Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (6 page)

“It’s a long story,” I said. “The reason we’re here is because my daughter, Julie, is a student in one of the middle-school classes you visit each year. She heard about what happened to Sparky.”

At the mention of his dog’s name, Joe’s eyes grew moist. It endeared him to me even more.

“The kids care that much?” he said.

“So much that she hired Mr. Monk to find whoever killed him.”

“Excuse me.” He turned his back to me and took a few steps away before wiping the tears from his eyes. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to hold him, and comfort him, and wipe those tears away myself.

I swallowed hard and waited. After a moment he faced me again. “Forgive me, Miss Teeger.”

“It’s okay. Call me Natalie, please.”

“As long as you call me Joe.” He overturned another bucket, set it down beside his own, and offered me a seat. I took it.

Monk whistled and stirred the air with his finger. I got the message.

“Do you mind if we turn around?” I said, turning so I faced Monk.

“Why?” Joe asked.

“Mr. Monk needs to see our faces,” I said. “He reads lips.”

“Is he deaf?”

“No,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Is he a good detective?”

“The best,” I said. “But eccentric.”

“If he can find the son of a bitch who killed Sparky, I don’t care if he likes to run naked through Golden Gate Park singing show tunes.” He immediately caught himself, his cheeks reddening in embarrassment. “Oh, my God. I forgot. Can he really read lips?”

“I doubt it,” I said, and waved at Monk. He gave me a thumbs-up.

Joe exhaled, relieved, and picked up one of the cats. “What do you need to know, Natalie?”

I liked hearing him say my name. Did I mention his voice wasn’t the least bit squeaky?

“Do you know of anyone who’d want to hurt Sparky?”

His face tightened, but he continued to gently stroke the cat. “Only one person. Gregorio Dumas. He lives a few doors down from the station house.”

That would certainly make it easy for him to know when the company responded to a fire and if the station was empty.

“What does he have against Sparky?”

“Love,” Joe said. “Sparky was smitten with Letitia, Gregorio’s French poodle.”

“And Mr. Dumas didn’t approve of the relationship?”

“Letitia is a show dog,” Joe said. “Gregorio was afraid Sparky would ruin her career. He warned me that if he caught Sparky in his yard again, he’d kill him.”

“Anybody else have a problem with your dog?”

Joe shook his head no. “Sparky was a smart, sweet, trusting animal. I’d take him to the cancer ward at the children’s hospital, and he was so good with those kids, even the tiniest, frailest child. Everybody loved him.”

“Somebody didn’t,” I said, and immediately regretted it.

His eyes started to tear up again, but this time he didn’t try to hide it from me. “He wasn’t just a dog to me, Natalie. He was my best friend. I know how corny that sounds, ‘a boy and his dog.’ But this job, and the hours I keep, aren’t conducive to relationships, if you know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, I did. Being a single mother who works for an obsessive-compulsive detective doesn’t make for a great social life, either.

“I spend a lot of time alone. But I wasn’t really alone, not with Sparky,” he said. “Now I am. He was all I had. I feel gutted and totally adrift. Do you know what that’s like?”

I took his hand, gave it a squeeze, and nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

I suddenly felt self-conscious. I withdrew my hand and stood up.

“Mr. Monk will find whoever did this, Joe.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because he’s Monk.”

“I’m told he’s got a long story,” Joe said. “I’d like to hear it sometime.”

“Here are my numbers,” I said, writing them down on a piece of paper. “Please give me a call if you think of anything later that might help Mr. Monk’s investigation.” I took a deep breath. “Or if you want to hear that story.”

“I will,” he said with a smile.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I just smiled back at him and headed back to Monk, who hadn’t so much as taken a step from where he had been standing.

“How much of that did you get?” I asked.

“Just the part about enemas, Astroturf, and Wayne Newton’s hair.”

“None of those things came up.”

“I see,” Monk said. “I must have been reading the subtext.”

There was subtext all right, but that sure as hell wasn’t it.

 

For dinner I made Julie, Monk, and myself Dijon chicken breasts, petite peas, and mashed potatoes. Monk helped by counting out the peas onto our plates (we each had exactly twenty-four peas per serving) and laying them out in rows. He also served our mashed potatoes with an ice-cream scoop so they formed neat balls, which he carefully smoothed out with a butter knife.

Julie watched all this with rapt attention. It took her mind off her sadness, that’s for sure.

While we ate, I filled her in on what we’d learned so far, which didn’t sound very substantive to me but seemed to impress her. She gave Monk a hug and went back to her room to IM her friends.

I told her once that when I was her age we didn’t have instant messaging to communicate with our friends. We used something called a telephone. You know what she said to me?

“I’m glad I live in the modern age.”

I felt like a dinosaur.

Monk insisted on doing the dishes after dinner, and I didn’t argue with him. While he worked I sat at the table and relaxed with a glass of wine. I decided there were some definite benefits to having a clean freak as a houseguest. I wondered what it would take to get him to do the laundry, but then I imagined him trying to sort our bras and panties without touching them, or even looking at them, and knew it would never work. On the other hand, it might be amusing to watch.

The phone rang. What would some anonymous cold caller in Bangladesh try to sell me tonight? I was tempted to let Monk answer the phone and put Rajid through the living hell he deserved, but I was merciful and snatched up the receiver myself.

“Hello,” I said.

“Natalie Teeger? This is Joe Cochran. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

He was, but in a good way. I reached for my glass of wine and took a preemptive gulp to slow down my heart. It didn’t work.

“Not at all,” I lied.

“I was wondering if you might be interested in having dinner with me sometime,” he said.

“That would be nice,” I said, trying to sound casual about it when, in fact, I wanted to scream with glee.

“Is tomorrow too soon? My next night off duty isn’t for a couple of days.”

“Tomorrow works for me.” Ten minutes from now would have worked for me, too, but I didn’t want to seem too eager. We set a time and I gave him my address.

When I hung up the phone, Monk was drying the dishes and giving me a look.

“What?” I said.

“You’re going on a date with Firefighter Joe?”

“It appears that way,” I said, smiling giddily.

“Who is going to take care of Julie?”

I wasn’t as concerned about that as I was about who would take care of
him
. I’d have to sit Julie down for a detailed briefing.

“I was hoping you’d keep an eye on her for me,” I said. Then I lied, “A sitter is going to be hard to get on such short notice. Do you mind?”

“Will there be any shenanigans?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Will I have to organize any activities?”

“She’ll probably just stay in her room,” I said. “She’s at that age.”

“Me too,” Monk said.

On Sunday mornings, Julie and I like to get into our grungiest old sweats, grab the Sunday
Chronicle
off the porch, and go to the Valley Bakery, where we order blueberry muffins, coffee for me, hot chocolate for her, and forage through the paper.

Julie likes to read the comics, of course, and the capsule movie reviews in the Datebook, also known as the pink section for its colored pages. Each review is accompanied by a drawing of a little man in a bowler hat sitting in a movie theater chair. For a great movie he leaps out of his chair, hands clapping, eyes bugging out, hat flying off his head. If the movie stinks, he slumps in his seat, sound asleep.

Sometimes, as I go through the week, I picture that guy sitting in his chair, reviewing my life as it plays out in front of him. Most of the time he’s sitting ramrod straight in his seat, mildly interested, which is a mediocre review. Rarely do I imagine him leaping out of his chair in ecstatic glee on my account.

After breakfast we take a long walk up a very steep hill to Delores Park, where the view of the Castro, the Civic Center, and the Financial District is spectacular. But that’s not the view we go to see. We like to sit under a palm tree on the grassy knoll and people-watch. We see all kinds of people of every race in every possible combination.

Take the couples, for instance. We see men and women, men and men, women and women, and people who fall somewhere in between. We see mimes performing, kids playing, families picnicking, bands playing, groups protesting—all of it against the panoramic downtown backdrop. It’s the best show in town.

We usually stay in the park for an hour or so, talking about the week that was and the week that’s coming, and then, once we’ve caught our breath and had our fill of the show, we make the easy walk downhill. Once we get home, around noonish, we take our showers, change into fresh clothes, and do whatever chores and errands need doing.

But our routine was shaken up on that Sunday by a couple of things. First there was the weather. The city was socked in by thick fog and soaked by drizzle. And then there was Monk.

He woke me up at six A.M. with his incessant scrubbing. I dragged myself out of bed in my T-shirt and sweats to find him in the hall bathroom.

Monk, his hands in dish gloves, was on his knees in the bathtub polishing the drain. He was wearing a matched set of pajamas, and sheepskin slippers, which would have been adorable if he weren’t an adult.

Obviously I’d cleaned the bathroom before he arrived, but not to the point that you needed sunglasses to tolerate the glare off the linoleum, which was what he’d done to it. On the sink there was a bar of soap still in its wrapper, a brand-new toothbrush enclosed in plastic, and a fresh tube of toothpaste. His electric razor was plugged into the outlet.

“It’s six o’clock in the morning, Mr. Monk,” I whispered so as not to wake Julie.

“I didn’t know you’re such an early riser.”

“I’m not,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Getting ready to take a shower,” he said.

“You do this before every shower?”

“And after,” he said.

I shook my head and trudged to the kitchen. He was still in there two hours later. Julie was up by then and she was sitting at the table in her bathrobe, eating a bowl of cereal and shaking her leg.

“I really have to go to the bathroom, Mom.”

“I’m sure Mr. Monk will be out in a minute,” I said.

“You said that an hour ago,” she said. “I’ve had two glasses of orange juice since then.”

“That wasn’t very smart, was it?”

“I didn’t think he’d be in there forever,” she said. “Couldn’t you knock?”

“Is it that bad?”

“It’s that bad,” she said.

So we both got up and went to the bathroom door. I knocked.

“Mr. Monk?” I said. “We really need to use the bathroom.”

“Does it have to be this one?” he asked from behind the door.

“It’s the only one in the house,” I said.

He opened the door, still holding his toothbrush. The bathroom gleamed the way it had at six. There was no sign at all that he’d used it. Julie bounced and shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“How well do you know the neighbors?” he asked.

“Not that well,” I said. “We’re going to have to share this bathroom.”

“I don’t see how that is going to work,” he said.

Julie groaned in frustration, pushed past Monk, and went straight for the toilet. He scrambled out of the bathroom in terror and slammed the door closed behind him before she could even lift up the lid of the toilet seat.

Monk stood there looking at me. I looked at him.

“There’s only one bathroom and three of us,” I said.

“It’s barbaric,” he said. “Does the health department know about this?”

“You’ll just have to get used to it.”

“How can you live this way?” he said.

“If you paid me more,” I said, “I wouldn’t have to.”

That shut him up. I knew it would.

The only thing stronger than Monk’s compulsion for cleanliness and order is his stinginess with money.