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Hallgrimur Helgason

THE HITMAN’S GUIDE TO HOUSECLEANING

for Barbara Taylor

^{CHAPTER 1}

TOXIC

^{05. 15. 2006}

My mother named me Tomislav, and my father was a Bokšić. After my first week in the US, I’d become Tom Boksic. Which then led to Toxic.

The thing I am today.

I often wonder if it was me who poisoned my name or the name that poisoned me. Either way, I bring danger. At least, that’s what Munita says. My darling explosive, she’s addicted to danger. Munita was living in Peru until her family got killed in a terrorist bombing. Then she moved to New York and found a job on Wall Street. It so happened that her first day of work was 9/11. On our first trip to Croatia together, she witnessed two killings. I have to admit that one of them was by my own hand, but the other one was totally accidental. I thought it was quite a romantic scene, actually. We were having dinner in Mirko’s restaurant when the guy sitting at the table next to us got a bullet through his brain. Some of his blood splattered into Munita’s glass of wine. I didn’t tell her. She was having red anyway.

What makes my Munita Bonita perfect for me is the fact that her family is dead. There is no mother in-law, no brother in-law, no Thanksgiving dinners, kids’ birthday parties, or weddings to attend, which would mean standing unprotected out on some stupid lawn, in the screaming sunshine, with fifty people at your back.

Yes, Munita Rosales is drawn to men of the gun.

Before me she was dating some Talian guy from Long Island. (For us “Italian” became “Talian” after Niko accidentally shot the “I” off a sign above one of their restaurants. ) His CV was much shorter than mine, but I guess he could still be called a colleague. I’m what they call in our language a plačeni ubojica. In New York they call it a contract killer, or a hitman. Ever since I arrived in New York six years ago, I’ve been keeping the funeral homes busy. I even thought about making a deal with one of them and told Dikan he should secretly buy one. That way we could make more money off our dead victims. Hit and run to the bank.

Let me tell you about my job. During the week I work as a waiter in the Zagreb Samovar, our beautiful restaurant on East 21st Street. The word “waiter” fits perfectly well since most of my time is spent waiting for the next job, which can be quite boring. The Balkan animal, which is my soul, is always hungry for prey. I get restless if three months go by without firing a gun. My slowest year was 2002: only two hits and one miss. I still regret that one. In this business, missing the target can be deadly. You don’t want some wounded psycho out there shopping around for your goodbye bullet. People tend to get a bit upset if they notice you’re trying to kill them. But let me assure you, my miss of 2002 became my first hit of 2003. Nowadays, I never waste a bullet.