Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out

by Lee Goldberg

  “That was educational,” I said. “What did I learn?”

  “They saw us with the captain,” Monk said. “They thought we were fuzz. We need to put some distance between us and the Man.”

  Monk headed east on Sutter and right into the heart of the Tenderloin, which had a long history of being one of the most violent, crime- ridden areas in the city, even though it was tucked between the Civic Center and the opulence and excess of Union Square. Supposedly the neighborhood got its colorful nickname because the police were given “battle pay” to work there and, if they managed to survive, could afford to eat tenderloin instead of chuck steaks.

  I don’t know if I believe that story, but it certainly fits San Francisco’s character.

  The Tenderloin was dense with the homeless and the crazy, along with prostitutes and drug dealers. But if you moved quickly and didn’t look for trouble, you’d be fine. But Monk wasn’t following those simple rules.

  “You don’t want to be here, Mr. Monk.” The truth was that I didn’t want to be there, at least not with him doing what he was doing.

  “Loosen up, Natalie, or you’re going to blow my cover. Follow my lead so you don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  “You mean like this?”

  I started snapping my fingers, taking long strides, and bobbing my head like a rooster, just like Monk, only more exaggerated and ridiculous. I looked like I was trying to imitate Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd as those two “wild and crazy guys.”

  Monk nodded at me approvingly. “That’s more like it. Now we’re fitting in.”

  There was no satisfaction in making fun of Monk because he never got the joke. He was incapable of seeing himself as others saw him. But I did it anyway because it made me feel better.

  Monk approached an older man at the mouth of an alley. The man was in filthy, ragged clothes, wearing a ski cap and drinking from a bottle in a paper bag. His hair was matted and his whiskers looked like a Brillo pad that hadn’t been rinsed after cleaning dishes. He smelled like a urinal.

  “Whatcha drinking, man?” Monk said.

  “What’s it to you?” Brillo growled.

  “I need the 411 on the H2O,” he said. “I like to drink the clean stuff.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s cool. I’m not Smokey. I’m just a thirsty hobo bum like you, hanging ten.”

  “You get near me and I’ll stick you.” Brillo yanked a shiv out of his pocket with his free hand and clutched his bottle close to his chest with the other. “This bottle is mine.”

  Monk immediately backed away, holding up his hands. “I dig you, man. It’s copacetic and antiseptic.”

  Brillo glared at us and dragged himself into the alley, settling down in a nest of blankets and cardboard behind a Dumpster.

  “Mr. Monk, this is pointless,” I said. “Street people don’t drink Summit Creek.”

  “Because it’s too valuable,” Monk said, spotting a lanky black man in a long leather jacket and leather pants strutting by across the street. “And he knows that.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The Huggy Bear.” Monk hurried after him and then, as he got near, slowed down and began snapping his fingers again, getting the man’s attention.

  I groaned and caught up with Monk just as he approached Huggy Bear.

  “Hey, my man, what’s the score?” Monk asked.

  Huggy Bear turned around. “You want to score?”

  “Right on. This hip cat is ready to boogie.”

  The man reached into his overcoat and pulled out a Baggie full of multicolored pills.

  “Those are narcotics,” Monk said. “Neato.”

  “I got all the candy you and your lady need,” Huggy Bear said, grinning at me. “Just name your flavor.”

  “Out of sight,” Monk said. “But what have you got to wash them down with?”

  “Huh?” Huggy Bear said.

  Monk leaned close and whispered, “I’m looking for something very special. God’s water.”

  The man looked confused. “You mean like a golden shower?”

  “Yes,” Monk said. “A golden shower.”

  I spoke up quickly, shaking my head and stepping in front of Monk. “No, no, no, he’s not interested in a golden shower.”

  “Yes, I am,” Monk said.

  “No, you’re not,” I said.

  “I desperately want it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Excuse us a moment,” Monk said to Huggy Bear and then pulled me aside, lowering his voice to a whisper. “What are you doing? You’re going to blow the deal.”

  “Do you know what a golden shower is?”

  “It’s obviously street code for Summit Creek, water that’s as valuable as gold.”

  “It’s pee.”

  “Summit Creek is not p-p-p—” Monk’s expression hardened with anger. “It’s not that.”

  “What you’re asking for is,” I said. “A golden shower is when someone pees on you.”

  Monk opened his mouth to speak, struggled to find the words, but he clearly just couldn’t get his mind around the horrific concept. It was too terrible to contemplate.

  His eyes rolled back in his head and he started to collapse. I caught him and lowered him, and myself, slowly to the ground until I was sitting with his head cradled in my lap.

  Huggy Bear hurried off, which was fine with me. I took a disinfectant wipe from my purse and dabbed Monk’s forehead with it. Nothing soothed him quite as much as disinfectant.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Monk, you’re fine,” I said. “Nothing happened.”

  “It has in my head,” Monk said. “It’s an image that will haunt me for the rest of my life, which is about sixty days, give or take.”

  “You’re in the Tenderloin, Mr. Monk. That’s the kind of thing people sell here,” I said. “Not bottled water.”

  “We need to arrest that man.”

  “He’s gone, Mr. Monk.”

  “Huggy Bear is a sicko,” he said.

  “Yes, he is.” I dabbed Monk’s forehead some more.

  “A pee-peddling, drug-dealing sicko,” Monk said. “I bet he hasn’t washed his hands all day.”

  “You need to calm down, Mr. Monk.”

  “What about my water?”

  “We’ll find you new water to drink,” I said. “But until then, you need to pull yourself together.”

  “I’ve never had anything else to drink.”

  “Think of it as an adventure,” I said.

  “I hate adventure,” Monk said.

  “Think of it as a new experience.”

  “And I hate new experiences.”

  “Don’t think at all,” I said.

  “All I do is think. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

  We sat there in silence. Across the street, the Pillsbury CSI technician walked up to a parked Chevy Malibu. He yanked a parking ticket out from under a windshield wiper, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the street before driving off.

  That seemed to snap Monk out of his malaise. It gave him a sense of purpose. He stood and snapped his fingers at me for a wipe. I gave him one.

  Monk marched across the street to the discarded ticket and picked it up with the wipe. I already had a Baggie out for it when he returned.

  “Pete littered,” Monk said. “And it’s not just any scrap of paper. It’s a parking citation, an official police document. That shows a blatant disrespect for the law.”

  “Yes, it does.” I held out the open Baggie. Monk dropped the wipe and the crumpled ticket inside.

  “He’s a law enforcement professional. This is what happens when a leader sets a bad example,” Monk said. “I wish Captain Stottlemeyer could see what his toothpick has wrought.”

  “I’ll keep the Baggie for him,” I said.

  “The captain is going to be so ashamed.”

  That thought, and the certainty that he’d been proved right, perked Monk up. Balance had been restored. He rolled his shoulders an
d we started walking back toward Van Ness.

  “We were sitting on the sidewalk,” Monk said, moving briskly. “Weren’t we?”

  “Yes, we were.”

  “We’re going to have to burn the clothes that I’m wearing when I get home.”

  “You could wash them instead.”

  “Would you wash clothes that had been irradiated?”

  “Your clothes aren’t radioactive.”

  “I wish they were,” Monk said. “It might kill some of the germs. You should burn what you’re wearing, too.”

  “I can’t afford to burn my clothes,” I said. “Unless you’d like to give me a raise.”

  “Let’s compromise,” he said.

  “Okay, what do you have in mind?”

  “You burn your clothes and I don’t give you a raise.”

  “How is that a compromise?”

  “You’re meeting me halfway.”

  “And what are you doing?”

  “I’m already there,” he said.

  I had to smile. As exasperating as he was, he was himself again, at least until he got thirsty.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mr. Monk in Therapy

  Dr. Neven Bell’s office in North Beach was all dark wood and leather furniture and was more masculine than a jock strap. I felt like I was sitting in the parlor of a private, and very snooty, men’s club.

  But the decor was a sharp contrast to the man who actually occupied the office. Dr. Bell was gray-haired and balding, wore lots of sweaters and tweeds, and exuded so much confidence and warmth that you couldn’t help feeling safe and comfortable around him. Whatever your problem might be, he looked like the man who had the answer.

  I’d only been sitting in the waiting area for a few minutes, barely enough time to read half of the cartoons in the New Yorker, when Dr. Bell slipped out of his office, closed the door behind him, and came to me.

  “Adrian and I are going to need the rest of the afternoon,” he said.

  “What about your other patients?”

  “Fortunately, my day is clear.”

  That was a surprise—not that Monk needed more attention, but that Dr. Bell had the time to give it to him on such short notice. Usually the shrink was so booked up that he wouldn’t indulge Monk for even an extra minute once a session was over. Apparently, even shrinks were feeling the pinch of the bad economy.

  “That’s good, because he’s lost his grip,” I said. “His reaction to this water thing is way, way over the top, even for him.”

  “It’s not about the water, Natalie.” Dr. Bell sat down on the edge of the coffee table. “It’s about what it represents.”

  “Of course you’d say that,” I said. “You’re a shrink.”

  “It’s a bottle of water to you and me, but for Adrian it’s a profound loss that requires a fundamental adjustment for him emotionally and psychologically.”

  “All he has to do is switch brands,” I said. “I’m sure there are other waters that are just as old and pure.”

  “You don’t understand. This is an attack on his carefully ordered and maintained life. He’s losing one of his last remaining ties to his mother, to his past, to a way of life.”

  “A dysfunctional way of life,” I said. “A lot of his problems are his creepy mother’s fault.”

  “Now who is sounding like a shrink?” Dr. Bell said with a smile.

  “There’s a reason Monk is obsessive-compulsive and his brother, Ambrose, won’t leave the house.”

  “Even so, losing the water he loves means facing, at least to some degree, his inability to control his world,” Dr. Bell said. “He needs to accept the loss and then confront the uncertainty and necessity of change.”

  “He still has to drink something.”

  “Don’t worry. Adrian won’t die of thirst. He’ll get through this and come out of it a stronger person.”

  “Will two hours be enough time for you today?” I said.

  “I think so,” Dr. Bell said, getting up again. “Convincing Adrian, however, might be more difficult.”

  I was in the mood for a latte at Starbucks but my sense of fiscal responsibility prevailed and I went to McDonald’s for coffee instead, using the money I’d saved to buy a small order of fries and a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle.

  I took my coffee, fries, and newspaper and walked up to Washington Park so I could enjoy the fresh air and the cloudless blue sky.

  I was lucky and found VIP seating—a bench that was perfectly positioned to give me fabulous, postcard-perfect views wherever I turned my head.

  In front of me, Coit Tower rose above the trees and the rooftops on Stockton Street. To my right, south on Columbus Avenue, I could see the top of the Transamerica Pyramid. And to my left, I could see St. Peter and Paul Church, white as a wedding cake, on Filbert Street.

  But instead of appreciating those views, I couldn’t take my eyes off my newspaper. It was like looking at a train wreck, a plane crash, and a naked celebrity all at once.

  Almost all the stories were connected to the economy in some way, which would ordinarily be a big bore. But not in these dark days.

  There was a big piece on Jack Moggridge, the ongoing criminal trial, and the tens of millions of dollars he’d taken from Big Country. That wasn’t news. The big development was the discovery of what he’d done with all of his profits.

  Moggridge invested almost every penny he had with Bob Sebes and his Reinier Investment Fund, which six months ago undoubtedly seemed like a very smart move. Sebes was regarded as a financial genius in the banking industry and his $2 billion fund delivered consistent returns for his investors regardless of the ups and downs of the world economy.

  But this time, the economy had gotten so bad that many of Sebes’ investors, in deep financial troubles, were cashing out of the fund because they needed money. The problem was, Sebes didn’t have the cash to cover the withdrawals and a few weeks ago he was forced to make a terrible confession.

  His fund was a fraud, a massive Ponzi scheme, and the $2 billion was all gone. Where it had gone, he wasn’t saying.

  So that meant Moggridge was broke.

  And while that was sweet, poetic justice for his criminal actions, it was hard to savor knowing that his victims would never be compensated for what they’d lost because of him.

  Meanwhile Sebes, responsible for one of the biggest financial frauds in history, had been placed under house arrest in his Pacific Heights mansion pending his trial. The news today was that a judge, despite the public outcry, had upheld the house arrest, arguing that Sebes had surrendered his passport, was wearing a GPS tracking device on his ankle, and, as one of the most reviled men on Earth right now, there was nowhere for him to run.

  I could understand the judge’s ruling, but it still pissed me off.

  If I mugged a guy in Washington Park for the hundred dollars in his wallet, I’d go to jail. But Bob Sebes had defrauded banks, pension plans, charities, and thousands of individuals out of billions of dollars and he got to stay at home, eating caviar and drinking champagne all day in his satin pajamas.

  Why did he get locked up at home instead of in a jail cell? Was it because he was rich? Because he was once a highly respected figure on Wall Street? Because he hobnobbed with movie stars, famous athletes, and world leaders?

  Of course that was why.

  What made it harder for me to accept was the fact that even if he was eventually sentenced to prison, it wouldn’t be the same one that I’d have to go to for mugging somebody. I’d be sent to some godforsaken hellhole and have to share a tiny windowless cell with some drooling child molester. But Sebes would get sent to a Ritz- Carlton prison with individual suites instead of cells, four-hundred-ply bedsheets, satellite TV, and espresso machines.

  There was a file photo accompanying the article of Sebes and his wife, Anna, a former concert violinist, relaxing on their yacht in Marin. She was his college sweetheart and, like many long- married couples, they’d grown to look like fraterna
l twins. Or maybe they just shared the same plastic surgeon.

  They both looked tanned, healthy, and comfortable, and far younger than their fifty-plus years. They also looked pretty pleased with themselves, which is probably why the editor chose the picture for the story. But to be fair to the Sebeses, I’d probably look vibrantly youthful and smugly self-satisfied if I had a few billion dollars in the bank, vacation homes in France and Hawaii, a yacht, his-and-hers personal trainers, and a full-time chef.

  The rest of the stories on the front page were just as cheery and upbeat. I read about the state’s $30 billion budget shortfall, the demise of a historic restaurant that had survived such calamities as the 1903 earthquake, and the possible closure of the Chronicle itself, which would leave the city without a single newspaper.

  I crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the trash. I was so angry and depressed that I was tempted to ask Dr. Bell if he had a couple of hours for me, too.

  No wonder Monk didn’t bother keeping up on the news. I considered following his example and living in blissful ignorance, only in his case it was blissless.

  On my way back to Dr. Bell’s, I stopped at a grocery store and picked up an assortment of bottled waters for Monk to choose from to replace Summit Creek. I didn’t expect him to pick one right away, but at least it would be a start.

  Monk was waiting for me outside of Dr. Bell’s office when I drove up. He didn’t look as content as he’d been when he found the crumpled parking ticket, but he wasn’t as overwrought as he’d been when we’d arrived at the crime scene. He got inside the car, buckled up, and let out a long, mournful sigh.

  “Was Dr. Bell helpful?” I asked as we drove off.

  Monk shrugged. “When you know that a blazing meteor is heading straight toward Earth and will completely eradicate the human race, how helpful can a visit to your psychiatrist really be?”

  “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a tiny bit?”

  Monk nodded. “A tiny bit.”

  “It’s a bottle of water, Mr. Monk.”

  “It’s a meteor. The thing is, it’s already hit Earth. We just haven’t died yet.”