Series, Book 1) Chapter 12 Another day at the office—another day of waiting, helplessly, for events to take their course. A private eye shouldn't be helpless; a private eye should be in control of events. That was what attracted me to the business in the first place: I had spent my life feeling like a leaf in a hurricane, powerless in the wake of the ultimate power, the power that had transformed everything. Here was a chance to change. The events I would control might be trivial, but only if individual lives are to be considered trivial—a subject open to debate, I suppose, but one on which I have my own opinion. The thing was, at this point I didn't really care. This had gotten a lot more serious than simply determining my self-image as a private eye. My entire future was at stake, and that made for a certain tension in my soul as the morning dragged on. I tried to be rational, to keep my perspective. There were plenty of ways in which things would not work out: the mysterious file might not exist, or might not contain the proof I needed; Winfield could be lying about having the money, or about taking me along.
