Christian White: classic pop face with a singer's high definition muscles, chiseled cheekbones. Angelic in one light, handsomely depraved in another. But Ralfi's eyes lived behind that face, and they were small and cold and black.

'Please,' he said, 'let's work this out like businessmen.' His voice was marked by a horrible prehensile sincerity, and the corners of his beautiful Christian White mouth were always wet. 'Lewis here,' nodding in the beef boy's direction, 'is a meatball.' Lewis took his impassively, looking like something built from a kit. 'You aren't a meatball, Johnny.'

'Sure I am, Ralfi, a nice meatball chock-full of implants where u can store your dirty laundry while you go off shopping for people to kill me. From my end of this bag, Ralfi, it looks like you've got some explaining to do.'

'It's this last batch of product, Johnny.' He sighed deeply. 'In my role as broker - '

'Fence,' I corrected.

'As broker, I am usually very careful as to sources.'

'You buy only from those who steal the best. Got it.'

He sighed again. 'I try,' he said wearily, 'not to buy from fools... This time, I'm afraid, I've done that.' Third sigh was the cue for Lewis to trigger the neural disruptor they'd taped under my side of the table.

I put everything I had into curling the index finger of my right hand, but I no longer seemed to be connected to it. I could feel the metal of the gun and the foam-padded tape. I'd wrapped around the stubby grip, but my hands were cool wax, distant and inert. I was hoping Lewis was a true meatball, thick enough to go for the gym bag and snag my rigid trigger finger, but he wasn't.

'We've been very worried about you Johnny. Very worried. You see, that's Yakuza property you have there. A fool took it from them, Johnny. A dead fool.'

Lewis giggled.

It all made sense then, an ugly kind of sense, like bags of wet sand settling around my head.