ver dollar at you and said, 'As a reward, sonny.' With big spenders like that, I'm
             sure you'll be able to pay your rent for this month sometime around August five years from now." Crozier slowly rose
             from his chair, so slowly that he almost lost his balance and fell back into it again. "I know all this, Lois," he replied as
             he paced the room to the side window. He lifted the blinds, peeked out at the bright lights of New York, then shut his
             window to the world with a sharp downward tug on the string. "I guess I just don't care about being a private eye
             anymore.""Why did you even start?" "Well, when I was a kid, I got hooked on Agatha Christie novels. It got to the
             point where I became addicted to mysteries of all kinds. Sam Spade, Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, I
             knew them all. I thought that being a gumshoe must be the most exciting thing anyone could ever do for a living. So,
             as soon as I got out of college with my useless Literature degree, I set up my own PI shop. I solved--" "You solved
             two cases in your first three days on the job, and you were headed for greatness." He turned and gave her a pained
             smile. "I've told this one before, haven't I?" "Only every other day, but don't let me stop you." He turned back to the
             wall and continued, completely missing the sarcastic roll of her eyes. "Then I didn't get any more cases for a while.
             And then I finally realized why this was always pictured as such a hard life--it is. The late hours, the long waits
             between cases, everything just wasn't what I thought it was going to be. It wasn't so glamorous, and there were
             never any closing credits, and I never got to toss off any 'Here's looking at you, kid' dramatic lines. It was boring.
             But this was all I had to do with my life--" "So you stuck with it." "So I stuck with it. Exactly." "Fabulous story, Dirk.
             It gets better every time I hear it." "OK, enough with the sarcasm...