A knock sounded at the door and I hesitated. “Answer it,” said Thelma, going pale.

He wore a rumpled, cheap suit. With his squint he looked like Popeye, lacking only the pipe and the sailor hat. “Mrs. Smith?”

“You have the wrong house.”

“No one here by that name?” His eyes lingered on Thelma, then darted over the living room that clearly served as an office. “I was told Mrs. Smith lived here. I’m looking for her.”

“Look somewhere else.”

We closed the door behind him. “We are screwed,” said Thelma.

“We’ll call him Popeye,” I offered, my mouth dry with anxiety. “If we need a name for him, that’s what we’ll call him.”

“You better tell Terrence. The Challenger is no stranger to the FBI.”

I picked up the latest Challenger, which lay on her desk. All this fall, inflamed by the death of Emmett Till in August, the paper had blasted the travesty of the Mississippi trial that followed, the rhetoric escalating with every issue.

But when I went home and told Terrence about Popeye, he was less upset than I thought he’d be. “The NAACP is bugged for sure. The Challenger probably is too. J. Edgar Hoover has a burr up his butt about all of us. You get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want, Roxanne. You gotta be extra careful. Here.” He took a matchbook off the table. “Let me show you an old trick Booker taught me.” He tore the cover off a matchbook, rolled it up tight, and showed me how to stick it at the very base of the door when I left the house. “If anyone’s been inside, you’ll know it before you open the door.”

“Popeye could come here?” My voice escalated to a near wail. “Find out about us?”

“They’re the FBI, Roxanne.” I knew when he called me Roxanne it was something important. “They can snoop all over your life, and they will. You and Thelma can’t ever let down your guard.”

“All right, but, baby, from now on you put the Porsche in the garage and close the door.”

He chuckled. “Greater love hath no person but that they should give up their garage for another. Scripture, girl. Honest.”

“Really? From the Church of Rick and Ilsa?”

“Chapter and verse.”