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would have found Tokyo disappointingly modern, but this is Kyoto, the ancient capital, founded in the eighth century, spared the American bombing. From the taxi window, rolling along broad boulevards laid out a thousand years ago, you would see castles and palaces, temples and shrines. But if your hotel were in the southeastern section of the city, you might be brought up short by the prospect of a billboard almost two stories high: a desert landscape in garish oranges and yellows, cacti and cowskulls, presided over by a mounted, golden-maned cowboy with psychedelic eyes, under the legend:
    HORMONE DERANGE
Western Goods and Sundries
Hats, Boots and Everything Between
Miles Ryder, Owner and Proprietor
    Hormone Derange, sole distributors for Tony Lama boots on the Japanese archipelago, had first opened for businessunder a more conventional, phonetically similar name. Miles Ryder explained to his friends that he had changed the name to conform with standard Japanese pronunciation. Ryder was the model for the cowboy on the huge billboard atop the storefront, and himself appeared to be based on photographs of Wild Bill Hickok. There was drama in the sweep of his blond hair around his shoulders and in the droop of his mustache on either side of his chin. The black Stetson was habitual. He was something of a legend in Kyoto; besides running two businesses he occasionally appeared on television talk shows and currently was the star of a commercial in which he bellied up to the bar of a saloon and called out for his sake of choice:
Even cowboys like it
. Either out of loyalty to American engineering or concern that a six-foot-two blond gaijin in cowboy togs was not conspicuous enough in Kyoto, Ryder drove a full-dress 1962 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide complete with buckskin saddle bags which he had imported at great expense.
    Even before the Friday night in the spring of 1977 when he poleaxed Frank DeVito in Buffalo Rome, Ryder had experience coming upside people’s heads with hardwood. In May of 1971—shortly before receiving notice that he had flunked out of the University of Texas, Austin—he had opened a man’s skull with a two-by-four in the parking lot of a vast honky-tonk called the Armadillo World Headquarters. The man had inquired of Ryder’s date whether she would like to perform a certain sexual act upon him. The sexual act was one which happened to be illegal in the state of Texas. The two-by-four was lying in the bed of a pickup in the parking lot. The man turned outto be a heavily connected dope dealer and sent word from the hospital that Miles Ryder’s ass was grass. Miles considered taking his chances with the drug dealer, but the farewell card from the university seemed another good reason to push on.
    An additional problem was the draft and his sudden eligibility. Ryder’s old man was career Army, and Miles had more than enough military discipline at home. Ryder
père
was then in Vietnam, safely behind the lines, whence he’d sent a snapshot of himself and several buddies with half-a-dozen Saigon whores. Ryder’s mother was too numbed by this time to be appalled. Miles had no desire to join his father. With the help of an Eastern Religions prof from whom he had taken a survey, about the only course he enjoyed, he managed to get himself enrolled in a dubious program run out of L.A. that sent people abroad for college credit. He was presently in Japan, at a Zen monastery in the mountains north of Kyoto, sweeping cobblestones, washing dishes and sitting lotus-posture on the floor until his knees screamed with pain. After a month he decided he did not have the patience to wait for satori, quit the monastery, moved to Kyoto and supported himself, like all the other gaijin, by teaching English. The Japanese, he discovered, had a kind of mania for learning English. Businessmen, high school girls—they came after English conversation like it was a drug. Ryder set himself the task of