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Authors: Lee Goldberg

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BOOK: Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants
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The
Palo Alto
made one short voyage before she was towed down to the Monterey Bay seventy-five years ago and deliberately beached to become a dance hall.
 
 
A couple years later, the ship was torn apart by a big storm, and the wreckage has been left there to rot ever since.
 
 
The Cement Ship on the canvas above my parents’ fireplace was a broken hulk, fading into the mist like a lost memory.
 
 
It enthralled me.
 
 
Monk couldn’t look at it. For one thing, just looking at the ocean, even in a painting, made him seasick. But I think what bothered him the most was that it was a shipwreck. It was something that needed to be put back together but was instead forever captured in the painting in a state of disorder.
 
 
For Monk that image was like what Kryptonite is for Superman, or what a crucifix is to a vampire.
 
 
It was a painting of a mess that could never be cleaned up, a thought Monk simply could not reconcile himself with. We had to cover the painting with a sheet whenever he visited the house.
 
 
For me, I found peace in the Cement Ship. It relaxed me and centered me somehow. Sure, the painting was creepy, and a little bit sad, but there was a beauty in it, too.
 
 
The
Peralta,
the sister ship of the
Palo Alto,
was also a wreck. It was one of ten rotting ships strung together to form a breakwater on the Powell River in British Columbia. I’ve never seen it, but I wonder sometimes if anyone has ever done a painting of it.
 
 
If so, I’d like to have it.
 
 
There’s something I find beautiful, captivating, and scary about shipwrecks. But the Cement Ship wasn’t just any shipwreck. It was my shipwreck.
 
 
Sometimes, it felt like my life was a cement ship and that I was constantly battling not to end up beached.
 
 
Maybe Monk’s life was a cement ship, too.
 
 
We were the
Palo Alto
and the
Peralta,
leaving port together in San Francisco.
 
 
And I believed that if we were separated now, we’d both become grounded somewhere and end up slowly eroded by the relentless surf.
 
 
I arrived in Burbank in time for lunch, but I didn’t have time to go out to eat, so I bought an overpriced bag of potato chips and a Diet Coke in the terminal. It’s a good thing I don’t gain weight easily. I wolfed down that healthy snack on my way outside of the airport, where I snagged a taxi and told the driver to take me to the jail downtown. Between the plane ticket and the taxi fare, I’d burned through most of my personal fortune.
 
 
Captain Stottlemeyer had called ahead and arranged everything for me, so things went very smoothly. The security staff was expecting me and my pass was ready. So after I went through security, which was almost as tight as what I’d gone through at the Oakland airport, I was led directly to the visiting room.
 
 
It was just like what you’ve seen on TV. The room was divided by a Plexiglas wall with cubicles on either side. Each cubicle had a telephone receiver attached to a long cord. It could have been 1967. You’d think they’d have come up with something more sleek and high-tech since then, something like those force fields they used in the brig on
Star Trek.
I was lost in big thoughts like that when Trevor sat down on the other side of the Plexiglas, startling me.
 
 
I knew he was about my age, but he looked to me like a frightened child with his arched eyebrows, ruffled hair and pouty lips.
 
 
There was something undeniably East Coast about his features and bearing, though if you asked me to pick out something specific, I couldn’t tell you. He had the same look as all those guys on
The Sopranos
, though without any of the subdued malevolence. What I saw in his face was sadness, fear and confusion.
 
 
We picked up our phones and openly stared at each other. He was studying my face as if searching for landmarks. I was scrutinizing his for glaring signs of guilt.
 
 
“Do I know you?” he asked.
 
 
“I’m Natalie Teeger,” I said. “I work for Adrian Monk.”
 
 
“Monk?” He seemed to inflate with hope and relief. “That’s terrific. Whew. I knew Sharona wouldn’t let me down. Is he going to help me?”
 
 
“You have to convince me first,” I said.
 
 
“Why? I’m Sharona’s husband. Isn’t that enough? Besides, Monk owes her plenty for—” He stopped, seeing the answer on my face. “She didn’t ask Monk to help me, did she? She really thinks I did it, that I could kill somebody.”
 
 
I nodded. And then he began to cry.
 
 
CHAPTER SIX
 
 
Mr. Monk’s Assistant Makes a Discovery
 
 
There’s something about seeing a man cry that makes me feel like I should avert my eyes. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it this time.
 
 
I stared at Trevor and openly studied each stinging tear on his face, each pained grimace, each tortured heave of his chest. I haven’t seen many men cry, but when they do, there’s a nakedness about it that I think is even more intimate and revealing than sex.
 
 
I’ve only seen my father cry once. I was nine years old when it happened. I was heading to his study to show him a drawing I’d done of our dog. The doors weren’t closed all the way, and something made me stop and peek through the crack before I went in.
 
 
He was alone at his desk, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. At one point, he dropped his hands and I saw his tear-streaked cheeks. But I saw much more. I saw vulnerability. I saw fear. And I saw shame.
 
 
He didn’t see me and I never said a word about it to him. I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now, what he was crying about. But I’ve never forgotten that moment or what it felt like. The only thing that comes close to it is the uncertainty and fear that I feel whenever there’s an earthquake and the once-solid ground below my feet turns to Jell-O.
 
 
As I sat in that visitors’ room, I wondered if that was what Dad felt like and if that was what Trevor was feeling now.
 
 
When I looked into Trevor’s face, I saw everything that I saw in my dad’s face that night. Try faking that. It isn’t easy to do unless you’re somebody with an Oscar or an Emmy statuette on your mantel.
 
 
Trevor’s tears lasted two minutes, maybe three, but I could see that they startled and humiliated him. He got control of himself with two big, deep breaths and a grimace. Then he looked around to see if anyone else witnessed the momentary crack in his masculine shell, but there were only me and the guard in the room, and if the guard saw anything, he didn’t acknowledge it.
 
 
I didn’t bother pretending that I hadn’t seen him cry or the vulnerability that it exposed. I’m not that good an actress, anyway.
 
 
He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his denim jailhouse shirt. “I didn’t kill Ellen Cole,” he said.
 
 
It was the first time anyone had mentioned the poor woman’s name to me.
 
 
“Then why was her stuff in your truck?” I asked.
 
 
“Someone is framing me,” Trevor replied.
 
 
“Who would want to do that?”
 
 
“Whoever caved her head in with a table lamp,” he said. “That’s who.”
 
 
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted her dead?” Of course he couldn’t. If he could, he would have told someone by now. It was a stupid question, but I didn’t know what else to ask. I was just fumbling along.
 
 
“I don’t know. I mowed her lawn, pulled her weeds and trimmed her shrubs,” Trevor said. “That’s as deep as our relationship went.”
 
 
“Then why were your fingerprints all over her house?”
 
 
“She was always asking me in to do little tasks for her,” he said. “ ‘Could you reach this? Change this bulb? Help me move this dresser?’ ”
 
 
“Was she an old woman?”
 
 
He gave me a look. “Don’t you know anything about this case?”
 
 
“Frankly, no,” I said. “I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to ask.”
 
 
“She was in her thirties, but she was short, kind of slight. Plus she was flirting, not that I’d ever act on it. I’m a happily married man.” He winced, as if feeling real pain. “At least I was. Or thought I was. What do you do for Monk?”
 
 
“What Sharona used to do,” I said, “only not as well.”
 
 
“How do you know?”
 
 
“Because he wants her back,” I said. I owed Trevor something real from me for his tears. “So why doesn’t Sharona believe you?”
 
 
“That’s the worst thing about this, worse even than being in here,” Trevor said. “I’m a screwup. I know that. I’ve lied to people. I’ve used people. I’ve disappointed everyone in my life, especially her. But this isn’t me. I couldn’t kill anybody.”
 
 
“If you were such a screwup,” I asked, “how did you and Sharona get back together?”
 
 
“A few years ago, I came out to San Francisco to make a play to get Sharona back,” he said. “But it was just so I could show my rich uncle Jack that I was domesticated again. He’d cut me off when Sharona walked out on me. Problem was, I’d accumulated some gambling debts and needed him to bail me out.”
 
 
“Which he wouldn’t have done unless he thought the money was going to your wife and kid,” I said. “You were just using them as props.”
 
 
“Yep. Sharona figured that out the day we were supposed to move back east. She sent Benji to her sister’s place, and when I showed up with the moving truck, she really gave it to me. Then she asked me if I wanted to give Benji a call and tell him how I’d manipulated them or if I was gonna leave that to her, too. You want to guess what I chose?”
 
 
“You made her do it,” I said.
 
 
He nodded, ashamed. “That night, and every day after that for the next few weeks, I kept imagining their conversation, and the look of disappointment on my son’s face, and it made me sick. I couldn’t stop puking. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror no more. So I decided to change.”
 
 
“What did you do?”
 
 
“I got a job in New Jersey waiting tables, and another one dry-cleaning, and paid off my debt. And after that, I sent every cent I could back to Sharona,” he said. “It was only a few bucks, but I wanted her to see the cash flowing the other way for once. I finally got some guts and called Benji. He didn’t hang up on me, so I copped to what I did and apologized. I called back every week and then twice a week. And then one day, Sharona and I started talking again, too.”
 
 
“And one thing led to another,” I said, letting my voice trail off.
 
 
“I really wanted us to work this time, more than anything else in the world. And I really thought that it was working and that Sharona knew that I wasn’t the same guy anymore. Then Ellen Cole got killed and I found out I was wrong. It was all a lie. Sharona never had any faith in me, never really trusted me again. She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t want to know. That’s worse than giving me the needle, you know?”
 
 
I knew.
 
 
I got back to the Bay Area in time to take Julie around to a few places in the neighborhood that night after all.
 
 
When we got home, she had a check for thirty dollars from Sorrento’s Pizza in her pocket and an advertisement to glue to her cast. Anyone who ordered a pizza and said they had heard about the restaurant from Julie’s cast would get a ten percent discount. If the sales were good, Sorrento’s would pay for a second week of cast-vertising (a term my daughter coined and that we’ve trademarked).
BOOK: Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants
8.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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