by Lee Goldberg
“You want me,” Sparrow said.
“No, I don’t,” Gavin said.
“Yes, you do,” Sparrow said. “That’s why you’re scratching your beard.”
“Maybe his beard just itches,” I said.
“When men want me,” Sparrow said, “they scratch.”
Gavin cleared his throat and continued. “What I’m saying is that there are some unconscious mannerisms Stone does whenever he’s telling a whopper. But even those mannerisms can be false. It’s a constant battle with him.”
“So why do you keep doing it?” asked Arnie, the balding anger-management counselor who worked with a notoriously violent ex-cop named Wyatt.
I thought that was a funny question coming from Arnie, considering that Wyatt had shot him three or four times and had thrown him out a window at least twice, and that was just since I’d met him.
Gavin thought about the question for a long moment, as if it was something he’d never considered before. But I was sure he’d thought about it many times. I figured he was probably just deciding how honest he wanted to be with himself and with us.
“Stone is funny, smart, caring, and a true genius. But his constant lies ruined his career as a cop and alienated everyone around him. Nobody can trust him. So now he doesn’t have anybody left in his life except me. It’s sad. And without me, I worry about what he might do.”
“You feel sorry for him,” I said.
“I admire him,” Gavin said.
“And you like to feel needed,” Jasper said, nodding sagely. He’s not sage, but he’s got the nod down. I think they teach it in shrink school.
Gavin shrugged. “I’m certainly not in it for the money.”
We all nodded in agreement like a row of bobbleheads.
Hearing Gavin’s story, I almost felt guilty about how well things were going lately with Monk. He still had all his obsessive-compulsive problems, but somehow they seemed more manageable these days, for him and for me. Or maybe I was just getting used to it.
But there was no question that things were humming along for him professionally lately, too. He solved cases so quickly, it seemed to me that he could probably start doing his work over the phone without visiting the crime scenes at all.
“Sometimes I think that maybe if I stick around long enough, and try real hard, I can save him,” Gavin said. “The way he saved me.”
I understood how he felt, more than I cared to admit to everyone in the room.
“What did he save you from?” I asked.
“Mediocrity,” Gavin said. “Before I met him, I was in telemarketing. I called people in the middle of their dinner and tried to sell them crap they didn’t want. Now I’m helping solve big murder cases. I’m doing something important with my life. What were you doing before?”
“Writing my thesis,” Jasper said.
“Running group therapy sessions,” Arnie said.
“Bartending,” I said.
“Enjoying life,” Sparrow said. “I’m really looking forward to going back to that.”
Gavin looked at the rest of us. “Do you want to go back?”
“I never left, ” Jasper said. “I’m still writing my thesis, only now it’s about the woman I’m working for. It’s going to break new ground in the understanding of paranoid schizophrenics.”
“I used to spend my days in an office with a lot of miserable, angry people before Wyatt came along,” Arnie said. “Now I’m leaping out of speeding cars.”
“Wyatt pushed you out,” I said. “You were in the hospital for two weeks.”
“I’ve become a man of action,” Arnie said. “I’m going to get a few scrapes and bruises.”
“Don’t men of action usually have more hair?” Sparrow said.
“Tell that to Bruce Willis,” Arnie said.
“You aren’t Bruce Willis,” Sparrow said.
“But I feel like I am,” Arnie said. “And that’s worth all the trouble Wyatt causes me.”
Gavin looked at me. “What about you? Could you go back to bartending?”
I shook my head. “Serving drinks was never my goal in life. I’m not sure I ever had a goal, which is probably why I’ve bounced around so many jobs. This is the longest I’ve worked in one place. But the truth is, I don’t think I could quit working for Mr. Monk.”
“Are you afraid of what will happen to him?” Jasper asked.
“I’m afraid of what will happen to me,” I replied.
CHAPTER TWO
Mr. Monk and the Balance of Nature
It was a beautiful Monday morning, the kind that makes you want to jump onto a cable car and sing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” at the top of your lungs.
But I wasn’t in a cable car. I was in a Buick Lucerne that my father bought me when my old Jeep finally crapped out. It was only later that I discovered the real reason for Dad’s largesse. He’d actually bought the Buick for his seventy-seven-year-old mother, who’d turned it down because she didn’t want the same car that everybody else in her retirement community was driving. Nana was afraid she’d never be able to pick her car out from the others in the parking lot.
So Nana got a black BMW 3 Series and I got a car that my fifteen-year-old daughter, Julie, won’t let me drive within a one-mile radius of her school for fear we might be seen. Supposedly Tiger Woods drives a car like mine, but if he does, I bet it’s only to haul his clubs around on the golf course.
The day was so glorious, though, that I felt like I was driving a Ferrari convertible instead of a Buick. My glee lasted until I turned the corner in front of Monk’s apartment and saw the black-and-white police car parked at the curb and the yellow crime scene tape around the perimeter of the building.
I felt a pang of fear that injected a hot shot of adrenaline into my bloodstream and made my heart race faster than a hamster on his wheel.
Since I’d met Monk, I’d visited lots of places cordoned off with crime scene tape, and the one thing they all had in common was a corpse.
This wasn’t good. Monk had made a lot of enemies over the years and I was afraid that one of them had finally come after him.
I double-parked behind the cop car, jumped over the yellow tape like a track star, and ran into the building. I was terrified of what I would find when I got inside.
The door to his apartment was open and two uniformed officers stood in the entry hall, their backs to me, blocking my way.
“Let me through,” I said, pushing past them to see Monk facing us. He was perfectly relaxed, his starched white shirt buttoned at the collar and his sleeves buttoned at the wrist. Believe me, for him that’s hanging loose.
I gave him a big hug and felt his entire body stiffen. He was repulsed by my touch, but at least his reaction proved he was alive and well.
“Are you okay?” I stepped back and took a good look at him and his surroundings. Everything was neat, tidy, balanced, and symmetrical.
“I’m a little shaken,” Monk said. “But I’m coping.”
“What happened?” I asked, glancing back at the two cops.
They were both grimacing. Either they’d eaten something that disagreed with them or they’d been talking to Monk. Their name tags identified them as Sergeant Denton and Officer Brooks.
“I was burglarized,” Monk said.
“What did they take?” I asked.
“A sock,” Monk said.
“A sock?” I said.
“A left sock,” Monk said.
“There’s no such thing,” Officer Brooks said. “Socks are interchangeable.”
Monk addressed Sergeant Denton. “Are you sure your partner graduated from the police academy?”
“Maybe you just misplaced the sock,” Sergeant Denton said.
“I don’t misplace things,” Monk said.
That was true. His life was devoted to making sure that everything was in its proper place.
“When did you notice it was gone?” I asked.
“I washed my clothes in the basement
laundry room this morning and brought them back up to my apartment to fold,” Monk said. “Then I heard the sanitation truck arriving, so I put on my gloves and boots and went outside to supervise my trash collection.”
Officer Brooks stared at him in disbelief. “You supervise your trash collection?”
“Don’t ask,” I said to the officer, then turned back to Monk. “So then what did you do?”
“I came back inside to resume folding my laundry,” Monk said. “And that’s when I discovered that I’d been brutally violated.”
“You lost a sock,” Sergeant Denton said.
“And my innocence,” Monk said.
“Did you look for it?” I asked him.
“Of course I did,” Monk said. “I searched the laundry room and then I ransacked my apartment.”
“It doesn’t look ransacked to me,” Officer Brooks said.
“It was a ransacking followed by a ran-put-everything-backing. ”
“Socks disappear all the time, Mr. Monk,” Sergeant Denton said.
“They do?” Monk said.
“Nobody knows where they go,” the sergeant said. “It’s one of the great mysteries of life.”
“How long has this been going on?” Monk asked.
“As long as I can remember,” Sergeant Denton said.
“And what’s being done about it?”
“Nothing,” the sergeant said.
“But it’s your job,” Monk said.
“To find lost socks?” Officer Brooks asked.
“To solve crimes,” Monk replied. “There’s some devious sock thief running rampant in this city and you aren’t doing anything about it. Are you police officers or aren’t you?”
“No one is stealing socks,” Sergeant Denton said.
“But you just said there’s a rash of sock disappearances,” Monk said.
“It happens,” I said. “I’ve lost tons of them.”
“You’ve been victimized, too?” Monk said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because they weren’t stolen,” I said.
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then how can you say they weren’t stolen?” Monk said. “Socks don’t just disappear.”
I was surprised and a little disappointed that Monk was becoming so unhinged over this. He’d been doing so well the last few weeks.
“Why would anyone want to steal your socks?” Officer Brooks asked.
“They are very nice socks,” Monk said. “One hundred percent cotton.”
Sergeant Denton sighed. “We’re leaving now.”
“You haven’t even taken my report yet,” Monk said.
“We do that and then we have to detain you until someone from psych services arrives and does an evaluation, which could take hours,” Sergeant Denton said. “I don’t think any of us want that, do we, Mr. Monk?”
“Somebody broke into my home and stole my sock,” Monk said. “I’ve secured the crime scene. What I want is a thorough investigation.”
“Can you handle him?” Officer Brooks asked me. I nodded.
“I’m a consultant to the police,” Monk said to them. “I work directly with Captain Leland Stottlemeyer in Homicide.”
“So why didn’t you call him?” Officer Brooks said.
“That would be overreacting,” Monk said. “It’s only a sock, for God’s sake. It’s not like someone was killed.”
“It’s nice to know you have some sense of perspective after all,” Sergeant Denton said. “There’s hope.”
“There’s never hope,” Monk said.
The officers turned their backs to us and walked out.
Monk looked at me. “They are shirking their duty.”
I didn’t feel like arguing with him. “It’s not a very valuable item, Mr. Monk. I suggest you just forget it and buy another pair of socks.”
“And what do I do with the remaining sock?”
I shrugged. “Use it as a rag to clean around the house. That’s what I do.”
“You clean your house with your socks?” Monk said, his eyes wide with shock. “That’s barbaric! I don’t even want to think about what you do with your underwear. Not that I ever think about your underwear. Or anybody’s underwear. Oh God, now I am seeing underwear. I have underwear in my head. What do I do?”
“You could throw the sock out.”
“I can’t,” Monk said. “It will haunt me.”
“It will?”
“I’ll always know that a pair has been broken and that somewhere out there is a sock waiting to be reunited with its other half.”
“The sock isn’t waiting,” I said. “It’s a sock. It has no feelings.”
“I will pursue my sock to the ends of the earth,” Monk said. “I won’t rest until the balance of nature has been restored.”
“One sock is all that it takes to knock nature off balance?”
“Can’t you feel it?”
The phone in the living room rang. I answered it for Monk. It was Captain Stottlemeyer.
“Perfect timing,” I said. “There’s been a crime.”
“That’s why I am calling,” he said.
“You already heard about the sock?” I asked.
“I heard about a murder,” the captain said. “What sock?”
“The one Mr. Monk lost and that’s going to haunt him until he finds it.”
In other words, Stottlemeyer could forget about Monk concentrating on any murder case as long as his sock was missing.
“I see,” Stottlemeyer said. “You don’t get paid enough.”
“Neither do you,” I said.
“But I don’t have to see Monk every day if I don’t want to,” he said. “And I get to carry a gun and drive a car with a siren.”
“You’re blessed,” I said.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “My wife left me and my last steady girlfriend turned out to be a cold-blooded murderer.”
“I guess life has a way of evening things out,” I said.
“With my help,” Monk added.
Stottlemeyer heard that. I could tell from his sigh. “Could you ask Monk to pick up the extension?”
