“She called him Tiny, sometimes Tonto,” Norman said. “Babyfaced-great big hulk of a guy…”

“Real big,” she said. “And not right in the head. He’s mostly deaf so he talked all in grunts. His mom acted like she understood him, but none of the rest of us did. He’s an animal. Prowling the neighborhood at night. Scared the crap out of me more than once.”

Norman said, “Couple of women were attacked. He beat the shit out of this one gal. Hurt her so bad, she nearly had a nervous breakdown.”

“Charming,” I said. I thought about the goon I’d seen while I was cruising through Gus’s house. Solana had been charging Gus’s estate for the services of an orderly, who might well be her kid. “You wouldn’t happen to have the tenant application she filled out when she moved in.”

“You’d have to ask the new owner. The building’s thirty years old. I know there’s a bunch of boxes in storage from back when, but who knows what’s in ’em.”

“Why don’t you give her Mr. Compton’s phone number?”

Startled, I said, “Richard Compton?”

“Yeah, him. He also owns that building across the alley.”

“I do business with him all the time. I’ll call and ask if he objects to my searching the old files. I’m sure he won’t mind. In the meantime, if you hear from Ms. Tasinato, would you let me know?” I took out a business card, which Norman read and then passed to his wife.

“You think her and this Rojas woman are the same?” she asked.

“Looks that way to me.”

“She’s a bad one. Sorry we can’t tell you where she went.”

“Never mind. I know.”

Once the door was closed, I stood for a moment, relishing the information. Score one for me. Things were finally making sense. I’d done a background check on Solana Rojas, but in reality I was dealing with someone else-first name Costanza or Cristina, last name Tasinato. At some point there’d been a switch in ID, but I wasn’t sure when. The real Solana Rojas might not even be aware that someone had borrowed her résumé, her credentials, and her good name.

When I returned to my car, there was a white Saab parked behind me and a fellow was standing on the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets, looking at the Mustang with a discerning eye. He wore jeans and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches: middle-aged, neatly clipped brown beard laced with gray, wide mouth, a mole near his nose and another on his cheek. “This yours?”

“It is. Are you a fan?”

“Yes ma’am. It’s a hell of a car. You happy with it?”

“More or less. Are you in the market?”

“I might be.” He patted his jacket pocket and I almost expected him to take out a pack of cigarettes or a business card. “Are you Kinsey Millhone, by any chance?”

“Yes. Do I know you?”

“No, but I believe this is yours,” he said, offering a long white envelope with my name scrawled across the front.

Puzzled, I took it and he touched my arm, saying, “Baby, you’ve been served.”

I felt my blood pressure drop and my heart skipped a beat. My soul and my body neatly detached from one another, like cars in a freight train when the coupling’s been pulled. I felt as if I were standing right next to myself, looking on. My hands were cold but shook only slightly as I opened the envelope and removed the Notice of Hearing and Temporary Restraining Order.

The name of the person asking for protection was Solana Rojas. I was named as the person to be restrained, my sex, height, weight, hair color, home address, and other relevant facts neatly typed in. The information was more or less accurate except for the weight, mine being ten pounds less. The hearing had been scheduled for February 9-Tuesday of the following week. In the meantime, under Personal Conduct Orders, I was forbidden to harass, attack, strike, threaten, assault, hit, follow, stalk, destroy personal property, keep under surveillance, or block the movements of Solana Rojas. I was also ordered to stay at least one hundred feet away from her, her home, and her vehicle-the low number of feet apparently taking into account the fact that I lived right next door. I was also forbidden to own, possess, have, buy or try to buy, receive or try to receive, or in any other way get a gun or a firearm. At the bottom of the paper in white letters on a block of black, it said This is a Court Order. Like I hadn’t guessed as much.

The process server watched me with curiosity as I shook my head. He was probably accustomed, as I was, to serving restraining orders on individuals in need of anger-management classes.

“This is so bogus. I never did a thing to her. She’s invented this shit.”

“That’s what the hearing’s for. You can tell the judge your side of it in court. Maybe he’ll agree. In the meantime, I’d get a lawyer if I were you.”

“I have one.”

“In that case, best of luck. Pleasure doing business. You made it easy for me.”

And with that, he got in his car and drove away.

I unlocked the Mustang and got in. I sat, engine off, my hands resting on the steering wheel while I stared out at the street. I glanced down at the restraining order I’d tossed on the passenger’s seat beside me. I picked it up and read it for the second time. Under Court Orders, in Section 4, the box marked “b” had been checked, specifying that if I didn’t obey these orders, I could be arrested and charged with a crime, in which case I might have to (a) go to jail, (b) pay a fine of up to $1,000, or (c) both. None of the choices appealed to me.

The bitch of it was she’d outmaneuvered me again. I’d thought I was so smart and she was already one step ahead of me. Which left me what? My options were now limited, but there had to be a way.

On the way home I stopped at a drugstore and picked up some 400 ASA color film. Then I drove back to my apartment and left my car in a weedy patch in the alleyway behind Henry’s house. I slipped through a gap in the back fence and let myself into my studio. I went upstairs and cleared the surface of the footlocker I use as a bed table, setting the reading lamp, alarm clock, and a big stack of books on the floor. I opened the trunk and took out my 35mm single-lens reflex camera. It wasn’t cutting-edge equipment, but it was all I had. I loaded the film and went down the spiral staircase. Now all I had to find was a vantage point that would allow me to fire off multiple views of my nemesis next door, making certain, at the same time, she didn’t catch sight of me and call the police. Surreptitious picture-taking would certainly qualify as surveillance.

When I told Henry what I was up to, he smiled impishly. “Your timing’s good at any rate. I saw Solana driving off as I was coming back from my walk.”

It was his clever idea to use a flexible silver sunscreen against the windshield of his station wagon, which he insisted on my borrowing. Solana knew my car too well and she’d be watching for me. He went out to the garage and came back with the screen he used to keep the interior temperatures down when he was parked in the sun. He cut a couple of nice round lens-sized holes in the material and handed me the car keys. I tucked the sunscreen under my arm and tossed it on the passenger’s seat before I backed the station wagon out of his garage.

There was still no sign of Solana’s car, though there was a handsome length of curb where she’d been parked earlier. I drove around the block and found a spot across the street, being careful to keep the requisite hundred feet between my person and hers, assuming she stayed where she belonged. Of course, if her parking spot was taken and she pulled her car in behind mine, I’d be jail bait for sure.

I popped open the sunscreen and set it against the windshield, then positioned myself, camera in hand, and zeroed in on Gus’s front door. I shifted my focus to the empty section of curb and adjusted the lens. I slouched down on my spine to wait, watching the front of the house through a narrow gap between the dashboard and the bottom of the screen. Twenty-six minutes later Solana turned the corner onto Albanil, half a block down the street. I watched her reclaim her parking place, probably feeling pleased with herself as she eased the car nose-first into the space. I sat up and braced my arms on the steering wheel as Solana emerged. The click and whir of the camera were soothing as I shot frame after frame. She stopped in her tracks and her head came up.