As Lucky and I walked home, I mean back to my place, I told her about the bizarre coincidence that I had discovered. The matchbook kid having the same name as the Sadista Records executive, I mean. I told her how I had prodded the millionaire troll with the noodles-cold hairdo. Logos had veered off when he saw the two Cosmii hanging around the targe of his intention. I only hoped he would stay clear of her until the performance was over. After all, I had a client to defend, and his Smith and Wesson bumpersticker and missing hunting knife didn't add up to a "Confirmed friendly" IFF in my book. When we got upstairs, I broke out the Titanium G4 and started scrubbing the Internet for ideas about the two names the Condo-person had left me with. The usual PR garbage from giant corporations, a PDF file about their avowed environmental friendliness and Gaian partnership . I was interested to learn on their "Officers of PepsiCo" page that the CEO was a slick suit using the handle Enrico Rogers. And Sharpir "Image" Roberts was their corporate head of Public Relations. Small bells started going off in the back of my mind.

I broadened the search a little and came up with something even more interesting.

Pepsi's big suits had decided chips and sodas wasn't big enough for them. They had acquired an oil consortium--which incidentally happened to include little Sherman Oil--and brought all the parts together in a holding company called Cosmo Oil, Vaseline and Petreoleum International Development corporation, known as COVAPID.

I learned something else from a newsgroup I found peopled by embittered exPepsico employees.

The operations office in the PR department spent their days pulling off capers to forward the interests of Pepsi in the public "mindshare" -- wow -- and their chief operating officer was named Anita Lyphee. A small dark haired woman. The one I had seen talking to the thugs with Cosmo Loonbucket and Condolezza Schwartz the other night.

Lyphee had connections with the biggest crime families in Mexico, Columbia and Ecuador. She had cornered the market in Panama hats back in 1979 and had gone on from one coup to another since then.

AMzing the things you learn on the Internet.

I dumped some saved pages tot he laser printer in the closet, folded up the Titanium and told Lucky what I had learned about COVAPID. She turned pale.