One of the FBI slickers snapped, "Let me see some ID."

Another said, "Where were you and your friend an hour ago?"

Leroy looked from one Fibbie to the next. Then he stared over at the uniform. "Virgil, what the hell's going on?"

"Like I said, a man's dead. Important man. His name's-"

With a slash of his hand, a slicker cut him off. "ID. Now!"

Leroy quickly slid a thin wallet out of his bib's pocket and handed over his license. While one of the agents punched the number into a handheld computer he'd slipped from his windbreaker, another agent held out his hand to Stone.

Stone didn't move. He just stared back with a vacuous expression, his lips gumming and his bum leg doing an exaggerated deep knee bend. He looked confused, which was all part of the act.

"He ain't got no license," Leroy said. "He ain't got nothing of nothing. Hell, can't even talk, just grunts."

The FBI agents closed around Stone. "He work for you?"

"Yessir. Four months now. Good worker, strong back. Don't ask for much money-room and board is all, really. But he got a bad leg and not too much upstairs. He's mostly what you call unemployable."

The agents looked down at the protruding angle of Stone's leg then back up at his bespectacled face and bushy beard.

One of them asked, "What's your name?"

Stone grunted and made several jerky motions with his hand, like he was showing off a bastardized martial art for the federal men.

"Sign language, least I think it is, or some such," Leroy volunteered wearily. "Don't know sign language myself so's I don't know his real name. Just call him ‘Hey man.' Then I show him what needs doing. That seems to work. It ain't like we're doing heart surgery up here, just throwing shit in a truck mostly."

A slicker said, "Tell him to lift up his pants leg on his bum wheel."

"What for?"

"Just tell him!"

Leroy motioned to Stone to do so by drawing up his own pants leg.