THE WOMEN’S MURDER Club was going for a ride in my Explorer on our way to a long overdue reckoning. I was behind the wheel and Cindy was behind me, leaning over the seat divider, breathing down my neck.

We headed up Seventh at a good clip, crossed Market, passed the Civic Center BART, then turned left on McAllister.

I slowed the car and stopped at the light. There was a pack of unmarked cars parked in front of the Asian Art Museum, across the street from the Abby Hotel. Just as promised.

The Abby Hotel was a peach-colored six-story Victorian building with white trim, a brown awning over the entrance, and a fire escape zigzagging up the front of the building.

It stood in all its shabby elegance across the street from the Asian Art Museum, two blocks from City Hall. The homeless roamed this part of McAllister freely, but it was also the hub of government and legal activity.

Now, at noon, the streets and sidewalks were filled with suited men and women from the courts carrying briefcases or pulling luggage trolleys, their heads bent to their iPhones.

I parked in front of the hotel, and the girls and I got out of my car. I showed my badge to the doorman, a gnarled-looking boozer somewhere between his late fifties and early seventies. It looked to me as though the last time he’d had his uniform cleaned was — never.

Then I bent at the window of an unmarked car to talk to Lieutenant Meile from Vice. He was working off his guilty conscience by giving us a tip and following up by providing all hands on deck.

He gave me a room number, said, “History tells us he’ll be in there for another twenty minutes.”

Two cops from Vice, Billy Fried and Johnny Rizzo, got out of the unmarked and joined me and the girls on the sidewalk.

The six of us entered the Abby’s scruffy, mildewed lobby; we passed on the rickety metal elevator car and instead took the fire stairs to the third floor.

Vice took the lead. Fried rapped on the door while Rizzo took a stance on the other side of the doorway, holding his gun in a two-fisted grip.

Fried said, “Open the door. This is the SFPD.”

There was a scuffle inside, two alarmed voices, and then the sound of something crashing.

Fried turned the knob, saw the chain, and applied the force of his foot to break in the door. He stepped in and said, “Hands up, Blayney. Everyone, freeze.”