“Three men dead,” Healy said. “And we got zip.”
“Be nice to know who is negotiating exactly what.”
“You got something on that?”
“Gino Fish has removed his welcome mat.”
“And your other hoodlum friends?”
“That’s no way to describe some of the city’s most valuable resources.”
“Hoodlums.”
“At least they come honest,” I said. “It’s the ones in disguise that concern me.”
54
DEAN AGARWAL KEPT a neat and tidy office, as neat and tidy as one would expect of the head of Harvard Business School. A pal of mine named Bill Barke had made the introduction, Bill being a one-phone-call guy, and that afternoon I found myself drinking coffee with the dean in Morgan Hall. Agarwal was a professional academic, the framed paper hanging on his wall telling me he’d been educated in Bombay, London, and Cambridge. I noted from his bookshelf that he had authored several books with titles such as Leadership in the 21st Century, Leadership Through Economic Crisis, and Leadership and Building Trust.
Agarwal was a dark man, slight of frame, with a very shiny bald head and thin, trendy glasses. He was warm and polite, and spoke with a British accent overlaid with subtle tones of India. His hands were small, but he had a firm and assertive grip. He wore a light khaki suit and looked a bit like Vijay Amritraj, only with much less hair.
“Harvey Rose was one of our great stars,” he said. We sat a short distance from a large desk in a cluster of chairs set about a table with good china and a coffeepot. “I taught organizational behavior to many glum students. Harvey would attract hordes to courses that were somewhat unorthodox at the time. He said the key to corporate success was simple if you understood how to accurately predict consumer behavior. Many of the faculty frowned upon his methods, feeling they bordered on emotional manipulation, but one could not deny his genius.”
“Did he strike you as a future casino mogul?”
“Frankly, I never saw Harvey leaving the safe haven of academia,” Agarwal said. “On paper, Harvey is spectacular.”
“And in person?”
Agarwal reached over to the table behind us. With a small spoon, he extracted two cubes from the sugar bowl and plopped them into his coffee. He smiled and took a sip. “Less than,” he said.
“I’ve had the pleasure.”
“And now you are running a background check on him?”
“In a matter of speaking,” I said. “I work for the wife of the late Rick Weinberg.”
“Surely she doesn’t think—”
“No, she does not,” I said. “But part of my job is to check into the backgrounds of those who did business with Mr. Weinberg. I hope to learn a little bit more about his world and perhaps find some clues.”
“And even better with a competitor?”
“Some argue that Harvey Rose was running second.”
Agarwal took another sip and placed the cup on the saucer. He leaned back into a lemon-yellow Queen Anne chair. “If Harvey had entered the competition, then he had found a formula to win.”
“I believe his odds have improved recently.”
Agarwal smiled. “And had Harvey not taken his current position and left the business school,” he said, “this would be his office.”
The dean had a nice view of Shad Hall and some tennis courts. I added two sugars and a little bit of cream to the coffee.
“Besides being a mathematical genius,” I said, “why would a Las Vegas company hire a fairly bland figure like Harvey Rose?”
“The system.”
I drank some coffee. I waited for more.
“Surely you have heard about the Rose system,” Agarwal said. “It was quite the buzz in all the journals.”
“I only keep up my subscription to Guns and Ammo.”
“Harvey was the first to say the gaming industry was no different than any other form of retail,” he said. “He applied the same approach to the consumer as he would if he was working for JCPenney. What I would call a very macro point of view. Star Gaming hired him as a consultant and were so impressed with the results, they offered him the CEO position. What he’s done for them is really quite genius.”
“And what is that?”
“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.”