“Madam?” The head table waiter, hands clasped behind him, bent from his waist and whispered into the ear of the dazzling redhead at the head table. He straightened up and she shifted slightly back to look upward to his face. Sparkling strands of jet beads dripped from the black chiffon of her dress and clicked gently, separating to subtly emphasize the mound of each breast.

They exited the elevator at the top, the eighth floor, heading toward a uniformed police officer standing at parade attention halfway down the hall. Katie’s voice sank to the level of soft gravel sliding across a polished mahogany bar.

Brady put his uniform hat on a hall table, golden ‘scrambled eggs’ front face to broadcast his presence to all comers. He lifted the handset of a white and gold telephone that made the City’s Palace Hotel renowned as the first hotel ever to have phones in every suite

“She’s a tough little broad,” Brady said. He thought, after a minute, said, “And she has clients from over there. Hitler just hit France. England’s probably next. They’d talk about it, she’d be interested, if for no other reason than the women are nervous when they come to see her, so she engages them, gets them talking

Broad official response to the little girl’s death geared up quickly. The hall of a few blocks away from the Palace Hotel, up from where Kearney Street crossed Market. Police Communications, separated from Southern Station only by thin, green drywall, occupied two-thirds of the first floor of the Hall.

The abrupt way the door to the murder suite swung open and the breeze it sent through the still air announced three men who marched into the room like they were the designated residents and not at all pleased at the prospect of sharing their private turf with company of any sort.