When he left I began to count all the people who had been sworn to absolute secrecy, including myself. Thelma and Terrence, Max, Marian, Simon, Leah, Kathleen, and Susan. These women obviously trusted one another, and talked or wrote often. But what about Susan’s husband, or her sister, or the sister’s husband? What about Kathleen’s daughters, who were still just teenagers? What about all the ancillary people I didn’t know? Jimmy’s desperate wife maybe, telling a neighbor, or even his parents whispering how they happened to be suddenly solvent if these Westerns sold? All those people. Who might they talk to? How much, how far could they be trusted? How far could anyone be trusted? Cue the thunder rumbled through my heart and mind as I waded deeper and deeper into the rampant distrust, the prickly suspicion that had dirtied, corroded every imaginable relationship in Hollywood.

•   •   •

My sense of peril intensified when I drove up to Clara Bow Drive one afternoon and slowed to a crawl because some kids were playing kickball in the street. Across from our place, I passed a guy sitting in a gray sedan reading a newspaper. The car wasn’t one I was used to seeing on the street, and why would a neighbor sit there reading? I turned to get a better look at him. He put the newspaper down and stared at me. He was a middle-aged white guy with a bad haircut and a squint.

“Did you see the gray sedan on the street?” Thelma asked when I came in. “He followed me from home this morning.”

“Why?”

“He’s FBI. I’m sure of it.”

The blood drained from my head, and I slowly lowered myself into the chair across from her. “What does this mean?”

Thelma lit a cigarette. The match trembled in her hand. “I don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet the FBI knows Max is not in Mexico any longer. They could have observers in Mexico who noticed that Max wasn’t hanging out at the same bars and cafés as the rest of them. They don’t know where he is, or they’d be in Riverside.”

“But we’ve been so careful!”

“We have to be even more careful. We have to be—” Thelma choked back tears. “Oh, god, I can’t even think of the word.”

“Vigilant.”

“Vigilant.” She took a deep, satisfying drag. “They know that I am a longtime friend of the family. They must think I will lead them to him. I work for you. You’re an agent representing writers. And . . .”

“But could they have guessed about Charlie?” I lowered my voice to a whisper.

“If they haven’t yet, they will. They may have bugged our phones. Be careful what you say on the phone. Listen for little clicks. They might have planted microphones here in the house.” She lifted the desk lamp and looked under it.