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one of your associates.”
    Associates? thought Reardon. “No,” he said, “keep it.”
    â€œVery well,” Timothy said. “I don’t smoke them, as you know, but I thought you might like it. Very expensive, you know.”
    â€œIt would probably be too strong for me, anyway,” Reardon said dryly.
    Timothy slapped his knees lightly and smiled. “Well, now, how are things on the force?”
    â€œSame as always.”
    â€œMurder and mayhem, I suppose.”
    â€œThe usual.”
    â€œEver thought of an early retirement?”
    Here it comes again, Reardon thought. “I like to work, Tim,” he said. “I don’t want to retire. I’ve told you that before. What would I do? What is it you think I would do if I retired?”
    â€œAnything,” Timothy said. He raised his arm and gently massaged the back of his neck while he stared absently into Reardon’s face.
    â€œNo,” Reardon said. “I’m not looking forward to retirement. I’ll leave when they make me leave.”
    â€œStill the same old hardtack,” Timothy said.
    â€œMaybe. Is my whiskey almost ready?”
    â€œSure, Abbey will bring it in shortly. We don’t drink Irish whiskey around here, so you should take the bottle with you when you go. It just sits here. Nobody drinks it.”
    â€œI have a bottle at home,” Reardon said. He did not want his son’s Irish whiskey, or his son’s financial support for retirement, or his son’s way of life.
    Timothy nodded and leaned back in his chair. He seemed as exhausted and impatient with their conversation as Reardon was.
    â€œHow’s your work coming?” Reardon asked dutifully.
    â€œFine, fine,” Timothy said. “But sometimes I think our firm should employ some detectives to help us with some of our cases. You know, old-fashioned street cops like yourself who can slice through all the rhetoric and get to the meat of the thing.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œThe rhetoric,” Timothy said, “slice through the rhetoric.”
    Reardon nodded.
    â€œSome of the lawyers on my staff are ineffective at investigation and research. Everything has to be laid out for them.”
    Reardon nodded.
    â€œThey aren’t self-motivated. They have to be told everything. No initiative.”
    Reardon nodded. “Maybe so,” he said.
    That night Reardon had the first dream he could remember in many years. He was sitting on a beach in the fog, smoking a cigarette, when a woman’s body floated quietly up on shore. She lay face down at his feet, the top of her head resting easily on the tip of his shoe. Her hair was long and red and she was wearing a flowered dress. A tide gently swept a single strand of pearls from under her neck and then drew it back again.
    In the dream Reardon was not at all shocked or frightened by the body. It had seemed to come on shore as naturally as a wave, and he stared at it without emotion, as if it were no more than a brightly colored shell. His eyes moved calmly over her dress. He noted the flowers in the design, small red rose buds alternating in diagonal lines with rows of pink dogwood petals. He remembered that he had seen this same dress in a shop window at the corner of 60th Street and Second Avenue almost twenty-five years before and had almost bought it for his wife’s birthday. He wondered how many such dresses had been made and in how many shops they had been sold. He bent over and started to look for a label, but in so doing he touched the woman’s bright-red hair, and a blade of terror pierced his loins and drove upward into his brain. Instantly he tried to run, but the hair transformed itself into a claw and seized his hand and began dragging him into the water. Frantically he tried to pull free, but the claw gripped his hand like a steel vise, and by the time his first scream broke through the fog he was waist-deep in the sea. His eyes