aren’t you.”
“They’re not knockoffs, Paddy, they’re up there with what they sell at Neiman Marcus.”
“And you want me to examine them for you.”
“Righto.”
He said, “I have tools for sectioning tissue, not Neoprene.”
“But you embed the tissue in something—even plastic sometimes—no?”
“My God, you actually pay attention to me when I'm talking shop.”
I said, “Usually just the first half of each sentence.”
“Bring me a sneaker.”
“I'll bring you one of mine,” I said.
“How about a new one?” he asked. “With that new shoe odor.”
“It seems to take some wear before they start to do their voodoo.”
“Have it your way, but it’ll be the end of that sneaker.”
I took a sneaker into his lab, wearing plain old brogans while I sacrificed what had become my favorite shoe. Patrick told me how he planned to section the shoe.
I interjected, “Start with the sole—the insole, actually.”
“And then what?”
“The vamp, just above where it meets the sole.”
He said, “Why not the tongue?”
“Start with the insole. And you’re right, maybe the tongue next.”
A week later Patrick called me, excited as hell, wanting to come to my office.
“Uh, Patrick, it’ll take a couple of days to get you security clearance.”
He said, “I've got clearance. I did some work for the Army a couple of years ago.”
I told him it wouldn’t be high enough unless he was handling nuclear devices or plans for ICBMs.
“Come to my office, then. You won’t believe what I've found.”
I went in to see Pillot, to tell him I might have a lead on the Sneaker Mystery, as it was coming to be called. He looked at me as if I was going off to an assignation with a Chinese spy. “Let’s hope this is good,” he said, leading me to put into words, finally, what had been going around in my head for a week. “I'll be so glad when that mope is replaced with a real section chief.” (I was, however, out of his hearing when I said it.)
Patrick was almost dancing he was so excited. “We have to collaborate on a paper,” he said. “This is ground-breaking, this is so fucking new I can't even imagine how they came up with it.”
“Lay it on me.”
He produced a manila folder, opened it and took out pictures, one at a time, and arrayed them in front of me.
“What am I looking at?”
I saw what looked like very blurry little insects.
“Nanoparticles. Look at this one, it’s the highest magnification. Those babies are thirty nanometers long. The Chinese are beating us in nanotechnology; this is proof.”
“They sort of look like tiny French press coffee makers,” I said.
“They are crude little syringes. As heat and friction are applied to the insole—you were right about that, you fox—they slough off the rubber material.”
“—And?”
He shrugged. “That’s not part of my expertise.”
I said, “Have you talked to anyone else in the lab about this?”
He looked hurt. “No. I thought I owed it to you to show you first. But I'm thinking of telling my students about it, and of course my project director.”
“Don’t tell anyone until you hear from me, Paddy. I mean it. This is very serious stuff, indeed.”
“I don’t get it.”
I said, “I have a hunch about what’s going on, but I want NBACC, the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, to analyze what’s in those little syringes.”
His mouth hung open for a couple of seconds, and then he said, “Does this mean I won’t be able to publish on this?”
“Yes, but you might get a gold star from Homeland Security for helping crack the case.”
He looked crestfallen. “I thought this was going to be a career booster.”
“It may. It may. Just hang in there.”
ҩ ҩ ҩ ҩ ҩ
I didn’t bother to go to Omar Pillot. I went straight to Paul Blockburger. As I entered his office I made a point of closing the door.
“Something serious, Mr. O’Doyle?
“Mr. Blockburger, we have to embargo Chinkers.”
He waited for me to go on. I handed him my copies of Patrick’s eight by ten glossies. He went through them slowly, then looked up, waiting for more information.
“Those are electron micrographs of nanodevices embedded in the insoles of Chinkers that I believe are miniature syringes. I believe they are filled with a substance that stimulates the nervous system of the wearer. The more friction inside the shoe, the more toxin or whatever gets shot into the foot of the wearer. I wear them, but being in a wheelchair, I don’t get that much of a dose. Kids wearing them playing basketball on asphalt playgrounds are getting a lot more. Hence the fights and the homicides. Like forty cups of coffee all at once.”
He picked up his phone.
“Is he in?”
“This is of the utmost importance. I need you to get him out of the meeting. I'll be in his office—I'm bringing Mr. O’Doyle, one of our analysts—in about two minutes. He’s gotta hear this and act on it now.”
He came out of his chair like a pulling guard. “Follow me.”
In the elevator I said, “I thought maybe we should get the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center people to analyze what’s in those little syringes.”
Blockburger said, “We embargo first, analyze second, bomb the shit out of the Chinese third. —I'm kidding, but this feels like an act of war to me.”
“Maybe,” I said, “We could justify the embargo by saying we think the leather in the shoes came from cattle with mad cow disease.”
He looked at me with narrowed eyes, as if seeing me in a new light. “Are you on the eligibility list for Murphy Dyring’s job?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You damn well have it, then.”
We went into the Deputy Director’s office. Blockburger was looking grim but I couldn’t help smiling.
Sneakers Page 3