The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 13} MURDER & KILLING INC.

I didn’t feel like killing Maack the couple. Their dog was enough. I’m still without my habitual working tool, and to tell the truth, I didn’t fancy another assemotional one. I don’t need two more Friendlys on my back. I also came to the conclusion that Igor was no longer an option.

I used to think my mistake of presenting myself as Igor at the gates of this country, instead of being Father Friendly all the way from JFK, was a bit of dumb luck, but now I’m not so sure. The fact that Mr. Friendly was traveling on the Icelandair flight that night, but then never showed up in Iceland, must have triggered suspicion in some high places. And when they identified the dead body in the airport bathroom as Friendly’s, they made the easy calculation: his killer was traveling on his ticket that night. They will have then checked the list of passengers and identified them all as guilt-free, glacier-loving tourists except for this one guy. And then the passport controller’s report that night must have given Igor away as a potential Friendly-killer. So leaving Iceland in Igor-disguise is a risk I won’t take. I don’t want to spend the next thirty years eating thirty-two-cent meatloaves and listening to Snoop Dogg thumping out from the next cell. I’m a Creed fan, for crying out loud. I’d rather stay here nameless, gunless, and aimless in The Land of the Ten Degrees.

The walk from Guard the Beer to Reykjavik is almost one hour long. A white police car goes by. I keep my cool. It’s like walking a tightrope. I have to maintain my concentration all the time. One look to the left and I might fall. Into federal hands.

I walk the same route that Gunholder drove me on day one. I’m going to her house. The butter-blonde is my only hope now. I didn’t dare calling her. Her phone must be bugged by now. I have no reason to believe that she’ll be waiting for me with balloons and brownies, but somehow my Balkan animal instinct tells me she will show me something else than the door.

I stroll down the barren sidewalk along the Miklabraut. Here I meet the first passerby of the night. A thin gray-haired man comes jogging towards me in a red T-shirt stained with sweat. His face is filled with horrible pain, as if he was playing Christ on the cross. It’s only a matter of years until jogging will be banned along with smoking. I had five jogger friends in NYC. We used to meet in Central Park four times a week, just to keep in shape for the honeys. I managed to quit after six months, but they couldn’t kick the habit. Three years later, three of them had lost all their weight. Well, I have to admit that for a very good reason one of them became my #32, a sad story really, but the other two both died from jogging-related conditions.

As the tortured jogger passes me, I manage to cover my face by pretending to lift my hat in greeting, like some old-school movie man. I have to be careful. I’m a household face in Iceland now. My picture was even on the TV news earlier tonight. It was the same photo they had in the paper, a terrible mug shot from the early Toxic days in Germany. I look different now, more cheeks and no hair, but a clever face-reader would identify me on the spot.

The sun seems to be setting at last as I enter the old town. Still there is no sign of darkness. It’s bright as a morgue at midnight. Here the cars are all still, parked outside the small houses, but there are also some passersby to stay clear of. I get lost for a good while, but finally I find Gunholder’s bulletproof house. She’s not home. I use my Swiss knife to get inside.

In the days since Wednesday, she has only added to the mess in her apartment. How can she live like this? Even an old footman from the Homeland War wouldn’t survive for three days in this dump. All the ashtrays are overflowing, and the situation has called for extreme measures: A small frying pan is sitting on top of the TV, filled with ash and broken butts. Clothes are everywhere, covering floor and furniture like a colorful snowfall. Here and there an empty beer can stands like a tombstone in the snow, a memorial to a long dead party. The bedroom looks to be growing dirty linen, and it smells like a gym. I spot two mags lying at my feet. One is called Dazed & Confused, the other one is Slut Magazine. What did I tell you? The holy couple have produced a ho.

I take off my coat, hat, and scarf, and start emptying the ashtrays and picking up clothes. In forty minutes’ time, the place looks like it could be photographed for The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning. I’ve just fallen into an armchair, the one facing the kitchen and the front door, when Gunholder opens it. I suck in my stomach. She screams a silent “what!” and then closes the door.

“What are you doing here?”

If I was still Father Friendly she would have said: “What the FUCK are you doing here?” The killer has a bit more appeal than the clergyman.

“What… I don’t… Who are you anyway?! And how did you get… So that’s why you could open the door the other day?”

She’s a bit drunk. Her beauty is slightly out of focus. Only now she notices the neatness.

“What? Was Mom here as well?”

After some more unanswered questions, she settles for a cigarette and lets herself fall down on the sofa.

“Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing? Did you really kill the priest? At the airport? Why?”

There is a touch of admiration in her voice. A hint of a smile on her delicious lips. I tell her my life story minus the sixty-seven homicides, my two years with Munita and my night with Andro. She smokes and listens and looks for an ashtray.

“Where did you put all the ashtrays?” she asks.

“There is one right there, in front of you.”

Apparently she has never seen an empty ashtray before. The Icelandic slut. She smells like a New Jersey Devils’ banner that’s been hanging in the dim corner of a seedy Newark lounge for the past twenty years. I really want to vacuum her with my nose.

“Oh, thanks,” she says and puts the ashtray to use.

“You should stop smoking. It can kill you,” I say.

“Are you telling me about killing?” she says with an offended smile.

“Yeah. Why not?”

“You just killed a priest didn’t you? Plus you’re wanted for another murder.”

I see. They’ve made the connection between the dead man in the airport and the dead man in the dumpsite. Good job.

“You think the killer doesn’t care about life? You think he doesn’t care about health or keeping a clean house?” I say and point to the tidy room.

“Very nice,” she says.

“The killer is a human being like everyone else. He has his rights.”

“Right. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK.”

“So you’re the… the sensitive type of a killer, then?”

“I don’t know. I just hate it when people discriminate against me, only because I… kill people.”

Oops. Shouldn’t have said that. She stops in mid-smoke.

“What do you mean? You’ve killed more people?”

I’m in trouble. Never show your gun on a first date. But she already knows I killed two guys, plus this is not a date, right? I’m here looking for her help. I’m in trouble.

“Some people just have to die,” is my solution.

“And my father’s friend had to die?”

“Well. He had to be killed. Or else I would be in jail right now, being raped in the shower every morning by black Hulks with limp hose-dicks.”

She looks surprised by my vocabulary. I am as well.

“But what do you mean by: Some people have to die?” she asks.

“Just, you know. There are people who deserve to die.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re evil. Evil people who do evil things. People who do the wrong thing. Or refuse to do the right thing. Then they have to be taken away.”

“Wow. You speak like my dad’s friend, Þórður.”

“Torture?”

“You call him that? Ha ha. Fits him well. Are you religious, or…?”

“I’m Catholic.”

“OK. How can I be sure you’re not some crazy TV preacher who was Father Friendly’s competitor and wanted him dead?”

“Because I’m not.”

“OK. But you say you’re a Catholic?”

“Yeah, but I’m a Croatian Catholic. There’s nothing religious about that. It only means you go to church two times in your life. When you marry and when you die.”

“That’s nice. And how often have you been? Once?”

I have to smile at this one.

“No.”

She hesitates for a second before extinguishing her cigarette in the ashtray. Then she says:

“Who are you then? Just another loser murderer who shot an FBI agent by some mistake and had to flee the fucking States?”

Well. Fuck her.

“I’m not a ‘loser murderer,’ I’m a….”

“Yeah? What?”

This is going too far.

“I’m a… professional.”

“A professional?”

“Yep. I’m a professional killer. I’ve killed over one hundred people.”

This is just great. I’m in bed with her by now.

“Come on. ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE?!”

I guess the exact number would be something like 125. In the Midwest I used to drive through towns with a sign saying: POP. 125. I always stopped for gas, imagining this was my own personal ADV.

“Yeah. On the whole. I killed about fifty or sixty as a soldier in the Croatian army defending the land of my father and mother. And since then I have killed exactly sixty-six motherfuckers from various countries in my work as a hitman for the national organization. Father Friendly was my first and only ‘amateur’ murder.”

She is speechless and remains so, like the Catholic priest in his confession booth.

“The national organization?” she finally asks.

“Yeah, the Mafia.”

“The Mafia? You’re in the Mafia?”

“Yeah. The Croatian Mafia, that is. Not the Talian shit.”

She stares at me for some good ten seconds, suddenly looking totally sober. The Mafia. In my early New York days I used to think this was my magic word. I thought every girl in Manhattan dreamt about a real and authentic Mob man with a foreign accent and expert humping style. I always dropped it on the first date, right after the main course. They all reacted in the same way; they politely excused themselves, went to the bathroom, and never came back. Oh, the girls of Manhattan, this whole dating army of mystic blondes and loud brunettes, with their moneytoring eyes, hair smelling of TV soap, and the fame-detector buried deep in their purses. Some even left their purses with me, and twice I went looking for them in the ladies room, but there was no trace of them. Yes, “the Mob” are magic words.

I slowly learned not to discuss my profession with my bubbly dinner partners, feeling very much like the AIDS-infected dater. I kept that info like a secret weapon, saving it for dumping purposes only, or SOS situations. If I was, for example, stuck on a first date and the food was better than the girl (a Day 3 Girl who was turning into a Day 20 type in the middle of her lecture on the American voting system and how some Nader guy was “our only hope”), all I had to do then was to drop the magic word and bang!—I could reset my radar.

The reaction is a bit different here. The ice-girl weighs her options until she asks:

“You’re like a… mass murderer then?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I’m not a murderer. I’m a killer.”

“OK.”

“There is a big difference between murder and killing.”

“Oh?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.

“Yes. It’s like the difference between a hobby and a job.”

“What do you mean?”

“Murder is something you choose to do. It may be wrong. Killing is something you have to do, or you die yourself. That’s not wrong.”

“Bullshit.”

“Bullshit?”

“Yeah. You think your victims will feel the difference? ‘Oh, I’m so happy I was killed and not murdered! It’s so much better!’ Fucking bullshit. One hundred people? What kind of a monster are you eiginlega?”

This last word must be Icelandic. She’s too agitated to have full control of her brain. I’m a bit worked up as well:

“Hey. What do you know about war? You’ve never even HAD war in this… this cold and silent land. You’ve never had to live outside, in the mountains in the middle of winter, without any tents or any real food for days, and then you see your father dead and they tell you your brother was killed and then they have those people lined up in front of you and they tell you to shoot. And you shoot, and you don’t know how many you shoot, and you don’t want to know how many you shoot, but still you want to shoot as many as possible. Because…”

I can feel that somewhere inside me tears are being manufactured for the first time in years.

“Because war is shit and we’re all deep inside it. No one can say that this is right and this is wrong, because it’s either ALL WRONG or ALL RIGHT. And…”

Tears have left the factory. The order has been placed. They’re on their way. But it’s a long haul.

“And you still don’t know. You still don’t fucking know. Fucking fifteen years later you still don’t know if it was wrong or if it was right. It was just…”

I pause before my speech dies out in a lone, soft, final word: “…shit.”

We sit for a while. The bright night entering through the windows fills the room almost sarcastically. This should be a dark scene. Tears have yet to arrive.

She looks at her hands. They’re resting on her knees. She has long nails, freaky long. They’re painted light pink. I remember the hand from the mass grave in ADV. It was a girl’s hand, the hand of a teenage girl, and it had those same long nails. And as we were trying to finish the grave, it always stuck out from the dirt. We tried hammering it with our shovels and jumping on top of it, with no success. It always popped up again—this chubby, white girl’s hand with long green nails. And it looked so ridiculous. It did not fit the circumstances; it just didn’t belong in a mass grave. A mass grave was a thing of the past, something that you associated with World War Two or whatever. People in mass graves were old women with dirty headscarves and poor peasant kids dressed in worn out clothes and wooden shoes. And here was this hand, waving to us from the goddamn grave, that was more like a graveyard, really, and it was so fucking modern. It was so very much a today’s hand. You could almost see that two hours ago it had been pushing the Play button on a Walkman with a Michael Jackson tape inside it.

Out of respect, I had started humming “You Are Not Alone,” the perfect psalm for a mass grave. Still, I couldn’t sing the hand to rest. And after trying for the tenth time to get the fucking palm into the ground, I totally freaked and pulled out my knife, chopped the hand off with some effort, and then threw it away. And this was one of my worst war moments: as I was working on it with my knife, I thought I heard something beneath my feet. Something like a girl’s cry muffled by dirt.

“Nice nails,” I finally say, looking at Gunholder’s hands.

She looks at me as if she wants to bury them. In my face.