The boy knocked on the door and was asked who he was.
'Sonny, with a guy the Kid sent,' he replied.
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 ad joining 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.'
'Crack the alibi yet?' he asked.
'Not yet.'
'It'll hold,' he assured me, 'unless they got too damned much on you. Think they have?'
I did think so. I said:
'No. McGraw's just feeling playful. That'll take care of itself. How's your end holding up?'
He emptied his glass, wiped his mouth on the back of a hand, and said:
'I'll make out. But that's what I wanted to see you about. Here's how she stacks up. Pete's throwed in with McGraw. That lines coppers and beer mob up against me and Whisper. But hell! Me and Whisper are busier trying to put the chive in each other than bucking the combine. That's a sour racket. While we're tangling, them bums will eat us up.'
I said I had been thinking the same thing. He went on:
'Whisper'll listen to you. Find him, will you? Put it to him. Here's the proposish: he means to get me for knocking off Jerry Hooper, and I mean to get him first. Let's forget that for a couple of days. Nobody won't have to trust nobody else. Whisper don't ever show in any of his jobs anyways. He just sends the boys. I'll do the same this time. We'll just put the mobs together to swing the caper. We run them together, rub out that damned Finn, and then we'll have plenty of time to go gunning among ourselves.
'Put it to him cold. I don't want him to get any ideas that I'm dodging a rumpus with him or any other guy. Tell him I say if we put Pete out of the way we'll have more room to do our own scrapping in. Pete's holed-up down in Whiskeytown. I ain't got enough men to go down there and pull him out. Neither has Whisper. The two of us together has. Put it to him.'
'Whisper,' I said, 'is dead.'
Reno said, 'Is that so?' as if he thought it wasn't.
'Dan Rolff killed him yesterday morning, down in the old Redman warehouse, stuck him with the ice pick Whisper had used on the girl.'
Reno asked:
'You know this? You're not just running off at the head?'
'I know it.'
'Damned funny none of his mob act like he was gone,' he said, but he was beginning to believe me.
'They don't know it. He was hiding out, with Ted Wright the only one in on the where. Ted knew it. He cashed in on it. He told me he got a hundred or a hundred and fifty from you, through Peak Murry.'
'I'd have given the big umpchay twice that for the straight dope,' Reno grumbled. He rubbed his chin and said: 'Well, that settles the Whisper end.'
I said: 'No.'
'What do you mean, no?'
'If his mob don't know where he is,' I suggested, 'let's tell them. They blasted him out of the can when Noonan copped him. Think they'd try it again if the news got around that McGraw had picked him up on the quiet?'
'Keep talking,' Reno said.
'If his friends try to crack the hoosegow again, thinking he's in it, that'll give the department, including Pete's specials, something to do. While they're doing it, you could try your luck in Whiskeytown.'
'Maybe,' he said slowly, 'maybe we'll try just that thing.'
'It ought to work,' I encouraged him, standing up. 'I'll see you--'
'Stick around. This is as good a spot as any while there's a reader out for you. And we'll need a good guy like you on the party.'
I didn't like that so much. I knew enough not to say so. I sat down again.
Reno got busy arranging the rumor. The telephone was worked overtime. The kitchen door was worked as hard, letting men in and out. More came in than went out. The house filled with men, smoke, tension.
XXV. Whiskeytown
