Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (22 page)

“You’ve got a deal,” I said.

We shook on it, and then I pulled her into a hug. When I let her go, she looked at me with a furrowed brow.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“Growing up,” I said. “Being adorable. Surprising me. Being you. Do I need to go on?”

“No, you’re making me nauseous as it is.” There was a knock at the door. Julie leaped off the couch and opened it. Joe Cochran stood there with another bouquet of flowers.

“You didn’t have to bring me more flowers,” I said.

“I didn’t bring them for you. They’re mostly for me in case I didn’t do a good enough job showering after our day in the dump,” he said with a grin. “They’re very fragrant. Mind if I carry them the rest of the evening?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

I took the flowers from him and put them in the vase. I told Julie not to wait up, gave her a kiss, and we left.

Joe took me to dinner at Audiffred, a French bistro that was, appropriately enough, located on the street level of the historic Audiffred Building at One Market Street down at the waterfront. It was constructed in the late 1800s by a homesick Frenchman, so the building had such typical Parisian architectural motifs as a mansard roof, decorative brick battlements, and tall, round-topped windows.

Audiffred was a fancier place than I’d dressed for, but the San Francisco dining scene had adopted the L.A. philosophy that you can go anywhere in jeans and running shoes as long as you have the attitude to pull it off.

Well, if there’s one thing I’ve got plenty of, it’s attitude. It’s a shame that won’t pay the mortgage.

Joe ordered a steak, well-done, with fingerling potatoes and sautéed spinach. The menu noted that the cow who sacrificed himself for Joe’s meal was a vegan and never consumed hormones. I’d never seen a cow’s diet mentioned on a menu before.

I ordered rack of lamb, but when I asked the superficially perky waitress whether my sheep was a vegan or not, she just gave me a blank look. She didn’t even crack a smile when I asked what the fish liked to eat before they ended up on the plate. Joe was amused, though, and that’s what counted.

“They take themselves way too seriously here,” he said. “And the food isn’t good enough for them to be so snooty.”

“Then why do you come here?”

“The food is fair, the decor is nice, and the place has been a friend to the fire department for over one hundred years.”

“You mean they donate money?”

“Better than that,” Joe said. “They donate booze.”

He explained that the Audiffred Building was one of very few in the city that survived the devastating 1906 earthquake and the fires in the aftermath.

“The owner of the saloon that was here offered the firefighters a barrel of whiskey each if they saved the building from the flames,” Joe said. “They did, and to this day firefighters drink here for free.”

“Maybe the waiters are just snooty to you because they know you’re not paying for the drinks,” I said. “I’m not a nurse or anything, but should you be having alcohol after what happened to you the other night?”

Joe touched the bandage. “This? Ah, it’s nothing. I’ve been hurt worse.”

“You have?”

“I’ve got a nasty burn on my back from a fire a couple of years ago,” he said. “It’s not a pretty sight, which is why I wore a shirt to dinner.”

“I wondered why you did that,” I said.

He went on to tell me the story of how he got burned. To be honest, I don’t remember a lot of the details, except that it involved a blazing tenement, a staircase that gave way, and a narrow escape. As he told the story, his whole face lit up, and he got more and more animated, the words spilling out in an excited rush. It was a memory he didn’t mind reliving and a story he liked to tell, even though it was an experience that left him physically scarred for life.

I know that’s part of what you do on your first couple of dates: You tell stories about yourself that show you in a really great light, or that illustrate aspects of your life and your character that are important to you. But sometimes you reveal things about yourself that you didn’t intend.

The story certainly proved Joe was caring, brave, and heroic, but that’s not the message I took from it. What I got was that he liked fighting fires. No, he
loved
fighting fires. The risks meant nothing to him. The accident that happened years ago and the one that happened the other night were near-misses he was bound to experience again.

He loved battling fires the way Mitch loved flying fighter jets. The reasons why I was attracted to Joe weren’t a surprise to me. He was great-looking, with a body I wanted to devour, and had a personality that reminded me of Mitch’s.

But the more he talked, and the more attracted I became to him, the more my anxiety intensified.

Was it fear of a new relationship? Or was it something else?

Our dinner was served, and Joe asked me about how I balanced single motherhood and working for Monk. I think he asked me because he wanted to eat his steak before it got cold, and he couldn’t do that and tell another rousing firefighting anecdote.

So now it was my turn to tell a story about myself that would show what a clever, funny, caring, strong, terrific person I was. My vague anxiety turned into a very clear and definable panic. What story could I possibly tell that would accomplish all that? I didn’t think I had one.

“I don’t think of it as balancing single motherhood with anything else. Julie comes first, before me, before anything. I just try to make it through each day without screwing up too badly.”

“How did you end up working for Monk?”

Okay, that was a good story. But unlike Joe’s stories of his harrowing brushes with death, it wasn’t one I enjoyed telling. I was much better at telling funny anecdotes about Mr Monk’s bizarre, obsessive-compulsive behavior, though I always felt guilty afterward, as if I were breaching a trust.

“Someone broke into my house late one night. I walked in on him and he tried to kill me. I killed him instead. The police couldn’t figure out why the intruder was in my house, so they called in Mr. Monk to help them investigate.”

Joe set down his fork. “You killed a man?”

I nodded. “I didn’t mean to; I was defending myself. I still can’t believe I did it. When you’re in a situation like that, I suppose instinct takes over. I did what I had to do to survive. I was lucky; there happened to be a pair of scissors within reach. If there hadn’t been, I’d be dead.”

I never thought of myself as capable of violence, certainly not of killing someone. It was a memory I tried to avoid. It scared me. It wasn’t so much the attacker himself, the fight, or the fact that I almost died that terrified me. The nightmare was imagining what would have happened to Julie if I were killed.

What would he have done to her? And if she escaped, what would her life have been like after losing both of her parents to violent deaths?

Maybe it was that fear that gave me the ability to fight back so hard, to kill rather than be killed. It gave me an edge I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

After that experience, I immediately enrolled Julie in tae kwon do class, despite her protests. I wanted to be sure that if she were ever attacked, her instincts would take over, and that her instincts would kick ass.

I could see that Joe wanted more details about the killing, but he was kind and perceptive enough not to ask. So he moved past that.

“Why was the intruder in your house?”

“Mr. Monk figured out he was after a rock in my daughter’s goldfish aquarium,” I said. “A rock from the moon.”

“From the
moon
moon?” Joe pointed up.

“Yeah, that moon,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

“You’re full of long stories.” He reached across the table for my hand. “I’d like to hear them all.”

His hand was big and warm and strong, and I couldn’t help imagining what it would feel like against my cheek, my back, my legs.

I became achingly aware of just how many long months it had been since I’d spent time with a man, if you catch my drift. And yet, the anxiety I felt was even stronger than my desire.

I’m a normal woman, healthy and still relatively young, and I’m not ashamed of or embarrassed about my needs, so that wasn’t what it was. Nor was it the prospect of bringing another man into my life. There had been other men since Mitch, and I hadn’t felt this same kind of apprehension then. And it wasn’t because of any reservations about the kind of man Joe was or how Julie would feel about him.

But the apprehension was there, and it wasn’t going away.

I was spared having to tell Joe another story by the trill of my cell phone. I reluctantly, and self-consciously, took my hand from his to answer the call.

I was certain the caller was Julie and that Monk had done something terrible, like reorganizing the drawers in my bedroom. I shuddered to think what he—and Julie too, for that matter—might have stumbled upon.

But it wasn’t Julie, and my bedroom secrets were safe. It was Captain Stottlemeyer calling.

“Are you with Monk?” he asked.

“Not at the moment,” I said. “Why?”

“I’ve got a murder, and I’d like Monk’s perspective on it. Can you get him down here?”

It wasn’t unusual for Stottlemeyer to ask for Monk’s help on a particularly puzzling homicide. Monk regularly consulted with the SFPD on a per-case basis, though nobody told me how much he got paid.

Stottlemeyer gave me directions to the crime scene. It wasn’t far from the restaurant, but I had to go back home and pick up Monk first.

“We’ll be there in an hour,” I said, and flipped the phone shut. “I’m sorry, Joe, but we have to go. There’s been a homicide, and the police want Mr. Monk’s help.”

“It can’t wait until dessert?”

“Think of that call as my fire alarm,” I said.

“Gotcha.” He waved to the waitress for the check.

 

One the way home, I explained my working relationship with Monk to Joe, who didn’t understand exactly what I did for a living. I told him my job was mostly helping Monk manage the everyday demands of life and smoothing his interactions with other people so he could concentrate on solving murders. And that I also handed out a lot of wipes and kept him hydrated with Sierra Springs, the only water he’ll drink.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Joe said as he walked me to my door.

“Most days, I don’t know either.”

He kissed me. A real, deep, passionate, toe-curling kiss. And I gave it right back to him. The kiss lasted only a minute or so, but when we un-clinched my heart was racing as if I’d just run a mile. It was a kiss that promised so much more, born of the urgency of our forced parting. For me, there was also a hint of melancholy. For some reason it felt to me like a kiss good-bye, even though we’d be seeing each other at the dump the next morning.

But I didn’t have the time to sort out my feelings; I was in too big a hurry. I banged on the bathroom door to get Monk out of the shower. I told him Stottlemeyer needed him pronto at a crime scene. Then I called Mrs. Throphamner, who agreed to come over and watch Julie.

“I still expect to be paid for the hours I worked,” Julie said.

“But Mr. Monk never even left the shower,” I said. “You didn’t have to do anything.”

“Not my problem,” she said with a shrug.

I dug into my wallet and gave her a twenty because I didn’t have any tens or singles, just what the ATM spit out on my last visit. “Here. Credit my account with the balance for next time.”

Monk emerged from the bathroom perfectly coiffed and in a fresh set of clothes, as if he were starting a new day. Behind him the bathroom looked as if it had never been used. He shifted uncomfortably in his clothes.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I still feel dirty,” he said.

“I’m sure that will pass.”

“So am I,” Monk said. “In a few years.”

“Years?”

“No more than twenty,” he said. “Or thirty. But I’m being conservative.”

I figured that worked out to roughly one year for each ton of garbage we had to sort through.

Monk spotted the flowers in the vase. “Who brought those?”

“Joe. Actually, he brought them for himself. He was afraid he might still smell from the dump,” I said. “Maybe you’d like them.”

Monk leaned down and sniffed the flowers, then stood up straight and started working that kink out of his neck, the one caused by a fact that doesn’t fit.

I was about to ask him what it was about the flowers that set him off when Mrs. Throphamner arrived and hurried to the TV.

“Forgive me,
Murder, She Wrote
is starting on channel forty-four,” she said. “I don’t want to miss the murder.”

“It’s okay,” Monk said, heading for the door. “We’re a little late for a murder ourselves.”

 

 

 

 

Captain Stottlemeyer was waiting for us on Harrison Street, where the 80 Freeway emptied into the city center in a tangle of off-ramps and overpasses. The wail of the cold wind and the roar of traffic overhead created a loud, bone-rattling shriek. It sounded as if the earth itself were screaming in pain.

The freeway passed over a weed-covered lot that was ringed by a corroded cyclone fence that had been peeled back in places. Stottlemeyer stood in front of one of the openings, with his hands deep in the pockets of his coat and his collar turned up against the biting wind. Behind him, forensic techs in blue windbreakers moved slowly through the lot, looking for clues.

The lot was strewn with discarded couches, soiled mattresses, and crude structures of scrap plywood, corrugated metal sheets, and cardboard boxes erected atop wooden shipping pallets. Shopping carts overflowing with bulging trash bags were parked in front of some of the makeshift shelters like cars in driveways.