BE chapter 6 action/plot summary

[Joseph Tracy]

 Max n kids eat pizza . kid, ”Crazy lady showed up at school today” said Bush does biz with saudis. She’ll be commencement speaker. has web site called tabloid of damned. This is March Kelleher, mother of wife of Gabriel Ice and old friend of Max,also divorced with 2  sons and daughter.  maxine has memory:They cooperated in activism against Landlord Kreichman( plastic surgeon) intent on moving tenants to raise rents. When called ugly cunt, March drew out can of easy off.  Later they had drinks. MK hated Lincoln Center for displacing puerto rican neighborhood,”Culture attracts the worst impulses of the moneyed,..”
March knows Maxi’s parents,  they got arrested together in demos against Raygun -Nicaragua, El Salvador, Maxine had not known about arrest til later as she was getting into club-drug scene, feels guilty.
  “I do remember,” Maxine tells the boys now, “March was always sort of . . . political?”

Reg comes by to say Eric Outfield looking in Deep Web finds Ice has been running Altman-Z s( to predict imminent bankruptcy) on small dotcoms. Eric paranoid, only meeting Reg on subway. Reg gives Max a disc.  Eric has found Ice encryption intense protecting an archive in remote servers either to survive disaster or hide it; trying hacker stuff he gets 2 scary messages, one in Leet characters. This worries Reg: “Maybe I should be telling him to run like hell.”
 Reg is feeling down from talk with ex-wife, she thinking of move to Seattle with new husband. He may move there too to be with kids. Sorry he may run.

Maxi goes to check out Streetlight People  who were VC funding hwgaahwgh and also work for Hashslingerz. Buildiing is ex-factory cleaned up to ultra hip. Owner Rocky Slaggiatt ( dropped end vowel to sound more anglo) offers her a pepper and egg sandich in exagerated Italian dialect but it is plastic. a joke. RS picks up phone and tells to hold calls. Tells Maxi they had small investment in  hwgaahwgh and wonders why she is interested
“Are you upset by unwelcome attention, Mr. Slagiatt?” 
    “Ain’t like we’re loan sharks here. Look up on that shelf.” She looks. “You . . . have a company bowling team.”
  “Industry awards,...” RS Says they had cleaned up anything fishy in 98. Maxine tells him about Hashslingerz She fills him in on the Benford-curve and other discrepancies at hashslingrz. “Prominent among payees of these fishy expenditures is hwgaahwgh.com. What’s strange is that after the company is liquidated, the amounts paid to it grow dramatically even more lavish and it all seems to be disappearing someplace offshore.”
     “Fuckin Gabriel Ice.”
    RS Tells Maxine that Ice uses Altman Zs to id failing companies and then use them to move money inconspicuously. Max asks about business with Ice, RS says not anymore, asks about social interaction with Ice and points a photo which is RS ’s wife Cornelia. He says they have eaten with Ice and went to Ice’s Montauk house. She is curious but no money to investigate. RS offers 5000, she takes 500. They go to Enricos Italian Kitchen for lunch have fancy  meat and wine. RS sings. Maxi asks who put up seed money for hashslingerz, probes about CIA. RS refuses bait on  CIA mafia connection, says seed money is Major secret.