A Cousin from Cleveland

San Francisco, 1945. The world has come to town to write a charter, the streets are full of delegates, and there are anti-aircraft guns on the roofs — when Dixon Hill's cousin from Cleveland walks into his office at ten past two and a man is machine-gunned dead through the window.

Gloria Hale runs a Western Union floor. She reads a city the way she reads a wire — by pattern, standing up, missing nothing — because she's from out of town and doesn't know what she isn't supposed to see. In two months she reads everything Hill has spent eleven years refusing to: twelve names on twelve buildings, and who they belong to.

A dead newspaper librarian. A cipher of dancing men. A record that a stranger can read and a native can't.

Book 5 of seven. A city that keeps its own books.