What Jason Keltner wanted to do was finish UNTITLED #23, his favorite among thirty incomplete fragments of music he'd created in the last several months. Then Norton Platt made him an offer he could refuse -- if her weren't worried about things like rent. Because he was, Jason agreed to babysit Paul Reno. The deal, after all, included expenses. And mileage. But no information about whom he was really being employed by. His first order of business: Take Paul to a party for Huey Benton and see what happens.

What happens is that Huey Benton drops dead. What happens next is that Jason and his roommates at the Manor, Robert and Martin, find themselves in the middle of a search for "dongle". All they know about it is that it has something to do with computers and that far too many people are willing to kill to get their hands on it... and that Paul, somehow, is in the middle of it all.

From Pasadena to Silicon Valley, on and off the Interstates at speeds that would make a new CPU blush, Jason and his friends try to stay ahead of those who think they know something... and close to those who do know about the dongle -- about why it's worth killing for and why they're now trying to kill them.

In a caper worthy of Donald E. Westlake, Jason and his gang, who wouldn't even think of shooting straight, race through California subcultures looking for answers that will let them live to play another day, and when they find them they face a final problem: what to do with what they've learned when they no longer know whom to trust.