Devlin had changed. He knew it. He hadn’t put a guy in the hospital for drying out since the early eighties. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a New York City Department of Hospitals Flight Deck. No reason for pulling back, except maybe getting closer to the old man’s age when the fire in his belly had begun to go out—but Devlin didn’t think he was going downhill yet. He was in much better shape than his father had ever been, positively healthy except for the cigarette smoking. He had never been a heavy smoker, and now he was down to a half a pack or less per day. For the past eighteen months he had been exercising, starting with Eileen’s mini-trampoline, then working his way through ten- and twenty-pound dumbbells. He walked three and four miles two or three times a week. Eileen had gotten him to give up red meat, and currently his cholesterol level was under a hundred and forty. John Lord was crazy about Eileen. “She’s got you loving life again,” he’d said. Devlin loved life more every day. He hadn’t known it was possible to love life so much.…

A car was parked out on the street in front of the Lake Tranquility house, a faded orange Pontiac hardtop with the new, cheap-looking New York plate with the Statue of Liberty in the center. Devlin parked in front of the Pontiac and walked back, pulling on his blazer as he went. On the passenger seat of the Pontiac was a paper bag overflowing with groceries and a red and white airline ticket folder. The driveway was empty, flanked by a pair of ragged spruces. The driveway blacktop was cracked and lumpy, the yard unkempt and bare.