Mr. Monk Is a Mess

by Lee Goldberg

  “That’s a terrible plan,” Monk said.

  “You haven’t even heard it yet,” I said.

  “It would be much better to kill two birds with two stones,” Monk said.

  “I think you’re missing the point of the analogy,” Irwin said. “Killing two birds with one stone refers to accomplishing multiple goals with one action.”

  “You could kill four birds with two stones,” Monk said. “That would be a good plan.”

  “Forget about the birds,” I said. “I am sorry I even mentioned birds. For this plan to work, we’re going to need to borrow a mail delivery truck. Can you get us one, Irwin?”

  “No problem,” Irwin said. “I have many brothers in the international fraternity of letter carriers.”

  “Great, now all we need is a script, clockwork timing, this gun, and a lot of luck.”

  “And two stones,” Monk said. “Or four.”

  “Forget the stones. There are no stones involved.” I shifted my gaze between Yuki and Irwin. “If this works, neither one of you will have to be on the run any longer. But I won’t lie to you—this plan will put you both in serious danger.”

  “I’m tired of hiding,” Irwin said.

  “Me, too,” Yuki said.

  “We’re in this together,” Irwin said. “To the bitter end.”

  “Yours is going to come immediately if you don’t stop hitting on me,” she said to him, then looked back at me. “Tell me what you’ve got in mind.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mr. Monk and the Plan

  It had been only a day or so since Ambrose asked us to look for Yuki, but he told me later that it felt to him like it had been weeks. He paced around the house and kept peeking out the windows, hoping to see Yuki returning. But all he saw was the cable installers and phone repair trucks coming and going across the street.

  The way he explained it to me, he’d always felt safe, warm, and comfortable in his home, but ever since Yuki left, he felt trapped. Before she came into his life, there really wasn’t anything outside his door that he wanted.

  Out there were chaos, uncertainty, feces, crowds, unpredictability, wild animals, uncertain borders, billions of insects, automobile traffic, germs, birds—all of which added up to inconceivable dangers and constant risk across an incalculable vastness topped by an endless sky.

  It was a space he couldn’t wrap his mind around. Just thinking about it made him break out in a sweat.

  His house was the opposite of all that.

  The walls and the roof created defined boundaries, safety, calm, certainty, isolation, normalcy, and predictability. He had almost total control over his environment. He could visualize it, know it, and master it.

  But now she was out there somewhere and he was inside and that was unbearable.

  Even if he could go outside, he wouldn’t know where to look for her, and that was if he could somehow shut out all the distractions, all the chaos, all the unknowns.

  And the whole time he was out there, he’d be afraid that while he was gone, she’d come back and leave again because he wasn’t there like he was supposed to be.

  It reminded him of how he’d felt those first few years, even that first long decade, after his father went out for Chinese food and didn’t come back. Ambrose’s biggest fear was that whatever he’d done that drove his father away had now scared Yuki off, too.

  It took thirty years for his dad to finally come back. He prayed that she would return to him sooner than that.

  Ambrose tried to distract himself from his fears and worries by working on his latest assignment—writing an owner’s manual for an electronic rice cooker that was so advanced it also connected to the home wireless network and could be programmed from afar with a smartphone application.

  But his muse had abandoned him when Yuki left. His writing was flat, sterile, passionless. He couldn’t seem to find his voice, or to capture the character of the rice cooker and, with it, the life-changing potential that it offered to the consumer.

  It suddenly struck him that his life without Yuki was like trying to cook rice without water: dry and unfulfilled.

  No wonder he couldn’t write the manual.

  There was a knock at the door. It was a sound that always made him nervous, since it meant he had to breach the security of his home to let someone, or something, from out there gain access to him and his safe little world.

  But it could be Yuki.

  Then again, she wouldn’t knock—she would just come in.

  So who was it?

  Ambrose crept up and peered through the peephole. He saw a cherubic mailman and a U.S. Postal Service truck parked at the curb. This was Irwin Deeb, but Ambrose didn’t know him, of course, at the time.

  The mailman held a Priority Mail flat-rate envelope, which made Ambrose happy.

  Ambrose liked Priority Mail flat-rate envelopes because he didn’t have to calculate postage no matter what he put in them. He also liked having them around. There was something remarkable and comforting about an item that managed to stay the same even as it changed. So he kept a minimum of one hundred Priority Mail flat-rate envelopes in a drawer of his desk at all times just because it made him feel good.

  He opened the door. “Yes?”

  “Are you Ambrose Monk?” Irwin asked.

  “You must be new. Who else would be here?”

  “I have a package for you,” the mailman said and handed it to him.

  “How come it wasn’t delivered with my regular mail?”

  “It came in after your postal carrier left,” the mailman said. “Have a good day.”

  The mailman turned and hurried back to his truck. That’s when Ambrose noticed the Priority Mail envelope was just like all the others in his drawer—missing stamps and a postmark.

  That made no sense at all.

  Why was the mailman delivering a Priority Mail envelope that hadn’t been posted?

  Ambrose was about to call out to the mailman when he noticed something else.

  The address was in Yuki’s handwriting.

  When he looked up again, the mail truck was already driving way.

  Stunned, Ambrose closed the door, locked it and bolted it, then took the envelope to the dining room, placed it on the table, and sat down in front of it.

  This was all very odd.

  He pulled open the tab and removed four crisp sheets of paper, all written in Yuki’s handwriting.

  One appeared to be a letter and the other three looked like pages from a handwritten screenplay.

  He read the letter:

  Ambrose,

  Do not read this letter out loud. Your house is under visual and audio surveillance by very bad people from my past who tried to abduct me at the grocery store. They are in the house and service vehicles across the street.

  Do not spy on them, but do keep compulsively looking out the window for me. You have to act as if nothing has changed.

  I am safe. Adrian and Natalie are with me and we have a plan that we hope will make everything right so that I can come home again.

  I am going to call you in one hour. I have enclosed a script for our phone conversation. It is very important that you follow the script word for word, since they will be listening.

  Please know that I love you, that I am nearby, and that I will never leave you.

  Love,

  Yuki

  Ambrose read the letter twice and when he was done, he realized that he was crying tears of joy.

  * * *

  Yuki called Ambrose precisely one hour later from my car where we were parked on Golden Gate Avenue, just east of Hyde in San Francisco. She used a throwaway cell phone that we bought at a convenience store and we put the conversation on speaker so we could all hear it.

  This is the script that they performed, and quite dramatically, too:

  Ambrose: Greetings, you’ve reached the home of Ambrose Monk. Ambrose Monk speaking.

  Yuki: It’s me.

  Ambrose: Where are yo
u? What happened?

  Yuki: My past caught up with me. A long time ago I stole a lot of money from some very bad people and stashed it away. They want it back.

  Ambrose: So give it to them.

  Yuki: I can’t. It’s gone beyond that now. They also want me dead. I’m calling to say good-bye.

  Ambrose: Please don’t go. We can figure this out.

  Yuki: I already have. I’m going to use the money to start a new life in another country, long enough to get plastic surgery and create a bulletproof identity. When I’m done, nobody will know that I was ever Japanese.

  Ambrose: They’ll catch you if you try to go back to St. Louis for the money.

  Yuki: I don’t have to, it’s right here in San Francisco. The money was in a box I stowed with friends. They had no idea what was inside. A few weeks ago, I had them send it to me at a post office in the city. I told them I was a student now at Hastings.

  Ambrose: What if whoever is chasing you knows about the package?

  Yuki: I am sending a stranger in to get it for me, then meeting him in the alley in back.

  Ambrose: It sounds dangerous. I don’t like it.

  Yuki: I don’t, either. But I promise this isn’t the end. It’s a beginning.

  Ambrose: It feels like the end to me.

  Yuki: Someday a woman you don’t recognize is going to come up to you, give you a kiss, and whisper that she loves you. That woman will be me.

  Yuki hangs up.

  It was a powerful scene, and all of us but Monk had tears in our eyes when it was over. Irwin actually applauded.

  The emotion Yuki and Ambrose brought to the scene was palpable, probably because the words and the sentiments behind them weren’t too far away from what both of them were actually feeling.

  And I am not just saying that because I wrote the little play, with input from Yuki and Monk, of course.

  The post office where Irwin got his mail was on Golden Gate Avenue and Hyde, across from the University of California’s Hastings College of Law.

  We figured it would be too on-the-nose to mention the street that the post office was on in the conversation, so we dropped in a mention of Hastings instead for Blackthorn to work with.

  I wanted to invest Blackthorn in the story. I was hoping that if they had to deduce where the post office was, they’d be so busy flattering themselves for their cleverness that they wouldn’t stop to think that maybe they were being manipulated. I also hoped they would be able to triangulate where the cell phone call originated, which would help them pinpoint the post office, which was right across the street from where we were parked.

  Monk’s contributions included writing Ambrose’s greeting and constantly checking the word count. He was pleased because the final draft of the script was 290 words, 1,182 characters, and 1,460 characters if we included the spaces between words, all even numbers, a balance we achieved thanks to some judicious trimming.

  “I think you have a future as a writer,” Monk said.

  “What would I write about?” I said. “My life isn’t that interesting.”

  “Mine is,” Monk said.

  It was something to think about.

  The post office was a one-story, virtually windowless concrete block on the northeast corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Hyde Street that looked like a remodeled mausoleum which, architecturally speaking, made it fit in perfectly with the Hastings College of Law monoliths that were on two of the opposite corners.

  Golden Gate Avenue was a one-way street with the traffic heading eastbound. Hyde was a one-way street with southbound traffic. We were parked facing the intersection and directly across the street from the mouth of the alley behind the post office.

  The alley didn’t cut clear across the block to Turk Street to the north. Instead, it formed an L, opening on Larkin to the west instead, which meant that Monk and I couldn’t see what was going on at the other end of the alley. But I suspected a black panel van would soon be parking on the Larkin side and another would soon be showing up near us.

  Irwin had changed into street clothes, sunglasses, and a baseball cap that I’d picked up for him on the cheap at the same Marshalls I went to the other day. Now that he was out of his uniform, I didn’t think anybody would recognize him as the mailman who went to Ambrose’s door.

  Immediately after the call, Irwin and Yuki got out of the car and walked over to the Allstars Donuts and Burgers, on the northeast corner of Golden Gate and Hyde, to have a cup of coffee and give all the players in the game time to get into position.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later a black panel van with tinted windows parked in a red zone just a few yards behind us.

  I took out my cell phone and made calls to Yuki and two other people, and then took out the gun and put it in my lap in case my timing was off and things went very wrong.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” Monk asked.

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “So you’re racked with anxiety, self-doubt, inadequacy, and facing the prospect of imminent doom.”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “Now you know how I’ve felt every day since I was born,” Monk said. “Actually, since shortly before my birth. I dreaded the birth canal.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Because I’ve been suffering from PTSD ever since.”

  That’s when Irwin Deeb emerged from the restaurant. We watched him in silence as he crossed the street and entered the post office to claim his vacation hold mail.

  I took a deep breath.

  The game was about to begin. I just prayed it wouldn’t end with anybody getting killed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mr. Monk and the Sting

  It was a tense and seemingly endless few minutes as Irwin waited in line inside the post office and the Blackthorn operatives, in the van behind us, waited for Yuki to appear and go into the alley.

  I was certain that they had spotted her in the restaurant by now, especially since she was sitting at a window booth so that she’d be seen, but they were holding off on making a move because they wanted to catch her with the money in hand.

  And we wanted that, too.

  So we were all showing commendable restraint.

  Irwin emerged from the side entrance of the post office holding a large brown cardboard box sealed with an overabundance of packing tape. He obviously didn’t want to take any chances that this box of money would split open the way the other one had.

  “Here we go,” I said, taking out my badge and putting it on a lanyard around my neck.

  Monk wouldn’t wear his badge on a lanyard since there was no way to keep it centered on his chest at all times.

  Irwin stepped into the alley and waited. Yuki came out of the restaurant, crossed the street, and headed for the alley. I noted a man in a suit rounding the corner at Hyde and falling into step behind her. At the same time another man, wearing jogging shorts and supposedly listening to an iPod, came around the corner at Larkin and walked toward her.

  They were boxing her in.

  Yuki pretended not to notice, but I knew that she did.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that the driver of the van was already turning his wheels toward the alley in preparation for the grab.

  This was going to happen fast. I started the car, released the brake, and put the gear into drive.

  Yuki stepped into the alley, traded some small talk with Irwin, then took the package from him. She started toward the sidewalk and the two men grabbed her, the guy in the suit jabbing her with a Taser.

  Irwin bolted down the alley. He wasn’t being a coward. He’d been specifically instructed not to attempt to rescue her. We wanted her captured.

  But the Taser wasn’t part of the plan.

  The van shot across the street—nearly causing two collisions with oncoming vehicles—and blocked the entrance to the alley. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I was certain that the two men heaved Yuki’s limp body
and the money inside the van and climbed aboard themselves, sliding the door shut behind them.

  The abduction was over in less than thirty seconds.

  I pulled out in front of the van, getting a head start on it as it sped off. Just before the intersection, I yanked the wheel hard to the left, fishtailing the car directly across the van’s path, giving the driver no time to veer around me.

  The van skidded to a stop, burning rubber and creating a screech that sounded like Godzilla’s fingernails on an enormous chalkboard, raising goose bumps all over my body.

  I swung my door open, stepped out in a firing stance, and aimed my gun at the driver.

  “Police! Get out of the vehicle with your hands up!”

  I guess I wasn’t very convincing, because the driver sneered at me, put the vehicle in reverse, and floored it.

  The van’s tires squealed against the asphalt as it backed up at high speed.

  On a one-way street.

  The cars behind the van swerved wildly to avoid collisions, sideswiping parked vehicles on both sides of the street.

  It was ugly.

  People on the sidewalks screamed, flattening themselves against the buildings and ducking into alcoves. It was a miracle that nobody got hurt.

  Monk got out of the car and looked at me over the hood. “Was this part of the plan?”

  “It’s evolving,” I said, my back to him, my eyes still on the van as it retreated toward Larkin. I could hear sirens approaching from somewhere.

  Monk ran to the corner. If I’d been smart, I would have done the same and got off the street.

  But I stood my ground in a firing stance. I was debating whether to shoot, and was an instant away from having to make a decision when two black-and-white police cars and Captain Stottlemeyer’s Crown Vic raced across Larkin.

  The cop cars came to a screeching stop in the intersection, creating a barrier behind the van, which skidded to a jarring halt just shy of rear-ending them.

  Captain Stottlemeyer had been my first call after the one to Yuki. But my timing had been off. It took the police longer to show up than I’d anticipated.