O. J. Simpson likes to relax at this bar even though he’s shackled to a strict drinking limit.

That is one of the terms of his parole: not to drink “to excess,” defined as a .08-or-higher blood-alcohol content level. Simpson monitors his blood with a personal Breathalyzer day and night, since a parole officer could burst into either bar or bedroom to test him at any moment. He’s also forbidden to touch weapons, imbibe marijuana and other controlled substances, or associate with felons. One slipup and he’ll be sent straight back to Lovelock, the northern-Nevada prison from which he was released on October 1, after serving nearly nine years on 12 charges, including armed robbery, kidnapping, and assault with a deadly weapon.

He always enjoys a single drink, a “Ketel One martini, three olives, extra cold,” says a waiter who serves him regularly at Grape Street Café, a restaurant and bar, in downtown Summerlin, a planned community developed by the Howard Hughes Corporation in western Las Vegas. Summerlin is a pristine, perpetually sunny world, an incongruous home for this infamous criminal, or “martyr,” as his attorney calls him. When Simpson moved in, many residents of this mostly white, gated community on a golf course erupted with anger on the neighborhood-watch Web site Nextdoor.

“OJ’s in the neighborhood,” one wrote. “Beware of him and the circus that follows.”

“Lest we forget: he’s a murderer!!!!!” wrote another. “Any reasonable person in this country would not want that man in their neighborhood,” wrote a third. (One person countered, “So where would you like him to move? We’ve got former and present day mob bosses living amongst us. Known gang affiliates. Drug lords. Sex traffickers. Yet you are overly concerned with O.J.”)

Tonight we’re eagerly waiting for O.J. to emerge from the 5,000-square-foot, $1.8 million home—with a Bentley in the garage and a swimming pool—where he currently lives. The house and the car have been lent to him by James Barnett, a friend for 20 years, since Barnett hired O.J. to give a motivational speech at his company.

JUDGMENT CALL

Post-prison phone shopping at Verizon with daughter Arnelle. From Splash News.

Precisely at six P.M. O.J. arrives at the bar with two friends. Now 70, he is a massive presence, towering over the young woman at the hostess station. Seeing him makes it all come back, one of the tawdriest stories in the annals of American crime: O. J. Simpson, whose 1995 trial and acquittal on charges of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman made him America’s first reality-TV star. (The court proceedings, obsessed over worldwide, were recently revisited in the F/X series The People v. O.J. Simpson and in the ESPN documentary O.J.: Made in America.) Thirteen years later he was convicted of armed robbery, for bursting into a Las Vegas hotel room “with guns and goons,” to rob two memorabilia dealers of O. J. Simpson mementos.

At Grape Street, however, he is hailed as a conquering hero. Sometimes it takes him 10 minutes to move from the hostess station to his table, so desperate are his fans for a handshake, a hug, or a selfie with the former Nevada Department of Corrections inmate No. 1027820. “I texted my boyfriend and was like, ‘Dude, O. J. Simpson is in the restaurant!,’ and he was like, ‘No way! Go take a picture and get his autograph!’” says Desireé Touchette, 24, one of the many young women who approached Simpson for a selfie embrace. “I was like, ‘Seriously?,’ and he was like, ‘Desi, I promise you, he’s like one of the most famous people in the world!’”