The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

is Acts Nine in the English Bible…It tells the story of Saul, of Levitan Saul, this ordinary man from Tarsus, this simple man working as an executioner for the Roman government. And they sent him to Damascus, so that he could carry the Christians in robes…”
    “In ropes,” I quickly correct him, suddenly sounding like a Bible expert.
    “…So he could put them in ropes and carry them to Jerusalem. But on his way, before he came to Damascus, he saw a great light and a voice spoke to him: ‘Saul, Saul, why you persecute me?’ And Saul said, ‘Who are you?’ And the voice said, ‘I am the Lord.’ And the Lord told him to stop working against the Christians, and Saul was blind for many days, until the Lord sent Ananias to him. And Ananias came to him and told him to see again. And Saul became Paul. The executioner became number two in God’s Church on earth. Jesus was number one, and Paul was number two. Hallelujah! And he wrote a big part of this book!”
    Goodmoondoor holds the black Bible in the air.
    “He wrote a big part of the holy book, the book of books, the Word of God. His soul was saved. He became a holy man. A holy man. Hallelujah!”
    “Hallelujah!” I repeat after him. I really do. Must be the beer.

CHAPTER 9
TORTURE
    05.19.2006
    The best thing about the war was sleeping outside. In the Dinara Mountains. The cuckoo was our alarm clock. I never saw him, but he always got us up before dawn, for the land was on our side . The Serbs were still asleep, behind the hill and the next. Lazy bastards. Never started fighting before eight. I guess we can thank them for those beautiful mornings. Sunny silent mornings with the best breakfast in the world: a woodcutter’s coffee and povitica bread. We ate in silence, watching the first morning rays deal with the butter still cold from the night.
    One of those early dawns, Andro, the crazy boy from Pula, suddenly started talking about the morning dew. In a little while he was shouting about:
    “We are fighting for dew! We can’t let the Serbs have the dew! We want more dew! Stupid war! Fighting for dew!”
    Then he sprang to his feet and started running around the hill pointing to different spots on the ground.
    “Croatian dew! Serbian dew! No-ownership dew!”
    Javor, our commander, pulled out his handgun and shot him in the back of his head. Andro fell in the grass like a dead calf.
    “Now you can drink it, you stupid son of the ugliest whore in Pula!” the lava-faced Javor spit out of his mouth.
    Piti rosu , to drink the dew, became our phrase for dying. I felt a bit sorry for Andro. Among all the members of our squad, I probably had the biggest tolerance for his nuttiness. I owed him.
    Andro was a big Madonna fan and even named his rifle after the American pop star. Every now and then he would burst out with “ …like a virgin, ” in his Morrissey voice. And he always carried a small crucifix in the breast pocket of his uniform. The mini-Jesus was white, but his cross was sort of brown, thus blending in with the dark green of the uniform. The effect was that the small Messiah always stuck out of the pocket as if waving his hands, saying: “Hey guys, listen!” Maybe Andro did, because from time to time he would start philosophizing about the pointlessness of war, not really the type of thing a soldier needs to hear. And every now and then he would do something crazy, like running naked through the enemy line and back, or now, screaming about dew. He was unstable, and Javor was absolutely right to kill him.
    But me and Andro once spent a whole night together, drinking and singing out in the open. We had lost our group and spent all our bullets when we stumbled upon a blown-up Chetnik tank. Inside it we found a bottle of rakjia that quickly released our singing spirits. It was the most stupid thing we could do, singing Croatian songs in the heart of a Serbian night. A bullet could have silenced us any minute. But you have to understand that fighting in a war is like playing Russian roulette 24/7. Every breath could be your last. It’s a dreadful thought, but it slowly becomes a thrilling one; you kind of get addicted to it. You even start teasing the limits. We were young and fearless, tired from killing, and couldn’t care less.
    Luckily, we were singing the Yugoslavian winner of the 1989 European Song Contest when a dead-drunk Serbian soldier suddenly appeared in front of us, in full army gear. Could he join us? he asked, did we have