The Dorchester Hotel was built in the 1920s by a particularly greedy and egotistical land baron named William K. Dorchester, who lived atop the twenty-story building in a ridiculously Gothic penthouse apartment and was known to use Powell Street below as his personal spittoon.

As a nod to Dorchester ’s British heritage, he insisted that the bellmen dress in the bright red beefeater uniforms with ruffled white collars and gloves worn by the guards of the crown jewels. The doormen still wear those uniforms today. They’d look classier dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants.

Once you get past them, there’s a certain amusing and historically appropriate gaudiness to the place that is an accurate reflection of when it was built and the man who funded it.

The lobby has a vaulted gold-leafed ceiling and crystal chandeliers. The walls are covered with enormous mu rals that chronicle the arrival of the Spanish explorers, the Gold Rush, and maritime trade in San Francisco Bay, with Dorchester himself looking down upon it all from the heavens like some benevolent god.

There’s French and Italian marble on the floors, the columns, and the grand staircase. Supposedly, even the urinals in the men’s room are carved from marble, though I have never seen them for myself. However, I can tell you that the women’s room doesn’t have marble toilets.

The Conference of Metropolitan Homicide Detectives was being held on the second floor, so Monk, Stottlemeyer, and I climbed the grand staircase and discovered that the gaudy grandeur ended at the top step.

The second floor looked like it had been renovated in the early seventies in garishly bright colors and hadn’t been updated since. The Brady Bunch would have felt right at home there.

Monk, Stottlemeyer, and I made our way to the ballroom. It looked like we’d walked into a reunion of JCPenney men’s department customers. The room was filled with potbellied men wearing off-the-rack suits, wide ties, and yellow crime-scene-tape-style name-tag lanyards around their necks.

We were greeted at the door by a man who looked like a cinder block that had magically come to life. He seemed square everywhere, from the flat-top buzz cut atop his head to the square-toed shoes on his feet. Even his hands looked square.

He introduced himself to us, even though his name was written on his lanyard and Stottlemeyer appeared, judging by the scowl on his face, to already know him and not like him much.

“I’m Detective Paul Braddock, Banning PD. I’ll be your moderator,” he said as he shook our hands in turn. “It will just be a simple Q and A. I’ll start things off with a question or two and then open it up to the floor.”

Monk motioned to me for a wipe. I took out a bottle of instant hand sanitizer from my purse instead. I figured he’d be shaking a lot of hands and I didn’t want to lug around a huge box of wipes or end up with a purseful of Baggies containing used ones.

“I’m Natalie Teeger, Mr. Monk’s assistant,” I said.

I squeezed a shot of disinfectant gel into Monk’s right palm and he rubbed his hands together so briskly he could have lit kindling.

Braddock watched him, amused. “My God, you really do that. I thought it was just an urban legend. I guess I can scratch that question off my list.”

“I’d like to see the others,” Stottlemeyer said.

Braddock grinned. “That would be cheating, Leland.”

“Since when do you have a problem with that, Paul?” Stottlemeyer asked pointedly.

“I wouldn’t want to undercut the spontaneity of the discussion,” Braddock said, his grin unfaltering. “See you up on the dais.”

The detective walked away. Stottlemeyer glared after him.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“He used to work for SFPD,” Stottlemeyer said. “Now he doesn’t.”

“Are you the reason why?”

Stottlemeyer shook his head. “He’s only got himself to blame for that.”

We headed up to the dais, which was a raised platform with a table set against a backdrop of four potted plants.

The table was covered with a white cloth. There were three chairs behind the table and three glasses, one pitcher of water, and two microphones on top of it.

I saw disaster looming. I excused myself and sought out Braddock in the crowd.

“Excuse me,” I said. “You’re going to need to invite another guest up to the table, and add another chair, glass, and two more microphones. Or you’re going to have to remove a chair and a glass, add a microphone, and moderate standing up.”

Braddock looked at me like I had a bug crawling out of my nose. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because Mr. Monk won’t sit at a table for three guests. He likes even numbers. So you can have two guests or four, it’s up to you, but they each need to have their own microphone.”

“You’re joking,” he said.

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“Is he nuts?”

“Mr. Monk likes things to be a certain way,” I said. “You want him to be comfortable up there, don’t you? Because if he’s not, he won’t answer any questions; he’ll just obsess about everything that’s wrong and try to fix it.”

Braddock sighed. “I’ll have the extra glass and chair taken away. I’ll stand with a microphone.”

“Thank you,” I said, and went back to the table, where I discovered that Monk had already removed the extra chair and set the extra glass on top of it for the workers to take away.

Monk was now arranging the two chairs, the glasses, and the microphones so everything was evenly spaced, centered, and symmetrical.

Stottlemeyer was busy chatting with some other cops and trying hard to disassociate himself from what Monk was doing.

I couldn’t blame him. I would have done the same thing if I weren’t being paid not to.

The hotel workers showed up and took the extra chair away and set up a microphone stand for Braddock.

Monk was measuring the ends of the tablecloth with his pocket tape measure to make sure it draped evenly on all sides just as Braddock climbed up onstage.

“Okay, everyone, please take your seats,” Braddock said into the mike. “We’d like to get started.”

Monk and Stottlemeyer sat down at the table. I took a seat in the front row so I could jump onstage in an instant if there was a major emergency, like a wrinkle in the tablecloth or a spilled glass of water.

Braddock turned to Stottlemeyer and Monk. “Shall we begin?”

“We can’t,” Monk said.

“Why not?” Braddock replied.

“Everybody isn’t here yet,” he said.

Braddock looked out across the large conference room. “The room looks packed to me.”

“There are three people missing.”

“Friends of yours?”

“No,” Monk said. “I don’t know who they are. I just know they aren’t here. There are two hundred and one people in the audience.”

“That seems like a good size to me,” Braddock said.

“Two hundred and two or two hundred and four would be better,” Monk said. “Or you can ask one person to leave.”

“I’ll leave,” Stottlemeyer said.

Braddock grimaced, waved over a busboy, and whispered in his ear. Within a few moments, the empty seats were filled with three busboys. He turned to Monk.

“Happy now?” Braddock asked.

“Aren’t you?” Monk replied.

Braddock forced a smile, turned to the audience, and introduced himself. He then explained that for the last eight years the San Francisco Police Department had employed Adrian Monk as a special consultant, working exclusively with Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, the man who brokered the arrangement.

“What makes this consulting arrangement even more unusual is that ten years ago, Adrian Monk was an SFPD homicide detective himself, until he was declared psychologically unfit for duty and forced to turn in his badge,” Braddock said, then looked at Monk. “Are you still suffering from those problems?”