The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

his audience my first night in Iceland, and now it has become the foundation of my recovery, Torture says. I get the point. Like me, this guy also changed his name. And like me he has a bloody past. Yet he became St. Paul, “the father of the church.” I’m sure to become St. Tom, father of something. Hopefully not a church, though.
    Deep into my second week in Torture’s basement, Hanna brings me a letter after dinner. She lays it gently on my chest, with a nodding smile that wrinkles her skin around the eyes, and says “read it” before she silently gathers empty dinnerware from my bedside table and goes back upstairs, her great horse tail swaying behind her back, above her round and solid bottom.
    I open the letter. It’s handwritten. No e-mails in the house of Abraham. Nice hand. Blue ink. “Dear Thordur.” It’s Father Friendly writing, from his house in Virginia, last October.
    “Let me start by thanking you so much for your kind words and the invitation to visit Iceland. The thought of coming all the way up to your exotic island, which I have heard so many fascinating things about, I find very exciting, to say the least.
    My good friend Rev. Carl Simonsen has informed me about your excellent work on behalf of the Lord, and I am aware of your friend Engilbertsson’s TV station. I would only be happy to do some shows up there.
    It is therefore with great regret that I inform you, that due to my personal situation, I cannot possibly accept your good offer. Last month, my wife Judy had a terrible car accident and will be hospitalized for the next three months at least. As you must understand, this sad situation prevents me from all traveling for the time being. I have postponed everything that includes flying until early spring next year.
    Please write me again in 2006.”
    Professional but Friendly. The busy brother.
    Poor guy. For staying at his wife’s deathbed he was rewarded with his own death. How cruel of me.
    The letter is accompanied by an autographed color photo showing the Friendly family standing in front of a big white house that could either be their church, their home, or both. Here is my bald victim with the white collar around his neck and his beaming blonde wife Judy by his side, the woman I was married to for two whole seconds in Goodmoondoor’s car earlier this spring. She’s a southern semi-beauty that could pass for Laura Dern’s well-preserved mother. A Day 7 type. The couple proudly stands behind two kids, about ten and eight years old. One is black, one white. The latter sits in a wheelchair. Like only American women are capable of doing, Mrs. Friendly is smiling so hard she cannot possibly see the camera. She’s blinded by bliss. Actually, they’re all smiling with the same enthusiasm as if they were modeling for the brochure of the best hotel in heaven. The disabled kid has a bit of a disabled smile, though. A touch of disappointment with life in general.
    I sum up my impression of Rev. David Friendly from letter and looks. He doesn’t strike me as the usual southern televangelist, the con man of Christ. Somehow he seems genuine. I guess he didn’t deserve to die at the age of forty. Despite all his homophobia. The soul-saver outweighs the widow-maker on any scale. Plus he has a crippled child, and another one adopted…And now the kids are orphans, fatherless, and motherless little creatures. I should probably offer to adopt them.
    The day after, Hanna rubs it all in. Did I read the letter and see the photo? Yes, I did.
    “He was a good man,” she says with wrinkled eyes and without the slightest hint of accusation in her voice.
    “And he lost his wife?”
    “No,” she says. “She had an accident and is para…What do you call it?”
    “Paralyzed?”
    “Yes. She is in a wheelchair.”
    “But Goodmoondoor told me she died.”
    “No, no. She almost died but she is getting better, I think.”
    “And they have two kids?”
    “Yes. They have two adopted kids. The younger one is from Gambia. And the other one is in a wheelchair, also.”
    No shit. The crippled one is adopted as well. How fucking holy can you be? And now there are eight wheels in the family…
    “You maybe want to write to them?” Mrs. Torture continues.
    No.
    “Yes, maybe.”
    “Of course you don’t tell them who you are. You just say that you knew Father Friendly as a preacher and that you heard about his death, and that you are sorry.”
    She makes a pause. We look at each other. Me and