The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

glæpamaður is “good night.”
    Then we have sibling-silence for three hours. They don’t even watch TV together. No music playing, either. What the hell are they doing? Neither of them leaves the house. Are they playing cards? Reading? At midnight there are some toilet sounds again, followed by the sweet sounds of silky underpants gliding down soft white legs. The war gave me a cat’s hearing.
    At three in the morning I dial Niko’s number in NYC. I speak with the voice of a dormer mouse, explaining my situation. He listens for a while, but when he finally talks back, he acts like a wannabe Talian on TV: “You callin’ me? Why you callin’ me? Who gave you my number?” Then he hangs up. He hangs up on me. My good old Niko. Niko Nevolja. This is really bad news. Some really, really bad news. I should consider myself dead. At least I should never even think of going back to NYC. Or even Croatia. Fuck. Fucking fucked-up fuck.
    I fall asleep at five.
    I’m woken at seven by some loud knocking and soft voices downstairs. I’m prepared for this one: Sleeping in my (or Mr. Maack’s) clothes, I pocket my phone and put on my running shoes in less than a second. Two such later and I have thrown the sleeping bag into a dim corner and put away the mattress beneath a box of books. I hear Gunholder acting crazy downstairs.
    “QUARY GONGI?!”
    Her voice follows me up through the skylight, the small rusty one in the middle of the steep bulletproof roof. It’s freaking cold outside. Gray skies, green trees, and the colorful roofs of Reykjavik. This one is rusty red. I quickly close the window and climb the steep roof. I can spot the white hood of a police car parked on the street below, and I hear the voice of a masculine officer traveling from street to garden. I jump on the other side of the roof, hanging on the ridge by the total sum of eight fingers. Through my belly I can hear the suckers already up in the attic, looking for the hiding man’s hide. Moments later I hear one of them open the fucking skylight. I can’t see him, but he can possibly see my cold white fingertips. I have to let go of the ridge. I do so. I let go. I slide down the roof in a very slow, slow motion, floating down the cold iron on my big Croatian belly. I stretch out my arms and feet, trying to stop myself with my sticky shoes and clammy palms without making a single sound. Two inches later I stop. I fucking stop. I’m spread out on the steep red roof like a gigantic frog.

CHAPTER 15
ICELANDIC ARMS
    05.22.2006
    I should write a thank you letter to the Icelandic police force. How they managed not to find a six-foot, 240-pound frog on the roof of the house they searched is a big mystery to me. The FBI should do some deep thinking before signing another deal of collaboration with them. I did the frozen frog for a freezing hour or so before returning down through the attic. The hatch in the floor was open. I kneeled before it like a ballet dancer in front of an imaginary lake, center stage, and was about to put my head down into it when I was suddenly faced with another head, containing two lusty lips. She was equally surprised to see me, and after a short sigh of relief we kissed.
    It was an unusually long kiss considering the fact that it was our first one. It was a kiss brought to us by the Feds. And their white-hatted assistants. Once it was over, I invited her up to my loft space, and in a matter of minutes we were making our first love atop the North Face sleeping bag, me thus becoming her #41. She turned out to be all the ice cream I had been longing for. Warm ice cream. She was incredible. My boner was steel-hard and she got very excited as well, screaming like an angry feminist protesting against a rapist being brought from car to justice. I even had to cover her mouth with my hand, fearing the police would show up again. She bit me. The arctic animal. I got a bit intimidated. Still she seemed to enjoy my shaky performance, her body shaking all over like an old man’s hand with Parkinson’s disease—or maybe it was just something she picked up in Slut Magazine . Afterwards we lay like two naked criminals at large, resting and talking.
    “You’re so beautiful.”
    That’s me talking, of course.
    “And you’re so…..”
    “Fat?”
    “You’re so strange.”
    “Strange?”
    “Yes, you’re so strange. I’ve never…You come from another world. I’ve never….”
    “You’ve never been with a killer before?”
    “No.