Naturally, Adrian and I started making out the moment we got on the elevator to leave the crime scene. I just felt turned on whenever Adrian solved a homicide, especially when it took our minds off the O'Donnell case, even for a short time. We'd brought a little bit of justice to another deceased person's friends and family in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now it was time to talk with Paul Braddock, the police detective that Danielle said her sister had been in contact with. He'd arranged to meet us in the bar around this time.

The three of us had just stepped out of the elevator when Adrian stopped, as if something had just occurred to him.

"Natalie, Kendra, did Danielle give Braddock a description of what we look like?" he asked.

"I don't know," Natalie said, "Do you want me to call her?"

"That would be helpful, sure," Adrian said.

Natalie took out her cell phone and dialed Danielle.

"Hey, Danielle?" Natalie asked.

"Hey, Natalie, what's up?" Danielle asked on the other end.

"You get anything out of O'Donnell's office?" Natalie asked. "Adrian, Kendra and I are curious."

"Yep, I did," Danielle said, "I checked his calendar. Apparently, he had some sort of meeting yesterday afternoon with someone out in Golden Gate Park."

"A meeting?" Natalie asked.

"Yeah, with some guy named 'Drogo'," Danielle replied. "Figure it's probably a codename. I'm trying to check that name out now."

"Anything else there?" Natalie asked.

"Yeah," Danielle said, "Found a photo of Paddy McClellan on his wall. It's not a surprise that he knew him."

"Oh, him?" Natalie said, "You know, we kinda figured that was the case, given O'Donnell's social status. The guy's everyone's best friend."

"I'm actually about to head off to his house to talk to him," Danielle said, "You wanna come along?"

Natalie winced. "Oohh, I don't think you want to do that, Danielle."

"Why not?" she asked. "I might get a better chance to figure out why O'Donnell attacked him."

"Because we think O'Donnell's gang killed Paddy and his wife right before they attacked the firehouse," Natalie said, "Kendra's dad's working that. We're just waiting for an autopsy on that one."

"Oh," Danielle said, surprised, "Jeez, this case is getting worse by the minute."

"It sure is," Natalie said. She then paused, as she remembered what she wanted to ask Danielle. "Danielle, another thing, did you ever tell Paul Braddock what we look like?"

Danielle hesitated for a moment. "Now that you mention it, I didn't. But he's going to be in a table at the far back of the bar. You can't miss him."

"Good, thanks," Natalie said, "Call you later."

Natalie hung up.

"Danielle says that O'Donnell apparently had some sort of visit to the park yesterday afternoon after his shootout with us at McCabe's," Natalie said to me and Adrian, "Apparently, he met someone named Mr. Drogo at a BART station out in the East Bay."

"Interesting," Adrian said.

"Anything on Paul Braddock?" I asked.

"Yes, Kendra, indeed," she said, "I know where he is."

The cocktail lounge at the Westin St. Francis was white collar and elegant. The upscale and well-dressed clientele snacked on complimentary tapas and warm almonds and spent considerably more on their libations, but they were probably every bit as lonely and bored, alcoholic and horny. Most of the women I saw were thin, expertly and expensively styled, and bearing lots of cleavage. There were also several businessmen there, who looked about the same, as far as being alcoholic and horny goes. A bar is a bar after all, no matter how much you dress up the place or the clientele who frequent it. Although, to be frank I think my roadie clothes made me kinda stand out, as did Natalie as she hadn't bothered to take off her long-sleeve coat at all since we'd left the penthouse. There were several TVs around the bar, all of whom were airing breaking news coverage about the firehouse attack.

The man we took to be Paul Braddock was sitting at a table in the back of the room, visible to everyone inside as well as anyone who entered or left. He seemed like a human cinderblock, with a flat-top buzz cut on his head. He was wearing a casual button shirt and khakis. On his table, he had a couple of bowls of mixed nuts and several empty drinking glasses.

Adrian, Natalie and I walked up to him with all the aspect of authority that we had in the city.

"Excuse me, Mr. Braddock?" Natalie said, getting his attention, "My name is Natalie Teeger. This is Adrian Monk and Kendra Davenport."

"Danielle told me you were coming," Braddock said. He checked his watch. "You're actually kinda early. I wasn't expecting you to be here for another half-hour."

"Yeah, well, the cop activity upstairs drew us here," Adrian said. He shook hands with Braddock and gestured for me and Natalie to do the same.

"Please, sit down," Braddock gestured.

Adrian and I sat down across from Braddock, and Natalie took a seat on Braddock's right.

"So, how's it going with you three?" he asked.

"We've had better days, that's for sure," I said. That felt like an understatement, coming from me.

"I can't imagine," Braddock said. He gestured to the televisions at the bar. "SFPD's been calling us several times today, asking us to send a few guys to powwow with them tomorrow morning about that."

"Yes, they are," Adrian replied. "In fact, we're here because you might know our primary suspects in that case."

"It was my understanding that you're here because you want to question me about the death of Denise Hossack," Braddock said.

"That too," Adrian added.

"What do you want to know?"

"We think that Denise Hossack was murdered last Wednesday," Natalie said, "We want to know what you know about her."

Braddock scratched his head with his hand as he thought up a response. "I'm very familiar with Denise."

"In what way?"

"Around July 25th, she and this other guy Luke Reordan show up at my doorstep," he continued, "They tell me that they're from the investigative journal Bullseye, and they are conducting an investigation into Douglas O'Donnell."

"Intertect CEO," I said.

"Correct," Braddock said. "And, well, what they were asking me about was kind of shocking. Miss Hossack and Mr. Reordan were claiming that Doug was some sort of terrorist and they had this opinion that he was planning something big."

"Something big," Adrian repeated, "What was this big thing?"

"They didn't say," Braddock shrugged, "All they told me was that they thought Doug was staging terrorist attacks on various big companies and profiting off them, such as the Circle, down in San Jose."

"We are a bit aware of that," I said, "Did they have any proof?"

"Hossack said to me that she'd gotten a job with the company and began to sleep with Edward O'Brien, Doug's chief financial officer, in an attempt to get intel on this 'big thing'," Braddock said, "But she said that was going nowhere. They asked if I could commit some of my police resources in the Oakland PD to investigate the man."

"Did you?" I asked.

"I did," Braddock said, "Once I got them to fork over about $5,000."

Natalie looked disgusted. "You solicited a bribe? You're an agent of law enforcement! You're disgracing the integrity of the system by taking a bribe!"

"Miss Teeger, the bribe was their way of paying me to investigate," Braddock countered. Natalie took a few deep breaths. "I wasn't intending to use the money for personal gain at all."
"OK," Natalie said, "But if your superiors found out, you might come up as the subject of an Internal Affairs or FBI investigation."

"A risk I'm willing to take," Braddock said.

"So, taking the bribe aside," Adrian said, trying to get away from the subject of Braddock taking a bribe to open an investigation on behalf of two investigative journalists, "Did you uncover anything about the companies in question?"

"I did look at these attacks that they alleged Doug was behind but I couldn't find anything that solidly implicated the man himself in them. I mean, sure, he profited off of each of these events, but there's no way they can be linked back to him. The SEC doesn't see anything in Doug's investments to be suspicious."

"He's really good at covering his tracks," Natalie said.

"I even managed to pull his phone records from his workplace, his cell phone, and his house," Braddock said. "On the cell phone, I found some calls that seemed quite unusual for the chief executive officer of a private investigation firm."

"What kinds of calls are we talking about?"

"Well I run the names of many of these guys that he's been calling," he said, "A bunch of them are hired Intertect employees. Those aren't suspicious, since for all it's worth, they're probably just calls regarding business. But then there are a bunch of guys on the list who, when I run their names, turn up to be career criminals. Most of them have stints for burglary, armed robbery, and car theft, to name the most common offenses."

"That sure is suspicious," Adrian said.

"And I'm thinking, 'Wow. What's the CEO of Intertect Private Investigations doing being in touch with so many criminals?' So I do more cross-referencing and I find that quite a number of these guys are people that Doug arrested during his days as a San Francisco vice cop."

"Really?" I asked. "I'm sure that O'Donnell must be paying them well."

"And when my wife and I did this guy's finances, I found something else unusual," Braddock said. "You wanna hear it?"

"Sure," Adrian said.

Braddock leaned in closer to Adrian, me, and Natalie.

"I found that Doug has a big assortment of offshore accounts in the Grand Cayman Islands, that he's been depositing money into, especially over the last couple of days," he said in a low voice.

This wasn't particularly shocking to me, Natalie, or Adrian. We knew from experience that if forensic accounting discovered that someone was wiring money into offshore bank accounts, they were probably sleazy or were criminals. Sleazy businesses might use them to dodge taxes, while criminals use them to launder illegally acquired money without arising suspicion. In my mind, O'Donnell was probably the latter type. It also explained why there were no fences in the city who'd heard from the man in the wake of the armored car job.

"Wow," Natalie said, "That's amazing."

"At least we now know where the heist money is going," Adrian replied, dryly. "Anything about these accounts?"

"I have a list of the accounts right here," Braddock said, reaching into his pocket. He produced a piece of folded paper and slid it to the center of the table. "Don't look at it until you're out of sight. I don't want to risk that the man has a plant here spying on us."

"All right, we can do that," Natalie said. She took the paper and slipped it into her purse.

"That's all I have for now," Braddock said, "I'm sure there's more to it than the names I came up with."

"There probably is," Adrian said. We sat there for a moment in awkward silence. I started to wonder why Braddock had been referring to O'Donnell by his first name while we'd been referring to him by his last name. After about a minute or two, Adrian broke the silence by saying, "Braddock, I know this is going to sound like a personal question, and you certainly don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but, it strikes me that you're acquainted with Douglas O'Donnell on a personal level. I mean, this whole time you've been referring to him by his first name rather than his last name. Ergo, you clearly know him for more than just being Intertect's CEO."

Braddock looked taken off guard. "I do know him. Well, at least, I thought I knew him well before those Bullseye reporters bribed me to help them bring him down."

"Thought you knew him well," Adrian repeated, "I take it that you know him on a personal level?"

"We were close friends back when Doug was on the force in the SFPD," Braddock said, solemnly, "Even though I was in Homicide and he was in Vice." He chuckled. "You know something? He actually introduced me and Leland to an informant he said was the secret to his success."

"You mean, Captain Stottlemeyer?" Natalie asked.

"Yeah, my captain," Braddock nodded, "This informant was this bartender guy in the Tenderloin named Bill Peschel. Doug claimed that Peschel was a successful snitch because of just how many criminals tended to blab about their deeds when they got drunk, often without knowing it."

"We actually know that guy," Adrian said, "Peschel, that is. He gave us information on some of our cases before he retired last year. Natalie, Kendra, you remember him, right?"

"Yeah, sure do," Natalie smiled.

"What a charming guy," I said, "Ratting on his customers. So, tell me something, Braddock: why did O'Donnell leave the force, then?"

"Doug felt disillusioned with the burden of wearing a badge a couple years back. It was around 2012, I think," Braddock replied, "Next thing I knew, he'd resigned from the force and opened Intertect as a massive PI firm."

"Maybe he felt more content being his own boss," Adrian replied, "That's always a possibility."

Braddock looked like he didn't seem comfortable talking about the subject.

"I had the guy out to my house, last Fourth of July," he said, musing, "Backyard cookout and all. My wife flipped the burgers, my son and daughter cut potatoes. Doug brought bay scallops. Every time I've made it since, I've taken to cooking them with the method he taught me. And the whole evening, we're laughing and trading stories…" Braddock snorted "…and yet, it's like he's a different person altogether. Not the charitable law enforcement donor I knew, but a ruthless criminal who engages in armed robberies and bankrupts other companies for his personal gain."

"And shoots firefighters in cold blood," I added on.

Braddock's face trembled. "You mean…..that right there…." He pointed to one of the televisions covering the firehouse attack. "…..That's his work?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it is," Adrian said.

"I think I'm tempted to throw up," Braddock said, putting a hand on his stomach. "This is just…..awful."

I'd have probably had the same feeling of butterflies in my tummy too if I found out that someone I'd known all my life was not what I'd thought they were. By that logic, I couldn't blame Braddock for feeling this way knowing that a guy that he thought was his best friend had just carried out the deadliest mass-murder spree in the United States in that year.

"I think that's all we need from you for the moment," Adrian said. He handed Braddock one of our 'Monk, Davenport, Teeger' business cards. "Here. If you think that you have any other information about Douglas O'Donnell you'd like to share with us, please just shoot us a call. We're available at all hours of the day."

"Thanks," Braddock said, "And I probably will have more to share with you."