“He got his best consumers to tell him everything,” Agarwal said. He smiled, pleased with the tidbit of information. “True genius. He gave everyone who came into his casino something called a Star Card. The more you played, the more points you would get. You could follow your card online and win dinners and trips. But you could also win a windbreaker or a Frisbee. He wanted everyone to add up their points.”

“I once earned a beer stein from S&H Green Stamps.”

“One and the same,” he said. “The prizes at the base level were worthless. But the data he was able to collect was priceless. He could track an individual every time he or she set foot in a Star Casino. He used a massive data bank to build computational models that predict the behavior of every consumer. Especially their ideal.”

“The Star Card.”

“Precisely,” Agarwal said. “Profits soared. Casinos raked in billions. He has doubled the number of Star Casinos to thirty or more.”

“Because of a formula?”

“Harvey can stand back and take an unemotional appraisal of a business situation. His moves and reactions are purely mathematical.”

“And this is revelatory?”

“Very.”

“Do you recall a student who was here when Harvey Rose taught?” I said. “A woman named Jemma Fraser. She was or is a British citizen. I don’t have the dates.”

“We do have certain privacy standards.”

“Of course,” I said. “But just to verify she was a student.”

“That should be easy enough to find out.”

He opened the door to an anteroom and requested the information from his secretary. He promptly closed the door and returned to our grouping.

“The name seems familiar, but I can’t place it.”

“She was one of Mr. Rose’s protégés.”

Agarwal shook his head and surreptitiously looked at his watch. The door opened and the secretary appeared with a computer printout. She smiled at me as she walked out.

“Ah,” he said.

“You know her?”

“Vaguely,” the dean said. “I think she worked with Harvey in some capacity.”

“Can you tell me more from her student record?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot share academic information, Mr. Spenser.”

“I’m looking for more personal,” I said. “Do you know someone who knew her?”

He held the paper loose as he thought. He fluttered the paper in his fingers, studied the information in hand, and then called his secretary again. The door opened, and she appeared. This time she did not smile at me. I felt we were keeping her from something.

“Can you find out if Stephanie Cho is teaching today?” he said.

The secretary nodded and the door closed. Agarwal nodded.

“A lead?”

“I believe I have someone you should meet.”

“Goody,” I said.

55

“OF COURSE I REMEMBER Jemma Fraser,” said Stephanie Cho. “We called her the Duchess because of the accent and the attitude. She always wore these killer tall riding boots. God, that was a while back.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Other MBA students,” she said. “I’m pretty sure she attended Oxford and worked for some private equity group before coming to the States. Knew everything and thought everyone else was a lesser being. All the men, and some of the women, were crazy about her. But she didn’t really mingle. We had some classes together. Can’t say I liked her very much.”

We sat together at a table outside Spangler Hall, the student union of Harvard Business School. I had bought Stephanie a tall iced mocha. I had decided against more coffee and drank bottled water. Now out of sight of the dean, I again sported my Brooklyn Dodgers cap and slumped a bit in my chair.

“Do you remember the classes?”

Stephanie Cho thought for a moment. She was a pretty girl, a bit heavyset, with blunt-cut black hair and a wide face. She wore a short-sleeve cowboy shirt that fit tightly around her chest and upper arms. She tapped her front tooth as she thought. “Machiavelli, for one.”

“That was a business class?”

“It has a fancier title than that, something like ‘Machiavelli and Computational Models for Consumer Behavior’ or some kind of junk,” she said. “It was Harvey Rose’s signature class. We all read The Prince, and Rose would relate the text to using data to get your consumers to do what you want them to do.”

“As in the ends justified the means.”

“Computational models are not educated guesses,” she said. “Using data of past behavior, a well-built model allows its user to accurately predict what consumers will do in any given situation, often more accurately than the consumer assesses his or herself.”

“And what does that have to do with The Prince?”

“It reduces everything to a data set,” she said. “If you think of your consumers as data sets and not people, it allows you to completely disengage from morality. Data sets are amoral. If the data says low-income consumers are more likely to spend that extra fifty bucks than middle-income consumers, then you target them. You don’t care if they can’t pay the rent or go to the doctor.”

“Ah.”

“And as the model gets better and better, it becomes a manipulation tool. Based on past behavior, you can set up the optimal circumstances that pretty much guarantee the outcome. It almost destroys free will. We can know that they will, and how they will, and for how long, and under what conditions.”

“Yikes.”

“What did you think we discussed here?”

“Love thy neighbor?”

“Yeah, right.”

“How about Jemma?” I said. “Did she ever discuss Professor Rose’s lack of ethics?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “But I really didn’t know her very well. Sometimes I’d see her out for beers or at parties. That was rare. But mainly she was stuck up Rose’s ass.”

“A true believer.”

“More than that,” Cho said. She took a sip of the mocha. “I think she had a thing for him.”

“For Harvey Rose?”

“I know, I know,” she said. “Right? He was one of those professors who couldn’t match his socks. Had ketchup stains on his shirt all the time. Uncombed hair.”

“I’m not so good with ketchup myself. Worse with salsa.”

“So you know, he wasn’t exactly the kind of professor that made women swoon,” she said. “I think he found Jemma’s devotion very flattering. Especially with her style. And that gorgeous accent.”

“Was there preferential treatment?”

“Well, he hired her immediately when he left Harvard.”

“Do you think they were intimate?”

“I have no idea,” Cho said. “God, I hope not. I mean, that’s why you come here. To be independent, to impress employers into leadership positions. Not to screw your way to the top.”

“Do you recall anyone else she was close to?”

Cho shook her head. “I really can’t. I’m sorry. We all knew her. But she was very, very aloof. I can ask around.”

“Did she have family in the States?”

“I had the impression she was here just for the education. All I can remember are those clothes of hers. Wore very fancy stuff that was a bit out of place. Inappropriate for nine a.m. classes.”

“And the riding boots.”

“Always wore them.”

“And her without a horse.”

“You have to understand we don’t have traditional graduate assistantships here,” she said. “You are not required to have an internship, either. But we all pretty much do. I had one with Prudential and later with Bain. You work with a company and then you’re assigned a professor as a mentor.”

“And Rose was Jemma’s mentor.”

“And mine, too, and plenty of male students’,” she said. “I just don’t recall him taking that active a role in my off-campus work.”

“Do you remember what Jemma did?”