BE Read Chap 17.

[Mark Kohut]

"Don't go down the basement", that horror movie trope
comes to my mind as Maxine enters the secret room guarded
via password......but, of course she does but after encountering
a wraith, she flees. I can read this as an internal story metaphor for
the Dark Web, can you?

She dreams then of Lester. She seems to have seen his ghost or
a premonition of him dead, because her instincts are true it seems and are
our
contact with an unstable reality. Like all the good private detectives who
know more
than they know they know.

And an insurance fraud or other kind of arson, not below Ice to commit?

And Gabriel Ice is linked with Donald Trump in his 'cost accounting'
ways---stiffing contractors--
and we meet Randy, onto Ice enough to justify petty theft in the "i'll take
my cut" NYC way...

Over and over, the main thruline of the novel to me, there in major and
manor ways every chapter:
Money doesn't talk, it swears and bleeds (dry) and kills...

Late capitalism indeed, as in the late Lester Traipse.