The last few years had been good and I had some cash in the bank; I could draw a token salary out of the agency, and Kerry would willingly supply any more I might need. I had no male hangups about that sort of thing, because it had nothing to do with charity or an incapacity in me. She was much younger, talented, and more ambitious; the odds were good that she would one day be made a junior partner at Bates and Carpenter. And we were practically living together anyway, practically married even if she didn’t care to make it legal. She had her apartment and I had my flat in Pacific Heights, but we spent lots of nights together in one place or the other. None of that would have to change.

As for my time, I could find plenty of ways to fill it. Spend more hours with Kerry, doing the things we enjoyed doing together. Read, go fishing, take little trips, get out to sports events. Maybe teach a criminology course at UC Extension or take on some consultancy work if I found myself getting bored. In any case, relax, enjoy the rest of my life. Fifty-six years old, I’d put in my time, I was entitled, wasn’t I? Damn right I was. Damn right.

The whole idea scared hell out of me.

I couldn’t forget the period, not so long ago, when I’d lost my license for two and a half months. It had seemed as though I’d lost my reason and zest for living along with it: I had done little more than vegetate during those weeks. I kept telling myself this was different because it was voluntary, because I was older, more financially secure, and ready and willing to get shut of the full-time investigating grind. And yet there was the nagging fear that I would have the same reaction if and when I did get shut of it-the same sense of displacement, uselessness, emptiness. That I would be like the old firehorse put out to pasture and chafing constantly because he knew there were fires he could be helping to put out, and never mind that he might get burned in the process.