BE Ch 11 summary

[Joseph Tracy]

We have extra time before next chapter but here is 

Chapter 11 summary

Maxine, Horst, Zig and Otis in Kugelblitz’s Vontz auditorium again for 8th grade graduation, Bebop group plays Billies Bounce followed by March Kelleher as speaker looking older, graying.
March tells parable of city with powerful ruler who would sneak around town in disguise doing his work in secret. When he was infrequently recognized he bribed them with Gold or Silver… “‘You have been exposed for a moment to a highly toxic form of energy,’ is his usual formula. ‘Here is a sum I trust will compensate you for any damage done. Soon you will begin to forget, and then you’ll feel better.’
  There was also an old lady who probably looked, March said, like your grandmother. She carried a large sack of junk collected from the street. As guardian of what was thrown away, she knew everything and had lived there longer than anyone. When she and the ruler met he was surprised when she threw the coins back at him.
    ‘Forget?’ she screeched. ‘I cannot and must not forget. Remembering is the essence of what I am. The price of my forgetting, great sir, is more than you can imagine, let alone pay.’   He dug into his bag but when he looked up she was gone. He supposed now he’d have to find this old woman and render her harmless. He sent his people with job offers but none could find her.  “Her criticisms of the regime, however, had already entered the collective consciousness of the city and become impossible to delete.
  March  says it was the kind of story told by Russians under Stalin. She asks audience to ask themselves who was lady, what was she finding out, what was the ruler up to? She offers a prize ot Pizza to best answer from a student.
    Applause but weak. 
Afterward  March asks who is Sterling Hayden look alike about Horst . They  meet for breakfast so March can ask CFE questions. "THE PIRAEUS DINER on Columbus is littered, dilapidated, full of cigarette smoke and cooking odors from the kitchen, a neighborhood institution". March says such places are on the way out, other real estate complaints, dot com swipes. Maxine guesses its about March’s Son in law G. Ice and tells her about her own research on Ice's financial finagling, money to gulf, government contracts.  
   March says he has a mansion in Montauk near air bas and alleged site of Montauk project. March says”The Montauk Project is every horrible suspicion you’ve ever had since World War II, all the paranoid production values, a vast underground facility, exotic weapons, space aliens, time travel, other dimensions, shall I go on? And who turns out to have a lively if not psychopathic interest in the subject but my own reptilian son-in-law, Gabriel Ice.”
“As another kid billionaire with a wacko obsession, you mean, or . . . ?”
“Try ‘power-hungry little CIA-groupie jerkoff.’” “That’s if it’s real, this Montauk thing.” “Remember, back in ’96, TWA Flight 800? Blown out of the sky over Long Island Sound, a government investigation which got so cute that everybody ended up thinking it was them that did it. Montaukies say it was particle-beam weapons being developed in a secret lab under Montauk Point.
  More talk, Maxi says she will give March more info if Eric gets new stuff. March asks Maxine to to go check up on Tallis , who is comptroller at Hashslingerz. She agrees.
  

Any questions brewing out there?  
Anybody ever look into Montauk project stuff?
Thoughts on the story of the ruler and old lady with memory?  Reminiscent of the crackdown on leaks, the with us or against us? Some relation to history as something to tactically erase vs. keep no matter how embarrassing?