“But it’s supposed to warm up.” He drank from an official NASCAR tankard of java, letting some dribble down his chin when he pulled it back.

Stone nodded as his bearded face drooped and his normally attentive eyes grew vacant behind the smudged lenses. As he walked behind the other man Stone’s left leg bent outward with a chicken-wing limp that stooped him into being several inches shorter.

They were loading an old banged-up, bald-tired Ford F-150 with firewood when the police car and black sedans slid into the driveway, propelling pebbly gravel in all directions like fired BBs. The trim, muscled men who climbed out of the rides wore blue slickers with “FBI” stenciled on the back in gold lettering and pistols with fourteen-round clips in their belt holsters. Three of them walked up to Stone and his buddy, while a chubby uniformed sheriff with polished black boots and a Stetson hustled to catch up.

“What’s the deal, Virgil?” Green Bay asked the uniform. “Some sonofabitch break outta prison again? I’m telling you, you boys oughta start shooting to kill again and screw the pissant liberals.”

Virgil shook his head, worry lines rising on his forehead. “No prison. Man’s dead, Leroy.”

“What man?”

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.