The door was opened by long-legged O’Marra. Sonny went away. I went into a kitchen where Reno Starkey and four other men sat around a table that had a lot of beer on it. I noticed that two automatic pistols hung on nails over the top of the door through which I had come. They would be handy if any of the house’s occupants opened the door, found an enemy with a gun there, and were told to put up their hands.

Reno poured me a glass of beer and led me through the dining room into a front room. A man lay on his belly there, with one eye to the crack between the drawn blind and the bottom of the window, watching the street.

“Go back and get yourself some beer,” Reno told him.

He got up and went away. We made ourselves comfortable in adjoining chairs.

“When I fixed up that Tanner alibi for you,” Reno said, “I told you I was doing it because I needed all the friends I could get.”

“You got one.”