Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg Read Free Book Online Page B

toes.”

    She looked at me as if I was losing my mind. I wasn’t. Yet. That was still a couple of hours away.

    The first call came at about one a.m. I clawed my way out of a deep sleep and reached blindly towards my nightstand for the phone. I knocked it off the table and almost fell out of bed searching for it on the floor in the darkness.

    I was dangling out of my bed, my head nearly touching the floor, when I found the phone and answered it.

    “Yes?” I said.

    “He’s stopped moving,” Monk said.

    “Isn’t that what you wanted?” I said. “Go to sleep.”

    “How can I sleep not knowing where he is?” Monk said.

    “Get a grip, Mr. Monk.” I am not very sympathetic when I am rudely awakened and I’m nearly upside down, with all the blood rushing into my groggy head.

    “He could be outside my door right now, licking his lips and sharpening his pickax.”

    “Relax,” I said. “He’s never eaten anyone’s flesh but his own.”

    “Maybe he wants to broaden his palate,” Monk said. “And break the culinary monotony.”

    Culinary monotony? Again? I struggled up into a sitting position in bed.

    “Have you and Julie been talking?”

    “No,” Monk said. “But do you think she would talk to me? I could use someone to talk to. Put her on.”

    “I am going to bed,” I said. “Don’t call back.”

    I left the phone off the hook, lowered the volume, and shoved it under a pillow. And then I went back to sleep.

    Here’s a piece of advice. Always remember to turn off your cell phone when you’re charging it or you could get a call at 4:42 a.m. from an obsessive-compulsive detective having a mental meltdown.

    I didn’t hear the call, since the charger is in the kitchen. But Julie heard it. She padded into my room and shook me awake.

    “What is it?” I asked. “Are you sick?”

    She held the cell phone out to me. “It’s Mr. Monk. He’s sick.”

    I took the phone from her and shouted into it. “I told you not to call.”

    “It’s a medical emergency,” Monk said hoarsely.

    “So call 911,” I said.

    “I did,” Monk said. “But they wouldn’t come.”

    “What’s the emergency?”

    “I can’t swallow,” he said.

    “Why not?”

    “I forgot,” Monk said, and began tearlessly weeping. “I’ve forgotten how to swallow. I’m going to die.”

    “What did the 911 operator tell you to do?”

    “She told me to swallow.”

    “Good advice,” I said and removed the battery from my phone.

    When I arrived at Monk’s house the next morning, I found him in his bed, fully dressed, holding a can of Lysol in each hand, aimed at the door.

    “Have you been lying like that all night?” I asked.

    “I’m under siege,” he said.

    “There’s nobody around,” I said.

    “Germs,” Monk said. “They are everywhere.”

    “That’s not exactly a revelation,” I said. “You’ve known that all of your life.”

    “But they weren’t coming to get me before,” Monk said.

    “What makes you think they are coming now?”

    “I can feel it,” Monk said and started spraying all around him until he was surrounded by a cloud of Lysol mist.

    “Is it safe for you to be breathing that stuff?”

    “It’s disinfectant,” Monk said. “It’s safer than air.”

    I didn’t share that belief, so I stepped out of the room. I used the moment of privacy to ponder my next move. Monk was falling apart, his shrink was on his way to Europe, and I was completely alone. It could only get worse. What was I going to do?

    On the bright side, Monk seemed to have remembered how to swallow.

    The phone rang, so I answered it.

    “Good morning, Natalie,” Captain Stottlemeyer said cheerfully. “How is Monk today?”

    “A complete wreck,” I said.

    “Even though Randy’s dogged investigation led to the recovery of his lost sock?”

    “Dr. Kroger went on vacation,” I said.

    “Oh hell,” Stottlemeyer said.

    “Monk didn’t call you?”

    “Thankfully,