From the perspective of my desk, parked outside the deluxe private office of our president and chief executive officer, Mr. Herbert Henry Hudson, you can see just about everything that goes on within the premises of the world-famous Hudson Modeling Agency.

This is no coincidence, believe me. I like to keep an eye on everything, always have.

On the day Sumner Fox walks past the glass double doors—an ordinary hot afternoon in late June, a steady stream of fresh new-mint high school graduates eager to commence their modeling careers, God bless them—I’ve been running the agency for about four years, depending on your definition of the term, and I have no intention of going anywhere. I like my job. I like my way of life, more or less. I wear my usual uniform of white button-down shirt and black gabardine slacks, hair pulled back in a neat gold knot, red lipstick and nothing else. I prop my feet on my desk and drink my seventh cup of strong black coffee while I flip through the portfolio of some vampy fifteen-year-old from Elizabeth, New Jersey—claims eighteen, the pretty liar, but I’m a better judge of age than a horse trader—and God knows I have no time at all for the bull-shouldered fellow who stands at the reception desk like a heavyweight boxer who’s taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

My telephone rings. Reception.

I direct an eyebrow of disapproval toward Miss Simmons from above the frame of my reading glasses. She shrugs and tilts her head toward the beef standing in front of her desk.

I lift the receiver. “Macallister.”

“Miss Macallister, Mr. Sumner Fox from the FBI is here to see you.” She says FBI in a hushed, secret voice, enunciating each letter separately.

I open my mouth to tell Miss Simmons to tell the so-called FBI to get lost, but she tacks on another sentence before I get the words out.

“He says it’s about your sister.”

AS I SAID, I like to keep everything at the agency within view—with one exception, to which Mr. Fox and I repair now.