"Tell them to do all the work they can outside if inside isn't ready yet."

"The FBI."

"Well, ask one of the older men. Do what you can. We can order any special parts we need."

"The FBI has come to put you in jail for the rest of your life."

"Yeah. Good. Do it." said Jimmy McQuade and went off into his comfortable dark world.

"See," said Mrs. McQuade with a strange sense of relief.

"Could you shake him again?" asked the spokesman for the pair.

Mrs. McQuade grabbed the closest piece of her husband and squeezed.

"Yeah. OK. Back to work," said Jimmy McQuade bounding from bed. He looked around, saw two men without tools in their hands, and finding nothing in the room that needed connecting, suddenly realized he was not at the building site.

"Home. Yeah. Hello, honey. What are these men doing here?"

"We're from the FBI, Mr. McQuade, we'd like to talk to you."

"Oh," said Jimmy McQuade. "Well. Okay."

His wife made a big pot of coffee. They talked in the kitchen.

"Some pretty interesting things are going on at your new job aren't they?"

"It's a job," said Jimmy McQuade.

"We believe it's more than a job. And we'd like your help."

"Look. I'm a good citizen but I'm a union man, too."

"Was Johnny Delano a union man also?"

"Yeah."

"Was he a good union man."

"Yeah."

"Was he a good union man when he quit?"

"Yeah. He couldn't take it and walked off the job. But he's a good union man."

The spokesman of the pair nodded and put a candid-size glossy photograph on the white formica of the kitchen table.

Jimmy McQuade looked at it.

"So. You got a picture of a pile of mud."

"The pile's name is Johnny Delano," said the FBI man.

Jimmy McQuade looked closer. "Oh, no," groaned Jimmy McQuade.