Bill at the bar was a friend of mine. Not a bartender, Bill, but he might as well have been for all the time he spent bellied up there working. And no friend at all, really, but he used the word to distinguish between those whose business he took and those he turned away. You were either a friend of his or you weren’t.
Bill was my bookie, and he scared the hell out of me.
This was ages ago, call it 30 years. I was a too-far-over-his-skis college doofus. In hindsight, Bill was just a low-level kid — close to my age — and probably not all that dangerous.