Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii by Goldberg, Lee (best large ebook reader .txt) 📗

the only person I’ve ever told about what happened to Mitch.”

“You don’t know what happened to Mitch,” Monk said. “You only know the navy’s version.”

“They told me he was shot down over Kosovo, that he survived the crash but panicked on the ground, getting himself killed and endangering the lives of his crew.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” Monk said as he sat down beside me on the edge of the bed. “The only people who know what really happened are the two crew members who survived. They could be lying to cover their cowardice, not Mitch’s.”

“The point, Mr. Monk, is that Swift knew all about that. None of it was ever made public.”

Monk shook his head. “He only knew what you told him.”

The tears really started coming now, but I didn’t care. I was too angry and hurt.

“You think all it takes is one drink by the pool and I’ll tell the first attractive man who comes along my most painful secrets?”

“You didn’t know you were doing it.”

“I wasn’t drunk. I know what I said.”

“Dylan Swift works in much the same way I do,” Monk said. “He looks at a person and makes deductions. And then he uses that information to get you to tell him what he doesn’t already know.”

“I didn’t tell him,” I insisted, sniffling.

“What he does is called cold reading. I saw him do it yesterday during his show. It’s a bit of trickery in which he pumps a person for information while simultaneously making it seem like he’s getting his facts from the beyond. It’s much easier to pull off with a crowd than with one person. What he did with you takes real finesse.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, beginning to get hold of myself.

“Let’s start with how he works a crowd. Last night, he wandered into the audience, sensing the letter G. Immediately a guy jumped up, said his name was Gary, and asked if the message was for him. In that instant, he told Dylan Swift the most important thing of all—that he was eager to be fooled and would do everything he could to help dupe himself. So, naturally, Swift picked Gary for the reading.”

Monk went on to explain that as soon as someone responded, Swift looked at the person’s age, hair-style, jewelry, clothes, and the friends or family with him and made some simple deductions. Then Swift started throwing out educated guesses in questions that were shrewdly framed as statements.

Monk told me that instead of agreeing or disagreeing with Swift’s guesses, most people would try to help him. They would freely volunteer additional information, giving Swift material with which to make more reasonable assumptions, and if he was right, they would think the dead were whispering in his ear. But if he was wrong, he could claim there was static on the line and, nine times out of ten, people would give him some suggestions to help him clarify the transmission.

“Swift told Gary that a woman he was very close to was reaching out to him. It was Gary who suggested it might be his sister,” Monk said. “Swift said he ‘sensed’ that her name began with an ‘M’ or an ‘E,’ but to increase his odds of success, he refined the guess by saying the letters might just be in the name somewhere. It was Gary who volunteered that Swift must be talking about his sister Margaret.”

I remembered it now. I could see how Swift got Gary to feed him the information he needed to appear as if he were channeling a spirit. But I didn’t see how he did it with me.

“That’s not what happened with me, Mr. Monk. The first thing he said to me was that my husband missed me. He already knew stuff….”

“I’m sure he did,” Monk said. “But think about what you gave him. A standard ploy a medium uses is to say your dead loved one has some unresolved issues to deal with, that he was cheated or wronged. Did he say that?”

I nodded and sniffled.

“And what did you say?”

I remembered exactly what I said.

“Mitch was killed two days before his twenty-seventh birthday. I’d say that was wrong.”

“It was an accident that took him from you,” Swift said.

“He was shot out of the sky by enemy fire. It was hardly an accident.”

I might as well have typed up Mitch’s biography and handed it to Swift.

“Oh, my God, I’m such a fool.” I started to cry again.

“No, you’re not.” Monk took my hand. “You just miss your husband very much.”

I did and I always would; I knew that. What I didn’t know was how close to the surface those feelings were and how easily I could be manipulated by them. I was ashamed of myself.

“Tissue,” he said.

I sniffled, reached into my purse, and handed him a tissue.

“It’s for you,” he said.

I blew my nose and, in deference to Monk and his kindness, I took a Ziploc bag from my purse, put the Kleenex in the bag, and tossed the bag into the trash can.

It was obvious that Dylan Swift was a fraud. And yet something he said still gave me goose bumps.

“Everything you’re saying makes sense, Mr. Monk, except for one thing. You remember that bikini I was wearing?”

Monk flushed with embarrassment and looked at his feet, as if I were wearing it at that moment.

“Vaguely,” he said.

“I’ve had it for years. I bought it in Puerto Vallarta, where Mitch and I went for a weekend of romance, sun, and tequila, much to my parents’ horror.”

“I don’t need to know this,” Monk said.

“I lost my top making out in the water with Mitch. He had to get an emergency bikini from a beachside vendor while I stayed in the water. That was the one he picked out for me. After that, every time he saw me in that bikini, he’d remember how I lost the last one. He loved to see me in it.”

“I don’t want to know this,” Monk said.

“Swift said that Mitch still loved