Dagger Key and Other Stories

“Yes. He was born Theodore Rankin. He’s forty-three. He believes he’s the world’s best poker player. And he may well be.”

“What was he before?”

“A bartender. He was killed during a robbery. I don’t know how the corporation got hold of the body.”

“The corporation. I assume they took the project over after it went in the toilet at Tulane.”

“That’s right. But there was a gap of ten years or so.”

“Why’re they so interested in a poker player?”

“It’s not the poker playing per se that’s of interest, it’s the patients’ underlying abilities. Their potentials go far beyond the life story they construct for themselves. We don’t understand what they can do. None of them lived long enough. But with the advances in micro-biology made during the last two decades, Doctor Crain thinks Josey may live for years. He’s developing more rapidly than the others, too. That may be a result of improvements in the delivery system. We used a heart pump at Tulane, but now they…”

“I don’t have to know the gearhead stuff.” I mulled over what she had told me. “You were fired from the original project. Why would Darden hire you? Where do you fit in?”

Verret toyed with the bottle cap. “I helped a patient escape. I couldn’t go along with what they were doing to him anymore. He developed some astonishing abilities while he was on the run. I’m the only person who’s dealt with someone that advanced.”

“What sort of abilities we talking about?”

“Perceptual, for the most part. Changes in visual capacity and such.”

She said this off-handedly, but I doubted she was being straight with me. I decided not to push it, and I asked what they had been doing at Harrah’s.

“At Tulane we kept the patients confined,” she said. “But Crain thought Josey would develop more rapidly if we exposed him to an unstructured environment under controlled conditions.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Turns out we didn’t have much control.”

“How much does Pellerin know?”

“He knows he was brought back to life. But he doesn’t know about the new personality…though he suspects something’s wrong there. It’s up to me to determine when he’s ready to hear the truth. Things go better if we tell them than if we let them piece it together on their own.”

“I still don’t understand your function. What exactly is it you do?”

“Patients need to bond with someone in order to create a complex personality. They have to be controlled, carefully manipulated. We were trained to instill that bond, to draw out their capabilities.”

She folded her arms, compressed her lips. I had the thought that, though none of what she had told me was comedy club material, talking about her role in things distressed her more than the rest.

“If the other therapists are good-looking as you,” I said, “I bet that instilling thing goes pretty easily.”

That seemed to distress her further.

“Come on, cher,” I said. “You going to be just fine. Y’all can be a significant asset for Billy, and that works to your advantage.”

She leaned forward, putting a hand on my knee; the touch surprised me. “Mister Lamb,” she said, and I said, without intending to, “Jack. You can call me Jack.”

“I want to be able to count on you, Jack. Can I count on you?”

“I told you I don’t have any control over the situation.”

“But can you be a friend? That’s all I’m asking. Can we count on you to be a friend?”

Those big brown eyes were doing a job on me, but I resisted them. “I haven’t ever been much good as a friend. It’s a character flaw, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t believe that.” She sat back, adjusting her T-shirt so it fit more snugly. “You can call me Jo.”

I contacted Billy Pitch, though not during prime time, fearing I might interrupt The Surreal Life or Wife Swap, and I told him what I had learned, omitting any mention of the “remarkable powers” that might soon be Pellerin’s, stressing instead his developing visual capacity. I wasn’t sure why I did this—perhaps because I thought that Billy, already powerful, needed no further inducement to use his strength intemperately. He professed amazement at what I had to say, then slipped into business mode.

“I got an idea, but it needs to simmer, so I’m going to stash you away for a while,” he said. “Get everybody ready to travel tonight.”

“By ‘everybody,’” I said, “you don’t mean me, right? I got deals cooking. I have to…”

“I’ll handle them for you.”

“Billy, some of what I got going requires the personal touch.”

“Are you suggesting I can’t handle whatever piddly business it is you got?”

“No, that’s not it. But there’s…”

“You’re not going to thwart me in this, are you, Jack?”

“No,” I said helplessly.

“Good! Call my secretary and tell her what needs doing. I’ll see it gets done.”