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

row so I could jump onstage in an instant if there was a major emergency, like a wrinkle in the tablecloth or a spilled glass of water.
    Braddock turned to Stottlemeyer and Monk. “Shall we begin?”
    “We can’t,” Monk said.
    “Why not?” Braddock replied.
    “Everybody isn’t here yet,” he said.
    Braddock looked out across the large conference room. “The room looks packed to me.”
    “There are three people missing.”
    “Friends of yours?”
    “No,” Monk said. “I don’t know who they are. I just know they aren’t here. There are two hundred and one people in the audience.”
    “That seems like a good size to me,” Braddock said.
    “Two hundred and two or two hundred and four would be better,” Monk said. “Or you can ask one person to leave.”
    “I’ll leave,” Stottlemeyer said.
    Braddock grimaced, waved over a busboy, and whispered in his ear. Within a few moments, the empty seats were filled with three busboys. He turned to Monk.
    “Happy now?” Braddock asked.
    “Aren’t you?” Monk replied.
    Braddock forced a smile, turned to the audience, and introduced himself. He then explained that for the last eight years the San Francisco Police Department had employed Adrian Monk as a special consultant, working exclusively with Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, the man who brokered the arrangement.
    “What makes this consulting arrangement even more unusual is that ten years ago, Adrian Monk was an SFPD homicide detective himself, until he was declared psychologically unfit for duty and forced to turn in his badge,” Braddock said, then looked at Monk. “Are you still suffering from those problems?”
    “I’ve been suffering since I was born,” Monk said. “Life is suffering.”
    “He’s got things under control,” Stottlemeyer said, and took a sip of water. “Let’s move on, Paul.”
    “How would you describe your working relationship?” Braddock asked.
    “Professional and productive,” Stottlemeyer said. “When we have a case that strikes me as particularly complex or unusual, I’ll call him in for his unique perspective. Nobody analyzes a crime scene the way he does.”
    Monk took a sip of his water, placed his glass next to Stottlemeyer’s, and squinted at the water level in each.
    Braddock looked at Monk. “And you? How would you describe it?”
    “It looks even to me,” Monk said, double-checking the level in the water glasses with his tape measure.
    “He means our working relationship,” Stottlemeyer said, snatching the tape measure from his hand.
    “That, too,” Monk said.
    “I’m an old-fashioned cop. I focus on standard investigative procedure, gathering the facts and the evidence,” Stottlemeyer said. “Monk takes a different, more personal approach. He has an instinctive sense of how things should fit together, and when they don’t, it really, really bothers him. He tries to organize things and along the way he finds clues that might get overlooked by traditional methods.”
    “How does he get paid?” Braddock asked.
    “They issue me a check,” Monk said. “It’s in an envelope but I can assure you that nobody licks the seal, which, as you all well know, is an unsanitary and sickening practice engaged in by psychopaths, degenerates, and lunatics.”
    There was a long moment of silence as everyone stared at him.
    Stottlemeyer took another sip of water and cleared his throat. “We guarantee him a minimum of eighteen cases a year and pay him on a per-case basis on anything beyond that.”
    “Not every case,” Monk said.
    “Every case that we call you in on,” Stottlemeyer said.
    “There are others?” Braddock asked.
    “Sometimes Monk shows up at crime scenes without being called. I’m talking about routine cases that don’t really require his expertise.”
    “You mean that you can handle on your own,” Braddock said.
    “We can handle any case on our own,” Stottlemeyer said. “But there are some that are more difficult than others, and in