live in fantasyland.”
“Then that makes us neighbors,” I said and walked outside to the street.
I dropped Monk off for his weekly appointment with Dr. Neven Bell, his psychiatrist, and took the box of Griffin’s possessions with me into McDonald’s, where I bought a cup of their cheap coffee and pretended I was in Starbucks.
I went to a table and started sorting through Griffin’s meager possessions, making an inventory in my notebook, along with my observations and any questions that occurred to me.
His wallet was in an evidence baggie and contained a few crisp twenties, his fake California driver’s license, and a faded slip from a fortune cookie that read, “You will lead many lives.” I sniffed the wallet. It smelled of leather, varnish, and fish.
The crisp twenties suggested to me that he’d exchanged his pesos for American dollars somewhere. The smell of varnish and fish on his wallet backed up Monk’s deductions that Griffin led a seafaring life. Which raised the first question that I jotted down on my list:
Did he smuggle himself into the U.S. on a boat?
If so, perhaps it was with somebody that he’d crewed for in the past, maybe even an American. If I could find that boat, and that person, that could be a significant lead. But there were marinas and ports all along the Southern California coast and tens of thousands of boats.
How could I find the boat that Griffin was smuggled in on?
I set that baggie aside and pulled out another one, which contained a gray ID card with a passport-type photo of Griffin on it. He had a fuller face and a scraggly mustache and short beard.
The card was written in Spanish on one side and English on the other and identified Griffin as a temporary resident and listed his date of birth as October 19, 1955. I assumed the document was a forgery and the birth date was probably a lie.
Who or what was Griffin hiding from?
Next I pulled out the old leather binocular case with a thin shoulder strap. It reminded me of Mr. Spock’s tricorder.
I pulled out the binoculars, which were heavy and black and in mint condition. I made note of the brand and model—a Jackson/Elite Clipper Model 188—and two serial numbers I found on the front bridge. I knew nothing about binoculars, but based on their bulkiness, the styling, and the materials, as well as the total lack of any integrated electronics, that they were at least thirty years old.
Why would he buy old binoculars instead of a smaller, more powerful, and lighter-weight model?
Perhaps it was all he could afford.
Did he buy them in a secondhand shop here? If so, where? And what did he need them for? What did he want to look at?
On the other hand, perhaps he’d owned that particular pair of binoculars for years. If so, the fact that he’d taken such great care of them, and brought them with him from Mexico, suggested they held some emotional significance for him.
What did the binoculars mean to him? Why bring them to San Francisco?
I rummaged through his shaving kit. All the toiletries were typical brand-name items, the kind that could be found at any local supermarket or drugstore.
I moved on to his collection of a dozen paperback Westerns, all of which were new, English-language titles published in the last few months. I figured he’d probably picked them up off the rack wherever he’d bought his toiletries.
He must have loved Westerns. Of all the things he could have done in his final days, he chose to hole up in a dive hotel room in San Francisco, reading them.
Maybe Western novels were hard to come by in Mexico and represented a pleasure that he’d been denied. Or maybe they, like the binoculars, represented something else to him.
There was one more item in the box, and it was in an evidence baggie for protection—it was the snapshot that Griffin was holding in his hand when he died.
I studied it again and made a list of everything I could see in the picture and what information I might glean from
“Then that makes us neighbors,” I said and walked outside to the street.
I dropped Monk off for his weekly appointment with Dr. Neven Bell, his psychiatrist, and took the box of Griffin’s possessions with me into McDonald’s, where I bought a cup of their cheap coffee and pretended I was in Starbucks.
I went to a table and started sorting through Griffin’s meager possessions, making an inventory in my notebook, along with my observations and any questions that occurred to me.
His wallet was in an evidence baggie and contained a few crisp twenties, his fake California driver’s license, and a faded slip from a fortune cookie that read, “You will lead many lives.” I sniffed the wallet. It smelled of leather, varnish, and fish.
The crisp twenties suggested to me that he’d exchanged his pesos for American dollars somewhere. The smell of varnish and fish on his wallet backed up Monk’s deductions that Griffin led a seafaring life. Which raised the first question that I jotted down on my list:
Did he smuggle himself into the U.S. on a boat?
If so, perhaps it was with somebody that he’d crewed for in the past, maybe even an American. If I could find that boat, and that person, that could be a significant lead. But there were marinas and ports all along the Southern California coast and tens of thousands of boats.
How could I find the boat that Griffin was smuggled in on?
I set that baggie aside and pulled out another one, which contained a gray ID card with a passport-type photo of Griffin on it. He had a fuller face and a scraggly mustache and short beard.
The card was written in Spanish on one side and English on the other and identified Griffin as a temporary resident and listed his date of birth as October 19, 1955. I assumed the document was a forgery and the birth date was probably a lie.
Who or what was Griffin hiding from?
Next I pulled out the old leather binocular case with a thin shoulder strap. It reminded me of Mr. Spock’s tricorder.
I pulled out the binoculars, which were heavy and black and in mint condition. I made note of the brand and model—a Jackson/Elite Clipper Model 188—and two serial numbers I found on the front bridge. I knew nothing about binoculars, but based on their bulkiness, the styling, and the materials, as well as the total lack of any integrated electronics, that they were at least thirty years old.
Why would he buy old binoculars instead of a smaller, more powerful, and lighter-weight model?
Perhaps it was all he could afford.
Did he buy them in a secondhand shop here? If so, where? And what did he need them for? What did he want to look at?
On the other hand, perhaps he’d owned that particular pair of binoculars for years. If so, the fact that he’d taken such great care of them, and brought them with him from Mexico, suggested they held some emotional significance for him.
What did the binoculars mean to him? Why bring them to San Francisco?
I rummaged through his shaving kit. All the toiletries were typical brand-name items, the kind that could be found at any local supermarket or drugstore.
I moved on to his collection of a dozen paperback Westerns, all of which were new, English-language titles published in the last few months. I figured he’d probably picked them up off the rack wherever he’d bought his toiletries.
He must have loved Westerns. Of all the things he could have done in his final days, he chose to hole up in a dive hotel room in San Francisco, reading them.
Maybe Western novels were hard to come by in Mexico and represented a pleasure that he’d been denied. Or maybe they, like the binoculars, represented something else to him.
There was one more item in the box, and it was in an evidence baggie for protection—it was the snapshot that Griffin was holding in his hand when he died.
I studied it again and made a list of everything I could see in the picture and what information I might glean from
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