“I do,” she said.
I’m human and a single mother, and I was already pretty keyed up by Monk and the movers, so I wasn’t in the mood for petulant behavior.
“Then get your butt out here and be polite,” I said.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll think I’m a baby,” she said, and then I heard what sounded like a muffled sob.
I immediately felt a pang of guilt for snapping at her instead of being the intuitive, caring, all-knowing mom I should be. I decided to ignore the warning signs on her door and heed the one I heard in her voice. I opened her door.
Julie was sitting on her bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She’d taken out all the stuffed animals that she’d stowed deep in her closet six months ago, after declaring she was “too grown-up” for them. Now she’d gathered them all around her and was hugging them close.
I got onto the bed beside Julie and put my arm around her. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“You’ll think it’s stupid.” She sniffled.
I kissed her cheek. “I promise I won’t.” “Maddie called,” she said, referring to one of her friends from school. “Sparky is dead. He was killed.”
And with that she started sobbing. Completely lost, I drew her close and stroked her hair. I hated to ask, but I had to . . .
“Who is Sparky?”
Julie lifted her head, sniffled hard, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “The firehouse dalmatian. The one that Firefighter Joe brings to school every year during his talk about fire safety.”
“Oh, that Sparky.” I still had no idea what she was talking about. “What happened?”
“Someone hit him on the head last night with a pickax,” Julie said with a shiver. “Who would want to murder an adorable, trusting, innocent dog?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She started to cry again and hugged me tight.
“I’ll find out,” Monk said softly.
Julie and I both looked up to see Monk standing in the doorway. How long had he been there?
“You will?” Julie asked.
“It’s what I do.” Monk shifted his weight. “Solving murders is kind of my thing.”
Julie reached for a Kleenex on her nightstand, blew her nose, and tossed the wadded-up tissue toward her garbage can. She missed.
“Do you really think you can catch the person who killed Sparky?” she asked.
Monk stared at the tissue on the floor as if he were expecting it to crawl away. “Yes.”
Julie turned to me. “Can we afford him?”
It was a good question. I looked back at Monk, who was watching the tissue and twisting his neck like he had a kink in it.
“Can we?” I asked him.
“I’ll bring the killer to justice if you will do me one huge favor.”
“What?” Julie asked.
I hoped it didn’t involve letting him move everything he owned into my house, because that wasn’t going to happen, no matter how many puppies, baby seals, or bunny rabbits were murdered.
“Pick up that tissue, place it in a sealed plastic bag, and remove it from this house immediately.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Thank you.” Monk looked at me and tipped his head toward the placard on her door. “It’s no joke.”
3
Mr. Monk and the Fire Truck
Saturday is Julie’s “activity day.” Tae kwon do. Soccer practice. Hip-hop class. And, of course, the inevitable birthday party. Let’s be honest here: No parent wants to spend their weekends chauffeuring their kids around. So I organized a carpool schedule with the other neighborhood mothers (it’s always the mothers who get stuck with this drudgery). That particular Saturday happened to be one of my carpool days off, so another overworked, dead-tired mother was driving a bunch of unruly kids to their classes, practices, and birthday parties.
I always intend to spend that special “alone” time pampering myself with a good book, or a long walk, or a luxurious soak in a hot bath. But I inevitably end up running errands and catching up on all the things I’ve fallen behind on, like doing laundry, shopping for groceries, cleaning up the house, and paying bills.
So on that Saturday afternoon I was free to assist Monk, who been hired by my daughter to investigate the murder of a firehouse dalmatian.
Our first stop was the fire station, which was over in North Beach, the neighborhood between Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf. There’s no beach there, of course—that was buried under a landfill, and the waterfront extended farther north decades ago, so the name is kind of a cheat. It’s perhaps better known locally as Little Italy, even though now there’re as many Chinese living there as Italians, so maybe that name is a cheat, too.
North Beach is also known for beat writer Jack Kerouac, and stripper Carol Doda, whose enormous hooters used to be up in lights in front of the Condor Club. There are a few remaining vestiges of the neighborhood’s beatnik past, mostly for the sake of the tourists. A couple strip joints still cling to life on Broadway, but their seedy allure is almost comically dated, and they’re losing ground fast to coffeehouses and art galleries.
Gentrification, beautification, and renovation are everywhere, my friends. It’s not just happening with buildings and neighborhoods. Go down to L.A. and you can see they’re gentrifying, beautifying, and renovating people there now, too.
The streets were still damp from Friday’s intermittent rains, but the skies were clear and bright, with a crisp, cold wind blowing off the white-capped bay. I could smell the sea, mingled with a hint of fried food wafting up from Chinatown.
The firehouse was on top of a hill with dramatic views of the Transamerica Pyramid and Coit Tower. It was a redbrick building from the mid-1900s with a stone carving of the SFFD emblem, an eagle with its talons gripping crisscrossed axes over licking flames, mounted above the arched garage doors.
“When I was a kid,” Monk said, “I wanted to be a firefighter.”
“You did?” I said.
“I loved everything about it,” he said. “Except the firefighting part.”
“Then what was it about being a firefighter that you loved?”
“This.”
Monk turned to the firehouse and opened his arms as if to embrace the sight in front of him. Both of the garage doors were open, letting the breeze stream into the station, where half a dozen firemen scrubbed and shined the two gleaming fire trucks, the sunshine glinting off the sparkling chrome and polished red metal.
“Isn’t it great?” He sighed.
I followed his gaze as he took in the fire hoses, neatly folded atop one another on the fire trucks; the spotless cement floors of the garage scrubbed and mopped to a marblelike sheen; the neat rows of fire hats, coats, and helmets aligned in open racks of dazzling steel; the pickaxes, shovels, and other tools mounted on the wall in order of size, shape, and function. The beauty of cleanliness, efficiency, and order.
His eyes were wide in childlike awe and appreciation. He was ten years old again, though I must confess that in a lot of ways I’m not convinced he’s ever really grown up.
Monk approached the captain, who stood beside a rolling cart of neatly folded white towels and a laundry basket, watching his men at work. His short-sleeved blue uniform was perfectly pressed and starched, his badge
