"Because this isn’t just a job,” Monk said. “It’s a lifetime commitment.”
21
Mr. Monk Goes to Burgerville
Monk faced the revolving door as if confronting an old enemy. He squinted at it and jiggled his arms at his sides. There was no way he was going through that doorway again.
“You look like a marshal staring down a gunfighter and waiting to draw your gun,” I said.
“I should have known when I saw this that Brandon Lorber was the kind of man who’d rip off his employees and destroy their futures.”
I waved to Archie Applebaum, who was sitting at his guard desk in the center of the lobby. He got up and came over. He held up his security card key for me to indicate that he knew I wanted him to let us in.
“Because he had a revolving door in his lobby?” I asked Monk.
“He clearly enjoyed the suffering of others,” Monk said. “What other purpose would there be for making people endure that?”
“Maybe so that they could get in and out of the building faster and he could conserve the heat and air-conditioning in his lobby.”
Monk snorted. “You’re so naïve.”
Archie slid his card through the reader on the security door, held it open for us, and motioned us inside.
The security door was only used after hours and for the handicapped, but it was the only way Monk was going in or out of the building.
“Welcome back,” Archie said. “Leland called and said you might be coming down. What can we do for you?”
“We’d like to talk to Andrew Cahill,” I said.
“I’ll call up and see if he’s willing to see you,” Archie said.
“Up?” Monk said.
“He’s on the tenth floor,” Archie said.
“Please ask him if he’ll come down to see us,” I said.
“No,” Monk said. “We want to go up.”
“That’s a lot of stairs, Mr. Monk,” I said.
“I want to see him in his office.”
Archie went to his desk, made the call, then came back over. “He’ll be glad to see you.”
He walked us over to the stairs, unlocked the door, and held it open.
“You’re awfully security-minded here,” Monk said.
“This is the corporate headquarters of a national chain,” Archie said. “We attract a lot of kooks.”
“Does everybody have a shredder in their office?” Monk asked.
“Of course,” Archie replied.
“What happens to the shredded documents?”
“The custodians pick them up, put them into a separate bin, and bring it down here,” Archie said. “I lock it in a special closet until the document disposal service gets here.”
“There’s a service for that?”
“They come once a week,” Archie said. “They take the shredded paper away and incinerate it.”
“I also lock my garbage in a special closet,” Monk said.
“You do?” Archie said.
“He does,” I said.
“Doesn’t everybody?” Monk said. “I wonder if they would come to my house each week, pick up my garbage, and incinerate it.”
“You’d have to ask them,” Archie said, “but I don’t think they would.”
“Who has keys to that closet?” Monk asked.
“Mr. Lorber, the building manager, and I share a set with the two guards who work the other shifts. Why do you ask?”
“I’m fascinated by shredded documents,” Monk said. “I like putting things back together that have been taken apart.”
“You’d enjoy reconstructing a shredded document?”
“I’d love it,” Monk said, and started up the stairs.
By the time we reached the tenth floor, I was aware of every muscle in my body and the full capacity of my lungs to draw in air.
Judging by the way Monk was breathing and the pained expression on his face, he wasn’t any better off than me, but somehow he’d mastered the ability to control his sweat. There wasn’t a bead of moisture on his skin. It was amazing.
I had to get him to teach me how to do that.
I wondered what other uncontrollable body functions he’d controlled. Could he also manage the moisture in his eyes and the production of saliva in his mouth? Maybe he even controlled the growth of his hair.
As I was trying to remember the last time Monk had had a haircut, a secretary met us at the stairwell with bottled water.
The water wasn’t Sierra Springs, so Monk refused it. I gladly took both bottles and guzzled them down as the secretary led us to Cahill’s corner office.
Cahill looked like a man who could bench-press my car. His muscles rippled under his tailored business shirt like the surface of the ocean. I don’t know whether they were moving or I was just swooning from my trek.
His office was furnished identically to Lorber’s, right down to pictures on the wall of himself standing outside of various Burgerville restaurants across the country. The only difference was a Lucite paperweight on his desk with a butterfly in it.
“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Monk,” Cahill said, offering Monk his hand. “I want to help you any way I can in your investigation.”
I gave Monk a disinfectant wipe before he had a chance to ask for it. I was eager to please after our little tiff.
“I can assure you my hands are clean,” Cahill said with a smile. “In every respect.”
“It sounds like you’re honing your denial skills for the trial,” I said. “The smile might just work on the jury.”
“I didn’t murder Brandon Lorber,” Cahill said. “I was at a Burgerville opening in Chula Vista.”
“Lorber was killed by a professional hit man,” Monk said. “An alibi doesn’t clear you as the one who hired him. But I believe my assistant was referring to the criminal trial for all the fiscal shenanigans here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cahill said.
People said that a lot around Monk.
In the context of a murder investigation, it was usually
