Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop (29 page)

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Authors: Lee Goldberg

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When you walk the streets you’ll hear a cacophony of Chinese, from people talking and yelling, movie clips playing loudly in DVD shops, and music blaring from the stores, apartments, and car radios.
And you’ll smell incense mingling with the luscious aroma of Chinese food being fried, grilled, boiled, and steamed in the countless bakeries, restaurants, and tearooms.
Chinatown is a complete sensory experience.
I like letting myself be pushed by the flow of tourists down Grant Street because it takes me past the scores of gift shops that are spilling out onto the sidewalks with things like silk ties, back scratchers, prayer wheels, Buddha statues, chop-sticks, porcelain figurines, teapots, T-shirts, pottery, sandals, wind chimes, pot holders, mah-jongg sets, bells, Hello Kitty pillows and bootleg Versace bags.
Monk hates Chinatown, of course, for all the reasons I love it. He becomes overwhelmed by the disorganization, the disarray, and the lack of symmetry. For him, it’s anarchy.
So rather than inflict Grant Street on him, I parked on the western periphery of Chinatown and we walked down one of the less busy and ornamented streets to JoAnne’s, an unassuming storefront tucked between a dim sum restaurant and a laundry.
The simple sign on the salon read, JOANNE’S, beneath what I assumed was the same thing written in much larger Chinese script. Elaborate drapes, decorated with pagodas, wa terfalls, dragons, and carp, were closed over the windows, so it wasn’t possible to peek inside. But from the outside, the salon didn’t look to me like the epicenter of chic for skin and nail treatments.
I opened the door and we stepped inside.
Based on the facade, inside I expected to see a drab neighborhood nail salon full of wizened old Chinese women sitting in torn vinyl chairs.
I was half-right.
The old Chinese women were there, but so were women of all ages, sizes, races, and ethnicities. They all wore white terry-cloth robes and sat in retro-futuristic chairs made of black leather and chrome. Their faces were being slathered with white cream and their fingernails were being buffed like sports cars by beautiful, slender young Chinese stylists with incredibly smooth skin, identical short haircuts, and one-piece white uniforms that resembled a lab coat on top and a miniskirt on the bottom.
The stylists looked so much alike that they might have been androids manufactured from a single mold.
The place resembled a nightclub more than a salon. The floors were black marble, the walls were gleaming white, and the curved-edge counters were stainless steel and it was all bathed in an otherworldly blue glow from ambient LED lighting.
“I like it here,” Monk said.
I wasn’t surprised. The stylists all looked alike and the customers, with the white face cream and matching robes, did, too. The interior was shiny and clean and the ambient light was the same blue as toilet bowl cleaner.
I spotted Linda Wurzel in the back of the salon. She didn’t have cream on her face or I might not have recognized her from a distance. She was wearing a robe and sitting in a chair in front of an ankle-high aquarium on the floor. It wasn’t until we got closer that I realized that her feet were actually
in
the aquarium and that there were several other women nearby sitting with their feet in individual fish tanks, too.
Dozens of tiny brown fish swarmed around her feet as if they were devouring them.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Wurzel?”
She looked up at me with those unnaturally alert eyes. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m Natalie Teeger and this is Adrian Monk.”
She glanced at Monk, whose gaze was fixed on her feet.
“The famous detective? The one who solved the murder of those two judges?”
“That’s him,” I said.
“You work with Nick Slade,” she said.
“You know him?”
“I’ve bumped into him at the InTouchSpace Invitational Golf Tournament,” she said. “He was one of our many early investors. What can I do for you?”
“You could take your feet out of that aquarium,” Monk said.
“It’s not an aquarium,” she said. “I’m getting a pedicure. The fish are eating the dead skin on my feet.”
“Piranha!” Monk yelled.
He grabbed her legs under the knees and yanked her feet out of the water.
Her chair tipped over backwards but I caught it before she fell.
Linda Wurzel yelped in surprise and slapped his hands, drawing stares from everyone in the room.
“Let go of me,” she said.
Monk did. “Are you insane? You’re lucky you still have feet.”
“I appreciate your concern for me, Mr. Monk, but they aren’t piranha; they are garra rufa, which means ‘doctor fish,’” she said. “They’re harmless carp.”
“They aren’t harmless if they are gnawing on your flesh,” Monk said. I have to admit I was with Monk on this one.
“They’re only eating the dead skin,” she said, and dipped her feet back in, causing Monk to gasp. I wasn’t too comfortable with it, either. “It’s a painless and totally natural pedicure that has been around for centuries.”
“So has the bubonic plague but we don’t use it as a weight-loss treatment,” Monk said.
Wurzel laughed. “This is a far more hygienic pedicure than anything traditional salons do. But I’m sure you didn’t come here to save me from some hungry carp.”
Monk eyed the fish warily, as if waiting for them to show their true, vicious nature. I had a hard time tearing my eyes away from them myself.
“We’re investigating the murder of a police officer named Paul Braddock,” I said.
“What does that have to do with me?” Wurzel asked.
“We think his murder might have something to do with the killing of Bill Peschel.”
She shook her head. “I still don’t see how I can help. I don’t know either one of them.”
“You bought Peschel’s tavern in the Tenderloin ten years ago,” I said. “There’s a Jamba Juice there now.”
“Oh, yes, I remember the building,” she said. “You’ll have to forgive me; I own so many properties.”
“Why did you buy that one?” Monk asked without taking his eyes off of the fish.
“I buy properties throughout San Francisco in areas that I think will eventually become prime residential and shopping districts,” she said. “So far, I’ve been right more times than I’ve been wrong.”
“Did your husband ever visit Peschel’s tavern or have any kind of relationship with him?” I said.
“Of course not,” she said. “Why would you think so?”
“Because Peschel’s early investment in InTouchSpace made him very well-off.”
“That’s true of hundreds of other people,” she said.
“And you bought his building,” I said.
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” she said.
Frankly, neither did I. But I had that ticklish feeling in my chest again and I didn’t know why.
A Chinese woman approached holding a bowl of white cream. She looked like a slightly older version of the Chinese androids we saw when we came in. She must have been the original model.
“Hello, I am JoAnne,” she said. “Welcome to my salon.”
I was right.
“May I?” JoAnne asked Wurzel.
“Please do,” Wurzel replied. JoAnne started to apply the cream to her face. “Have you ever had a geisha facial, Miss Teeger?”
“It’s a little out of my price range.”
“It’s heaven,” she said.
“You’ll be there soon if you keep letting creatures feed on you,” Monk said.
“There’s nothing dangerous about it,” JoAnne said. “It’s certified by the health department. It’s totally natural.”
“So is letting vultures and maggots pick at your flesh,” Monk said. “Is that your next beauty treatment?”
I gestured to the white cream. “Why is this called a geisha facial?”
“Because Kabuki actors and geishas would use the cream to remove their makeup and replenish their skin,” JoAnne said. “The Chinese have also used it for centuries. I’m using my great-great-great-grandmother’s mixture.”
“What’s in this that isn’t in my jar of Noxzema?”
“Milled nightingale guanine mixed with rice bran,” JoAnne said.
Monk looked up. “You must be mistaken. Guanine is—”
“Bird poop,” she interrupted. “This is made from nightingale droppings.”
Monk froze and his face went almost as white as Mrs. Wurzel’s.
“You’re putting avian excrement on this woman?” He looked at Wurzel. “And you’re letting her?”
“It feels wonderful,” Wurzel said.
“The guanine has been sterilized with ultraviolet light to kill the bacteria,” JoAnne said. “It cleans and revitalizes your skin better than anything else.”
“You’re cleaning people’s skin with excrement instead of soap,” Monk said.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” JoAnne said. “But yes, I suppose you’re right.”
Monk turned his head and looked at all the other women in the salon with the cream on their faces. He swallowed hard.
“Excuse me, I need to leave,” he said slowly, measuring his words. “Natalie, could I borrow your cell phone, please?”
I handed him my phone and he immediately started dialing as he walked away. He was probably making an emergency call to Dr. Bell. All in all, I thought he was showing admirable restraint. I was prepared for him to tackle JoAnne and wrestle the cream from her grasp.
JoAnne and Mrs. Wurzel watched him go. They didn’t realize they’d gotten off lucky.
“What’s his problem?” Wurzel asked.
“He can’t accept that putting bird poop on your face is good for you. It offends his sensibilities,” I said. “I have to admit I’m skeptical, too.”
“I’m glad I didn’t tell him about our kitty litter exfoliation treatment or our Egyptian cleanse,” JoAnne said.
I could guess what the kitty litter exfoliation was but not the Egyptian option.
“What’s an Egyptian cleanse? Camel pee?”
JoAnne laughed and so did Mrs. Wurzel. It was nice to know that I hadn’t offended them.
“Cow bile, ostrich eggs, and resin,” Joanne said.
“I think I’ll stick with Noxzema,” I said, and turned to Mrs. Wurzel. “If anything occurs to you about Bill Peschel or Paul Braddock, please give us a call at Intertect.”
I didn’t have a card to give her but I figured Intertect was in the book.
“I will,” she said.
I walked outside and found Monk standing across the street. I assumed that he wanted to put some distance between himself, the poop facials, and the flesh-eating carp.
Monk said good-bye to whomever he was talking to and handed me the phone.
“That’s a chamber of horrors.”
“I wouldn’t pay two hundred bucks to have bird crap smeared on my face,” I said. “But maybe it works. Women wouldn’t be coming from all over to have it done if it didn’t.”
“JoAnne must be using some form of mind control on them,” Monk said.
“It’s not mind control. It’s insecurity and futility. They just want to look young and pretty as long as they can and keep the pimples and wrinkles away forever. I’m the same way. I think it’s hardwired into us.”
“Those women are in mortal danger,” Monk said. “It took all of my willpower not to do something about it on the spot.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because it’s a dangerous, volatile situation. JoAnne and her evil minions are practically holding loaded guns to the heads of those women. I didn’t want to cause a panic. So I played it cool.”
“I’m glad that you did, Mr. Monk. I think that taking a relaxed, low-key approach was exactly the right thing to do.”
“I’m leaving it to the professionals,” he said.
“What professionals?”
That’s when I heard the sirens. Within moments, fire trucks pulled up in front of us and firefighters in hazardous materials suits charged into the salon.
“You called a haz-mat team?” It was a rhetorical question, of course, since the team was right there.
“And plenty of backup,” he said.
“Backup?” I asked. “What kind of backup?”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than two black, windowless vans screeched to a stop behind the fire trucks, the back doors flew open, and dozens of men in full paramilitary gear and carrying automatic weapons spilled out and stormed into the building.
“Who are they?”
“Homeland Security,” Monk said.
Linda Wurzel and the other customers were hustled outside at gunpoint in their bathrobes and white face masks. That would have been embarrassing enough, but then the satellite broadcast vans from the local TV stations began to arrive.

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