Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants by Goldberg, Lee (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

He was talking about his wife, Trudy, and the car bomb that killed her. He didn’t know who killed her or why.

He’d failed her.

For a while that failure crippled him. And the person who helped him through that nightmare and showed him how to reclaim his life was Sharona, and now he was terrified that he was going to fail her, too.

“You’ll see the thing that isn’t right,” I said. “I know you will.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asked.

“Because you’re Adrian Monk,” I said, “and I have faith in you.”

“I wish you didn’t,” Monk said.

“You have to have faith in something,” I said.

“I do,” Monk said. “But I don’t think Formula 409 is going to solve my problems.”

Even though Julie couldn’t play soccer with her broken arm, she wanted to attend the Saturday-morning practice at Dolores Park to show her team spirit. I think she also wanted to get maximum exposure for her cast-vertising campaign. It worked out great for me, because Monk wanted to talk with the priest at Mission Dolores, which was only two blocks away from the park.

The mission was founded by the Spaniards in 1776 to proselytize the Indians, five thousand of whom succumbed to a measles epidemic brought by the same people who came to save them from their heathen ways. The adobe church that stands today was built in 1791 by the Neophytes, a fancy word for Native Americans who’d survived the epidemics and become Christians. The four-inch-thick walls had withstood the ravages of time and the 1906 earthquake, so I figured the church could withstand Adrian Monk.

I wasn’t going to tell him about the measles epidemic, even though it happened hundreds of years ago, or else he wouldn’t have stepped into the church. He might even have had to move out of San Francisco entirely if he learned about it.

Julie and I had an early breakfast before picking up Monk in the rental car. I dropped Julie off at the park; then Monk and I continued on to the church, getting there in the middle of morning mass.

The church was long and narrow and crowded with parishioners, all of whom faced the gilded baroque altar and the priest in his white robes and green vestments.

There was an old woman arriving ahead of us, shuffling slowly into the church. A deacon in his midthirties stood at the door and greeted us with a polite nod and a smile.

As we filed in, the old lady dabbed her fingers in the bowl of holy water at the doorway and crossed herself and kissed her fingers afterward.

Monk gasped and motioned to me for a wipe. I gave it to him and he held it out to the woman.

“Take this,” Monk said. “Quick.”

“What for?” she said.

“The water, of course,” he said. “Didn’t you see all the people who stuck their filthy hands in it?”

“It’s okay, young man,” she said. “It’s blessed.”

“But it isn’t disinfected,” Monk said.

“God has cleansed it,” she said.

“You’re old and your resistance to infection is weak,” Monk said. “You should gargle immediately with a strong mouthwash before the deadly germs you slathered on your lips invade your aged body.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she exclaimed as she turned her back on him and huffed away.

“That lady has a death wish,” Monk said, turning to look at me just as I dabbed my fingers in the water and crossed myself. I’m not religious, but I figure it never hurts to take whatever blessings you can get.

Monk thrust the wipe into my hands. “Are you insane, woman?”

“Mr. Monk, please,” I whispered. “We’re in a church.”

“We’re in a hot zone for disease,” Monk said. “Someone’s got to save these people.”

“I think that’s what Father Bowen is trying to do,” I said, glancing past Monk to see the priest at the altar shooting us a stern, reproachful look. He might as well have been God. I felt my bowels freeze.

Monk marched past me back to the bowl of holy water, took a deep breath, then plunged his hands inside. Wincing as if he’d stuck his hands in battery acid, Monk began scooping water from the bowl and heaving it out the front door.

The deacon, shocked, stepped in front of Monk and blocked the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“Emptying this cesspool,” Monk said.

“That is holy water,” the deacon said. “It sanctifies us.”

“It sickens you,” Monk said. “You’ll thank me later.”

“No, I won’t,” the deacon said. “This water is a remembrance of our baptism. It cleanses us of our sins and purifies our souls as we enter the presence of the Lord.”

Monk was about to scoop out some more water, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

“If you really want to purify people,” Monk said to the deacon, “dispense hand sanitizer.”

“Mr. Monk,” I whispered, “people have been sanctifying themselves with holy water for thousands of years.”

“That explains the black death, among other things,” Monk said. “Wipe. Wipe. Wipe.”

I handed him three wipes, as ordered, and he began scrubbing his hands as if he was sanding them.

“This is unbelievable,” he said.

It certainly was. He was completely oblivious to the attention he’d drawn to us, but I wasn’t. I smiled at everyone who was glaring at us, trying to make silent amends for Monk’s disruption and disrespect.

The parishioners were filing out of the pews and lining up in the center aisle to take communion. I was suddenly jarred by a horrifying premonition of what was to come. I knew I had only a few seconds to avert disaster.

“We should go,” I said to Monk, while trying to hustle him to the door. “We can come back later.”

“Why should we go?” Monk said, jerking his arm free. “Father Bowen