I did know.
Kathleen’s club sandwich had been cut into four pieces. She picked up a wedge and studied it. “What about the fire chief?” she asked. “If you’re right, that makes him wrong, and he’s the expert.”
I speared a couple of fries and popped them into my mouth. There’s nothing like the taste of diner French fries. “They put hamburger grease in the oil,” I said. “Makes the French fries burst with flavor. You want some?”
“No. What about the fire chief?”
The waiter returned with a thick roll of clear sealing tape and said he’d be right back to refresh our drinks. I nodded and began taping the fingers on my right hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure I don’t splay my metacarpals.”
She showed me her bewildered look and watched me tape my wrist. After doing that, I removed a thin sheet of plastic from my wallet and began fitting it to the bottom part of my palm, from pinky to wrist. “Can you wrap this for me?” I asked.
“You’re insane,” she said, but she wrapped the tape around the palm of my hand, covering the plastic and holding it in place. I flexed my hand to test it and decided it would do. “What about the fire chief?” she repeated.
“He’s in on it.”
“What?”
“They paid him off after the fact. They didn’t want to, but they had to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This arsonist was good. The only reason he appears sloppy is because the fire department got to the scene so quickly. Four minutes and twenty seconds, if you can just imagine. Another five minutes and the fire would have killed all the evidence. The chief knew it was arson, some of his men probably knew. So whoever ordered the torch-I’m guessing Joe DeMeo-had to get to the chief.”
“You said the chief was talking about his retirement.”
“It’s all he talks about.”
“So this Joe DeMeo character, he gave the chief enough money to look the other way?”
“I expect the money was a bonus, like a reward for doing the right thing. DeMeo probably got the chief’s attention by threatening his wife, kids, and grandchildren.”
The composite plastic affixed to the edge of my hand was invented by an engineering team at the University of Michigan in mid-2007. It’s strong as steel and as thin and pliable as a small sheet of paper. Made from clay and nontoxic glue, it mimics the brick and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells. The nanosheets of plastic are layered like bricks and held together with a gluelike polymer that creates cooperative hydrogen bonds between the layers. It takes several hours to build up the three hundred layers needed to make the thin sheet I kept in my wallet at all times.
