The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

my child and head for the door. It’s halfway open—the incredible chill of the Icelandic spring comes rushing in my face like some sort of an odorless gas that makes you shiver to the bone—but I can’t see anyone out there. I step on the famous golden threshold and look about. Someone grabs my arm and I can feel the barrel of a gun piercing my left side. My brain may have been washed in the river of Jordan, but my nervous system is still that of a soldier. I sense a gun when I sense it.
    It’s Niko.
    Of all the guys in the world, it’s fucking Niko.
    My heart instantly skips a beat before the needle lands on Britney’s “Toxic.” In one instant my new life is blown away by the old one.
    “Nice to see you,” he says in Croatian, with the customary grin, and asks me to join him for a ride, pointing to a black Audi idling out on the street. “I think we have to talk.”
    It’s nice to hear my mother’s tongue again.
    I tell him I need to get my shoes. Clearly, he wasn’t prepared for this one, and is thrown off guard as he watches me turn back inside the house.
    The shoes are behind the door. I should probably call on Olie to jump into the kitchen for a sharp knife or ask Torture to roll out his fiery tongue. But I only bow over my thick-soled sneakers, feeling Niko’s sharp gaze stab me in the back, listening to the final chords of Dado’s song echo from the entrails of the house followed by the crowd’s crazy applause. I put on my shoes and straighten up. When I reach for my black leather jacket, Niko shakes his head.
    “But it’s fucking cold,” I say.
    “We won’t be long.”
    Gunnhildur shouts something from the living room and I hesitate a moment, looking my old friend in the eye, before closing the door behind me.
    Once we’re outside, he quickly searches me, looking for an automatic rifle in my armpits, in my pockets, or in my crotch. I’m wearing a thin black sweater over a white T-shirt and some cool jeans that Gun helped me pick out. As I get inside the car, I think I notice some movement in the living room window of my in-laws. As if someone had seen us. I shouldn’t worry, really. The holy men will have their SWAT team of angels come to my rescue.
    So for the second year in a row I’m prevented from watching all of Eurovision. I was really looking forward to the Serbian entry. Rumor had it they were entering a lesbian dwarf, who looks like Milošević’s illegitimate daughter, praying for love, peace, a piece of our land, or whatever.
    Niko looks the same. His goatee has turned a bit gray though, and his skin shows signs of the cold. But the long nose and the hard black eyeballs are there—this gaze of his that clearly says “Don’t fucking fuck with me! ” He throws himself into the seat beside me and the driver darts off. The car smells of leather and luxury. It looks to be about two hours old.
    I recognize the driver. It’s the New York Neck-backer. Good old Radovan. Shaved to the skull. He’s even wearing the same fucking sunglasses he wore my last day in America.
    So it’s reunion time. Ponovni susret. We must be heading for a fancy restaurant where Don Dikan waits at the end of the table, surrounded by Gun lookalikes and sucking on the fat Havana cigar he’s been trying to light for the past thirty years.
    Niko has his eyes on me, keeping his gun LPP, though always pointed at me. It’s his Desert Eagle, a pitch-black semi-automatic made in Israel. I remember when he first got it. He blushed like a boy. He just had to have one after he saw the first Matrix movie. Typical Niko. His black eyeballs resemble the opening of the barrel. Three black holes stare at me. “Don’t fucking fuck with me!” So this is how my victims must have felt when they were faced with the loaded gun and the willing finger. Except I have God on my side. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good (Proverbs 15:3).
    Radovan seems to have spent a week in Reykjavik. He drives like a local already, with great confidence and great speed. The streets are deserted. Everybody’s watching the Serbian lesbian.
    “So you waited for the right moment?” I ask.
    “We’ve been waiting for this moment,” Niko says.
    “Me too,” I say. “It took you longer than I thought.”
    “You maybe thought you’d escaped us, ‘Tomaš Leivur’?”
    I must admire his research.
    “Who’s your man? Truster?”
    “Truster? Who’s that?”
    “Never mind. What’s happening in