“That you, Amos?”
“Shit no, it’s me, Lester Colton.”
“Right. Lester.” Longarm pulled the door open and let Amos inside. “What’s that you’re carrying?”
“We drank yours last night. My turn tonight.” He held a dark brown bottle aloft, as if to display a trophy.
“You’re a sneaky little sumbish, but sometimes you get it right in spite o’ yourself,” Longarm said.
Amos chuckled and uncorked the bottle. Which proved to be a corn whiskey instead of a rye. But what the hell. A man can’t have everything. Which is no reason to stop trying, of course. “Cheers.”
“Mud in your eye.”
Both took deep pulls from the bottle, passing it back and forth until the edge was off. Then Longarm motioned Amos to the chair and took a seat on the side of the bed. “Hear anything t’day?”
“Just that the police chief doesn’t like you worth a damn. He doesn’t really believe that story you gave him about passing by and seeing a light in Nare’s living quarters.”
“How’d you hear about that?”
“It’s all over town by now, jumping from saloon to saloon. Deliberate, of course. They want to make sure nobody in town has anything to do with you. Making you out to be a liar is just a part of that.”
“Reckon that makes sense after a fashion.” Longarm smiled. “And o’ course Bender wouldn’t believe my story. After all, it’s the truth.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh.” Longarm gave Amos a somewhat more complete account of the affair than Chief Bender had gotten.
“The son of a bitch was after the party’s records,” Amos said.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“I wonder what was in them that was so important, the party secretary was killed just to get them,” Amos mused.
“If there’s a connection.”
“IP” Amos challenged. “There pretty much has to be a connection.”
“Maybe so, maybe no. Could be someone was just taking advantage of an opportunity that fell into his lap. Or o’ course it could be that Nare was killed for those records, like you say. But if the killer was after the records, why not grab them last night instead o’ this evening?”
“A gunshot sounds mighty loud to the fellow who’s pulling the trigger. He couldn’t have known no one would hear the shot last night.”
“No, but he coulda watched from across the street or something. That’s what I’d of done.”
“Our man might not be as cool about murder as you, my friend,” Amos suggested.
“He’s had his practice lately, it looks like.”
“Still and all …”
Longarm sighed. “One thing you can count on when it comes to criminals.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re all of them crazy as hell an’ about as predictable as the weather.”
“Isn’t that the natural truth.” Amos had another go at the bottle, then handed it to Longarm.
“Someday, ol’ son, I’m gonna teach you about drinkin’ whiskey,” Longarm said, taking a long swallow of the mellow corn and returning the jug to his friend.
“In the meantime I thought you might wanta hear something that came up in conversation this afternoon.”
“What’s that?”
“One of the Texas First boys was kind of pumping me to see could I offer any support for them in my home county. You know?”
“That sounds normal enough.”
“Yeah, but wait until you hear what this guy was hinting at.”
“Just hinting?”
“It isn’t the sort of thing you come right out and say. Not unless you know the other person mighty well.”
“And …?”
Amos lowered his voice a bit even though they were undoubtedly alone and beyond any serious likelihood of eavesdropping. “You know that rescission clause in the Texas constitution?”
“The who-what?”
Amos smiled and shook his head. “I can tell you’re no Texan.”
“Thank goodness there’s at least one regular human in this room,” Longarm returned.
“When Texas came into the Union back in the forties, my friend, one of the privileges we kept for ourselves was
