Free Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants by Lee Goldberg Page A

with all the people who are either pissed off or inconvenienced by whatever outrageous, bizarre or outrageously selfish thing Monk is doing.
     
     
    But not this time. With Sharona there, I finally had some support.
     
     
    Sharona treated the situation as if it was completely normal, and if anyone gave Monk a funny look, she gave them a hard stare right back, scaring them off.
     
     
    When the bewildered manager of the gas station came out to complain about Monk shutting down his men’s room and terrifying customers with his hazmat suit, Sharona handled the man beautifully.
     
     
    “Think about this a minute,” Sharona said. “The guy is cleaning your restroom for you and it isn’t costing you a cent. Do you really have a problem with that? Is it a job that you would rather be doing?”
     
     
    That was all the owner had to hear. He went back to his register and didn’t say another word to us.
     
     
    With the owner appeased, and Monk busy cleaning, disinfecting and presumably relieving himself somewhere in the midst of all that, Sharona and I got a hamburger at the Carl’s Jr. across the street.
     
     
    I couldn’t help wondering if my Super Star with Cheese used to be one of the cows up the road. But I was so hungry, I didn’t care.
     
     
    While we ate, Sharona and I talked about the difficulties of being a single parent and trying to take care of Monk at the same time.
     
     
    “It’s like being a single parent with two children,” I said.
     
     
    “At least this one cleans his room,” Sharona said.
     
     
    “And yours,” I said.
     
     
    I discovered that we had a lot more in common than I thought. It was getting difficult for me to keep disliking the woman, even if she was out to ruin my life.
     
     
    It took Monk about an hour and a half to do his thing and then we got back on the road. We got into Los Angeles around six p.m., and even though it was the height of evening rush hour, the traffic wasn’t too bad until we hit the Sepulveda Pass. That’s where the San Diego Freeway goes over the Santa Monica Mountains and down into the LA basin. Even with six lanes on each side, the freeway still wasn’t wide enough to handle all the cars. I’ve crawled faster than these cars were moving.
     
     
    Perhaps that was why everyone seemed to be driving an SUV the size of a house. They spent so much time on the freeway, it was like they lived there, so they figured that they might as well have all the comforts of home in their cars.
     
     
    The SUV in front of us had TV screens in the rear of the front-seat headrests for the viewing pleasure of the passengers in the backseat. Sharona and I were able to watch Entertainment Tonight and catch up on the latest important news.
     
     
    When we reached the top of the pass, we had a clear view of the LA basin and what we were breathing.
     
     
    Monk took one look at the thick brown layer of smog and put on his gas mask, which he must have taken out of his suitcase when he unpacked his hazmat suit.
     
     
    I couldn’t blame him for wearing the gas mask. I found myself wishing I had one, too.
     
     
    Sharona called Lieutenant Sam Dozier. He was working a homicide at an antiques store in Brentwood, which happenedto be pretty close to where we were, so we decided to meet him there.
     
     
    I was surprised that Dozier was okay with that. I figured that maybe he wanted to see what made Monk so special.
     
     
    Well, the lieutenant was about to find out.
     
     
    Big-time.
     

 
    CHAPTER NINE
     
     
    Mr. Monk and the Fly
     
     
    It’s never easy finding a parking spot at a crime scene, but it was even worse this time because there was a lot of roadwork being done. The traffic was bottlenecked. The street was clogged with bulldozers, pipes, and construction materials.
     
     
    We ended up having to park two blocks away and make our way through the crowd of construction workers and lookee-loos to the police line around the antiques