Mr. Monk on the Couch

by Lee Goldberg

  “Give me some more of your rules.”

  “Never date a man who has more hair on his shoulders than I have on my head. Don’t wear tops that show my bra straps. Never eat a Jell-O mold that has fruit or anything else floating in the center. Don’t trust anyone named Scooter or Skip. Don’t go grocery shopping on an empty stomach.”

  “You call those rules?”

  “What would you call them?”

  “Inadequate. It’s a wonder you’re still alive,” Monk said. “You should keep your date with Jerry.”

  “And you think going on dinner dates with murderers is good for my survival?”

  “You want to be a detective, don’t you? This is your chance to play cat and mouse.”

  “I don’t know how to play cat and mouse,” I said. “And I’m not entirely sure who would be the cat and who would be the mouse in this situation.”

  “You heard the captain. The only way this investigation is going to move forward is if Jerry makes a mistake. Right now, he is feeling secure. You need to shake him up.”

  “It may not be safe,” I said.

  “He’s not going to hurt you, especially if you stay in crowded, public places,” Monk said. “Besides, I’ll be watching you.”

  “You will?”

  “You won’t even know that I’m there,” Monk said. “I will become one with the night.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mr. Monk and the Night

  Whenever I see the Ferry Building, I always remember that scene in the movie It Came from Beneath the Sea when a giant octopus, enraged by atomic bomb blasts at sea, swims into San Francisco Bay and begins attacking architectural landmarks, as monsters of all kinds love to do.

  First the octopus goes for the Golden Gate Bridge, then sets his sights on the iconic, and very phallic, 245-foot clock tower in the center of the long, broad Ferry Building. He wraps one of his tentacles around it, snaps it in half, then goes off looking for Coit Tower, or Ghirardelli Square, or some other historic landmark to destroy.

  Before the bridges were built, most people traveled to and from the city through the Ferry Building’s terminal, except for those few who made the trek up the peninsula. But after the bridges, there wasn’t much use for those ferries anymore, and the building eventually fell into disrepair and disuse. It was renovated in 2003, the grand nave restored and transformed into an upscale marketplace lined with gourmet takeout. It was usually packed with tourists and long lines, which sort of killed the whole point of running in for a quick bite.

  But I was thankful for the crowds that night. If Jerry Yermo wanted to kill me, he’d have to do it in front of thousands of witnesses, not to mention Adrian Monk.

  Jerry was waiting outside the main entrance, a big smile on his face. He didn’t look like a cold-blooded killer, but cold-blooded killers seldom look the part. A bitter wind was blowing off the bay, and the chill went through my skin and into the marrow of my bones.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the wind. Maybe it was Jerry.

  For a moment, I wished that octopus would attack, grab Jerry with his mighty tentacle, and drag him into the depths. The sentiment must have shown on my face, because his smile faltered at the edges.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  I didn’t have a script, or a plan, or a clue. I was going entirely with my gut, which was cramping, and that didn’t give me much direction. I gathered my coat tight around myself and shivered.

  “I just need a coffee,” I said. “It’s been a long day and I could use the jolt.”

  He led me to the overpriced coffee place and got us both piping hot tall ones, and we started walking south on the Embarcadero, in the general direction of Cupid’s Span, a big sculpture of a bow and arrow stuck in the grass of Rincon Park.

  The coffee helped. I don’t know whether it was the caffeine or the simple, creature comfort of having something hot in my cold hands.

  “What’s your day been like?” he asked.

  “The usual. Another day, another corpse.”

  I glanced across the street and saw Monk in a dark overcoat, the collar pulled up, tapping parking meters as he kept pace with us. He missed one, doubled back, and then hurried to keep up.

  “It’s what keeps us in business. Sad to say, but someone has to do the dirty work.”

  “Actually, this murder was surprisingly clean,” I said.

  “Strangulation? Poison? Suffocation?”

  “Four gunshots to the upper body.”

  “That doesn’t sound very clean,” Jerry said. “You can’t shoot someone four times and not leave a lot of blood.”

  “Oh, there was blood. But other than that, the killer wiped the place down. He didn’t leave a trace behind.”

  “That’s what you get with all those CSI shows on TV nowadays,” Jerry said. “All the criminals are forensics experts.”

  “I mean really, seriously clean. He used the same specialized solvents and cleansers that you would.”

  “That is odd,” Jerry said. “Who was the victim?”

  “A BART engineer named Stuart Hewson. He lived up on Rayburn and Liberty.”

  “Isn’t that over by your house?”

  “And Mark Costa’s, too,” I said. “In fact, you can see Costa’s house from Hewson’s living room window.”

  “That’s a killer view,” he said.

  “It certainly is.”

  I glanced across the street. Monk had fallen behind. He was helping someone parallel park their car. He had his tape measure out. Adrian Monk: one with the night.

  I stopped and turned my back to the street, as if to admire the view of the Bay Bridge and the East Bay. What I really wanted to do was keep Jerry from seeing Monk.

  “This one isn’t bad, either,” I said.

  “I agree,” he said, giving me a not-too-subtle once-over. A day before, his look might have flattered me. But at that moment, knowing what I did about Jerry, it gave me the creeps. It was like he was a mortician sizing me up for a casket.

  “Hewson had a telescope and liked to spy on people,” I said. “He saw a burglary being committed, and that got him killed.”

  “Sounds like a variation on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.”

  “Except in that story, the witness survived and was trying to do the right thing. Hewson contacted the burglar and tried to cut himself in on the deal.”

  “Then it’s hard to feel much sympathy for him. From the way you’ve described the situation, if he’d done the right thing and called the police, he’d still be alive.”

  “So he deserved to die and the murderer should walk?”

  “I’m just saying that maybe nobody would have died if Hewson hadn’t escalated the situation. It was a victimless crime until then. Sounds to me like he brought it on himself and forced the burglar to do something he wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

  “There was an alternative,” I said. “The burglar could have paid Hewson off instead of killing him.”

  “That’s easy for us to say now, looking at it from the outside, but I’m sure when you’re in the moment, weighing all the options and possible long-term problems, you would go with the option that offers the quickest, most definitive, resolution.”

  “Murder is certainly definitive.”

  “Do you have any leads on the killer?” Jerry took a sip of his coffee and looked across the bay, trying a little too hard to be casual with his question.

  “We have more than that,” I said. “We know who it is.”

  “So he’s been arrested.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But very soon.”

  He looked at me and smiled. “What’s holding them up?”

  “A few procedural details,” I said, smiling right back at him. This cat-and-mouse stuff was fun. But he was far too relaxed and confident. I wanted to see him sweat and it suddenly occurred to me how to make that happen. “But the clock is ticking. We aren’t the only ones going after this guy.”

  “Other law enforcement ag
encies are getting into the act, too?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “The case isn’t that big of a deal.”

  “Then who else is there?”

  “You know those other killings, the really bloody ones you’ve been cleaning up over the last couple of days?”

  “It would be hard to forget them,” he said. “It’s how we met.”

  “Rico Ramirez, the guy who butchered those people, is hunting for Hewson’s murderer, too.”

  “What’s the connection?” Jerry said.

  “Whoever killed Hewson took something that belongs to Rico,” I said. “And Rico wants it back. He won’t ask for it nicely.”

  “I don’t see how Rico is going to tie that engineer’s murder to his missing item.”

  “We’re talking about diamonds, the ones that were hidden in Costa’s couch.”

  “This is getting very complicated.”

  “It’s actually very simple,” I said. “Whoever has the diamonds now is living on borrowed time. He’s going down. The only question is who will get to him first—the police or Rico Ramirez. In one scenario he lives, and in the other he dies a really horrible death.”

  “Maybe the killer will cleverly elude them both.”

  “We don’t think the killer is that smart. If he was, we wouldn’t be onto him so quickly, would we?”

  “But you haven’t been able to arrest him,” Jerry said. “That tells me that there’s a big gulf between what you think you know and what you can prove.”

  “That might be true,” I said. “But that legal distinction isn’t going to mean anything to Rico Ramirez. You’ve seen what the man can do with a knife.”

  Jerry took a big sip of his coffee and tipped his head toward the street behind us.

  “Would your chaperone like to join us for dinner?”

  I turned and saw Monk measuring the space between two parked cars with his tape measure, while a woman, presumably one of the drivers, stood behind him, gesturing angrily at the sidewalk. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I got the impression she wanted him to get the hell away from her and her car.

  I faced Jerry. “I’ve lost my appetite tonight. I’m going to pass on dinner.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” he said. “I was really looking forward to seeing you again.”

  “You will,” I said. “You can count on it.”

  “I thought you said you’d be one with the night,” I said as Monk and I walked back to my car. I’d just finished telling him all about my conversation with Jerry.

  “I was,” he said. “I blended right in.”

  “You were double-checking the gap between parked cars with a tape measure.”

  “Just like any other parallel parker in the city would do.”

  “People don’t use tape measures when they parallel park,” I said.

  “You mean that you don’t.”

  “I mean that nobody does. You stood out.”

  “Only because you knew I was there,” Monk said. “You were hyperaware of me.”

  “Jerry saw you, too.”

  “Only because he knew that you knew that he was the guy and that I would never let you meet him unprotected,” Monk said. “Plus you probably blew my cover by looking at me all the time. Do you think you rattled him?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? The whole thing about Rico Ramirez was pure improvisation on my part. He probably saw right through it.”

  “I don’t see why he would,” Monk said. “It’s a credible threat.”

  “I’m not sure that Jerry thought so.”

  “So we’ll try someone else,” Monk said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mr. Monk Tries Again

  The medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, is tucked between the southeastern edge of Golden Gate Park and the tall woods at the northern slope of Mount Sutro.

  We met Corinne Witt in front of the statue of Hippocrates on Parnassus Avenue. I thought that was a little symbolically heavy-handed on Monk’s part, but I didn’t say anything about it.

  Corinne was wearing a bulging backpack, the zipper unable to close over all the textbooks that she was lugging. She wasn’t the bubbly, enthusiastic girl I remembered. She looked pained. Who wouldn’t, carrying that backpack, along with a big, guilty secret that could send her to prison for life?

  All that considered, I was surprised that she’d agreed to meet us. Then again, saying no might have made her appear as if she had something to hide.

  Surely Jerry had warned her, and everyone else on the crew, that Monk and I were onto them in the hour since I’d met with him on the Embarcadero. I’m sure he’d assured them that we had nothing but theories and that they had to hang tough, because if one of them went down, they all did.

  “Hey, Adrian, Natalie, what’s up?” she said, forcing a smile that still looked more like a grimace.

  “Thank you for seeing us,” Monk said.

  “Sure, no problem, but I don’t have much time,” she said. “I’ve got to cram for a big test.”

  “I’m here about the big test you had yesterday,” Monk said. “The one that you failed miserably.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I didn’t have any other tests this week.”

  “You were presented with a choice and you made the wrong one,” Monk said. “You betrayed the man behind you.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the statue of Hippocrates, draped in his robes, staring down at her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In purity and according to divine law will I carry out my life and my art,” Monk said in an oratory manner. “Into whatever homes I go, I will enter them for the benefit of the sick, avoiding any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption, including the seduction of women or men, whether they are free men or slaves.”

  “I haven’t seduced anyone except my boyfriend.”

  It might have been less confusing if Monk had quoted only the relevant portions of the Hippocratic Oath and left the other stuff out, but it didn’t seem like the right moment for me to say that.

  “You’re a medical student, sworn to uphold the Hippocratic Oath,” Monk said, “and yet you committed an act of the highest impropriety and corruption. You took a life. Stuart Hewson’s.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “I know everything that happened, Corinne. You found diamonds hidden in a wall at Mark Costa’s house. Instead of turning them in to the police, the four of you divvied them up amongst yourselves. But Stuart Hewson saw you, and he demanded a share. You had a choice at that moment. You could have walked away, no harm done. Instead, the four of you broke into Hewson’s house and killed him. You each shot him once with the same gun. How can you ever hope to become a doctor living with that?”

  “You’re creeping me out, Adrian,” she said. “You’re not making any sense at all.”

  “What makes no sense is what you’ve done,” Monk said. “You’re a cleaner, dedicated to cleanliness and order, and yet you made the worst kind of mess. You spilled another person’s blood. And for what? Some glittering stones?”

  “I really have to go.” She started to walk away, but I blocked her path.

  “Are you an organ donor?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Do you have one of those stickers on your driver’s license that tells the authorities that, in the event of your death, your organs should be harvested and donated to others?”

  “Yes, I do,” Corinne said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You might as well peel that sticker off,” I said. “Because when Rico Ramirez is done hacking you up, there will be nothing left of you to save.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Rico Ramirez.”

  “You will, Corinne. You took his diamonds. And some night very soon, he’ll come introduce himself. He’ll be the last person you ever meet on this side of hell.”

  She pushed me aside and marched off
. Monk and I watched her go.

  “ ‘This side of hell?’ ” Monk said.

  “ ‘Whether they are free men or slaves?’”I said.

  “Mine was a direct quote,” Monk said. “Yours was melodrama.”

  “You’re talking to me about melodrama? You’re the one who told her to meet us in front of the statue of Hippocrates. I was taking my cue from you.”

  “I think we made our point,” Monk said. “We played on both her guilt and her fear.”

  “But she didn’t crack,” I said.

  “Yet,” Monk said. “Guilt and fear are a kind of rot. It spreads unless it’s cleaned. And there’s only one way to do that.”

  “I suppose there’s a reason they say that confession is good for the soul.”

  And that made me think about Walter O’Quinn again, who thought he could run away from who he was and what he’d done. He couldn’t do it, and Corinne Witt wouldn’t be able to, either. The question was whether she’d carry that guilt with her as a free woman or in a prison cell.

  I dropped Monk off at his apartment and then headed home. There was an e-mail waiting for me from Ambrose and Yuki with a list of the people who owned condos in the building across from the Excelsior.

  If one of the homeowners was Stacey O’Quinn or her daughter, Rose, neither of them had been courteous enough to buy property under her real name.

  Ambrose and Yuki assured me they were in the midst of running background checks on the homeowners to narrow down the field of suspects.

  I e-mailed them a thank-you note, told them I was in their debt, and went to bed. But I had a hard time falling asleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about Jerry Yermo.

  It was one thing to steal items left behind by the dead—more a crime of opportunity than of premeditation. You lift up a floorboard, or rip open a mattress, and find a stack of cash or gobs of jewelry—it’s like stumbling upon buried treasure. Who is going to know if you take it?

  But this time was different. Jerry had been caught in the act.

  Why didn’t Jerry just tell Hewson to go to hell, turn the diamonds in to the police, and consider the whole incident a frightening wake-up call? Wouldn’t that have made more sense than murdering the guy?