"This time you had to face the consequences of your actions, you mean! Where's Marcus, Angelo. I never did see one of you without the other one. Sometimes I wonder about you two." Brown asked.

"He's out finding himself." Angelo said. Marcus had shacked up with a pretty young girl and was now following her on her quest to find a UFO in the desert. Angelo didn't see any reason to mention this.

"So you come around here to corrupt more of my detectives with your idiotic ways!? No! Absolutely not! Get out!" Brown pointed dramatically at the door.

"You think he's going to corrupt us, Chief?" Franks laughed.

"You think you're so G.o.dd.a.m.n smart, Franks, well you're off the case, both of you!" Brown thundered. Anderson threw down his pen in frustration. Getting taken off a case was black mark on his record that would not fade, even after Brown had his inevitable heart attack.

"You think that this f.u.c.k up is funny, now you know the punch line! I have the last laugh! This is MY department! f.u.c.k with me and Angelo will have to find you a job on the cattle rustling detail up in cow town, 'cause you won't be working in L.A. anymore!" Brown turned to Angelo. "Get out of here cowboy, or I'll give you a reason to walk funny!" With that he scooped up Angelo's file and stomped back into his office.

After eating lunch and taking time to calm down, Angelo went down the street to the skyrise that housed the headquarters of the LABN.

"May I help you Sir?" The receptionist asked.

Angelo showed her his ID. "I'm doing a background investigation about the network. Who can I speak to?"

The receptionist looked thoughtful in a pretty, decorative way.

A young oriental man came up to her desk. "Gena, I'm dying, here. At least say you'll do lunch with me." He dropped to the floor. "I'm begging, now. Please."

The receptionist's eyes rolled. "No." She said.

"But I'll be worth billions! Aren't I worth a few minutes of your time?" The young man pleaded.

"Mr. Chee, this is Detective Angelo Mancuso from Vista City." Gena said.

Chee looked up from the floor. "Hi."

"Hi." Angelo said it as if he spoke to prostrate men all the time. Chee looked all of fifteen years old.

"He wanted some background information on the network." Gena said. "Would you speak to him, please?"

"Only if you say you'll have lunch with me." Chee challenged.

"Okay," Angelo said. "You talked me into it."

"Not you, her." Chee pointed at Gena's feet.

"I'm buying." Angelo said.

"Oh. Okay. Are you coming, Gena?" Chee scrambled to his feet.

"Sorry Shane. I'm on duty. You go tell the nice man what he wants to know." Gena said.

"All right. I'll talk to you later, Gena." Chee said. Angelo could almost see the pink hearts of adolescent l.u.s.t dancing around Chee's head La Maison was not one of Angelo's regular hangouts, but he'd been there a couple of times. He a.s.sociated it with his parents and the older generation of wealthy people in Los Angeles.

Shane Chee's decision to eat there seemed at first like an adolescent prank. Chee asked for his usual table and greeted the matre'd by name. Only the most self consciously rich people took the pains to do that.

Angelo grimaced inwardly. A meal at La Maison would wreck his monthly budget. Once again he'd have to turn to his parents for help. He didn't like to do this, but it was an investigation, and the VCPD expense accounts would choke and die at the thought of La Maison, even if they applied.

Outwardly Angelo stayed bland. "What do you do at Los Angeles Business Network?"

Chee stopped wolfing an expensive french dinner roll and glared at Angelo. "You're kidding right?"

Angelo stayed bland. "No, I'm not kidding. Tell me."

Chee rolled his eyes. "I'm the senior systems architect and software designer."

Angelo hid his surprise. He'd would have bet money that Chee worked in the mail room. "Really? You seem awfully young for that."

"Why are you old folks always saying that? The mental faculties are at their height early. I'm not too young, you're just too old." Chee said.

Angelo sighed. He was approaching his thirty seventh birthday and it made him a little sensitive. "Really?" He said.

"Yeah. I'm a savant. A genius. I'm at the peak of my creative abilities. With my work, me and Marlowe are going to be worth billions." Chee bragged.

"What work is that?" Angelo asked.

"Duh! Think I'm stupid or something? You'll find out when everyone else does, the day we release it on the open market." Chee sneered.

"What do you know about GeosNetwork?" Angelo asked.

"What is this deep background?" Chee sneered even more. "Geos and the GeosNetwork is c.r.a.p pure and simple. Every dork with his daddy's computer and an issue of Popular Science can hack it. MY system is bulletproof."

"You have a system?" Angelo asked.

"Did they actually tell you who it was that you'd be interviewing before they sent you?" Chee gaped.

"Not really. You had it right when you said deep background. That's what I'm asking for." Angelo.

"I get paid $512 dollars an hour. I am way too heavy to teach a technically illiterate hack the basics of the computer industry." Chee said.

"Okay, granted," Angelo said mildly. "Think about it. Could it hurt to choke out some back ground information while you stuff your face on my expense account?" He thought carefully about how to shoot Chee and ditch the body.

Chee turned it over. "True. If Wired wants to buy me lunch while I educate you, then it's their dime. What do you know?"

"Actually, I'm new to the field." Angelo said. "I know next to nothing about the high powered hacker's world."

Chee sighed. "Oh G.o.d. All right. I graduated two years ago from UCLA's Computer Science Program. I was s.n.a.t.c.hed up by John Marlowe as soon as I reached the age of consent, because of my natural genius, excellent technical training, and because his network's previous operating system was too lame to live."

"How did Marlowe hear of you?" Angelo asked.

"He's got his ears to the ground in our industry and I hacked his system and told him so." Chee smirked at his own cleverness.

"So he hired you." Angelo said.

"Do you want to try to explain equipment based interlaced digital binary interrupts as opposed to software configurable addressable interrupts?" Chee explained. "No lawyer in his right mind wants to try me. No judge or jury could even understand what it was exactly that I did. Marlowe figured that if he couldn't beat me, then he'd join me. He's a very astute businessman."