Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop

CHAPTER NINETEEN

While Lansdale drove their Crown Vic, Disher reviewed the file on Braddock that Stottlemeyer gave him. Stottlemeyer had meticulously detailed dozens of instances of abuse and gotten statements from several of Braddock’s victims.

But Disher was having trouble concentrating on the reports. Reading in the car made him nauseous, which was one distraction, and he couldn’t stop thinking about what this investigation could mean for him, which was another.

This case was more than a chance to impress the deputy chief. It was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shine on a national stage. Cops from all over the country were at the conference and they would be watching his progress with keen interest. A success could raise his profile considerably. But if he mucked it up, Bullitt would be riding a motor scooter instead of a Mustang, marking the tires of parked cars with a meter maid’s chalk stick.

Disher suddenly felt the three egg-and-cheese McMuffins he had for breakfast climbing up his throat with a hot vengeance. He yelled for Lansdale to pull over, opened the passenger door to the car before they even came to a stop, and vomited in the street, right in front of a Japanese tour group standing on the curb.

He wiped his mouth with a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin he found in the map pocket of the door and smiled at the revolted tourists.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Mune on sawaru na. Shinu kakugo shiro.”

The Japanese tourists glowered at him and marched away in a huff.

Disher closed the door and turned to Lansdale. “What is their problem?”

“I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with you puking on their shoes.”

“I missed their shoes by a good two inches,” Disher said. “Besides, I showed them the courtesy of apologizing in English and Japanese.”

“No, you didn’t,” Lansdale said.

“Mune on sawaru na, shinu kakugo shiro means, ‘Please forgive me for the inconvenience, I’m truly sorry.’ ”

“It means, ‘Stop groping my breasts and prepare to die,’” Lansdale said.

“I think you’re mistaken,” Disher said.

“My wife is Japanese,” Lansdale said.

“Oh, so I guess you’ve heard that a lot,” Disher said, and slapped the dash. “Let’s go, Jackal, we’ve got some bad guys to catch.”

Lansdale drove them up another block to the hotel and parked right in front. Disher put on a pair of sunglasses for the Caruso effect before getting out and hurrying inside.

Sure enough, all eyes were on him as he headed across the lobby towards the elevators, so everybody saw him when he tripped over the suitcase and slid on his stomach across the slick, marble floor.

Lansdale helped Disher to his feet.

“Who put that suitcase down in front of me?” Disher said. “I want him arrested for assaulting an officer.”

“It was there when we came in. You headed straight for it, Bullitt. You might want to take off your sunglasses indoors, the lighting is pretty dim in here.”

“Then tell them to turn up the lights; we’re running a murder investigation here,” Disher said. “Clues hide in the dark. And it’s ‘Bullitt, sir,’ to you.”

“Yes, sir,” Lansdale said. “Bullitt, sir.”

Disher looked around, pretending to be scanning for clues, when he was really checking to see if anyone was laughing at him. If they were, they were hiding it well. That was when he spotted the surveillance cameras in the corners of the ceiling.

“I want the surveillance tapes on all floors, elevators, and stairwells for the last twenty-four hours and a complete list of guests who are staying in the hotel.”

“Will do,” Lansdale said.

They got into the elevator and rode it up to the seventh floor in silence. Disher pocketed his sunglasses. When the doors opened, they were greeted by a uniformed officer, who glanced at the badges clipped to their belts before letting them exit the elevator. The entire floor was being treated as a crime scene, which would have been Disher’s first move if it hadn’t been done already.

Disher approached the open door to Braddock’s hotel room and looked inside. The room was cramped with forensic techs who were taking pictures, bagging things, and brushing every surface for prints.

“Take five, boys, we need the room,” Disher said. “Everyone goes but the ME.”

He stepped aside as the techs filed out of the room, leaving behind only Dr. Daniel Hetzer, who crouched beside Braddock’s body, which was facedown on the floor beside the king-sized bed.

Dr. Hetzer maintained two days’ worth of stubble on his pale, fleshy cheeks to compensate for the lack of hair on his head. He used to be a two-pack-a-day smoker until he gave up cigarettes for alcohol instead. But he still smelled of cigarette smoke.

Disher looked around the room. The bed was made, but the comforter was wrinkled and pillows were bunched up against the headboard as a backrest. The TV remote was on the floor beside the bed. Braddock was watching TV when his killer arrived, which meant the killer wasn’t lying in wait for him, which meant the killer was invited in, which meant it was someone Braddock knew.

The dining table was tipped over. There was a broken bottle of scotch and the shards of two broken glasses on the floor. Disher was surprised the doctor wasn’t lapping up the puddle like a thirsty dog.

“Cause of death?” Disher asked.

“Strangulation,” Hetzer said. “But he took a beating sometime before that. His nose is broken and there’s a bruise on his chest.”

He turned the body over so Disher and Lansdale could see Braddock’s broken nose, which was Stottlemeyer’s handiwork, and the red ligature marks around his neck, which were somebody else’s.

“You might want to check between Braddock’s teeth for traces of the comforter,” Disher told Dr. Hetzer.

“You think that Braddock liked to chew his bedsheets?” Lansdale said.

“I think Braddock knocked his killer back into the table as he was being strangled. Then the killer pushed Braddock facedown into the bed, put all his weight on Braddock’s back, and added smothering to his murderous repertoire.”

Dr. Hetzer nodded. “Judging by the position of the body, I’d say you’re probably right.”

“I didn’t get this badge out of a box of Cap’n Crunch, Doc,” Disher said. “When was he killed?”

“I’m guessing midnight,” Hetzer said, “Give or take an hour or two.”

“Can’t you be more specific?”

“I wish I could, but the AC was turned on full blast. It was like a meat locker when we got here.”

“Someone was trying to make it difficult for us to pin down exactly when the murder occurred,” Disher said. “We’re dealing with a pro. What was Braddock strangled with?”

“I’d say a belt, a rolled-up towel, or the sash of a bathrobe.”

Disher turned to Lansdale. “Make sure the forensic boys bag anything in this room that could have been used to strangle somebody. And talk to the people in the adjoining rooms, upstairs and downstairs, too. Maybe they heard something. I also want those glass shards tested for prints ASAP. I want to know who he was drinking with.”

“What are you going to be doing?” Lansdale asked.

“The heavy thinking,” Disher said. “You bring me the pieces and I’ll put the puzzle together.”

Monk spent the day at his apartment working through the files that Nick Slade had sent over that morning. I tried to help as best I could, but since I’m not a detective genius, it basically meant being a sounding board as he sorted through the clues and then being a stenographer as he laid out the solutions to the mysteries.

Danielle came by late that afternoon with a file under her arm. When I saw the file, I involuntarily tensed up. But it wasn’t another case to add to the pile Monk was dealing with. It was her research into Bill Peschel, his daughter, Carol, and her husband, Phil.

Monk set aside his remaining cases for the moment to listen to what Danielle had dug up.

“Your instincts were right, Mr. Monk,” she said. “Carol and her husband are living a lie. They aren’t a prosperous, upper-middle-class family.”

“They’re communist sleeper agents who’ve infiltrated American society,” Monk said.

Danielle and I stared at him.

“You are aware that we are in the twenty-first century,” I said. “And that the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Cold War is over?”

“Yes,” Monk said.

“That’s not it,” I said.

“How do you know?” he said.

“Because the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Cold War is over.”

“Okay,” Monk said. “They’re wanted fugitives.”

Danielle and I stared at him.

“They’re brother and sister,” Monk said.

Danielle and I stared at him.

“They’re illegal aliens,” Monk said.

“Have you been possessed by Randy Disher?” I asked.

“Why do you say that?” Monk replied.

“They’re broke,” Danielle said. “Their personal bank accounts are nearly depleted and they’ve reached the spending limit on their credit cards.”

“That’s not nearly as interesting a lie to be living as the others,” Monk said.

“We’ll have to tell them to work on that,” I said.

“Phil lost his job as a sales rep for a pool equipment company four months ago,” Danielle said. “He leaves the house each morning in a jacket and tie but spends his day sitting in an easy chair at a Barnes and Noble in San Rafael doing crossword puzzles.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“We traced his credit card usage,” she said. “I also put him under surveillance.”

“You can do that?” Monk said.

“I can’t but you can,” Danielle said. “I hope you don’t think that I abused your authority.”

“I didn’t know I had any authority,” Monk said. “What else can I do with it?”

“Let’s concentrate on the case,” I said. I didn’t want Monk thinking too hard about the resources that were available to him or he’d assign Intertect’s operatives to watch the streets for people spitting out their gum on the sidewalks. “Does Carol know that he’s out of work?”

“The bank accounts and credit cards are all under his name, so the statements go to him,” Danielle said. “So it’s possible that she doesn’t. But I do know that they’ve been living on the money her father has been giving them from his savings and stocks.”

“What are they worth?” I asked.

“The combined value is nearly one million dollars,” she said. “Now that Peschel is dead, they can add the one-point-five-million-dollar life insurance payoff to the pot.”

“Not if her husband killed him,” Monk said.

“Phil certainly had a strong financial motive for murder,” Danielle said.

I nodded in agreement. “And he knew better than anybody exactly when Carol and the kids were going to be out of the house that morning.”

“So would anyone who looked at her refrigerator,” Monk said.

I was surprised that Monk had noticed her calendar on the refrigerator, but I shouldn’t have been. He notices everything, even when it appears he isn’t paying any attention at all.

“I wouldn’t rule Carol out as a suspect just yet,” Monk said. “She might have known that her husband was out of work. The two of them could have planned the murder together.”

“But they were already living off her dad’s money,” I said. “What did they have to gain from killing him?”

“Taking care of him was a burden,” Monk said. “And there was the danger posed by his warts.”

“What warts?” Danielle asked.

“Carol told us at the wake that he was covered with them,” Monk said.

“She wasn’t being literal,” I said. “ ‘Warts and all’ is an expression.”

“That means he’s covered in grotesque, blistering tumors created by a highly contagious virus.”

“It means she loved him despite the fact that he wasn’t a perfect person,” I said, then turned to Danielle. “Maybe you could elaborate on that.”

She explained that Peschel dropped out of high school and drifted up and down the state, working as a manual laborer in agriculture and construction for a few years, before landing back in San Francisco, where he did all kinds of odd jobs, like taxi driver, short-order cook, ditchdigger, and, finally, bartender at a Tenderloin dive called Lucky Duke’s.

Along the way, Peschel built up a police record of minor offenses, like assault, petty theft, and drunk-and-disorderly conduct. He also did some “debt collection” for Bobby Fisset, a big racketeer in the city during the late fifties, early sixties.

In 1967, Peschel met Clara, a salesgirl at Capwell’s department store, and got her pregnant. They were married a few months before she started showing.

“How did you find out all of this?” Monk interrupted.

“For starters, the police maintained a confidential file on him.”

“If it was confidential,” I asked, “how did you see it?”

“Nick has sources in the SFPD,” Danielle said. “I also looked at all relevant federal, state, county, and local records and, posing as an obituary writer for the Chronicle, I interviewed Carol Atwater for details on his early life.”

Monk nodded, impressed.

I hoped he wasn’t drawing any comparisons between her efforts and mine on his behalf. I’d never done any research like that for him. For one thing, I wouldn’t know how to begin. For another, she had resources I couldn’t hope to match.

Even so, I felt a pang of insecurity and a cramp of jealousy. I tend to internalize my anxieties.

Danielle continued briefing us on what she’d learned: Lucky Duke’s luck ran out in 1970 and he was stricken with throat cancer. Peschel took over running the bar. And when Duke died nine months later, Peschel borrowed money from Fisset to buy the business from Duke’s widow and rename it Bill’s Tavern.

To pay off the debt, Peschel let Fisset use a back room at the bar to run a private poker club.

After Fisset was gunned down outside of Alioto’s restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in 1973, Peschel secretly gave the police tips that helped nab the shooter and avert a mob war.

“By working in the Tenderloin for years and associating with Fisset, Peschel established his street cred with the low lifes and criminals,” Danielle said. “They saw him as one of them.”

“He was,” Monk said. “And warty, too.”

“By helping the police catch Fisset’s killers and prevent a lot of bloodshed, he earned the trust of the police, who showed their gratitude by making him a paid informant and turning a blind eye to his various nickel-and-dime illegal activities to make ends meet.”

Something didn’t make sense to me. “If the tavern was such a dive, and Peschel was scratching and scraping for money his whole life, how was he able to sell his business for enough money to retire with his wife to Florida?”

“He sold the tavern for thirty-five thousand dollars,” Danielle said. “He became rich off of his InTouchSpace-dot-com stock and the sale of his Florida condo.”

“How did he luck into buying shares of InTouchSpace before it went big?”

“Word on the street, I guess,” she said.

“He was on the wrong street for that word,” Monk said, shrugging his shoulders. “Something doesn’t fit.”

“So what’s next?” I asked.

“We talk to the suspects,” Monk said. “But we don’t touch them under any circumstances.”

“Why not?” Danielle asked.

“Warts could run in the family,” he replied.