"Come on, Linda, I know it's nuts, but it's my Gran. She *really* likes you."

Linda sighed. "Let me comm you the address, OK?"

"Thanks, Linda," Art said, watching the address in Van Nuys scroll onto his comm's screen. "Thanks a bunch. Have a great trip -- don't let your ex get you down."

Now, armed with Linda's f.u.c.king ex's name, Art went to work. He told Gran he had some administrative ch.o.r.es to catch up on for an hour or two, promised to have supper with her and Father Ferlenghetti that night, and went out onto the condo's sundeck with his keyboard velcroed to his thigh.

Trepan: Hey!

Colonelonic: Trepan! Hey, what's up? I hear you're back on the East Coast!

Trepan: True enough. Back in Toronto. How's things with you?

Colonelonic: Same as ever. Trying to quit the dayjob.

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Are you still working at Merril-Lynch?

## Colonelonic (private): Yeah.

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Still got access to Lexus-Nexus?

## Colonelonic (private): Sure -- but they're on our a.s.ses about abusing the accounts. Every search is logged and has to be accounted for.

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Can you get me background on just one guy?

## Colonelonic (private): Who is he? Why?

Trepan: /private Colonelonic It's stupid. I think that someone I know is about to go into biz with him, and I don't trust him. I'm probably just being paranoid, but...

## Colonelonic (private): I don't know, man. Is it really important?

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Oh, c.r.a.p, look. It's my girlfriend. I think she's s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g this guy. I just wanna get an idea of who he is, what he does, you know.

## Colonelonic (private): Heh. That sucks. OK -- check back in a couple hours.

There's a guy across the hall who never logs out of his box when he goes to lunch. I'll sneak in there and look it up on his machine.

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Kick a.s.s. Thanks.

##Transferring addressbook entry "Toby Ginsburg" to Colonelonic. Receipt confirmed.

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Thanks again!

## Colonelonic (private): Check in with me later -- I'll have something for you then.

Art logged off, flushed with triumph. Whatever Fede and Linda were cooking up, he'd get wise to it and then he'd nail 'em. What the h.e.l.l was it, though?

23.

My cousins visited me a week after I arrived at the nuthouse. I'd never been very close to them, and certainly our relationship had hardly blossomed during the week I spent in Toronto, trying to track down Linda and Fede's plot.

I have two cousins. They're my father's sister's kids, and I didn't even meet them until I was about twenty and tracking down my family history. They're Ottawa Valley kids, raised on government-town pork, aging hippie muesli, and country-style corn pone. It's a weird mix, and we've never had a conversation that I would consider a success. Ever met a violent, aggressive hippie with an intimate knowledge of whose genitals one must masticate in order to get a building permit or to make a pot bust vanish? It ain't pretty.

Cousin the first is Audie. She's a year older than me, and she's the smart one on that side of the family, the one who ended up at Queen's University for a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MA in Poli Sci, and even so finished up back in Ottawa, freelancing advice to clueless MPs dealing with Taiwanese and Sierra Leonese OEM importers. Audie's married to a nice fella whose name I can never remember and they're gonna have kids in five years; it's on a timetable that she actually showed me once when I went out there on biz and stopped in to see her at the office.

Cousin the second is Alphie -- three years younger than me, raised in the shadow of his overachieving sister, he was the capo of Ottawa Valley script kiddies, a low-rent hacker who downloaded other people's code for defeating copyright use-control systems and made a little biz for himself bootlegging games, p.o.r.n, music and video, until the WIPO bots found him through traffic a.n.a.lysis and busted his a.s.s, bankrupting him and landing him in the clink for sixty days.

Audie and Alfie are blond and ruddy and a little heavyset, all characteristics they got from their father's side, so add that to the fact that I grew up without being aware of their existence and you'll understand the absence of any real fellow-feeling for them. I don't dislike them, but I have so little in common with them that it's like hanging out with time travelers from the least-interesting historical era imaginable.

But they came to Boston and looked me up in the nuthatch.

They found me sitting on the sofa in the ward, post-Group, arms and ankles crossed, dozing in a shaft of sunlight. It was my habitual napping spot, and I found that a nap between Group and dinner was a good way to sharpen my appet.i.te and anasthetize my taste buds, which made the mealtime slop bearable.

Audie shook my shoulder gently. I a.s.sumed at first that she was one of the inmates trying to get me involved in a game of Martian narco-checkers, so I brushed her hand away.

"They've probably got him all doped up," Audie said. The voice was familiar and unplaceable and so I cracked my eyelid, squinting up at her silhouette in the afternoon sun. "There he is," she said. "Come on, up and at 'em, tiger."

I sat up abruptly and scrubbed at my eyes. "Audie?" I asked.

"Yup. And Alphie." Alphie's pink face hove into view.

"Hi, Art," he mumbled.

"Jesus," I said, getting to my feet. Audie put out a superfluous steadying hand.

"Wow."

"Surprised?" Audie said.

"Yeah!" I said. Audie thrust a bouquet of flowers into my arms. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, your grandmother told me you were here. I was coming down to Boston for work anyway, so I flew in a day early so I could drop in. Alphie came down with me -- he's my a.s.sistant now."

I almost said something about convicted felons working for government contractors, but I held onto my tongue. Consequently, an awkward silence blossomed.

"Well," Audie said, at last. "Well! Let's have a look at you, then." She actually took a lap around me, looking me up and down, making little noises.

"You look all right, Art. Maybe a little skinny, even. Alphie's got a box of cookies for you." Alphie stepped forward and produced the box, a family pack of President's Choice Ridiculous Chocoholic Extra Chewies, a Canadian store brand I'd been raised on. Within seconds of seeing them, my mouth was sloshing with saliva.

"It's good to see you, Audie, Alphie." I managed to say it without spitting, an impressive feat, given the amount of saliva I was contending with. "Thanks for the care package."

We stared at each other blankly.

"So, Art," Alphie said, "So! How do you like it here?"

"Well, Alphie," I said. "I can't say as I do, really. As far as I can tell, I'm sane as I've ever been. It's just a bunch of unfortunate coincidences and bad judgment that got me here." I refrain from mentioning Alphie's propensity for lapses in judgment.

"Wow," Alphie said. "That's a b.u.mmer. We should do something, you know, Audie?"

"Not really my area of expertise," Audie said in clipped tones. "I would if I could, you know that, right Art? We're family, after all."