BEg2: Chapter 19 Summary

[Allen Ruch]

I am sorry this is late, and forgive me for it being hasty! I hope this puts the ball back on the track. (I am the goddamn KING! of mixed metaphors!)

Chapter 19

Part 1

Heidi, back from San Diego Comic Con, has been visited by an NYPD detective interested in her old fiancé, Evan Strubel. This detective is named Carmine Nozzoli. This leads to a great Pynchonian set-up/pun:

Maxine: “You two were romantically involved?”

Heidi: “Not romantically. Baroquely maybe. Years ago.”

Ratcheting herself firmly into a particular socket shaped by numerous Pynchon heroines before her, Heidi extolls the virtues of dating men in law enforcement. Both women spend some time communicating in the language of shopping. Seems the detective bought Heidi a Monica Lewinsky original purse! [God forbid I link to the Daily Beast, but here we go:]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/monica-lewinsky-had-a-handbag-line-20-years-ago-i-set-out-to-find-one

The women order some dubious Chinese food, and various NYC in-jokes follow about the mysteries of said Chinese food, as well as the proliferation of take-out menus in the pre-Seamless/Grub Hub days. This leads to a stereotypical “Asians eat dogs!” comedy routine, along with the gloriously named “Twelve Favors Drunken Squid.” The conversation ends with Maxine duping Heidi into a drawn-out joke with a PUNchline: “I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers.”

Part 2

Now connected with Detective Nozzoli, Maxine has him “run a quick make on Tallis’s fiber-salesman BF.” Chazz Larday checks out as an “average lowlife” from Florida(?) possessing a rap sheet filled with minor scams; though he has loose ties to the Dixie Mafia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Mafia

He’s done some minor jail stints, nothing major. [Then again, he hasn’t encountered Raylan Givens!]

Maxine calls Chaz Larday’s phone and pretends to be from hashsligerz accounting, “trying to clear up one or two details about some arrangements you have with our company comptroller, Mrs. Ice.”

Chazz responds, “Mizzis Ice,” then pauses, just long enough for Maxine to realize he should have played dumb. Maxine then asks whether the arrangements are actually for “MISTER Ice.”

Having overplayed her hand, Maxine is rewarded with an empty threat about tracing phone calls, and Chazz hangs up. Maxine intuits that Tallis is not entirely innocent; but furthermore, Gabriel Ice probably doesn’t just know about their illicit affair; he may be bankrolling it! She asks herself, “Has he also been using Tallis as a mule to move money secretly into DarkLinear Solutions? And why so secretly, for goodness’ sakes?”

Part 3

Vyrva returns from Defcon in Las Vegas, not as tan as expected, and acting weird. Seems “everybody’s after DeepArcher…the NSA, the Mossad, terrorist go-betweens, Microsoft, Apple…” and hashsligerz, too.

Indeed, Gabriel Ice was at the convention, at a “Black Hat Briefing, some kind of security conference they hold every year the week before Defcon.”

As the two women enjoy an ice coffee, things become more interesting:

Vyrva: “See—there’s a chance of some money […] Honestly, should it matter who gets to own the damned old source code? Not as if it has a conscience, DeepArcher, it’s just there, users can be anybody, no moral questionnaire ‘r netheen? it’s rilly only about the money. Who ends up with how much?”

Maxine: “Except that in my business, what I see a lot of is innocent people making these deals with the satanic forces, for money way out of scale to anything they’re used to, and there’s a point where it all rolls in on them and they go under, and sometimes they don’t come back up.”

Narration: But Vyrva is far away now, the summer street outside, the cumulus piling up over Jersey, the rush hour bearing down, it’s all country miles from wherever she is, rambling some DeepArcher of the unshared interior, her click history vanishing behind her like footprints in the air, like free advice unheard, so Maxine supposes it’ll have to keep, whatever it is, whatever’s finally on the term sheet.