Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop Read Online Free PDF Page A

said.
    “Or milk a cow?”
    “I have a suggestion, Monk. Instead of going through the endless list of things you don’t want to do, how about letting me tell you what the favor is?”
    “It doesn’t involve chewing gum or spitting tobacco, does it?”
    “The Conference of Metropolitan Homicide Detectives is being held in San Francisco this year and they want to interview you and me onstage tomorrow morning about our working relationship.”
    “Why?” Monk asked.
    “Because we end up solving a lot of murders together,” Stottlemeyer said.
    “Would I have to be in front of an audience?”
    Stottlemeyer nodded. “Just a couple hundred cops from around the country. But you won’t be alone. I’ll be up there with you.”
    Monk squirmed. “I’m not comfortable with public speaking.”
    “And I’m not comfortable rubbing other cops’ noses in our high case-closure rate,” Stottlemeyer said. “But this request comes directly from the chief. I think he wants to gloat.”
    I spoke up. “Look at the bright side, Mr. Monk.”
    “There’s never a bright side,” he said.
    “This means the police chief knows about your achievements and respects your abilities. He’s proud of the work you are doing and wants to show you off,” I said. “Speaking at this conference could be a big step towards getting reinstated to the force.”
    Monk looked at me and then at Stottlemeyer. “Do you think so?”
    Stottlemeyer shrugged. “It never hurts to kiss up to the boss.”
    “Okay, I’ll do it,” Monk said. “As long as there isn’t any actual kissing involved.”
    “There won’t be,” Stottlemeyer said. “And if any women go into labor, I’ll deliver the baby.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Mr. Monk Answers Questions
     
    T he Dorchester Hotel was built in the 1920s by a particularly greedy and egotistical land baron named William K. Dorchester, who lived atop the twenty-story building in a ridiculously Gothic penthouse apartment and was known to use Powell Street below as his personal spittoon.
    As a nod to Dorchester’s British heritage, he insisted that the bellmen dress in the bright red beefeater uniforms with ruffled white collars and gloves worn by the guards of the crown jewels. The doormen still wear those uniforms today. They’d look classier dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants.
    Once you get past them, there’s a certain amusing and historically appropriate gaudiness to the place that is an accurate reflection of when it was built and the man who funded it.
    The lobby has a vaulted gold-leafed ceiling and crystal chandeliers. The walls are covered with enormous mu rals that chronicle the arrival of the Spanish explorers, the Gold Rush, and maritime trade in San Francisco Bay, with Dorchester himself looking down upon it all from the heavens like some benevolent god.
    There’s French and Italian marble on the floors, the columns, and the grand staircase. Supposedly, even the urinals in the men’s room are carved from marble, though I have never seen them for myself. However, I can tell you that the women’s room doesn’t have marble toilets.
    The Conference of Metropolitan Homicide Detectives was being held on the second floor, so Monk, Stottlemeyer, and I climbed the grand staircase and discovered that the gaudy grandeur ended at the top step.
    The second floor looked like it had been renovated in the early seventies in garishly bright colors and hadn’t been updated since. The Brady Bunch would have felt right at home there.
    Monk, Stottlemeyer, and I made our way to the ballroom. It looked like we’d walked into a reunion of JCPenney men’s department customers. The room was filled with potbellied men wearing off-the-rack suits, wide ties, and yellow crime-scene-tape-style name-tag lanyards around their necks.
    We were greeted at the door by a man who looked like a cinder block that had magically come to life. He seemed square everywhere, from the flat-top buzz cut atop his head to the square-toed shoes