I glanced in the rearview mirror again. When I was a teenager my father used to follow me. While I was in my first year of law school I went to a shrink for a while but left when he suggested that I had only imagined my father followed me. It was true. Sometimes I would go off on a date and, in the rearview mirror of some sweaty-palmed Romeo’s Ford Fairlane, catch sight of my father’s Cadillac two or three cars back. He would casually cruise up beside us at a stoplight to glare at the boy whose arm dangled around my shoulders as though he had unexpectedly encountered us in traffic. This has given me sharp eyes and a healthy sense of paranoia. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Nothing unusual.

I made a left at Third past a giant palm tree covered with posters announcing a salsa dance at the Hollywood Palladium.

El Gran Combo Charanga 76 CELIA CRUZ—LA REINA DE LA SALSA

I wondered if Lupe was a good dancer. She sure could move.

I looked in the rearview mirror again.

Third between Van Ness and Western is cheap clothing stores with extravagantly flounced red dresses, black gowns with rhinestone straps, strangely colored brown mannequins. Botánicas. Boticas. I made a mental note to ask Lupe the difference. When this was all over, I would sign up to take a Spanish class at the high school near me. Shoe stores with black patent stilettos. Fruit stands with melons and papayas overflowing onto the sidewalk. Brilliant orange gladiolas and tiger lilies.

I drove past Rudy Sancerre’s Flamingo Photo and past the Cuban’s, which I now noticed was named “Guantanamo,” to Western, when I hung a right. I drove around the block, getting caught for a moment in traffic on Western. I drove by the front of the two studios again. No sign of life in either one; both with heavy protective paper in the windows. Either there was a shoot going on or no one was there. Based on my prior contacts with the two men, I guessed they didn’t have any work and that no one was there. For an instant my eyes caught the heavy movement of an old black Chevy in the rearview mirror. It was surging up behind me, but it didn’t come any closer and didn’t follow me when I made the turn at Western again.

For an instant I hesitated at the entrance to the parking lot behind the studios. I didn’t want my car to be seen, but I didn’t want to be far away from it if I needed to make a fast getaway. Deciding it was better to have it close at hand, I pulled into the nearly deserted lot. There was an old ranch wagon by the door of the Mexican beer bar and an almost new BMW by the oriental massage parlor.