No, ma'am.

Was he a secret scientist?

No, sir.

Was he a big Mafia cappucino who split with the family?

No, sir.

Was he a hit? He was a real live hit, wasn't he?

Well, ma'am, we believe that his demise was, so to speak, intentional.

That's for dang sure. Folks don't blow up by accident.

Yes, sir.

So here they were, talking to little children about froobies and bang bangs and sand boxes, while other agents went around picking up pieces of the man called Calder from the schoolyard.

"Anything else?" said the agent.

"He went like a ladyfinger. Bang. You know how ladyfingers blow up when you light them," said Jimmy.

"Ladyfingers are firecrackers. They're against the law. I never used them," said Kathy Poffer. "Jimmy used them a lot though. Jimmy and Johnny Kruse and Irene Blasinips. She showed herself to the boys, too. I know that."

"And you took extra cookies before nap," said Jimmy, turning in his playmate to the FBI. But the FBI did not seem interested in firecrackers or who showed what to whom, just Mr. Calder who was new to the town and had gone bang like a ladyfinger with some of him left, like those little firecrackers that never quite went all up.

There was something else, too, Jimmy remembered, but no one would be interested in that. They wanted to know about the bang, not about the new kid who wouldn't let anyone play with the froobie but just hung around sort of, and when Mr. Calder came by, called out to him and seemed to know him because he called him Mr. Calder.

"Mr. Calder, they say you can throw a football, but I bet you can't throw a froobie," the new kid had said.