Mr. Monk on the Couch (14 page)

“You’ll make sure that I’m buried in clean clothes that are properly buttoned and that the casket has been thoroughly disinfected,” Monk said. “And you’ll double-check that I am actually dead before they bury me. You should also clean off the grille of the truck and the pavement where I fell. Better yet, ask Jerry to do it. No offense, but he’s more sanitary and thorough than you are.”

“What I’m asking, Mr. Monk, is what would I do for a living? How would I support myself? Who would I be?”

“You wouldn’t have to answer those questions for at least a year.”

“Why a year?”

“That’s how long you’ll be incapacitated with inconsolable grief, though each day will still be a profound struggle. After all, your whole life revolved around me.”

“That’s sort of my point. What am I going to do if you’re gone?”

“You’ll be a great detective,” he said. “Would you like me to write you a recommendation so you have it on file?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, but solving this case is, at least for me,” I said. “So if you already know the answer, keep it to yourself.”

“I don’t,” Monk said. “And I would tell you if I did.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
took Monk to his apartment and then went back to my house. I sat down in front of my laptop to check my e-mail. I’d received some replies to the questions I’d posted on the binocular forums about Walter O’Quinn’s Jackson/ Elite Clipper Model 188.

Someone calling himself “TheLaneSter” wrote:

I didn’t know if that information would be useful or not, but I wasn’t about to turn down any help. So I went to the box of O’Quinn’s belongings, removed the old binoculars, and examined the bridge. I found the stamping right where TheLaneSter said it would be and e-mailed the number to him.

The next message that I opened was from Glenn Shaffner, a representative of the company that bought the company that bought the company that bought Jackson/Elite.

Shaffner asked me for the JE stamping, the serial number, and the color of the antireflection lens coatings. He wanted to know if the coating was gold/amber, blue, or green.

I looked at the lenses. They had a gold/amber coating. I was in the midst of sending Shaffner the information when TheLaneSter got back to me. He wrote:

That was useful information. Now I knew that the binoculars were from the early 1960s. I wrote back to TheLaneSter and asked him if the binoculars were valuable or particularly collectible.

He wrote back almost instantly and said that they were mass-produced, and that the same basic model continued to be made through the early 1970s, with some slight regional differences and improvements. The model that O’Quinn owned, he wrote, could be bought on eBay for twenty bucks.

The information only underscored my initial hunch about the binoculars. These were special to him. They might have been the one thing that he’d taken with him from his past life to his new one.

But why?

I thanked TheLaneSter for his help and then put the binoculars back in the box of O’Quinn’s belongings—the paperback Westerns, his wallet and fake ID, his shaving kit, the snapshot. It didn’t seem like much.

I remembered something I’d said to Ambrose and Yuki about Walter O’Quinn.

And this was all that he had left behind.

If I was going to solve this mystery, I had to know who he was. I had to see the world the way he did.

I could go to Mexico to see how he’d lived and talk to the people who knew him. Maybe he’d also left some other things behind that could give me some clues.

But what happened in Mexico was Jack Griffin’s life. The years there didn’t matter. It was his time in San Francisco that did. This was where Walter O’Quinn had died. Twice.

So I picked up the box, grabbed my coat, and headed for the Excelsior Hotel.

 

I got the key to room 214 from the squirrelly manager and went upstairs, carrying the box and a grocery bag. I could feel the eyes of all the transients in the lobby on me as I walked up the stairs. If the room didn’t have a sturdy dead bolt, I’d have to wedge a chair under the doorknob.

The stairwell and hallways reeked of chlorine, but when I opened the door to room 214, I was hit with the strong odor of Jerry’s solvents and cleansers. I hoped the stuff killed only germs and not people.

The room was neat and orderly, the way Jerry and Gene had left it. The mattress and box spring had been replaced, and someone had managed to find another threadbare, sunbleached bedspread to put on top of it. At least this bedspread wasn’t covered with suspicious stains and cigarette burns.

I closed the door, locked it, and then set the box and grocery bag on the bed. I unpacked the bag, arranging the canister of Pringles, the cans of mixed nuts, and the bottles of water where I’d seen the original items before. I did the same thing with all of O’Quinn’s belongings. When I was done, I had a fair re-creation of the room as we’d found it when O’Quinn died. The only things missing were the pill bottles, the vitamins, and O’Quinn himself.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around the bleak room.

Why would a dying man want to spend his last days in here? I could think of many more pleasant places to die. It might as well have been a prison cell.

Maybe the symbolism was intentional. He took the trip out to Walnut Creek to revisit the scene of his crime, and then he’d sentenced himself to this death-row cell to atone for what he’d done.

But why this hotel?

Why this room?

Why not someplace in Walnut Creek?

Maybe because there wasn’t a hotel miserable enough out there to match what he thought he deserved.

I parted the moth-eaten drapes and looked out the window at the street below.

It was dark now, so the only people out were the hookers, drug addicts, muggers, and drunks who emerge at night from wherever they’ve been hiding all day to forage in the Tenderloin.

The bar at the corner was open and attracted the nocturnal crowd like a bug light. All that was missing was the electric crackle of death.

The wannabe Starbucks across the street was called Brewster’s Mug. It was closed, the windows and doors protected with corrugated metal covers that were spray-painted with graffiti and resembled roll-down garage doors. The coffee shop was on the ground floor of the office building that had been renovated into loft condos.

The building was a beachhead on the leading edge of the gentrification invasion.

I wouldn’t want to live there.

Only a few units were completed and occupied, their windows lit behind closed drapes or blinds. But the drapes were open in one corner unit, and I could see a young couple in their kitchen, making dinner.

I was curious about those brave tenants, so I picked up the binoculars and spied on them.

They looked like models in a model home, a living advertisement for the good life. They were perfectly coiffed and designer clothed, and radiating a self-conscious elegance and grace that was more pose than poise. It was as if they knew I was watching. Me, and the whole world, too.

There was nothing salacious enough to keep my attention, so I scanned the rest of the building for activity. Most of the windows revealed vast, empty floors, the walls open to the I beams and studs, wires dangling from the open ceilings, the spaces illuminated by the occasional glowing, naked bulb.

I wondered if O’Quinn did this, too.

Was that why he was here? To spy on the residents of the building across the street? Could one of them be Stacey or Rose?

It was something to think about. Maybe Ambrose and Yuki could find out who owned the units from property tax records or other real estate–related databases.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next, but I knew that Ambrose and Yuki were looking into Stacey O’Quinn and her daughter, so the investigation was moving forward even if I wasn’t, which was reassuring.

Now I understood why so many fictional detectives had sidekicks to do their busywork and beat people up. Sidekicks gave the detective some freedom to think.

I probably provided the same service for Monk, even if I wasn’t much good to him as a researcher or as muscle.

I opened the can of Pringles, picked up one of the Westerns, and laid back on the bed to read.

At least this was something I was reasonably sure that O’Quinn had done.

The bedspread was rough and the pillow crackled as I put my weight against it, as if I were resting on a bag of Ruffles potato chips.

But it wasn’t long before I got caught up in the tale of a tough cowboy, wandering the endless prairie in search of desperados and his own redemption.

I rode off with him, losing myself in the tall grass.

 

The sunlight woke me up at about eight a.m. I was startled and disoriented, but after an instant of panic, the adrenaline cleared my head and I remembered where I was.

I didn’t awake with any revelatory new understanding of Walter O’Quinn or the case, but I still felt my stay in his hotel room had been a valid approach to immersing myself in his final days. Sleeping in his bed, however, was probably more than was necessary.

As I lay there, collecting my thoughts, I made a mental note to get a morgue photo of O’Quinn that I could show to local merchants. The cancer had taken a toll on his face by the time he’d arrived in San Francisco, and he had no longer been the same man who was in the picture on his fake IDs. I was hoping that perhaps someone would remember him. But that was a project for another day.

There was no way I could see Monk without a shower and a change of clothes, so I’d have to make a stop at home before work, which would mean I was going to be late.

Monk wouldn’t like that.

I decided to keep O’Quinn’s things in the room, put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the knob, and left, taking the key with me.

I was headed toward my car, which I’d parked in the red zone in front of the Excelsior with the police department placard on the dash, when I was lured across the street to Brewster’s by the aroma of fresh coffee.

It was packed inside with young professionals who looked very much like the living mannequins I’d spied on the previous night. I wondered what they were all doing here.

My clothes were wrinkled, my skin was sticky, my hair was a mess, and I still had the smell of Jerry’s solvents in my nose, so I wasn’t surprised when people kept their distance. They treated me like I’d slept in the alley all night under a cardboard box.

When I got to the counter, the fresh-faced, twentysomething female barista gave me a surprisingly authentic-looking smile, even though she was both harried and disapproving. The name on her apron was “Alyssa.”

“Good morning, how may I help you today?”

I ordered a big cup of straight-up black coffee and then asked her, “Where do all these people come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“They certainly don’t live in this neighborhood,” I said.

“There’s a cheap parking lot a few blocks up, so they leave their cars and walk to Union Square, the Civic Center, and the financial district. They come here for a pit stop.”

“Define cheap.”

“Under twenty-five bucks a day,” she said.

I was glad I had my police parking placard or I doubted I could afford to drive a car in the city.

I took my coffee and was on my way out the door when my cell phone rang.

It was Jerry Yermo, calling to firm up our date for that night, assuming that no murders, suicides, or decomposing corpses ruined our plans. I envied people who didn’t have to regularly factor death into their social lives.

We decided to get together early, around six p.m., at the Ferry Building, grab a coffee there, and then take a casual stroll along the Embarcadero to the Grinder, a smoky, working-class dive bar–cum-steakhouse in a back alley that’s been a local fixture for a half century.

The Grinder used to be a hangout for the dockworkers, but now that the docks had become upscale shops and cafes, they were serving a new clientele. I’d never been there, but I’d heard that their drinks were strong enough to be used as cleanser and that the steaks were huge, served rare or medium rare with massive helpings of potatoes topped with slabs of butter as thick as a dinner plate.

It was exactly my kind of place. And I thought it was a very good sign that somehow Jerry seemed to know this after only one date. It boded well for our relationship.

I ended the call quickly, before the flirtatious banter could start. I wanted to conserve my flirting energy for the date, and I didn’t want to take the risk that I’d embarrass myself by saying something stupid in a lame attempt to be clever. If I was going to do that, I wanted it to be with a drink in front of me that I could blame.

I got in the car, put my coffee in the cup holder, and was about to head home when my phone rang again.

It was Captain Stottlemeyer.

“Don’t do this to me,” I said as I answered the phone.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said.

“Is it a murder?”

“It usually is,” he said.

“Does Mr. Monk have to be there right away?”

“How long does he need?”

I quickly calculated how long it would take me to get home, shower, change, and then pick up Monk. And that didn’t even include the travel time to the crime scene, wherever it was.

“Never mind,” I said, resigned to my fate. “Give me the address.”