed and looked away, his gaze locking on something on the floor beside the changing table. He cocked his head from side to side, trying to figure out what he was looking at.
It was a white plastic container that resembled a large thermos. I recognized it immediately, of course, as any parent would.
“What is that?” Monk asked.
“It’s a Diaper Genie,” Carol said. “You put a disposable diaper inside, twist the dial that’s around the opening, and it seals the diaper in a plastic bag.”
I had one of those when Julie was a baby. It meant I didn’t have to wash cloth diapers like my mother did or deal with a garbage can full of disposables. Even emptying the Genie wasn’t too unpleasant. All you had to do was open the bottom of the Genie over a trash bag or your outdoor garbage can, and the sealed diapers came out in one large string resembling plastic-wrapped sausage links.
Now, thanks to the Diaper Genie, my daughter can claim a small measure of immortality-her dirty diapers will endure for centuries in a landfill somewhere for future anthropologists and archaeologists to examine for clues about ho
w she lived.
“How sturdy are the bags?” Monk asked.
“The bags are triple-layered to hold in the smell and the germs,” Carol said, handing him one of the cartridges of refill bags. “It’s a godsend for mothers.”
“For us all,” Monk said.
He studied the cartridge with wide-eyed wonder. “So let me get this straight. Are you saying that whatever you put inside this Genie is individually wrapped and sealed?”
She nodded. “I only use it for diapers and dirty wipes.”
“But you could use it for other things,” Monk said.
“Like what?”
“Everything you throw out,” Monk said.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“It would save you the time of manually separating and bagging all the items in your trash.”
“Who does that?” Carol asked.
“Who doesn’t?” Monk replied, then held his hand out to me. “Wipe.” My hands were full with the baby, so Carol handed him a wipe from the box on the changing table.
He cleaned his hands, dropped the tissue into an open bag in the Diaper Genie, and twisted the outer ring, which cinched the bag shut and opened a new one.
His eyes sparkled with joy.
“Wow,” he said, then motioned to me for another wipe.
Carol handed him the box and then gestured for me to follow her into the hallway.
“Now I see why the captain brought you,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
She glanced at Monk, who wiped his hands again and dropped the tissue into the Diaper Genie. “You’re dealing with the same problem that I am.”
I shook my head and bounced the baby. “Mr. Monk isn’t suffering from dementia. He’s just eccentric.”
“That’s what we used to say about my dad. He thinks he’s still running his bar. Most of the cops he used to know hang up on him when he calls in the wee hours of the night with his tips. The few who visit rarely come back a second time. It’s too depressing.”
“What about his old customers?”
“They are either dead, in jail, or people I would never allow to set foot in my house.”
