User:DReifGalaxyM31/Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather

"Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather" is the fifth episode of the third season of Monk, and the 34th episode overall.

Plot summary
Monk goes into the heart of the San Francisco mob to investigate a recent massacre at a local barbershop.

Plot synopsis
At Albert's Barber Shop, a barber and his customer are chatting amiably about baseball experiences. One man comes in, his face obscured by a newspaper, and sits down in one of the other chairs. Behind them, a mobster walks through and into the back room carrying a suitcase, without a blink from the others. In the back room, he empties the suitcase, which is full of cash, and two other guys start to count it.

Back outside, the first man sets down his crossword puzzle, gets up, walks over the gumball machine, and tries to yank the machine out. There is a sudden clattering sound. The customer begins yelling, and, inside the back room, the guys hear gunfire. Drawing their weapons, they rush outside, only to be gunned down in a hail of bullets.

Sometime later, at a local auto shop, Sharona Fleming is haggling with her auto mechanic about the price of the latest repairs to her car. When Adrian Monk offers to take a look at the damage himself (though only to rotate one of the wheels so that the Volvo logo on it is level), Sharona throws up her hands and agrees to pay.

As they leave the mechanic's shop, a limousine pulls up, and two large men get out: "Fat Tony" Lucarelli, and his associate, Vince. Fat Tony summons Monk for a meeting with his uncle, mafia don Salvatore Lucarelli. Monk is too afraid to say no, while Sharona unexpectedly finds herself flirting with Tony. They go to Salvatore's restaurant, where Sal is in the midst of chopping fish for a wake in memory of the five men who were killed at the barber shop, one of whom was a distant relative of his. He wants to find out who is responsible, and offers to triple Monk's usual fee, but Monk refuses.

However, after Monk goes outside, a flower van pulls up. The van is occupied by FBI Special Agent Colmes, who instructs Monk to get into the van with him. Monk and Sharona are taken to the FBI's temporary office, where Colmes reveals that the Lucarelli family have been under surveillance by a joint ATF/FBI task force for several months.

Colmes sees Salvatore's offer as a golden opportunity for Monk to go undercover, and wants Monk to accept the job because they haven't been able to get close to the Lucarelli family yet. Monk says that he can't do that: if he finds out who the killer, or killers, were, Salvatore will have them murdered. Colmes makes Monk an offer: if Monk agrees to spy on the Lucarellis, Colmes will pull some strings with the Commissioner, and get Monk reinstated to the police force. Colmes also explains to Sharona that Fat Tony gets his nickname from the fact that he used to be 250 pounds in weight. Midway through Colmes's briefing, Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher barge in. They try to get Monk not to accept, but Monk can't refuse. Stottlemeyer's reluctance to let Monk go into the Lucarelli family comes a result of two factors: first is the fact that the last agent who tried to infiltrate the family was killed in a particularly gruesome way, and Stottlemeyer also knows that Colmes usually sets people up so that even if they succeed, he backs out of his deal.

Monk, Sharona, Stottlemeyer, and Disher go to the barbershop, the crime scene still essentially intact. Stottlemeyer notes that the barbershop was a front for a numbers game that Salvatore's crew ran out of the backroom. Monk notes that no money was taken, meaning it wasn't a robbery, but Stottlemeyer notes to Monk that the mobsters use bullets instead of emails to exchange messages. He also mentions that there was a witness having lunch across the street at the time of the massacre, who reported seeing three men walk in and shoot everyone inside dead like fish in a barrel.

Stottlemeyer also notes that according to ballistics reports, all five victims were killed with the same weapon, an Ingram MAC-10. Monk is curious: if there were three killers, why didn't the other men bring their own guns? The gumball machine appears to have been ripped out, used so that the killers could escape out the back door to avoid being spotted by the cops out front. Monk also spots an unfinished crossword puzzle on the table, and figures that someone else was in the barbershop.

The investigation turns up a witness, Phillip Bedard, an employee of the U.S. Mint. He tells Monk that although he didn't see the massacre happen, he did see three men go inside the barbershop before hearing the gunshots. Bedard recounts a jacket one of the men was wearing and the symbol on the back, which Monk recognizes as belonging to a Chinese gang. Monk decides it's time to pay a visit to the gang's leader, Jimmy Lu.

Meanwhile, Sharona accepts a dinner date with Tony, who charms her with the story of how he lost his former fat (and his moniker), and confesses to her that, though he knows what his uncle does for a living, he's got nothing to do with the family business, and would like nothing better than to set up a little bookshop for himself.

After Monk talks to Jimmy Lu, he determines Jimmy and his gang had nothing to do with the massacre. Unfortunately, while Monk is attempting to rest in exasperation at the fact that Lu is doing more than 100 pushups, a Molotov cocktail is hurled through the window and sets the hideout on fire. Colmes is furious with Monk's blunder, but Monk decides to revisit the crime scene, after having been given a wired tie to record conversations with Lucarelli.

Monk has been bothered by a small detail since the start of the investigation, and he meets with Disher, Stottlemeyer, Sharona and Lucarelli at the barbershop. He resurveys the scene, and then spots something in the crime scene photos that only Monk would ever see: the gumball machine is missing.

Here's What Happened
Monk and Sharona go to Phil Bedard, the witness. They note that he has claimed that he was never inside the barber shop and just saw the gang members go in. But Monk has noticed that Bedard is an accomplished crossword solver, and remembers having found an almost finished puzzle on the table in the barber shop. And, in the case file, there is a photo of Bedard from the day before the massacre of him blowing up a big bubble of gum made of at least five gumballs, a photo that was taken right in front of the barbershop.

The day before the shooting, Bedard stole five double-headed pennies from the Mint – rare coins, worth about $200,000 each. When he noticed that he was being followed by Mint security (they are known to follow employees from time to time), he panicked. He ducked into the barber shop, and hid them in the coin slot of the gumball machine, figuring that he'd come back to get them when he was safe.

The next day, when he went to retrieve the pennies, he found that he couldn't get them out easily, so he tried to take the whole machine, ripping the chain out of the wall - and that's when all hell broke loose. He had no idea that the barber shop was a front for the mob, but found out when the customer in the chair pulled out a submachine gun. There was a struggle between Bedard and the customer for the gun, and by a lucky chance, Bedard came out on top. He killed everyone in the shop, then he took the machine and ran. Then he claimed to witness the attack so he could steer everyone towards Jimmy Lu and his gang.

Bedard admits it, but refuses to turn himself in, saying that no jury will convict him over the slaying of five wise guys. Since Monk is wired, he returns to Colmes, who informs him that the bug wasn't functioning. Monk and Sharona are stymied, but then Bedard runs to the F.B.I., begging to be arrested. He gives a fearful glance over his shoulder, and the others see Tony and Vince, giving Sharona a friendly wave.

The FBI packs up its command post, being transferred to Denver. As they are leaving, Randy reluctantly plays a conversation from a bug in Salvatore's limousine for Sharona: Tony and Sal, sharing a good laugh about the lies he has fed Sharona, along with the truth that Tony is one of Salvatore's most feared enforcers. Sharona is disappointed, but hardly surprised, and thanks Randy.

Stottlemeyer reminds Colmes that he and Monk had a deal. Colmes says the deal is off, since their sting didn't turn up any evidence against Lucarelli - they just nailed a trigger-happy coin collector. The fact that Monk solved the case and found the killer, and risked his life for the FBI, means nothing to him. Stottlemeyer is tempted to punch the agent out, but Monk accepts his disappointment, plus he gives his revenge to him his own way: packing one FBI surveillance van full with boxes, yet keeping the other half-full.

Epilogue
In the 2009 novel Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, written by Lee Goldberg (who co-wrote "Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather"), Salvatore Lucarelli reappears in one of the subplots of the story.

Four years after the events in "Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather," and sometime between the events of the episodes "Mr. Monk Gets Hypnotized" and "Mr. Monk and the Miracle", Lucarelli is arrested for his crimes. At the time of Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, he is being held in jail and awaiting trial. His trial becomes delayed after someone shoots and kills Clarence Stanton, the judge presiding over the trial. By the time of the shooting, Monk has just been laid off by the SFPD due to a budget crisis. He is able to find several clues before being ejected from the crime scene that suggest that the killer is a woman.

Shortly thereafter, Monk is hired by a private investigations firm, Intertect. When the alternate judge to preside over Lucarelli's trial, Alan Carnegie, is killed, Monk and Natalie Teeger are (in an ironic twist) assigned to clear his name. They interview him about his involvement at the jail, and then proceed to the other crime scene. When Monk examines the second crime scene, he sees clues that prove that the same killer, a woman, was involved. Since few Mafia chiefs employ female assassins, Monk begins to suspect his client may be innocent. After asking a few questions to Rhonda Carnegie, Alan's widow, Monk is able to peg her as the killer. As unhappy as he is with Monk's presence, Stottlemeyer has too much faith in his judgment, and arrests her for the murders.

The appearance of Lucarelli in Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop makes Lucarelli one of the few acquaintances of Monk to have met both Sharona and Natalie, though on different occasions (but both of which were in homicide cases). He is also possibly the only one-time character in a TV episode of the show to appear in one of the novels.

Background Information and Notes

 * Monk makes reference to Stottlemeyer's failure to support his reinstatement in "Mr. Monk Goes to the Carnival."

Reception
Tell how the episode was received by critics and possibly fans. Also, give the number of viewers in this section.