Firestarter(26)

"We've debriefed his last group," Albert Steinowitz said. "There were sixteen of them, and each of them paid a split tuition fee-one hundred dollars at enrollment, a hundred more halfway through the course, if they felt the course was helping them. Of course they all did."

Cap nodded. McGee's talent was admirably suited for investing people with confidence. He literally pushed them into it.

"We fed their answers to several key questions into the computer. The questions were, did you feel better about yourself and the Confidence Associates course at specific times? Can you remember days at work following your Confidence Associates meetings when you felt like a tiger? Have you-"

"Felt like a tiger?" Cap asked. "Jesus, you asked them if they felt like tigers?"

"The computer suggests the wording."

"Okay, go on."

"The third key question was, have you had any specific, measurable success at your job since taking the Confidence Associates course? That was the question they could all respond to with the most objectivity and reliability, because people tend to remember the day they got the raise or the pat on the back from the boss. They were eager to talk. I found it a little spooky, Cap. He sure did what he promised. Of the sixteen, eleven of them have had promotions-eleven. Of the other five, three are in jobs where promotions are made only at certain set times."

"No one is arguing McGee's capability," Cap said. "Not anymore."

"Okay. I'm getting back around to the point here. It was a six-week course. Using the answers to the key questions, the computer came up with four spike dates... that is, days when McGee probably supplemented all the usual hip-hip-hooray-you-can-do-it-if-you-try stuff" with a good hard push. The dates we have are August seventeenth, September first, September nineteenth... and October fourth."

"Proving?"

"Well, he pushed that cab driver last night. Pushed him hard. That dude is still rocking and reeling. We figure Andy McGee is tipped over. Sick. Maybe immobilized." Albert looked at Cap steadily. "Computer gave us a twenty-six-percent probability that he's dead."

"What?"

"Well, he's overdone it before and wound up in bed. He's doing something to his brain... God knows what. Giving himself pinprick hemorrhages, maybe. It could be a progressive thing. The computer figures there's slightly better than a one-in-four chance he's dead, either of a heart attack or, more probably, a stroke."

"He had to use it before he was recharged," Cap said.

Albert nodded and took something out of his pocket. It was encased in limp plastic. He passed it to Cap, who looked at it and then passed it back.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"Not that much," A1 said, looking at the bill in its plastic envelope meditatively. "Just what McGee paid his cab fare with."

"He went to Albany from New York City on a one-dollar bill, huh?" Cap took it back and looked at it with renewed interest. "Cab fares sure must be... what the hell!" He dropped the plastic encased bill on his desk as if it were hot and sat back, blinking.

"You too, huh?" Al said. "Did you see it?"

"Christ, I don't know what I saw," Cap said, and reached for the ceramic box where he kept his acid neutralizers. "For just a second it didn't look like a one-dollar bill at all."

"But now it does?"

Cap peered at the bill. "It sure does. That's George, all-Christ!" He sat back so violently this time that he almost rapped the back of his head on the dark wood paneling behind his desk. He looked at Al. "The face... seemed to change for a second there. Grew glasses, or something. Is it a trick?"

"Oh, it's a hell of a good trick," Al said, taking the bill back. "I saw it as well, although I don't anymore. I think I've adjusted to it now... although I'll be damned if I know how. It's not there, of course. It's just some kind of crazy hallucination. But I even made the face. It's Ben Franklin."

"You got this from the cab driver?" Cap asked, looking at the bill, fascinated, waiting for the change again. But it was only George Washington. Al laughed. "Yeah," he said. "We took the bill and gave him a check for five hundred dollars. He's better off, really." "Why?" "Ben Franklin isn't on the five hundred, he's on the hundred. Apparently McGee didn't know."

"Let me see that again."

Al handed the one-dollar bill back to Cap, and Cap stared fixedly at it for almost a full two minutes. Just as he was about to hand it back, it flickered again-unsettling. But at least this time he felt that the flicker was definitely in his mind, and not in the bill, or on it, or whatever.

"I'll tell you something else," Cap said. "I'm not sure, but I don't think Franklin's wearing glasses on his currency portrait, either. Otherwise, it's..." He trailed off, not sure how to complete the thought. Goddam weird came to mind, and he dismissed it.

"Yeah," A1 said. "Whatever it is, the effect is dissipating. This morning I showed it to maybe six people. A couple of them thought they saw something, but not like that cab driver and the girl he lives with."

"So you're figuring he pushed too hard?"

"Yes. I doubt if he could keep going. They may have slept in the woods, or in an outlying motel. They may have broken into a summer cabin in the area. But I think they're around and we'll be able to put the arm on them without too much trouble."