One engineer, who had hitherto seemed quite sane, advanced the idea of building the world’s largest man-made island within the shoals of Yerba Buena.

Much mirth greeted this notion until the engineer added that, once the fair was over, the island could then become San Francisco International Airport, ideally located within ten minutes of both its namesake city and Oakland. This could replace the outmoded San Francisco Aerodrome (a fancy name for some unattractive farmland out in Alameda) without wreaking havoc upon any existing community. The Administration Building, where I was currently sitting, would become the airport’s terminal and control tower. Two hangars built for the maintenance of the Pan American World Airways seaplanes currently harbored in the island’s marina could serve land-based planes at the new floating airport as well.

A general contractor named R. W. Hewett, a guy who apparently knew what he was doing, enlisted the services of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, who said they could build an island in under nineteen months. And they did.

Culpepper came back into the room, all smiles. “Got the nicest book of mug shots you’ll ever have to thumb through,” he said, and slapped down an oversized souvenir program bearing the gold-engraved silhouette of a kneeling naked woman and the words Folies Bergère. “Flip through the pages and see if there’s anyone in this book who looks familiar.”

As police lineups go, it was eminently fair, since the program featured photographs of some twenty female cast members in absolutely equal states of undress. Searching for Marie among them was slightly challenging because I had only seen her with her clothes on. But I found her quickly enough. She was posed in three-quarter profile, which exaggerated her ostrichlike neck and chin, but with the way that angle presented the rest of her, no one would be focusing north of her shoulders. She was wearing a feathered toque and little else. The program indicated her specialty numbers were “Nightingale at Midnight” and “The Criminal’s Ball of Pigalle.” Poor thing, to have died as she did.

“That’s her,” I said, pointing.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Culpepper took the program back from me. “Yeah, you got her. And we know why she killed herself. She was Jewish.”

I told him I wasn’t aware that this was considered cause for suicide.

Culpepper sat himself into the unyielding wooden chair across from me. “Do some thinking.” He reached to his outer breast pocket, produced a cigar, and toasted it, drawing a match’s flame up the flue of the Panatella. “She’s Jewish. She’s French. What does that mean to you?”

“No ham-and-Swiss-cheese crepes?” I ventured, baffled as to what point he was making.