The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

Gangster’s Paradise. No army, no guns, no murders, and almost no police. Only gorgeous women with groovy names.
    “It’s not Gunholder. It’s Gunnhildur ,” she says.
    “Goonhilda?”
    “No. Gunn ! You start with Gunn , and then hildur . Gunnhildur !”
    “Gunhilda?”
    “Æ, whatever. I’ll just call you Tott .”
    “What does that mean?”
    “You don’t want to know.”
    “You never had a nickname?”
    “When we lived in the States, the kids always called me Gunn and my dad still calls me that sometimes.”
    “Gun?”
    “No. Gunn !”
    “You’re my Gun. The one I’ve been looking for ever since I came up here.”
    Her lips vibrate with joyful irritation as she exhales her last draw of smoke.
    “A smoking Gun,” I add while taking a good look at her.
    She’s the total opposite of my Munita. The butter-blonde ice queen and my tandoori tarantula. I lean in for a kiss and fall into her Icelandic arms.

CHAPTER 16
LOVE IS IN THE FRIDGE
    05.22.2006
    I’ve finished my first week in exile. Even though I’ve not killed anyone for the past seven days, except one small dog, this has to count as one of the most interesting weeks of my life. For seven days and seven nights the sun has not set. I’ve had five different nationalities and held down two jobs. I’ve appeared on live television. I watched the European Song Contest for the first time in six years. I broke into two apartments, stole one car, three beers, some bread and bacon and six eggs. I also find myself in love with two different girls. One Icelandic and one Indian-Peruvian.
    To avoid further police visits, I have the blonde buy me a new phone, equipped with a virgin number. I then call the dark one. I call her all morning, all afternoon. I call her cell, I call her at work, I call her at home. I send messages. I leave messages. And massages.
    I finally decide to call the doorman of my building in SoHo, the one with the freaky hairdo. Just hearing his deep voice gives me a warm feeling mixed with a dash of homesickness. But it mixes badly in my stomach.
    He says Munita came by a few days ago, accompanied by a Talian looking stud. They went upstairs. She told the doorman she had keys to my apartment. This is a lie. I never gave her any keys. But the doorman had to believe her, he saw her enter the building with me all the time. The Talian guy came downstairs a few fucking hours later, but she has not left the building since. The bitch.
    I thank him and speedily finish the phone call before dialing my own apartment. There’s no answer. Of course not. The horny bitch. Fucking Talians all over my bathroom tiles! I should call Interflora and order a bouquet of poisonous lilies to be delivered to my door in NYC. Why couldn’t she just have done it at her place? Why did she have to smear my white leather couch with Talian sweat?
    I call the doorman again—suddenly getting the feeling that he’s the only person I know in the Big Apple. (I know I killed most of my New York contacts, but still, this fact is pretty sad. Six years have been erased from my life.) I ask him to call my apartment and if there is no answer, call the police or something. Someone has to enter the goddamn door and bring the fucking woman to the fist-fucking phone.
    “You have the key to my apartment, right?”
    “Yes, of course I have your key,” the doorman says.
    He tells me to call him back in an hour.
    In an hour…Well, fuck my fuck. In a fucking hour the fucking Truster is back home and I can’t possibly talk on the phone now. I have to remain completely still and silent up here in the cold, cold attic. In the cold, cold Atlantic. Poor me. I shouldn’t have taken #66 to the dumpsite. I should have finished him in his car. Then his friends never would have gotten near me with their zoom lenses. It was just that his car was so fucking great. It looked so expensive. (I sometimes inflated my fee by giving the victim’s car to Radovan’s guy out in Jackson Heights, a much used used-cars salesman named Ivo.)
    Fucking Radovan. The fountain of all my troubles.
    I listen to Truster and Gunholder watch the evening news. Lilliput Island seems to have enough of political scandals and fucked-up celebrities to fill a daily news-hour. Or they’re just saying that nothing happened today. No murders, no war, no nothing. Aw, fuck it. I call anyway. I can’t possibly wait until morning. Gently I turn my body around, dive into the sleeping bag head first, butt upwards, and