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?”
“I think she pretty much interned with Professor Rose,” she said. “Some of the students did that. But it was preferred that we left campus and worked in a real business setting. I just recall her always being in his office. Almost like his secretary, or a personal assistant. I thought the whole arrangement a bit weird. Maybe it was because I was always wearing sweatpants while Jemma was in haute couture.”
“You should see me on Saturday nights.”
“You seem very odd for a cop,” Stephanie said. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her knees with her arms. She stared at me, looking very much like a little girl, a bit quizzical. Her blunt-cut hair ruffled a bit in the spring breeze.
“I could not stand being a cop,” I said. “That’s why I work for myself.”
“That’s what I want,” Stephanie said. More wind kicked up on the common and you could smell the river. “My parents were first-generation. My father thought life was work. He believed that every day you must take a hard path to be a good man. You don’t seem that way.”
“I am often late for work.”
“My parents are very proud of me,” she said. “But they don’t understand why I left my job. And why I don’t take what I learned and put it in practice. I could never tell them I’m quite content to teach.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“You know, Professor Rose came back here last fall to speak,” Cho said. “He told us to be unemotional and detached in our decision making. He said you only need to know the who, what, and when, not necessarily the why.”
“I’ve been teaching an associate of mine the same thing.”
“Computational models?”
“Hoodlum ethics.”
56
Z MET ME at Danehy Park in Cambridge at sunset. People jogged along paths, and dogs frolicked about. I had decided to sort out what I learned by throwing the tennis ball to Pearl. She had spent much of the last week cooped up, which tends to make a hunting dog psychotic. So we worked out her issues by letting her sprint for the ball and return it. My arm had grown tired and I tossed the ball to Z. Pearl, tongue lolling from her mouth, showed no signs of fatigue.
“I heard about the two dead men,” Z said. “They part of the new team?”
“Healy thinks so,” I said. “Heavy hitters from Vegas. Someone wanted to make sure they were not welcome.”
“Maybe they were hired by Weinberg’s people,” Z said. “To come for the killers.”
“Or maybe they killed Weinberg and got their due.”
Z threw the ball over a rolling hill. Pearl disappeared for several moments. She appeared triumphantly with the tennis ball covered in slobber and blades of grass.
“What is Jemma saying?” I said.
Z shrugged. He watched Pearl intently.
“She won’t talk about Weinberg,” he said. “It makes her very upset.”
I nodded. Z tossed me the slobbery ball. I wound up and threw it to the moon. Pearl was off like a rocket.
“How does she treat you?” I said.
“Fine.”
“I found out today that she had been an intern for Harvey Rose,” I said. “Ten years ago at Harvard Business School.”
Z nodded.
“That was something she had not told me,” I said. “You?”
Z’s face was impassive, and he shook his head. Pearl returned. I rocketed the ball again. This time a black Lab broke into stride with Pearl but was no match for her. She beat him by three car lengths, and upon return, she teased him with the ball, nudging it to his mouth.