The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning by Helgason Hallgrímur Page A

you could open the door the other day?”
    She’s a bit drunk. Her beauty is slightly out of focus. Only now she notices the neatness.
    “What? Was Mom here as well?”
    After some more unanswered questions, she settles for a cigarette and lets herself fall down on the sofa.
    “Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing? Did you really kill the priest? At the airport? Why?”
    There is a touch of admiration in her voice. A hint of a smile on her delicious lips. I tell her my life story minus the sixty-seven homicides, my two years with Munita and my night with Andro. She smokes and listens and looks for an ashtray.
    “Where did you put all the ashtrays?” she asks.
    “There is one right there, in front of you.”
    Apparently she has never seen an empty ashtray before. The Icelandic slut. She smells like a New Jersey Devils’ banner that’s been hanging in the dim corner of a seedy Newark lounge for the past twenty years. I really want to vacuum her with my nose.
    “Oh, thanks,” she says and puts the ashtray to use.
    “You should stop smoking. It can kill you,” I say.
    “Are you telling me about killing?” she says with an offended smile.
    “Yeah. Why not?”
    “You just killed a priest didn’t you? Plus you’re wanted for another murder.”
    I see. They’ve made the connection between the dead man in the airport and the dead man in the dumpsite. Good job.
    “You think the killer doesn’t care about life? You think he doesn’t care about health or keeping a clean house?” I say and point to the tidy room.
    “Very nice,” she says.
    “The killer is a human being like everyone else. He has his rights.”
    “Right. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s OK.”
    “So you’re the…the sensitive type of a killer, then?”
    “I don’t know. I just hate it when people discriminate against me, only because I…kill people.”
    Oops. Shouldn’t have said that. She stops in mid-smoke.
    “What do you mean? You’ve killed more people?”
    I’m in trouble. Never show your gun on a first date. But she already knows I killed two guys, plus this is not a date, right? I’m here looking for her help. I’m in trouble.
    “Some people just have to die,” is my solution.
    “And my father’s friend had to die?”
    “Well. He had to be killed. Or else I would be in jail right now, being raped in the shower every morning by black Hulks with limp hose-dicks.”
    She looks surprised by my vocabulary. I am as well.
    “But what do you mean by: Some people have to die?” she asks.
    “Just, you know. There are people who deserve to die.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they’re evil. Evil people who do evil things. People who do the wrong thing. Or refuse to do the right thing. Then they have to be taken away.”
    “Wow. You speak like my dad’s friend, Þórður.”
    “Torture?”
    “You call him that? Ha ha. Fits him well. Are you religious, or…?”
    “I’m Catholic.”
    “OK. How can I be sure you’re not some crazy TV preacher who was Father Friendly’s competitor and wanted him dead?”
    “Because I’m not.”
    “OK. But you say you’re a Catholic?”
    “Yeah, but I’m a Croatian Catholic. There’s nothing religious about that. It only means you go to church two times in your life. When you marry and when you die.”
    “That’s nice. And how often have you been? Once?”
    I have to smile at this one.
    “No.”
    She hesitates for a second before extinguishing her cigarette in the ashtray. Then she says:
    “Who are you then? Just another loser murderer who shot an FBI agent by some mistake and had to flee the fucking States?”
    Well. Fuck her.
    “I’m not a ‘loser murderer,’ I’m a….”
    “Yeah? What?”
    This is going too far.
    “I’m a…professional.”
    “A professional?”
    “Yep. I’m a professional killer. I’ve killed over one hundred people.”
    This is just great. I’m in bed with her by now.
    “Come on. ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE?!”
    I guess the exact number would be