Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop by Lee Goldberg Page A

considered a feminine color. A man wouldn’t want to be seen on a bike of that color.”
    “We’re in San Francisco, Mr. Monk. This may come as a shock to you, but there are a lot of men here with feminine tendencies who aren’t shy about showing it.”
    Monk shivered from head to toe. I don’t think he’s ho mophobic, per se. He’s just phobic in general. His sense of order demands that if something is designed for a woman, or directly associated with femininity, then only a woman should use it.
    He would be just as unsettled by a woman wearing a man’s tie or using his aftershave instead of perfume.
    Come to think of it, a woman doused with aftershave would unsettle me, too.
    “There’s more,” Monk said. There always is with him. “The bike left an impression in the dirt. You can see the shape of the seat and where it was relative to the handlebars. Women are anatomically different from men.”
    “Are they really? I thought you didn’t notice.”
    “I try not to,” Monk said. “But those differences are reflected in how they design women’s bicycles. Women have wider hips than men, so their bike seats are different. They also have shorter torsos and longer legs than men, and that’s reflected in the distance between the seat and the handlebars. It’s also why the top tube of the frame is at an angle.”
    “I always thought it was to accommodate women who wore dresses and skirts when they rode bikes,” I said.
    “That too,” Monk said. “Can you take a picture of that?”
    I had a built-in camera in my cell phone. I took some shots of the ground for him.
    “How do you know it wasn’t a man riding a woman’s bike?”
    “The killer wouldn’t risk drawing that much attention to himself.”
    “Let me remind you again that we are in San Francisco,” I said. “A man riding a woman’s bike wouldn’t be that unusual, even if he was wearing a dress.”
    Monk shivered again. “I should tell the captain what I know.”
    “He’ll figure it out himself from the shoe impressions and an analysis of the paint chip,” I said. I looked back and saw the captain and the officers heading our way.
    “Do you think so?”
    “I’m positive,” I said, though I wasn’t. But what the captain did or didn’t discover about this killing really wasn’t our problem. We weren’t being paid to worry about it.
    “I’m not so sure,” Monk said.
    Clearly, drastic action was necessary.
    “You have some nature on your shoes,” I said. “I think it’s pine sap.”
    Monk let out a little yelp and hurried towards the road. I took my time. I wondered whether we’d have to burn his shoes when we got back to his apartment or if it would be enough to just dump them in his Diaper Genie.
    Perhaps we’d have to do both.
     
    I won’t hold you in suspense any longer. We did both. After that, he spent the rest of the day in his apartment, frantically looking for excuses to put something, anything, into his Diaper Genie and seal it for eternity.
    He created messes just so he could clean them up and dump the remains in the Genie. He “accidentally” dropped a bag of coffee, a box of cereal, and two cups on the floor.
    I went outside to empty the Diaper Genie and when I came back I found Monk talking furtively on the phone in the kitchen.
    “My name is Anonymous, and I have no relation whatsoever to Adrian Monk,” he said in a deep voice. “Here’s my tip. The person who shot Judge Stanton in Golden Gate Park was a woman. You can tell from the impression made by her bicycle in the—”
    I yanked the phone plug from the wall.
    “What are you doing?” I said.
    “Calling the police hotline and leaving an anonymous tip. Don’t worry, they’ll never know it was me.”
    “It doesn’t matter whether they do or not. They fired you, Mr. Monk, and now you’re giving them the benefit of your knowledge for free.”
    “Not everything has a price,” he said.
    “Your consulting services do and the police aren’t paying