Thelma certainly seemed to be the main target of Popeye’s observations. He sometimes followed her home and parked outside her house in Tarzana. He followed me home only once—on a night, thank god, when Terrence was staying at Naomi Avenue to make a deadline. I gave Terrence Max’s number and asked him to call from Naomi and alert him. Max was grateful, and he said he had a new script, nearly finished, but he would hang on to it. If anything happened to Thelma or me, he asked if Terrence would please let him know.

A few weeks passed and nothing happened to Thelma or me. But the kid who lived next door knocked on our door one afternoon to get his ball from our backyard, and he told us that Popeye had been asking up and down Clara Bow Drive for what people knew of us. Which was nothing except that Thelma drove a Nash, and I drove an MG. When Thelma took me out to Reg’s to pick up the Silver Bullet after it was again repaired, Reg said that a man flashing an FBI badge had insisted on pawing through the MG, through the glove box, the trunk, under the seats.

“I had to let him look, Miss Granville,” said Reg sorrowfully. “I got to keep my immigration papers clean, and I don’t want no trouble.”

“Sure, Reg. I understand,” I said calmly, though I was seething. “Did he ask after Terrence Dexter at all? After Terrence’s car?”

“No, miss. Only you.”

I often wondered what the back seat of Popeye’s Chevy must look like. Old newspapers? Apple cores? Bags of stale potato chips? Coke bottles? Did he read pulp magazines? Detective stories? Edgar Rice Burroughs while he sweltered in his sedan? We feared he might harass the mailman, so we got a post office box. True, he could harass the post office people, but he might need a warrant for that. I feared he might harass any clients who came to the office. I told Jimmy and Maurice to stay away. Charlie never showed up anyway. I met my clients at lunch dates, or for drinks at the most expensive places I could think of, places where a guy like Popeye would stand out just for looking like the dumpy little squirt that he was. But after that immediate, unnerving flurry of inquiries and poking about, Popeye became an intermittent rather than a continual presence. The fact that we never knew when he might turn up made him more scary, rather than less. He seemed a kind of ghost in our lives, and we feared him whether we could see him or not.