Bleeding Hearts Part 30

'It's all so crammed in, isn't it?'

This was before she saw Central Park.

The park was looking at its best. There were joggers, and nannies pushing prams, and people walking their dogs, and throwing frisbees or baseb.a.l.l.s at one another, and arranging impromptu games of baseball and volleyball, and eating hot dogs while they sat on benches in the sunshine. She asked me if I'd ever walked all the way round the park.

'No, and I doubt anyone else has. Further north, the park hits Harlem.'

'Not so safe?'

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'Not quite.'

Our coach-driver had asked if we wanted a blanket or anything, but we didn't need one. Our horse didn't scare easily, which was a blessing, considering the number of cars and cabs crossing town through the park. Bel squeezed my hand.

'Tell me something, Michael.'

'What sort of thing?'

'Something about yourself.'

'That sounds like a line from a film.'

'Well, this is like living in one. Go on, tell me.'

So I started talking, and there was something about the sound the horse's hooves made on the road, something hypnotic. It kept me talking, made me open up. Bel didn't interrupt once.

I was born near an Army camp in England. My father was an Army officer, though he never rose as far as he would have liked. We moved around a lot. Like a lot offerees kids, I made friends quickly, only to lose them again when either they or I moved. We'd write for a little while, then stop.

There was always a lot to do on the camps - films, shows, sports and games, clubs you could join - but this just set us apart from all the other children who didn't live on or near the camp. I used to bruise easily, but didn't think anything of it. Sometimes if I b.u.mped myself, there'd be swelling for a few weeks, and some pain. But I never told anyone. My father used to talk about how soldiers were taught to go 'through the pain barrier', and I used to imagine myself pushing against it, like it was a sheet of rubber, until I forced my way through. Sometimes it would take a few plasters before a cut knee or elbow would heal. My mother just thought I picked off the scabs, but I never did. My father had to take me to the doctor once when I bit the tip off my tongue and it wouldn't stop bleeding.

Then one day I had to have a dental extraction. The dentist plugged the cavity afterwards, but I just kept on 242.

bleeding, not profusely, just steadily. The dentist tried putting some sour stuff on my gums, then tried an adrenaline plug, and finally gave me an injection. When that didn't work -1 was on my fourth or fifth visit by now he referred me to a specialist, whose tests confirmed that I was a mild haemophiliac. At first this gave me a certain stature within my peer group, but soon they stopped playing with me. I became an onlooker merely. I read up on haemophilia. I was lucky in two respects: for one thing, I was a mild sufferer; for another, I'd been born late enough in the century for them to have made strides in the treatment of the disease. Factor VIII replacement has only been around since the early 1970s, before that you were treated with cryo. Acute sufferers have a much harder time than me. They can bleed internally, into joints, the abdomen, even the brain. I don't have those problems. If I'm going for an operation or for dental treatment, they can give me an injection of a clotting agent, and everything's fine. It's a strange sort of disease, where women can be carriers but not sufferers. About one man in 5,000 in the UK is a haemophiliac, that's 9,000 of us. Not so long ago, n.o.body bothered testing blood donors for HIV. That led to over 1,200 haemophiliacs being treated with a lethal product.

Over 1,200 of us, men and boys, now HIV positive and doomed.

A similar thing happened in France. They gave contaminated clotting factors to children, then tried to hush it up. I was in such a rage when that happened, such a black rage. I almost went out and picked off those responsible ... only who was responsible? It was human error, no matter how sickening. That's one reason I won't do a hit in a Third World country, not unless the money is very good. I'm afraid I might be injured and treated with contaminated Factor VIII. I have dreams about it sometimes. There are rigorous checks these days, but does every country check, 243.

does every country screen and purify? I'm not sure. I can never be sure.

I carry my works with me everywhere, of course, my syringes and powdered clotting factor and purified water.

I'm supposed to visit a Haemophilia Centre when I need a doctor or dentist, and for a yearly check-up. The blood products we haemophiliacs use can contain all sorts of contaminants, leading to liver damage, hepat.i.tis, cirrhosis ... Then there's the bleeding, which can lead to severe arthritis. (Imagine an a.s.sa.s.sin with arthritis.) Between five and ten percent of us develop inhibitors, antibodies which stop the Factor VIII from working. Like I say, it's a strange disease. We can't have intramuscular injections or take aspirin. But things are always getting better. There's DDAVP, a synthetic product which boosts Factor VIII levels, and now there's even properly synthetic Factor VIII, recombinant Factor Vffl they call it. It's like 8SM and Monoclate P, but created in the lab, not from blood. No contaminants, that's the hope.

Meanwhile, there is a cure for haemophilia: liver transplant.

Only at present it's more dangerous than the disease itself. There will come a cure; it'll come by way of genetic research. They'll simply negate the affected chromosome.

As you can tell, haemophilia has had a ma.s.sive impact on my life. It started as soon as the disease was diagnosed. My parents blamed themselves. There was no family history of the disease, but in about a third of cases there never is; there's just a sudden spontaneous mutation in the father's sperm. That's how it was with me. My parents, especially my mother, treated me like a china wedding present, as though I could only be brought out on special occasions. No more rough games with the other boys - she made sure the other parents knew all about haemophilia. My father spent more time away from me, at the shooting range. So I followed him there and asked him to teach me. A pistol first, and later a rifle. To stop me bruising my shoulder, he had 244.

my mother make a little cushion to wedge behind the stock.

I still use that cushion.

My mother was opposed to the whole enterprise, but could never stand up to my father. It was a couple of years before I could beat him. I don't know whether his eyes were getting worse, or his aim less steady, or it was just that I was getting better. When I finally left home, I left it as a marksman.

I'd always been clever at school, and ended up at a university, but I didn't last long. After that there were dead- end jobs, jobs which gave me a lot of time to myself. I worked in a library, then in a couple of bookshops, and eventually got a great job working with kayak rentals in the Lake District. Only that fell through when my employers discovered I was a haemophiliac. They said the job was too risky, I'd become a liability.

Was it any wonder I couldn't hold down a job? The only place I wanted to be was on the range. I joined gun clubs and shot compet.i.tively. I even went hunting on a few occasions, looking for a new challenge. Then I met a disarming man called Holly Maclntyre. He swore this was his real name. Friends of his called him 'Mad Dog'

Maclntyre. He was huge and bull-headed with cropped hair silvering above the ears. His eyes were bulbous and red- rimmed, like he spent too long in chlorinated swimming pools. He was always ready for aggro, and sometimes initiated it for its own sake. He reminded me of a rugby league forward.

Holly had known my father, and he'd seen me shoot a few times. He was by this time long out of the armed forces and working in what he called a 'security capacity' for a number of countries, though he couldn't name them. In fact, he was a mercenary, leader of a gang of about a dozen men who could be bought, who would go anywhere in the world and train any rag-tag rabble for a price. Mad Dog was on the lookout for fresh blood.

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I told him he couldn't have mine, and explained why.

'Is that all that's stopping you?' he said. 'Christ, you could still be useful to me.'

I asked him how.

'Sniper, my boy. Sniper. Put you up a tree and leave you there. You'd be nice and cosy, no cuts or bruises, n.o.body'd know you were there. All you'd do is pick 'em off as they came into sight.'

'Pick off who?'

'The f.u.c.king enemy, of course.'

'And who would they be?'

He leaned close to me and hissed whisky. 'Whoever you like!'

I turned down his offer, but not before he'd introduced me to a few people who were later to prove useful. See, at this time I was a military groupie. I liked to hang around with squaddies and old soldiers, with anyone who shared my background and belief system. I knew which pubs and clubs to go to, which gyms. I knew where some weekend shoot was going to be. These shoots, they weren't paintball or grouse or a few h.o.a.ry old foxes. They were held in secret, far away from humanity, where you could make a big noise and n.o.body'd hear you. I used to take bets. They'd place a coin upright on the bonnet of a car, and there'd be someone in the car with his hand by the bonnet-release. At a given signal, I'd have to hit the coin before the bonnet sprang open.

Everyone loved me. But I knew I was turning into a sideshow. Worse than that, I was becoming a freak. So I did something about it. I made myself a life plan. It didn't happen overnight; I read books and went travelling. I knew three things: I was bored, I was poorer than I wanted to be, and I had a skill.

I started small, shooting a few rats I bought from a pet shop. That wasn't very satisfactory: I'd nothing against the rats, and nothing to gain from shooting them. I found I 246.

actually liked them better than I liked most of the people around me. I don't like people really, I'm just very good at pretending. I did some hunting in the USA, and that was better than shooting rats. Then one night in New York, I picked off a junkie from my darkened hotel room. They were standing in an alley six floors below me. I reasoned that they didn't have long to live anyway, the life expectancy of a junkie on the New York streets being slightly less than that of your average rat. From then on, it got easier.

I went back to see Mad Dog, only he was somewhere in Africa, and this time he didn't come back. But I knew other people I could talk to, other people who knew what I needed to know. It was six months before I got my first contract.

They were expecting me to hit the victim on the head and bury him in Epping Forest. Instead, I took him out from four hundred yards and created an immediate news story. My employers decided this was okay, too. I was paid, and my name was pa.s.sed along. I knew I wouldn't be working for the Salvation Army. But then I wasn't killing any nuns and priests either. It was only after a few hits that I decided anyone was fair game. It isn't up to the executioner to p.r.o.nounce guilt or innocence. He just makes sure the instruments are humane.

I noticed that Bel was sitting like a block of stone beside me.

'Sorry,' I said. 'But I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.'

'Michael, you've spoken for so long, and yet you've said almost nothing.'

'What?'

'Can we go get something to drink?'

'Sure.'

I told the driver to take us back now. We pa.s.sed another carriage on the way. There were some j.a.panese tourists in the back. While the drivers exchanged bored looks, the j.a.panese videoed us, waving and grinning as they did. We 247.

looked like a couple weary of their life together, and reeling.'

from yet another spat. .: 'You know,' Bel said, 'you've never asked me about myself.

That's strange. When I've gone out with men before, they've always ended up asking me about myself. How old are you, Michael?'

'My pa.s.sports say thirty-five.' We were lying in bed together. We hadn't made love, our bodies weren't even touching. The silent TV was playing.

'And you've never been married, never had a steady girlfriend?' ; 'There've been a few.' s 'How many?' 5 'I don't know.' .? j 'A few hundred? A few dozen?'

'Just a few. Christ, Bel.' I threw off the cover and stood up.

The air conditioning was whirring away, blowing cool air over me.

'Look,' I said, 'I'm not... I never said I was much good at this ... this sort of thing.'

'Do you hear me complaining?'

'Okay, I'll ask you something about yourself.'

She smiled sadly. Her eyebrows were beautiful. Her lips were beautiful. 'Don't bother,' she said. 'Ask me some other time when I'm not expecting it.'

Then she sat up and started watching TV, disappearing back into herself.

The next morning we flew to New Mexico.

I wasn't going to buy a car in New York. n.o.body buys a car second hand in New York if they can help it. The cars are rustier than elsewhere, with more miles on the clock (even if they show less miles) and steeper price tags. You either buy on the west coast or you buy in New Mexico, Texas, somewhere like that. We bought in Albuquerque.

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Bel was right: the blond man and his team might have no trouble picking up our trail again. From flight and hotel information, they could trace us as far as New York. But Michael West, not Michael Weston, had paid for the flights to Albuquerque, and the name on his companion's ticket was Rachel Davis. I was taking all these precautions when all the blond smiler from Oban had to do was head directly to the Olympic Peninsula and wait for us there. That was okay; I just didn't want him intercepting me. This way, I might get at least one good shot in first.

We didn't linger in Albuquerque. My New Mexico ID and a bundle of cash bought us a fast car. It was a Trans-Am, just right for the trip ahead. I'd picked up a few small ads and car ads magazines from the first newsagent's in town, and we sat in a diner while I scoured them. I ringed half a dozen and went to the pay-phone. The first number I called, the owner was at work and his wife said I'd have to see the car when he was around. I hit the jackpot with the second number. I was talking to a drawling mechanic called Sanch who was mad about 's.h.i.t-kickers' (his term for fast cars) and was selling this Trans-Am because he wanted to buy a beautiful old Firebird with a paint job 'to die for, man'.

He was so keen to sell, he picked us up outside the diner in a pickup truck and took us back to his three-storey house along a dirt road in what seemed a nice middle-cla.s.s neighbourhood.

'I fix all the neighbourhood cars, man, they bring them all to me.'

It looked like half the neighbourhood cars were parked right outside Sanch's house, mostly in bits. He kept his best models in the garage, including another, highly-tuned Trans-Am. I'd rather have had this one, but the one he was selling sounded sweet too. I looked at the engine, and we took it for a spin. It was white, and the interior was a bit grotty, plus it was missing quarter of a fender. The engine was clean though, and it had a hi-fi. He brought the price 249.

down another $1,000 for cash and I asked if I could use his bathroom.

While Bel enjoyed a cold beer and the collection of nude calendars in Sanch's kitchen, I unzipped my money belt and took out the notes. Back in the kitchen, Sanch had already filled in the relevant details on his ownership papers.

'Hey,' he said, handing me a beer, 'I meant to ask you, what you gonna use the car for?'

'Just some driving.'

'That's the way to see America.'

'Yes, it is,' I said, handing over the money. He examined it, but didn't count it.

'Looks about right. Here, I got something for you.' It took him a little while to find what he was looking for. It was a Rand-McNally Road Atlas, its covers missing, corners curled and oily. But the pages were all there. 'I got about half a dozen of these things laying around. After all, you don't want to get lost between here and there.'

I thanked him, finished the beer, and put my part of the ownership doc.u.ment in my pocket.

Then we drove to Lubbock.

It served as a nice introduction to American driving. Long straight roads, the occasional shack planted in the middle of nowhere, and sudden towns which disappeared into the dust you left behind. The car was behaving, and, lacking a TV, Bel was communing with the radio. She liked the preachers best, but the abrasive phone-in hosts weren't far behind.; One redneck was praising the gun.

'Guns made America, and guns will save America!'

'You're loon-crazy, my friend,' said the DJ, switching to another call.

Albuquerque is only about 250 miles from Lubbock. We could do it inside a day easy, but we weren't in any particular rush. When we stopped at a place called Clovis and I still got an answering machine in Lubbock, we decided to check into a motel. The place we chose was choice indeed, 250.

twenty dollars a night and decorated in 1950s orange.

Orange linoleum, orange lampshades, orange bedspread. We looked to be the only guests, and the man in the office could have given Norman Bates some tips. He rang up our fee on an ancient till and said he was sorry about the swimming pool. What he meant was, the swimming pool wasn't finished yet. It was a large circular concrete construction, waiting to be lined. It was unshaded and sat right next to the road. I couldn't see many holidaymakers using it. There was a hot wind blowing, but the motel boasted an ice machine and another machine dispensing cold cola.

'The TV hasn't got cable!' Bel complained, already a seasoned traveller in the west. Along the route we'd been offered water beds and king-size beds and adult channels and HBO, all from noticeboards outside roadside motels. Bel wasn't too enamoured of our bargain room, but I was a lot more sanguine. After all, the owner hadn't made us fill in a registration card and hadn't taken down the number of our licence plate. There would be no record that we'd ever stayed here.

'Let's go do the sights,' I said.

We cruised up and down the main and only road. A lot of the shops had shut down, their windows boarded up. There were two undistinguished bars, another motel the other end of town with a red neon sign claiming No Vacancies, though there were also no signs of life, a couple of petrol stations and a diner. We ate in the diner.

There was a back room, noisy from a party going on there. It was a fireman's birthday, and his colleagues, their wives and girlfriends were singing to him. Our waitress smiled as she came to take our order.

'I'll have the ham and eggs,' Bel said. 'The eggs over easy.'

She smiled at me. 'And coffee.'

I had the chicken dinner. There was so much of it, Bel had to help me out. Since there was no phone in our room, I tried Lubbock again from the diner, and again got the 251.

answering machine. After the meal, we stopped at the petrol station and bought chocolate, some cheap cola, and a four- pack of beer. I had a look around and saw that the station sold cool-boxes too. I bought the biggest one on the shelf.

The woman behind the till wiped the dust off with a cloth.

Till that with ice for you?'