“There’s an official tally?” I said.
“There is now,” Monk said. “I’m the official and I’ve just tallied. Why didn’t anybody call us?”
“I guess it never occurred to anybody that we needed an official tally,” Disher said.
“I meant why didn’t anybody call us to aid in the investigation?”
“Because this is a simple case and you were occupied on the Stipe thing.”
“But this is a murder,” Monk said.
“So is that,” Disher said.
“But this is a
real
murder.”
“Stipe’s murder looked real to me,” I said.
“Do you see anybody here with an elephant nose?” Monk said to me before turning to Disher. “Let’s trade.”
“No,” Disher said.
“I bet the captain will say yes.”
Monk shouldered past Disher and marched into the hotel room.
“I bet he won’t,” Disher called after him.
I turned to Disher. “How’s the Lorber case going?”
“The Special Desecration Unit has made some progress in between the Stipe shooting and this murder.”
“I know it’s not a murder, but I’m really curious why someone would bother shooting a dead person. Would you mind telling me about it later?”
“Sure, of course.” Disher smiled, clearly pleased that someone was taking an interest in what he and the Special Desecration Unit were doing. “I’d be glad to.”
“It’s a date,” I said, then immediately regretted my choice of words. “Not a date date, but an understanding that we’ll meet at some future time in a purely non-romantic way.”
“Right,” Disher said. “I knew that.”
I followed Monk into the hotel room before I could embarrass myself any further.
Stottlemeyer was at the far end of the narrow room, standing by the window and looking down at one of the two beds, where a very hairy dead man in his underwear lay tangled in the blood-spattered sheets.
A half-empty bottle of wine and two glasses were on the table. Monk was examining one of the glasses.
“There’s lipstick on the rim of this glass,” Monk said.
“Yes, Monk, I know that,” Stottlemeyer said with a weary sigh.
“Who is the victim?” Monk asked.
“The front desk says his name is John Bozadjian and that he checked in yesterday afternoon.”
“Did he pay with a credit card?”
“Yes, he did.”
“So where is it?” Monk asked.
“I would say it’s probably in his wallet,” Stottlemeyer replied.
“His wallet is missing,” Monk said. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And he isn’t wearing a watch or any jewelry,” Monk said. “But he’s got tan lines on his wrists and around the base of his ring fingers that suggest that he had some.”
“Believe it or not, I noticed that too,” Stottlemeyer said. “You know how I became captain of Homicide? I’ll tell you how. By solving a lot of homicides. On my own.”
Monk cocked his head and looked at the victim. Then he cocked his entire upper body and looked again. I didn’t see how that changed his perspective, but I didn’t understand most of what Monk did.
“It looks like a robbery,” Monk said.
“Unfortunately, I see cases like this all the time,” Stottlemeyer said. “An out-of-towner picks up a hooker for a night of whoopee and she rolls him for his cash and jewelry. Usually, it ends there and we never hear about it. Most guys are too embarrassed, or too married, to report it.”
“So if the prostitute knew that the odds were her victim wasn’t going to report the theft anyway,” I asked, “what was the point of killing him?”
“The hooker probably only meant to hit him hard enough to put him out for a while. But clobbering someone on the head is a crapshoot. If you do it too lightly, they could hit you back. Do it too hard and you could put them down for good.”
“Picking up a prostitute and bringing her back to your room is such a huge risk to your health and safety in so many ways,” I said. “What are men thinking?”
Stottlemeyer gave me a look. “What do you think they are thinking?”
“Men are idiots,” I said.
“Men are men,” Stottlemeyer said.
“What are you going to do now?”
Monk squeezed past Stottlemeyer to examine the clothes on the other bed.
Stottlemeyer sighed. “We’ll question the hotel door-men, concierges, and busboys—they’re usually the guys who put the clients in touch with the ladies in exchange for a commission. They’ll give us a name. We’ll round up all the hookers in the area and question them. And we’ll talk with the escort services. Meanwhile, we’ll keep our eye on the pawnbrokers and fences who’d be most likely to move the stolen merchandise.”
“It sounds like a lot of work,” I said.
“That’s how it gets done most of the time,” Stottlemeyer said, watching Monk, who took out his pen and began to examine the clothes with it. “How did things go at the convention?”
“We met some interesting people and learned a lot about the show.”
“What did you learn about Stipe’s murder?”
“You’d have to ask Mr. Monk about that,” I said.
Stottlemeyer looked at Monk, who was using his pen to lift up one of the sleeves of the victim’s discarded shirt.
“Well?” Stottlemeyer said.
“When did the maid discover the body?” Monk said.
“After lunch. She came in to clean the room and there he was,” Stottlemeyer said. “I was asking you about your investigation of the Stipe murder.”
“So she hadn’t cleaned the room since yesterday.”
“Yes, Monk, that would be the logical assumption.”
“Actually, sir, she didn’t clean the room yesterday,” Disher said, stepping in. “Emilia, the maid who ordinarily handles this floor, called in sick today with a stomach flu. Paola—that’s the maid who found the body—usually cleans on the seventh floor. Paola took a double shift to cover for Emilia today.”
“Thank you, Randy,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned back to Monk. “The ME is waiting to take the body.”
Monk nodded and stepped between Stottlemeyer and me to examine the clothes in the closet. I peered behind Monk to look at the captain.
“Which other
Beyond Earth
people are staying here besides Stipe?”
The captain peered behind Monk to answer me.
“Kingston Mills, the executive producer of the new show, and Judson Beck, the star. But the really interesting thing is that Stipe’s ex-wife Arianna showed up here last night with her divorce lawyer, Howard Egger.”
“Why did she do that?”
“I don’t know,” Stottlemeyer said. “We were going to ask her about it when this came up. In fact, we were just about done with this crime scene when you arrived.”
Monk leaned back from the closet.
“The victim has antacids, a jeweler’s loupe, sixty-five cents in change, and three bits of lint in the left front pocket of his overcoat.”
“That’s fascinating,” Stottlemeyer said.
Monk held his hand out to me. “Do you have any lint?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“We need another piece of lint and I’m lintless,” Monk said. “I’m always lintless.”
Stottlemeyer narrowed his eyes at Monk. “You want to put another piece of lint in Bozadjian’s coat pocket?”
“And one penny,” Monk said.
“That’s bizarre even for you.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Monk said.
“Monk,” Stottlemeyer said, “you can’t.”
“I’m respecting the dead.”
“You’re contaminating the crime scene. You can’t add stuff to the victim’s personal belongings.”
“I know that.” Monk took an evidence bag out of his pocket. “We’ll put our lint and our penny in here so it’s with the other stuff, but separate.”
“What does it matter if he’s got three pieces of lint and sixty-five cents? He’s dead.”
“So that means we stop caring? What about this man’s family? What would they think if they knew we showed such callous disregard for him?”
Stottlemeyer took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then jammed his hand in his pocket. He pulled his hand out, sorted through his loose change, and dropped a penny in the evidence Baggie.
“Happy now?”
“You don’t have any lint?”
Stottlemeyer looked down at his open palm. “Isn’t that lint?”
“That’s a crumb,” Monk said.
Disher dug around in his pockets. “I have lint.”
He opened his hand and showed it to Monk, who took a pair of tweezers from his breast pocket, carefully picked up the lint, and dropped it into the Baggie.
Monk placed the Baggie in Bozadjian’s coat, patted it gently, and smiled at us.
“There,” he said. “That’s better. Can’t you feel it?”
“I feel cracks forming in my skull,” Stottlemeyer said. “Are we done here?”
“Not quite.” Monk went into the bathroom and looked into a large toiletry bag that was on the counter near the sink.
We watched as Monk took out a separate vinyl case from the toiletry bag and unzipped it to reveal several tiny syringes, some vials, and a red box that was marked NEEDLE CLIPPER/BIOHAZARDOUS WASTE and had a pinhole at one end.
“Bozadjian was using drugs,” Monk said.
“That’s insulin, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said. “He was a diabetic. The hooker probably took his MedicAlert bracelet with the rest of his stuff.”
Monk cocked his head at the spare bed, crouched in front of one of the corners, and untucked the blanket.
Stottlemeyer groaned. “Now what are you doing?”
Monk motioned to the top sheet, which was folded around the corner and tucked under the mattress.