The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

Spanish out in the kitchen and a bunch of small time celebrities with big time boobs wailing outside my front door, hungry for sex. Fuck it. I should have all that instead of idling up here in the arctic nowhere, a born-again dishwasher with an ugly name and a jumpy girlfriend, sipping on stolen Polish beer and discussing philosophy with the grandson of King Kong.
    “What do you think of movies about the Mafia written by some wimps high on soy lattes. Some unshaven campus kids who’ve never even seen a gun in their lives?”
    “What is?”
    “Aw, nothing.”
    We go back to the movie and Balatov does a round of Bulgarian swearing. Our part of the world is the true home of colorful language. Croatia holds the world record in men’s cursing. I’m only a word away from coming back at him with: “You look like you just fucked a porcupine!” Or: “I just fucked your dead mother’s rotten body in the hole where her left tit used to be!”
    “You girl is good,” the bastard then suddenly says.
    “My girl?”
    “I see you and girl in shop,” he says with the slimiest smile and a very hairy thumbs-up. “Is good.”
    “You mean…?”
    “I see you make sex in shop. Is daughter priest, yes?”
    There you have it. He’s been spying on me. So he’s working for the Fucking Bureau of Impotents after all.
    “So why don’t you call them? Why don’t you just arrest me then?”
    “What is?”
    No. After a quick interrogation I have to conclude that he’s not an agent undercover. He’s too genuinely stupid. But then what is he doing up here? Why the hell is he staying in this horrible country of sunny nights and Sanskrit subtitles if he hates it so much?
    “I work in housing build. I no pay. I wait money.”
    Of course it’s quite possible that this man is a genius acting stupid and that he is really undercover. But then the cover would be so thick that he would never be able to get any information through.
    The next day we’re woken up by the usual Polish Sunday morning prayer. Some altar wine and a sermon on modern day slavery in Western society. But the drunken brawl is soon overshadowed by an uproar in the Lithuanian camp. Some hefty arguing goes on at their end of the floor, for a good hour, until one of them rushes out, slamming doors behind him. Somehow the Lits all have the same look: flat dark hair and a pale face full of birthmarks.
    Outside my cell, Balatov informs me that we have a dead man on our floor. The small guy who only joined our little society last week passed away. After flying up here with a kilo of cocaine in his stomach, he came down with constipation. He’s been lying in the cell down the hallway for five days now, the blackbeard says. He couldn’t shit, not for his life.
    “I see him. Belly was balloon.”
    Balatov offered his help, he says, but they didn’t accept it. For some reason, he seems to think quite highly of himself when it comes to the inner workings of the human body.
    Somehow the Poles have heard the sad news and come flying out of the kitchen like drunken crows. They want to call their beloved master, the Good Knee, at once. Some even want the White Hats. But the Lits won’t have any of it. It’s a pretty funny scene, actually. A shouting match in English between Poland and Lithuania.
    “No call police!”
    “No! Call! Please!” The argument swiftly ends when one of the Lit guys brings out a gun. It’s a small German model, similar to the one the Hanover Polizei uses. The Poles look dumb-founded then immediately shut their mouths and return to their bottles of Wyborowa. Balatov plays the wise old man, telling the gunman to cool it.
    Seeing the gun makes me all warm inside. It’s like seeing an old friend. I stand for a while, dizzy from gunsickness, watching him walk down the hall, before retreating to my cell.
    It’s a long Sunday. I lay in bed, with the Bible open to “The Raising of Lazarus,” while my heart plays the theme from The Twilight Zone . I try to call Gun three times. She doesn’t answer. I could try to sneak out of the barracks and crawl back into Torture’s basement, but I guess it’s better to stay cool. I guess I should be more afraid of my Lithuanian colleagues than the White Hats. I reach for Tommy’s overcoat, search out his Icelandic passport, and put it in the pocket of my pants. Just in case.
    Every half an hour I hear the dead man’s friends rush up and down the hallway, up and down the stairs, talking loudly on the phone in