“I DON’T CARE if he’s in a meeting with Queen Victoria herself,” Monk angrily said into the phone. “Tell him it’s Monk, and tell him I’ve read the notes.” Onto the line came one of the soft rock stations, and Monk listened to a Lionel Ritchie number while waiting. The chorus was repeating for the third time when O’Day came on.

“What do you want, Mr. Monk?” He tried his best to sound bored.

“About two hundred thousand dollars,” Monk said with equal aplomb.

“Really.”

“Really. You, Park Hankyoung, a few others from the Merchants Group and several of your good ol’ boy golfing buddies are Jiang Holdings.”

“You’re in way over your head.”

“Then you better throw me a life preserver. Say one that costs about a quarter of a million.”

“I’m going to hang up,” O’Day said, without much conviction.

“Go ahead,” Monk challenged. “I’m itching to send my story around to the papers. Oh, and not the Times, I know you and the publisher both take breakfast at the Odin Club. But the folks over at the weekly alternative in town, and the black paper The Sentinel, and hey, maybe somebody at The Nation or Mother Jones might think it’s worth a few inches of ink.”

“Everything is spelled out in Suh’s notes.” There was a crack in the veneer, a sliver of desperation in the silky voice of the lawyer and power broker.

“You know it, slick.”

“I thought you were a standard bearer, Monk. The post-modern, hip-hop private eye operating in the Land of Nod. The city-state trapped forever between the sea and the desert. The perfect metaphor for lives born in the womb of wetness only to dry up and blow away in the harsh unforgiving arid landscape.”

“Nice imagery there, M. O. Did you have something similar in mind when you sent your goons on their errand to scare Jill? Sent them on a bogus drive-by so I’d be all hot and bothered to go after Crosshairs.”

“You’re swimming a little deeper.”

“Sure I am, big boy. Like you were the one who sicced the Consumer Affairs Board on me so I’d jump more, and Keys and I wind up chasing phantoms rather than the real crooks. Hiring me so you could keep an eye on what I was doing, and because you think you’re the lord of the manor, and can do anything you want. Even flaunt Suh’s death by burying him at Florence and Normandie. Knowing then it was going to be the sight of a SOMA groundbreaking. A not-so-subtle warning for the other shopkeepers to keep their noses out of the business of Jiang Holdings.”

In a measured manner, O’Day said, “Grimes was fucking up. We had to make some good out of a bad situation.”

“Right. Like Suh really believed you were going to let him live.”

“How much was that amount again, small change?”

“You know goddamn well what it was. And I just tacked on another 50 Gs ’cause your breath stinks.”

“And you give me back the original. Not, I might hasten to add, that there’s probably anything in there to legally indict me. But it might stir up unnecessary concerns.”

“The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.”

“You mock me with Rousseau, Monk. But you don’t mock my money. Stay by the phone, my greedy friend, you shall hear from me soon.”

Monk stared at the phone. He doubted if Keys and Diaz were still listening in, but what if they were? Would they intervene, or were they in O’Day’s pockets, too?

The door to his office moved inward and Dexter Grant, carrying a cup of coffee, entered. That unmistakeable gait of his took him into one of the Eastlakes.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“You look worried.”

Perturbed that his old mentor could read him so well, Monk went on the offensive. “Dex, is there something I can help you with today?”

He crossed his bandy legs and slouched in the seat. As was his custom, he put the cup on the floor next to the chair. “I was watching the news yesterday, and there was this reporter talking about how the special task force had blown an arrest.”

“I told you about Drier, so what?”

Grant gulped down some coffee. “So I got to wondering who might have tipped off Crosshairs and why.”

“Of course,” Monk said non-committally.

Grant folded his arms and waited.

“I suppose you won’t be satisfied until I tell you everything that’s happened since I last saw you.”

Grant took another leisurely sip of his coffee.

Reluctantly, Monk filled him in.

“Sheeoot, as granny used to say.” He was about to go on when the phone rang.

“Hello,” Monk said into the receiver.

“I’ll have your money tomorrow. But how do I know you won’t try something with one of the copies you’ve made?”

“That’s your lookout, O’Day. The deal is for the original.”

“And your silence,” he added flatly.

“Three-thirty at the sports store on the second floor of the Baldwin Hills Mall. And it has to be you.”

“No.”

“Bye.” Monk hung up. He and Grant looked at one another, men the phone went off again.

“I guess I’ve got little choice.”

“See ya.”

There was a throng of teenagers milling about the mall. They were raucous and demi-god self-confident in their powerful, graceful bodies, larger and taller than Monk remembered being at their age. Decked out urban slick in their Air Jordans, Cross Colours, Guess Jeans, NaNa boots, Champion sweatshirts, X watchcaps, Bronze Age shirts, and cuffed and rolled 540 Levi’s.

A passel of them—girls reeking of knock-off Giorgio and boys with shoulders wide as Kenworth cabs—sauntered past Monk. He leaned on the rail in front of the popular sports store owned by an ex-NBAer on the second floor. Maxfield O’Day, walking stiff-legged and looking straight ahead, appeared at the other end of the walkway a minute ahead of schedule. With a deliberate pace, he approached Monk. A soft learner attaché case hung straight down from his arm.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Monk.”

O’Day had a smirk on his face and that made him nervous. Monk looked around, being careful not to linger on the young black woman Tina Chalmers had sent to surreptitiously take the picture of his handing the notebook over to O’Day. Back some paces from where he and the SOMA president stood, there was an Asian man in an expensive suit. What made him stand out was the tilt to one side of his body and the lift of his shoulders as if he wore football pads under his jacket. Kyphoscoliosis, curvature of the spine, an M.E. acquaintance of Monk’s told him once. Robinson was wrong, he was handsome with close-cropped black hair, and a noticeable five o’clock shadow dominated his lower jaw. His hands were clasped before him butler fashion.

Near the man were three teenaged girls laughing and goofing on one another. Ostensibly they were looking into the display window of a woman’s clothing store, but that was just an excuse to slyly watch the boys go by. The man, aware that he had Monk’s attention, tipped his hands slightly forward. The overhead track lighting gleamed off the knife he held.

Monk snarled at O’Day. “What if I gat you while you stand there laughing up your sleeve at me?”

O’Day said, “I believe you have something for me.”

Suh’s notebook for a stranger’s life. Did the man with the hunchback think he could get away once he did his deed? What did it matter? If one of those girls went down, the blood would stain Monk’s soul. He held up a loose-leaf notebook.

O’Day calmly took it out of his hand. He put down the attaché case and paged through the notebook. Satisfied, he placed the notebook in his attaché case. The hunchback melted away. “Thank you for all your good work, Mr. Monk.” He looked around. “I wonder where my associate has gotten off to.” He turned hard eyes on Monk. “He can be so capricious at times. Stay right here while I look for him, will you, Mr. Monk? In case he conies back this way.”

“Sure.”

O’Day walked away and Monk remained by the rail for a long time, wanting to be certain that the handsome killer wasn’t prowling around the mall, watching for Monk trying to follow O’Day and lashing out at some young throat. Eventually, he left the spot and went down to the Sears on the first floor. Back where the catalog department used to be before it was dropped due to the recession, there was still a bank of pay phones, and Monk stood by one in particular. Thirty minutes later it rang.

“They’re at a building out here near Glendale.”

“Off of Riverside Drive?” Monk asked Grant.

“That’s the one, Hemlock.”

“I’m on my way.”

“I’ll be parked behind a building with the name Macdonald Family Heirlooms on it.”

Monk arrived and pulled his car in next to where Grant had parked. The car the retired PI was in was a two door late model Grand Am. The older man got out as did Monk. “This must belong to one of your daughters,” Monk said, pointing at the vehicle.

“I think we’re going to have to build up a special reserve of ordinary cars. How the hell did Spenser on TV in that cherry Mach I Mustang follow people?”

“Thanks for your help, Dex.” Monk started to move off.

“Thanks for your help, Dex, my ass.” He came up beside him. “I’m with you, old student, till the bitter end.”

Monk halted. Somewhere a dog barked, and a truck rumbled by over on the main street. “I can handle it from here, Dex.”

“Look, I may have lost a step or two but I ain’t blind, I don’t need to wear a diaper yet, and my hand don’t shake, much.” He unlimbered his dated Police Special .38, a natural extension of his large knuckled hand. “I was going through skylights and busting down doors when you were still throwing your strained carrots at your mom.”

Monk was inclined to give him an argument but knew that would only result in the both of them shouting at each other and alerting O’Day. He shook his head in surrender. “Come on.”

Monk tried the door but it was locked. Grant gently pushed him aside.

“What, you thought they’d leave breadcrumbs for you?” Grant produced a lock pick kit from the pocket of his windbreaker. Expertly, he undid both locks and turned the knob. The door went in on darkness. They both listened but could hear no voices.

“The young before the restless,” Grant invited.

Monk went in, gun out, thankful that the light was failing outside and therefore his body less of a silhouette in the doorway. Silently, Grant came in behind him, closing the door. The interior of the building was a large warehouse space. Various types of machinery, scattered around haphazardly, were covered in tarps tied down with steel cables. Both men wore rubber-soled shoes, and they went along quietly in the garnering gloom of the place.

Off to the right, cut into a far wall, was a lighted archway. A railed catwalk rose along the south wall. Metal stairs led up to it. Grant pointed up and headed for the stairs, Monk toward the archway. Getting closer, Monk heard a noise. He looked to his left and thought he saw a shape detach itself from next to one of the bulky tarps. He went in that direction and something caught him in the middle of his back, and he went down on both knees. “Dex,” Monk hollered.

A dampness spread on the back of his shirt like a hawk unfolding its wings. His arms were getting numb. The figure shifted in front of him, the light from the archway highlighting someone raising something overhead. It was a woman, the woman from the picture in Samuels’ room. Grant fired his gun. The bullet went past her. But it was enough to momentarily stop the downward arc of the iron bar she held.

Feeling returned to Monk’s right arm, and he brought his gun up. “Throw that thing away.” He got his feet under him.

Her hair was tied back, and she wore black Spandex tights, white tennis shoes with white socks over the ankles, and an armless sweat top that displayed the bunched muscles in her arms. Aerobics to murder by. The iron bar made a loud noise as it met the concrete of the warehouse.

“Come on, let’s see what our other playmates are up to.”

The archway went black and the woman jumped him. She was strong and her hand wrapped around his right wrist while her other one drove into his rib cage. Monk gasped, letting go of the automatic. Rather than try to fight the motion of her pushing him backwards, he went with it and dropped to the ground. His knee sought purchase in her body, but she was already thinking ahead of him. She blocked his leg and caught him on the side of his face with her fist.

Pain pulsed inside his temples, and Monk countered with a blow that managed to find her washboard of a stomach.

“Shit,” was her reply.

Monk couldn’t tell if she was expressing contempt or actually felt his blow. He got out from under her, and the two got to their feet. She rushed forward immediately, and her arms encircled his torso. They were driven back in the blackened room and Monk crashed into something hard. One of the covered machines. He got an open palm under her chin and shoved upward.

The beam of a flashlight pierced the room, and Monk and the woman were briefly illuminated in it. Suddenly the light jiggled, and Monk was aware that it dropped to the floor and blinked out.

There was the flash, then the retort, of a gun blast. As if on a dance floor where moving bodies are seen only in the glare of a throbbing strobe light, Monk had a nanosecond glimpse of Grant and Bart Samuels. They both had guns in their hands. There was another burst of light and a retort, and someone yelled.

The woman spun Monk around and hit him solid in the stomach, doubling him over. His knees went weak, but it was Monk’s turn to think ahead. Instinctively, he’d raised his forearm and it blocked the fist she was bringing down on his head. He felt the rush of wind as her knee came up. Monk grabbed it in both hands, and forcefully yanked on the leg. It straightened, and the body attached to it must have reared back straight as a plank. Because the next sound Monk heard was a sharp wet thud and the leg went limp. Monk released the limb, guessing that the woman’s head must have hit one of the large slabs of machinery.

“Dex, Dex,” Monk yelled, not caring if Samuels and the other man heard him.

“Over here, by the archway,” a quiet voice replied.

Monk stumbled to it and knelt down when he felt a hand on his leg. “How bad is it, Dex?”

“Hard to say, youngster. I’m feeling dizzy in the head and my left leg has a cramp in it.”

“Is it the leg?” Monk said hopefully.

“No. His bullet caught me a little above the midsection.” His breath was becoming ragged and Monk had to fight down a feeling of helplessness. “Finish the job, Ivan. Or they’ll for sure finish us both. I’ll crawl off somewhere so they can’t find me and use me as a hostage.”

Monk wanted to say something else but knew Grant was right. There was a another sound, and suddenly Monk felt the Police Special pressed into his hand.

“I think I clipped him, too.” Monk could hear Grant, heaving in and out large gulps of air, slide his body away.

He straightened and found that as his eyes became adjusted to it, the warehouse was not totally black. Light from the street filtered in from the frosted windows set up high in the walls. With the hulking, unused machines lying about, it gave the place the quality of a mist-covered land full of tombstones and grave markers waiting to be used for dead dinosaurs. Off to one side, Monk could perceive the inert form of the woman. The archway was just before him. Grant had disappeared. He went through the arch.

Entering the area on the other side of the archway, Monk stood still, trying to orient himself. There seemed to be partitions in this part of the warehouse that at one time had probably been the office portion. Stepping more into the space, Monk strained to somehow extend his other senses in an effort to detect Samuels. He went down on his stomach and slowly sent himself forward as a soldier might slither under barbwire.

He halted his forward motion but he wasn’t sure why. An undefinable feeling touched on a nerve and he stopped and listened. Listened hard. Monk reached his free left hand out to his side and it landed on cold metal. He felt more of it. A secretary’s chair on casters. Monk swung his body toward it, grabbed the chair, and quickly shoved it along the floor in front of him.

A gun barked like a German shepherd in heat. Its bullet pinged off the floor near where Monk had been. He sent a .38 round up and to the left of where he’d seen the flash.

“Goddamnit,” Monk heard Samuels yelp. The ponytailed man cranked off another shot where he’d seen Monk’s gun flash. But the private detective had secreted himself behind the desk the chair had been at. Frantically, Monk felt in his pockets and produced a book of matches. Another slug tore into the top of the table. Careful to shield the light as he struck one of the matches, Monk set the whole pack ablaze and threw it into the air like a rookie trying his best for the quarterback position.

Briefly, Samuels, one of his legs leaking vermilion, was caught in the hot burst of light as he leaned against a far wall. He recovered from his surprise just as Monk grouped two in his chest. The thatches went out, and Monk could hear the body tumble forward onto the floor. He got up running. There was a closed door next to where Samuels had stood and Monk could still see it in his mind’s eye. He found the knob and got the portal open. A hand lashed onto his ankle and he kicked his foot loose.

“Help me, man.”

Monk ignored Samuels’ plea and found himself in a hallway. It was so narrow that he could touch either wall by stretching out his arms. He turned and went in that direction. Suddenly a wall rose up to meet him and he could feel the rough hewn surface of its bricks. He turned around and went in the other direction. He passed the doorway he’d just entered, and could hear Samuels’ labored breathing. He went cold because he had to. “Where are they, Samuels, what room are they in?” Monk said, whispering close to the other man’s face.

“You’ll get me a doctor?”

“Yeah,” Monk said keeping his bile down.

“Down the hall, last door on the right.”

Monk stood to the side of the door. A high window at this end of the hall bathed the space in a soft yellow light. Monk tried the knob but it was locked. Where the hell was the man with the curved spine?

“Samuels? Myra?” came a voice on the other side of the door.

Monk waited. The voice said, “Kyung?”

The other man. Suddenly, Monk felt vulnerable standing in the hall, and his first impulse was to shoot off the door’s lock and rush in and get O’Day. But he checked himself. There was something about the pause between when O’Day had said the first two names and then calling Kyung’s as if it were an afterthought. Maybe Kyung wasn’t prowling around the warehouse.

The area of the doorjamb that held the lock mechanism gave way as the second blast from the .38 ripped into it. The door was kicked and then there was a discharge of air, like someone spitting. The silenced .32’s bullet was spent on the door opposite the one that Monk had kicked. But he wasn’t standing in front of it, but to the side, where he had shot from. As he’d guessed, O’Day had tried to sucker him in the room. Kyung, and his small bore gun with the sound suppressor, was also in the room.

Monk had retreated down the hall and was now crouched at the doorway that led back to the partitioned office.

“You’re a smart man, Monk,” O’Day boomed. “I’m sure we can come to some agreement.”

Monk didn’t reply.

“The phone’s in this room, Monk. The only one that still works in this building. Is Grant dead or wounded, Monk? Will you let your old partner die?”

“What’s the deal, O’Day?” Monk could wait it out from his position, since it was obvious the only way out of the room for the both of them was past him. Yet the head of SOMA’S hole card was Grant’s life, ebbing from him as they dickered.

“Throw your gun out. No, wait, Kyung has made it clear that the .38 is spent, but we want your .45 and the gun you probably have from Samuels.”

“I lost the automatic on the warehouse floor. Here’s Samuels’ gun.” Monk made a big production of sliding it down the hall toward their door.

“That won’t do, Monk. Get the other one and slide the .38 down here also.”

He did as ordered and said, “You’ll have to wait, I’ve got to look for the automatic.”

“I’ve got time,” O’Day said, some of his old charm returning.

Back out in the warehouse, Monk found the .45 near Myra’s unconscious form. He slid it down the hall.

“Now come out and stand perfectly still in the hallway, hands so we can see them.”

“Okay,” Monk said and did so.

The overhead light came on and Monk squinted to see. O’Day and Kyung, a .32 Beretta with a suppressor in his hand, appeared. Not a powerful handgun, it required up-close and personal use. Clearly, Monk concluded, Kyung enjoyed his work. His hands hung loose at his sides, the backs of them facing the other two.

O’Day was back in form. “You were right about most aspects of the case, Monk. I’ve got to hand it to you, I didn’t think you were that capable.”

“Thanks.”

“Suh wouldn’t tell us where he’d hidden his notes and so I saw it was to our advantage to make an example of him. I had him buried at Florence and Normandie.”

“Why’d you have Kyung kill Grimes?”

O’Day was an actor playing to his audience. He worked his hands like an orator. “On that, you were correct, too. Mr. Stacy was getting a bit too obstreperous for our needs. His attack on you at the club, thinking that would put him in good graces with me, and some of his other antics were calling undue attention to our work. It seemed convenient to deal with him when we did.” With that, he waved a hand in the air and Kyung raised the Beretta, taking a step toward Monk.

Monk’s left arm jumped. The small frame hidden hammer .38 was in his hand. He got off two as Kyung squeezed off one. The assassin’s head snapped back, his face contorted with disbelief. Something gurgled in his throat, and he sank to the ground. Monk charged forward.

“How, how …?” O’Day said to him open-mouthed.

Monk grabbed him hard by the throat. “There better be a phone in there.” He hated the lawyer for all that had happened; the machinations, the avarice, the killing and the blood. And that one, if not two, men were dead by his hand and his gun. He’d done it to protect his and Grant’s lives, but the act of eliminating a human existence was a malignancy too many in the world shared. And if there was anything Monk was sure about, it was that guns didn’t cure the disease.

He dialed 911.