Chapter 19

July 14

"We're not really going to do this, are we Dr. Mudgett?" Dana asked down at the hospital.
 "Do what? The blood tests?"
 "No not the blood tests, the other thing."
 "Oh, the population curtailment project. To be honest, I've been more focused on the blood tests."
 "How can you be thinking about blood tests when there's been open discussion of mass murder."
 "I'm project oriented."
 "Oh," Dana said. "So you haven't been thinking about the other thing at all? I haven't been able to sleep at night worrying about it. It's a major decision."
 "Yes, I suppose."
 "I have to admit, I think there's something wrong about murder, even if it is for all the right reasons."
The doctor fixed a hard gaze on Dana. "Are you engaging in short-term thinking, or are you just an idealist?"
 "I'm an idealist," Dana said.
 "Oh, that's okay, then. There's nothing wrong with a little pie-eyed idealism, even if it does get in the way of progressive policy being put into action. It takes all types, after all."
 "Do you think we're really going to go through with it?"
 "Blood tests?"
 "Murders. I'm talking about the murders."
 "Oh, right, right. Hard to say. It's not something anyone on the island would be likely to do on his or her own. But by working together, people can achieve great things…actually that's kind of profound. I'd better jot it down in my journal in case someone wants to write a biography of me later." Mudgett did so then continued. "I'd say they need a majority to move a project this ambitious forward. Four out of the seven people on the island."
 "A majority not counting the natives?"
 "No, no, of course not counting the natives."
 "I think Sarah would go through with it," Dana said.
 "Yes, I think so, too. And Laura probably will join in if the project goes forward, since Laura can't stand to see any project go forward unless she's part of it."
 "What about Brent?"
 "If something needs to be blown up, Brent's your man. I'm not so sure if he's as gung-ho about bag killings, but time will tell."
 "To be safe, I'm going to count him as a 'yes.' That's three of seven. But I can't believe Jeff would do something like this."
 "Jeff's idea of confrontational is a firm letter," said the doctor. "He might agree with this, but he'll never agree with doing this. When the time comes to move forward, he'll find a suitable ideological reason to move back."
 "That's two against," Dana said.
 "And for my part, I feel I must remain above the fray on this one, on account of my sacred oath as a physician."
 "So that's three who figure to be for and two who figure to be against, with one abstaining."
 "That means it could come down to Tommy," the doctor observed. "That one's too tough to call."
 "Tommy's too tough to call? I can't imagine Tommy taking any stand this decisive. There's no way he'll do it."
 "Unless I've misread the man entirely, Tommy has no real convictions at all," said the doctor. "He only became an activist to fit in with a group. He might just as easily have joined a soccer team or a pottery class, except that those activities require skills and end after an hour or two each day. Social activism is open to anyone, it supplies an entire way of life, a set of ready-made opinions, and a group of people who have to pretend to like you because they agree with you."
 "So Tommy won't go ahead with this," Dana said, relieved.
 "That's not what I said. I said he's too tough to call. How can we even try to guess what he thinks about this issue when it's all but certain that he hasn't bothered to think about it himself to this point, nor does he intend to think about it later? Tommy will continue to go along with whichever way the group seems to be leaning until someone tells him how important it is for him to take their side, and then he will, if only because it makes him feel needed."
 "Jeff's his best friend. Don't you think he'll just do what Jeff does?"
 "Perhaps, but Jeff lacks the ability to make an impassioned appeal to win Tommy's support, just as Jeff lacks the ability to make an impassioned appeal to make Tommy go away. That's the only reason why Jeff is Tommy's best friend in the first place."
 "Sarah might make an impassioned appeal."
 "She might, and more importantly, Tommy might read something into it."
 "You mean Sarah might make a pass at Tommy just to sway his opinion."
 "Maybe, but she wouldn't really even have to. Tommy might just imagine that she has."
 "I'm pretty sure Tommy is gay."
 "No, I think Tommy would be willing to go either way, should an opportunity present itself. Tommy is not a man of firm convictions. But I'll tell you this. If you care about stopping this, you'd better do something, because Tommy wants to go along with the group, and at the moment, the group is 3-2 against you…with one abstaining."
 
"What are you so depressed about?" Andy asked that afternoon.
 "Oh, I guess I'm just a bit conflicted about some of my recent transactions," I said.
 "You're depressed about work? Fuck that, you've doing fine. And I don't just say that so you'll remember me when your father has promoted you despite your poor job performance."
I'm pretty sure the second half of that was just Keller's idea of a joke. "It's not my job performance, exactly. It's more because I've adopted a somewhat active trading strategy with one of my clients."
 "Oh, so that's it. You churned some son of a bitch and now your conscience is catching up with you. Get over it. The guy had it coming."
 "What makes you say that? You've never met the guy."
 "I dunno. Just seemed like the thing to say. Are you saying he didn't have it coming?"
 "No, he had it coming alright. He didn't even deserve to have the money in the first place. I just figured I ought to feel a bit guilty about it, for the sake of my eternal soul."
 "Well how long do you expect this guilt thing to last? I don't like sitting next to depressed people. It just reminds me how shitty the bonuses are going to be this year."
 "Why would it remind you of that?
 "Shitty bonuses are the only thing that ever make me depressed. I guess I tend to assume that everyone else is on the same page."
 "Tell you what, give me about thirty more seconds, then, for you, I'll suppress my moral qualms. But for the next half a minute I'm going to stew over the fact that I'm not doing more to be a productive member of society. Like actually making something."
 "You do make something. You make the markets more efficient. You make it easier for people to reach their retirement goals."
 "I call people and suggest that they invest in one stock rather than another without any real track record to prove that my recommendations are any better than they could do themselves picking stocks at random. They might as well ask the kid who bags their groceries for stock tips."
 "Bullshit," Keller said. "You're playing a vital role here, even if you're not really more qualified than some piece-of-shit kid with an emasculating job. You're giving people the confidence to invest in the stock market. Without professionals offering their suggestions, most people would just keep their money in bank CDs or hidden under their mattress."
 "Okay, if we're such a necessary part of the process, why are do-it-yourself discount brokers like Charles Schwab so popular?"
 "They're only popular when the market's going up. In good times, any moron can make money in the market. Since everyone's a genius, a lot of them decide they don't need us. But after the market starts going down, everyone relies on the professionals."
 "Even though the professionals are losing money too?"
 "Yep. When a professional losses money, it's a temporary and unavoidable market risk. When an individual losses money, it's his own stupidity. No one wants to feel stupid, so they come to us."
 "They come to us to lose money"
 "That's right."
 "In that case I'm really good at this job."
 "You're damn right."
 "Thanks for the pep talk."
 "What kind of person would I be if I wasn't there for a friend? I mean, this might be a cutthroat business but..." But Keller's phone rang, so he left the thought unfinished.
 
Smith used to love being left in charge. The very best thing about being second in command was that every now and then the commander had to sleep or vacation or use the toilet. Whenever Jergensen had so much as doze off in a meeting, Smith would puff out his chest and start issuing orders to anyone who would listen. On those rare occasions when Jergensen actually left campus, Smith would strut proudly around the quad, all but forgetting his trademark shuffle, imagining looks of respect on the faces of everyone he saw, even those who didn't know who the hell he was. This was different. This time he'd only been promoted to captain because the ship was sinking and the previous captain apparently had some reservations about being the one required to go down with it. 
 Now the wolves, or more precisely the faculty, were at his Smith's door. And dialing his phone number. And one or two were trying to throw things through his fourth-floor window. They all were either waiting to complain about the current state of affairs, or getting a jump on complaining about the likely future state of affairs. Smith needed a plan, and he needed one fast, since he was barricaded in his office and he really needed to use the bathroom. But it was so hard to think under those conditions. The faculty members at his door finally seemed to have figured out that Smith didn't intend to leave his office, no matter how many times they pulled the fire alarm. So instead, they'd taken to sliding written suggestions under his door. At least Smith hoped that's what they were doing. It was either that or they were going to shove a match onto the pile and start a real fire. 
 "I know you can hear me in there," a professor shouted. "I've made a list of all the departments that can be eliminated. It's pretty much everything except sociology. I'll just slip the list under the door."
 "Don't listen to him," called another voice. "I've done some research and it turns out we can eliminate anything we want except psychology. If we were suspend psychology classes for even a semester, all the best theories might be discredited by the time we start back up."
 "He's a madman," said the first voice. "Without a sociology department, we won't be able to research things that seem obvious but probably still need to be studied anyway, just to be sure."
 Smith put his fingers in his ears and ducked under his desk. Kerns had passed the buck with all the skill of someone who realized that the thing to be passed wasn't so much a buck, but rather a seemingly unsolvable problem of no real monetary value. Smith's admiration for the man now nearly matched his loathing, although it still trailed far behind his disgust. Smith wondered again if Kerns had been a college administrator all along, and merely had posed as an economics professor to slip in the back door and take Smith's job. If so, it had been an admirably long-term plan. Smith had traced Kerns' records back to elementary school. Kerns had been the only second grader in the history of Franklin Pierce Elementary to stand up in front of his class and say he wanted to be an economist when he grew up. The other children had mocked his choice, but young Kerns had been ready with graphs, statistics, and a wide range of incomprehensible formulae to defend his position.
 "What to do? What to do?" Smith asked himself as he hid under his desk. The faculty was short of offices, the students were short of dorms, and the weather had better hold next year, because there were going to be a lot of lectures held out on the quad if additional classrooms didn't turn up. Keeping everyone happy under these conditions would be a near-impossible task…But should he be able to pull it off, he'd be a hero. 
 There seemed only one reasonable solution. Smith would solve the building shortage the only way he knew: through compromise. 

July 15

Funny things these qualms. Officially, qualms can come from sudden attacks of illness, pain, nausea, or morals, which just goes to show you the kind of company that morals keep. Hypocritical little bastards. Odd thing was, my qualms had decided they liked me enough to stick around for a while, even though I'd made it abundantly clear to them that they weren't welcome. It wasn't that I felt bad about costing Timmy a portion of his multi-million-dollar deli-slicer windfall. Without me he wouldn’t have had that money in the first place, and by no moral standard did he deserve to keep it. My qualms mostly were amassing in preparation for the day when I churned some other, non-Timmy person, someone who might very well have worked hard for their money. That was the sort of thing that would keep my qualms happy at feeding time. 
 I mentioned my concerns to Gwafinn that Thursday during our twice-weekly Tuesday lunch. Gwafinn had insisted that we eat lunch together in the building cafeteria every Tuesday, just to make sure everyone knew he'd hired his son. When the message didn't seem to be spreading fast enough, he'd decided we should have our Tuesday lunch on Thursdays as well. Gwafinn was unmoved by my moral concerns, just as he previously had been unmoved by my concerns that Tuesday's lunch probably should be confined to Tuesdays. 
 "What's your job title here at Johnston Brothers," he asked.
 "I'm an equities salesman."
 "Salesman? Not consultant? Not advisor? Not mystic guide?"
 "Just salesman."
 "Now if you walked into a used car dealership and put all your faith in the used car salesman, would you have a right to be mad when drive away in an AMC Pacer, or did you get what you deserved."
 "I suppose the latter."
 "Of course the latter."
 "But we're not a used-car dealership. This is Wall Street. We have professional ethics to uphold. I have a license from the government to sell securities--or I'm supposed to anyway, although the truth is I haven't found time to get it yet and everyone lets me slide because they think I'm your son. Surely we can't just try to steal all our clients' money."
 "Right indeed. And I'm pleased to see such fine morals in the younger generation. As your contractual father, it proves that I raised you well. We certainly do not try to steal all of our clients' money here at Johnston Brothers. But if we find that we accidentally wind up with all of their money due to the trading strategies that they themselves have agreed to, that's a different thing altogether."
 "So it's 'a fool and his money are soon parted,' like Mark Twain said?"
 "Twain blew most of his money on bad investments," Gwafinn noted.
 "What does that prove?"
 "It proves that some 19th-century stock promoter was good at his job."
 "And it doesn't matter that the stocks I'm selling might not be any good?"
 "The stocks you're selling are the very best. They all receive top ratings from one of the country's leading investment banks."
 "That is to say, 'they're good stocks because we say they're good stocks.'"
 "Exactly. Why do you think anything is considered good in any field."
 "You're saying it's for no reason other than the fact someone says it is?"
 "What else? Let's consider an example; say an archaeologist digs up an old painting…"
 "Vase."
 "What?"
 "Make it an old vase. They don't dig up old paintings."
 "Okay, if it's important to you, this archaeologist finds an old vase right below the old painting. He proclaims it a valuable relic and his colleagues agree. So it's valuable. It's worth millions even though it's smashed to pieces, it's thousands of years out of style, and you could buy a better vase at Wal-Mart for $4.95 if you wait for one to be marked down from their already impressive everyday low prices. This old, broken, million-dollar relic lands in a museum where thousands of people a day make special trips to appreciate it, despite the fact that they've already seen pictures of it on television, and it's not like staring at an old vase in person is any different than staring at it on a TV screen. With me so far?"
 "I think."
 "Good, because here's the interesting part. A year later someone comes forward and proves it's a hoax, that the vase isn't old at all. And a funny thing happens. People stop coming to see it. The museum takes it off display, It's worthless. Only it's the same damn vase."
 "Yes, but it wasn't really the vase itself that was valuable," I argued. "It was the age and place in history…"
 "Okay, forget the vase," Gwafinn cut me off. "Consider a fashionable woman walking down Fifth Avenue. There are herds of them up there. Pick any one of them you like for a little scientific experiment. One year she'll buys a wardrobe full of mid-length hems and gray colors. She wouldn't be caught dead without them. The next year these things are out of fashion, so she puts them away forever and wears short hems and pastels instead. Was she wrong then, or is she wrong now?"
 "There is no 'right' or 'wrong,' it's just fashion."
 "Try telling her that. What's 'right' is what enough of the right people believe is right. What's 'wrong' is what the right people believe is wrong, and not coincidentally, what's 'wrong' also is what the wrong people believe is right. Truth is what people believe it to be."
 "But…certainly there are absolute truths."
 "Maybe a few, Gwafinn conceded. "Only they have a funny habit of turning out to be wrong." Gwafinn checked his watch. "Always glad to talk philosophy with you, Bob, but I've got to go. I'm working on a big, top secret project. Oh, that reminds me, I need you to go feel out the research department, and if possible the Johnstons as well, to see if they've figured out what I'm planning."
 "What are you planning?"
Gwafinn looked exasperated. "Didn't I just tell you it's top secret," he said. Then he helped himself to my apple and left me sitting at the cafeteria table. 
 Something was troubling me. It wasn't the issues that Gwafinn had raised concerning the meaning of truth. It wasn't the fact that I might not have it in me to be a superstar equity salesman, and after only a week and a half I already was becoming a little bored with the life of a competent equity salesman. It wasn't that I had been put on a secret mission so secret that even I wasn't allowed to know what it was. No, I believe it had more to do with a topic Gwafinn had raised earlier in our conversation, during his used-car salesman analogy. Until fairly recently, I had driven an AMC Pacer.
 
"So Tommy, what are you doing?" Dana asked. Tommy was, as it happened, sitting on a rock staring out at the ocean.
"Nothing," said Tommy, suddenly concerned that he probably should have been doing something. "What are you doing?"
 "Nothing," said Dana, much to Tommy's relief. As long as someone else was doing nothing, too, he was in the clear. Dana took a seat next to him. "I've just been thinking about the last big meeting."
Alarm bells went off in Tommy's head. Had the others been talking about him at the meeting? No, that wasn't possible. He had been careful to be the first to arrive and the last to leave. "What about it?"
 "You know," said Dana. "The whole population-control proposal."
 "Oh, right. That." Tommy was pleased that it did indeed have nothing to do with him.
 "What did you think of it?"
 "Oh, you know."
Dana waited a moment, but it appeared that was all Tommy had to say on the subject. "Could you be a touch more specific? I'm trying to gauge opinions."
 "What have the others said?"
 "You're the first one I've asked."
 "I am? Why?"
 "Because your opinion is important to me?"
 "It is?"
 "Absolutely. I think your opinion on this could be crucial to the future of this island."
 "Really?" Tommy asked.
 "That's why I'm so relieved to hear you agree with me that it's a bad idea."
 "Absolutely."
 "I'm glad we had this talk," Dana said.
 "My pleasure. It's a cause I strongly believe in."
 "You mean it's a cause you're strongly against."
 "Right, right, that's what I meant.
 "I knew it was." 
 "That was easy," Dana thought, and figured Sarah's progressive genocide project could now be laid to rest alongside Jeff's "one-life, one-vote" expanded democracy idea that had bogged down in the insect-registration process, and Laura's "sleep is wasted time" initiative that, ironically, still gave Dana nightmares.
 
"Check on the research department" and "check on the Johnstons." I knew how to do both of those things in a single lunch, even if Gwafinn wouldn't tell me specifically what I was supposed to be checking for.
 "Gwaf--what are you doing here?" asked Rob Johnston. Rob was the youngest of the Johnstons, a member of the research department, and, as it happened, someone I knew from Bucklin College. It was he who had doomed me to a lifetime of unemployment and depression, albeit a lifetime of unemployment and depression that had lasted only a month, by using his last name to screw me out of the Johnston Brothers' job.
 "Oh hi, Rob, good to see you," I said, doing my best to sound like someone who had just bumped into someone else by accident, a fact that wasn't 100% true, in as much as it was completely false. "I just came on board."
 Ideally, I would have liked to find someone in research that I could trust implicitly. But since nothing said by anyone is research ever could be trusted implicitly, I settled on the next best thing: someone I probably couldn't trust, but whom I could read like a book. One of those large-print books they made for old people and those who enjoyed reading at a great distance. Rob might have been a Johnston to my Gwafinn--apparently destined to become the Hatfields and McCoys of Wall Street, only with less spitting--but I'd played poker with him more than a few times at Bucklin. As a poker player, Rob had many weaknesses, including, but not limited to, a total inability to bluff. He balanced these weaknesses against his one great strength, a truly first-rate bankroll. Considering the low stakes of our poker games, this one strength alone was enough to guarantee that Rob was certain to leave the table with more money than the rest of us, even if he hadn't won a single hand. Rob was rather proud of the resulting string of victories.
 "You know, I'm glad you're working here," Rob continued. "I always thought you were a smart guy. And I felt bad when I got the job just because of my last name." So far, so good. Rob had reacted as though he truly didn't know that I was the supposed son of his family's arch-enemy. And I could tell he wasn't bluffing. 
 "Don't worry about it Rob." I'd decided to let him slide on the whole nepotism thing. "Tell, you what, why don't we go grab lunch and catch up?"

"Oh, I don't know what's going on in the upper reaches of the Johnston family hierarchy," Rob said over a burger. "No one ever tells us anything down in research. Besides, I'm the lowest Johnston on the totem pole, and it's a pretty big pole."
 "You've got no idea if they're planning a revolt against the new CEO?"
 "The feeling I get is they're all worried about their jobs. Maybe they're planning to wait out the recession then make a play for power when the economy turns around. No one wants to be captain of a sinking ship."
 "You think?"
 "Just a guess."
So much for breaching the Johnston wall of secrecy. "So how's life in the research department?" I asked. 
 "Not bad, I suppose. I pretty much just keep my head down and give everything the same rating that everyone else does."
 "Any major rumors flying around the department?"
 "Not that I've heard. Of course, people tend to keep the best rumors to themselves in research. They call them 'inside information.'"
That about did it for Gwafinn's questions. Now all that was left was making polite chit-chat until the check came. "What have they got you covering?" I asked.
 "I'm in charge of paper stocks…that is, the stocks of companies that make paper. Turns out the stocks themselves are all pretty much made of paper, which threw me a bit at first."
 "How's the paper sector look?"
 "Must be good. I'm giving everything a 'Buy.'"
 "You know, Rob, I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but life actually made more sense in college. I mean, I wasn't doing anything particularly useful then, either, but at least I'd figured out how to do it."
 "College? Hell, I haven't been really good at anything since the sixth grade. Life was so much simpler when work could be submitted in diorama form. Man, I used to kick ass at dioramas. Sometimes I think I should find a shoebox and some pipecleaners and turn in my stock reports as dioramas."
 "Better hold off unless you want to face the wrath of the SEC's Arts & Crafts Board."
 "Yea. You're probably right. So how's life in sales? And for that matter, when exactly did you get hired? I didn't see you in the training program."
 "Life in sales is very…educational," I answered, evading the first question and avoiding the second one entirely. "Lots of stuff we never covered in economics class."
 "Tell me about it," Rob said. "I haven't seen a widget since I've been here."