Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop (7 page)
Read Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop Online
Authors: Lee Goldberg
“It wasn’t a date,” I said. “It was two friends having a cup of coffee and it was very nice, thank you. He’s really a sweet, sensitive man under that gruff-cop exterior.”
“He’s too old for you, Mom.”
“I’m not interested in him romantically. He’s someone I can talk to.”
“That’s what your female friends are for,” she said. “Your posse.”
“I don’t have a posse,” I said. “Besides, he knows better than anybody else the unique problems I have to deal with. We share a common bond.”
“You’re both over thirty and single?”
“We both care deeply about Adrian Monk,” I said.
“You’re like two divorced parents who share custody of him,” she said.
“We’re the closest thing Mr. Monk has to a family,” I said.
“What about his brother?”
“He never leaves the house,” I said. “We’re the ones who see him every day. And with that caring and commitment comes a certain amount of responsibility and aggravation.”
“Because he’s a nut job,” Julie said.
“Because he’s special,” I said. “Like you.”
I gave her a kiss on the head and mussed her hair up.
“I’m nothing like Mr. Monk,” she said.
“You don’t think you give me aggravation?”
“Not half as much as you give me,” she said.
“That’s a mother’s job,” I said.
“Then you’re very good at it,” she said, gifting me with a big smile.
It was nice to know I was good at something.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mr. Monk and the Bartender
M
ill Valley is a bedroom community across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in woodsy Marin County. For much of the seventies and eighties, the town was known primarily for the swinging that went on in those bedrooms, hot tubs, and any other place any number or combination of consenting adults gathered.
ill Valley is a bedroom community across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in woodsy Marin County. For much of the seventies and eighties, the town was known primarily for the swinging that went on in those bedrooms, hot tubs, and any other place any number or combination of consenting adults gathered.
The only thing notorious about Mill Valley now was how expensive the homes were. Everything started at a million. I couldn’t even afford a birdhouse there.
Bill Peschel lived with his daughter, Carol Atwater, her husband, Phil, and their two children in a three-bedroom, ranch-style house on a street with landscaping so manicured and sidewalks so clean that they brought a smile to Monk’s face.
Stottlemeyer was leaning against the hood of his police-issued Crown Vic at the curb and chewing on a toothpick when we arrived. I parked alongside the gleaming Mercedes SUV in the driveway and got out. On the back window of the SUV was an inscription in stickered white letters that read, IN LOVING MEMORY OF CLARA PESCHEL.
I don’t understand the point of those automotive memorials. How does buying yourself a nice car celebrate the memory of a loved one? I almost always see those memorials on sports cars or supercarrier-sized SUVs. Does making your Porsche or Hummer a rolling grave marker for your dead family member somehow justify the gas-guzzling indulgence? Or are those memorials actually for people the driver has killed with his car?
To me, those memorials are even stupider than the yellow BABY ON BOARD warning signs, which imply you might have considered smashing into the car if you weren’t alerted that an innocent child was a passenger.
The SUV had one of those signs, too. And two child seats in the back.
“Clara was Bill’s wife,” Stottlemeyer said, following my gaze.
“So why dedicate a car to her?” I asked.
“Maybe her daughter bought it with her inheritance and wanted to acknowledge the gift,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I think it’s weird,” I said. “So who is this guy we’ve come to see?”
“Bill was one of my most reliable snitches,” Stottlemeyer said. “He used to own a dive bar in the Tenderloin. He sold out ten years ago, retired to Sarasota, and then, after his wife died, he moved back here to live with his daughter.”
Monk squatted beside the lawn and admired the neatly trimmed, bright green grass. “I’d like to get the name of their gardener.”
“But you don’t have a yard,” I said.
“I’d just like to compliment him on his fine work,” Monk said.
I turned to the captain. “Do you visit Bill often?”
“I try to make it out here once a month or so.”
“Are you this close to all your snitches?”
“His tips helped me solve a lot of big cases,” Stottlemeyer said. “I might not be a captain today if it weren’t for him.”
I looked at Monk. “Did you know him?”
“I didn’t use confidential informants,” Monk said.
“You didn’t need to,” Stottlemeyer said.
I pointed at him. “There, that’s exactly what I was talking about last night.”
“You saw each other last night?” Monk asked.
I ignored him and pressed my point. “You make self-deprecating remarks like that about your investigative abilities all the time. It reveals your feelings of insecurity and inferiority.”
“I prefer to think of it as stating the facts in a dispassionate and totally candid manner,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Monk. “Yes, we had coffee last night.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I like coffee and getting together with my friends,” the captain said. “It’s something human beings do, Monk. It’s called socializing. You ought to try it sometime.”
“With other people?” he said.
“That’s the idea,” I said.
He shook his head. “That’s how communicable diseases are communicated. Socializing should be done only under the strict supervision of a doctor in a sterile environment.”
“Sounds like fun,” Stottlemeyer said, and headed for the door.
It sounded like the creepy pictures I’d seen of Thanks-giving at the Monk household when he was a child. The dining room table, the floor, and the seat cushions were covered with protective plastic. His mother served them turkey cold cuts with a pair of tongs that she held with rubber-gloved hands like either the meat or the children were radioactive.
“More important, it’s sanitary,” Monk said, and we trailed after the captain.
Stottlemeyer rang the bell and the door was opened by a woman who had the harried look that defines early motherhood. Any mother can recognize it, because she’s looked the same way. It’s a mix of weariness, confusion, and exasperation that comes from trying to do fifteen things at once while taking care of your inexhaustible, demanding, and uncontrollable kids.
Carol Atwater was in her early thirties, thin but bordering on chubby, still carrying a few of those stubborn pregnancy pounds. She was dressed in designer-label casual clothes that were too expensive to really be casual in.
“Hello, Captain,” she said.
“Please, Carol, call me Leland,” he said, then tipped his head towards us. “These are my friends Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger.”
“I have to warn you, things are a little crazy here this morning,” she said. “Actually, it’s been that way ever since Dad moved in.”
“Anything I can do to help?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“You’re doing it just by being here and getting him off my back for a few minutes,” she said, stepping aside to let us in. “It’s great when you or some of the other cops come by. I can only sit around drinking with him for so long.”
“I hear you,” Stottlemeyer said.
I wasn’t sure that I did. I’d known her for only five seconds, but she already didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d hang out with her dad having cocktails all day.
“Dad is where he always is,” she said, gesturing ahead of us.
The entry hall led into a family room that was cluttered with children’s toys. There was a fireplace, a big-screen TV mounted on the wall, and an overflowing toy box in one corner. A pair of French doors opened to the backyard, where I could see a swimming pool ringed by a wrought-iron fence and the sprinklers watering the impossibly green lawn around it.
A baby girl in a T-shirt and diaper sat on a blanket in the center of the room and teethed happily on a plastic doughnut. She was smiling and drooling all over herself. I wanted to steal her and take her home with me.
Monk kept his distance, as if the child were a ferocious dog.
The family room was separated from the open kitchen by a long counter with four bar stools in front of it.
Bill Peschel stood behind the kitchen counter, drying some glasses with a towel. He looked to me to be in his late sixties or early seventies. He wore an apron over his sunken chest and broad belly. Tufts of hair sprang from his nearly bald head like patches of dry, overgrown weeds. His nicotine-stained teeth were almost the same color as his weathered skin.
Behind him, on the opposite counter, was a row of unlabeled bottles filled with water. He motioned us over with a sweep of his bony arm.
“Howdy, folks, come on in,” he said. “There’s plenty of room up here at the bar or you can help yourself to a table.”
He motioned in the general direction of the baby.
Carol lifted up the baby, sniffed the diaper, and made a face.
Monk gasped in horror. “Are you insane?”
“Did that old drunk wet herself again?” Peschel said. “Show her the door, will you please, Bev? She’s scaring away the customers.”
The way he said it, he might have been joking. But I had a feeling he wasn’t. For one thing, he called his daughter Bev and her name was Carol.
“I’m going to go change the baby and see if I can put her down for a nap,” Carol said.
“Take your time,” Stottlemeyer said to her, then sat down on one of the stools and smiled at Peschel. “I’d like a gin and tonic, please. My partner here will have a beer.”
“You can’t do that, Captain. You’re on duty and I don’t drink,” Monk said. “The only alcohol that passes my lips is in mouthwash and I spit it right out again.”
Stottlemeyer shushed Monk with a wave of his hand.
“Stuck with another rookie?” Peschel asked Stottlemeyer.
“Afraid so,” Stottlemeyer said.
Peschel took a coffee mug from amidst the baby bottles in the dish strainer, filled it up with water at the sink, and set it down in front of Monk, who seemed very confused.
“Drink up, Boy Scout,” Peschel said. “Put some hair on your chest.”
“I don’t want hair on my chest, among other places,” Monk said. “But this isn’t a beer. It’s tap water.”
Peschel grinned at Stottlemeyer. “The kid talks tough, but I don’t see him drinking it. You want a chaser with that?”
“He’s fine.” Stottlemeyer glared at Monk, trying to get him to play along. But make-believe wasn’t something Monk was good at.
I sat on the stool beside Monk, took a sip from his mug, and wiped away the imaginary foam from my lips. “Tastes fine to me.”
Peschel smiled. “Are you a working girl, honey?”
“No,” I said. “Just thirsty and lonely.”
“I’ve got nothing against your trade,” he said. “But whatever you score in here, I get a ten percent commission.”
He winked at me and moved down the counter to Stottlemeyer.
“How’s business?” the captain asked him.
“Slow.” Peschel reached for one of the unlabeled bottles of water behind him and poured a splash into a glass, then added a shot from another bottle. He put a napkin down in front of Stottlemeyer and set the glass on top of it. “Besides that drooling old drunk, hardly anybody has been in tonight.”
“So you called me down here for nothing,” Stottlemeyer said. “Except some refreshment.”
“I didn’t say that.” Peschel set a bowl of animal crackers in front of Stottlemeyer and leaned close. “Hy Conrad was in here the other night, shooting his mouth off. He was bragging about the Jewelry Mart smash-and-grab.”
“That’s small-time stuff. I’m in Homicide now.” Stottlemeyer nursed his drink as if it packed a punch. “That kind of news isn’t worth the cost of this watered-down booze you serve.”
“I’m just getting warmed up,” Peschel said. “What if I told you a fancy lady came in here looking for someone to kill her rich husband and make it look like an accident?”
“Why would she come to you?” Monk asked.
“I’ve been tending bar here for a long time,” Peschel said. “I know people who know people.”
“In a residential neighborhood?” Monk said. “That can’t be legal. Do you have a liquor license to be selling alcohol out of your home?”
“I was tending bar here while you were still sucking your mama’s teat,” Peschel said.
The blood drained out of Monk’s face. “I never did that. What a disgusting, horrible thing to say. Captain, arrest this man.”
Stottlemeyer motioned to me to get Monk out of there. I tugged Monk’s sleeve.
“I saw some crooked pictures in the hall,” I said. “Maybe you could straighten them.”
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