Tom McGuire is on stage in a comedy club, pursuing his dream as a stand-up wannabe. A disturbance in the audience leads to the discovery that one of Maria's 'clients' at her County job is the aged mother of a Russian caviar smuggler in big trouble with the FBI. Tom represents the smuggler, with disastrous results. A stock promoter Tom prosecuted while working at the US Attorney's office has put Tom's friend and dock neighbor Murray Markoff up to promoting a bogus public company on the Internet, touting the stock of a cold fusion company through a variety of misleading screen-name personae. Throughout, the action is punctuated by Tom's comedy performances and nights in stand-up comedy workshop, and well-informed descriptions of stand-up technique, and the culture of comedy and comedians The author describes the step-by-step process of a classic 'pump and dump' stock scheme, and how promoters have learned to use Internet chat rooms to generate buying momentum