The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 12} MR. MAACK

I have never lived in such a big house. I quite like it, I have to say. Suddenly exile is excellent. Escaping the holy house was a big relief. Now I don’t need to put on a stupid smile in the morning or walk the shiny floors like Christ on water. Getting Friendly off my back was like dumping a loud girlfriend with a Texan accent and a cell-phone addiction.

I spend the rest of Saturday night home alone, enjoying the European Song Contest 2006 on my big new surround-sound flat screen, which looks more like a fat screen, actually. The counting of the votes was always my favorite. Some screaming Finns in Halloween costumes take home the trophy. Bosnia & Herzegovina comes in third. Severina finishes at number thirteen with only fifty-six votes, all of them coming from the former republic of Yugoslavia. Even the Serbs feel bad enough to give us ten points. Or it was their dicks voting. Apparently the rest of Europe hasn’t seen Severina’s sex tape. If we are ever to win this fucking thing again, we need to create more Balkan states.

The fridge is full of food. I make a late-night omelet for the hungry hitman in hiding. I take it in the billiard room downstairs, trying to keep low profile and lights off. My landlords are Kristján Þ. Maack and Helena Ingólfsdóttir, and it seems they’ve been enduring these names for about sixty years. The photo albums show a happy mustached couple smiling in all the right places from Florida to Slovenia. They seem to travel for a living. The kitchen calendar shows March in Kenya, April in Bulgaria. Probably thinking of me, Helena has marked this weekend: London, London, London, London. They’re due back on Monday.

After a long and eventful day, I’m happy to go to their bed. It’s big as a boxing arena, with his and her corners. I can’t find the gloves, but I can see that she’s reading some Italian cookbook and he’s reading Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia. Fucking Talians all the time. How about some press for the honest and hard-working men of the Croatian Mafia? How about some books, some films, some fame? Fuck it. Even some ugly-named nobody on Gun-Free Island is reading about the pasta-poopers. I sleep on her side, reserving my last waking minutes for a survey of my strange situation. What’s next? I could either kill them when they return and stay here until the fridge is empty, or use the ticket Igor bought me at the airport. I don’t see any other possibilities.

I spend Sunday at home, enjoying a long and luxurious breakfast, trying hard to read the article that accompanies my photo on the back page of the newspaper that came through the front door late last night. The headline reads: Mafíumorðingi á Íslandi? Sounds like Mafia something in Iceland. The question mark is reassuring. There is a mention of Father Friendly and Goodmoondoor’s Christian TV station, along with some words from the preacher himself. I can picture his big-eyed llama-face on a long hairy neck in front of the reporter: “We are in big shock. We didn’t suspect anything. He was very friendly. We consider ourselves lucky to be alive.”

Igor’s name is not mentioned. He’s my only hope now.

I try to call Munita, using the Maacks’ house phone. I know it’s not the wisest move, but I just can’t resist. I have to talk to her. I call her mobile and her machine. “So please leave me a massage after the beep.” You got to love that voice. That soft, oily, hairy world that sucks you in like the mother of life itself. Even her speaking mistakes are sexy. She doesn’t answer. And she doesn’t call back. I wonder if she’s OK? Violent death runs in her family.

I take a long hot bath in the biggest tub east of Vegas, letting bubbles bounce my belly for fifty minutes, then enjoy a naked walk of the house with a cold beer in hand, taking all possible advantage of the extraordinary feeling of being out of sight, out of time. I live in an empty house. I’m the no one who’s at home. I do not exist. I’m just that invisible force that moves a small green can of Heineken beer around this big house, slowly sucking away its contents.

As I go back inside the bathroom, I’m unpleasantly surprised to see my face in the mirror. For a split second I see Father Friendly. I’m reminded of our quick eye contact in the mirror at JFK and my heart skips a beat. Mr. Friendly is stubborn like a stud on steroids. He just won’t let go. He keeps calling me from his grave like an angry senior complaining about his coffin. I even dreamt him last night. At some open-air gathering of long white gowns and tall green trees, he came over to me and kissed me on the forehead. His lips felt big, thick, and warm. As if he was black. And when he backed away, I saw that in fact he looked like Louis Armstrong, the good old trumpet man.

I don’t get it. Sixty-six pigs have gone down, without the slightest twinge of conscience, and then all of a sudden: a bald priest killed in an airport bathroom keeps following me around like a retarded girl in love. Maybe he wasn’t just a holyman but a holy man? Like Louis Armstrong.

The beer makes my brain swim inside my head, like a whale trapped in an undersized aquarium, and I get all confused. I look at myself in the mirror, look for myself in the mirror. Somehow I’m not there. I’m faced with a babushka doll with the face of an American TV preacher. Inside him there is the charming polish housepainter Tadeusz Boksiwic. Inside him is the Russian armsmuggler Igor Illitch. Inside him: Toxic the hitman. Inside him: The fresh-off-the-boat Tom Boksic. And finally, inside him, there is “Champ,” the tiny little Tomo-boy from Split, Croatia.

Instead of getting depressed about the number and sizes of all my different selves, I add yet another one to the wooden doll: I walk out of the house as Mr. Maack, the successful business man of Guard the Beer, Iceland. I’m wearing a long light brown winter coat, a dark gray hat, and a red scarf around my neck. Shoes from Lloyds, London. On top of it all, I’m holding a brown leather briefcase containing my Russian sneakers and some clean underwear. I must look totally ridiculous, like a royal hitman on his way to a late night job.

Still, I try to walk like a business man: with a straight back and belly out front. A man who’s got all his successes behind him now doing his victory walk. As if he was not moving his feet himself, but was being pushed down the road by the steady growing interests of his investments. This means that I walk rather slowly along the sidewalk. I’m the only one to do so here in the country of no streetwalkers. It makes me a bit nervous. Every fucking car is full of eyes. Apparently they’ve never seen a walking man before. It’s like being on stage to a full house at the HNK. But this is the only way. Stealing a car wouldn’t be Mr. Maack’s style, and a taxi was too risky.

The light is on as ever. At 10:33 the sun is still burning on the horizon like an orange lantern at an outdoor Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn. It’s a beautiful evening, actually, with completely calm seas and the customary ten degrees.

Damn it. Now I sound like a British gentleman. Must be the hat.