Section 2: I was enlightened the day after my 40th birthday.

Here we learn that when Dag got out of the army with a tour in Viet Nam, he used his GI bill to go to school and get an accounting degree. He joined a large firm (like AA or maybe H&R Block) and spent the next fifteen years happily filing people’s tax returns. He suddenly realized after his 40th birthday or after 15 years behind the same desk that he could “answer any question to his own satisfaction.” That included the question of what did he want to do with his life. He quit his job and became a PI, specializing in accounting-type investigations.

After all his recollections, we discovered that he has a question that he can’t answer today: “Where am I?” He is confined someplace and has to find his way out of captivity. Doesn’t know who has gotten to him, but he manages to escape. (or they have let him escape—“It was just difficult enough to get away that I could feel proud that I managed it, but had to doubt if it was my own doing.”) He is now on a fresh trail, but his meetings with his client, which she insists on having more frequently than he’s used to, start bringing up feelings that he believes are inappropriate. She, too, seems to be caring for him but denying it.

Dag follows a trail to Chicago and starts prowling around, discovering that his quarry has in his possession negotiable securities that are showing up on the market in Chicago. Just as he comes to this realization, he is grabbed again, tied up, and thrown in the Chicago River. End of Section Two.