Bleeding Hearts

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She had just over three hours to live, and I was sipping grapefruit juice and tonic in the hotel bar.

‘You know what it’s like these days,’ I said, ‘only the toughest are making it. No room for bleeding hearts.’

My companion was a businessman himself. He too had survived the highs and lows of the ’80s, and he nodded as vigorously as the whisky in him would allow.

‘Bleeding hearts,’ he said, ‘are for the operating table, not for business.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, though of course in my line of work bleeding hearts are the business.

Gerry had asked me a little while ago what I did for a living, and I’d told him export-import, then asked what he did. See, I slipped up once; I manufactured a career for myself only to find the guy I was drinking with was in the same line of work. Not good. These days I’m better, much cagier, and I don’t drink on the day of a hit. Not a drop. Not any more. Word was, I was slipping. Bullshit naturally, but sometimes rumours are difficult to throw off. It’s not as though I could put an ad in the newspapers. But I knew a few good clean hits would give the lie to this particular little slander.

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