Then I'd heard that Ralfi Face wanted to put out a contract on me. So I'd arranged to meet him in the Drome, but I'd arranged it as Edward Bax, clandestine importer, late of Rio and Peking.

The Drome stank of biz, a metallic tang of nervous tension. Muscle-boys scattered through the crowd were flexing stock parts at one another and trying on this, cold grins, some of them so lost under superstructures of muscle graft that their outlines weren't really human.

Pardon me. Pardon me, friends. Just Eddie Bax here, Fast Eddie the Importer, with his professionally nondescript gym bag, and please ignore this shit, just wide enough to admit his right hand.Ralfi wasn't alone. Eighty kilos of blond California beef perched alertly in the chair next to his, martial arts written all over him.

Fast Eddie Bax was in the chair opposite them before the beef's hands were off the table. 'You black belt?' I asked eagerly. He nodded, blue eyes running an automatic scanning pattern between my eyes and my hands.

'Me too,' I said. 'Got mine here in the bag.' And I shoved my hand through the slit and thumbed the safety off. Click. 'Double twelve-gauge with the triggers wired together.'

'That's a gun', 'Ralfi said, putting a plump, restraining hand on his boy's taut blue nylon chest. 'Johnny has a antique firearm in his bag.' So much for Edward Bax.

I guess he'd always been Ralfi Something or other, but he owed his acquired surname to a singular vanity. Built something like an overripe pear, he'd worn the once famous face of Christian White for twenty years

- Christian White of the Aryan Reggae Band, Sony Mao to his generation, and final champion of race rocks. I'm a whiz at trivia.