The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

New York?”
    “You messed up, Toxic.”
    Radovan drives the empty road. He seems to be heading for the airport. They’re bringing me back. The only question is whether I’ll be traveling business or cargo.
    “What happened?” I ask.
    No answer. I try again:
    “How did I mess up? I followed orders. I only did what Dikan asked me to do.”
    “You messed up, Toxic. Ivo is dead. Zoran is dead. Branko Brown is dead. And Branko Karlovać as well.”
    “And Dikan?”
    “Boss is OK.”
    Radovan breaks in, smiling from the driver’s seat, talking into the rearview mirror:
    “Dikan told me to kiss you. When you’re dead! Ha ha.”
    “Shut up and drive!” Niko shouts.
    So cargo it’ll be. My final fifteen minutes have started ticking. Heart switches from Britney pop to funeral fugue. The black Audi takes us past the long aluminum factory, on the outskirts of town. The soft radio delivers Louis Armstrong, blowing his trumpet “Cheek to Cheek” and telling us he’s in heaven.
    “Who killed them? The Feds?” I ask, casually bringing my left foot behind my right.
    Being able to speak my language again this close to the end is like a former chain-smoker being offered one last cig before the big event. Croatian words exit my mouth like lustful smoke rings. Actually, seeing Niko’s face again, makes me want to smoke.
    “You killed them, Toxic.”
    I killed them. The dumpsite hit must have triggered a series of TJs. But the Feds don’t kill people. At least not until they’ve heard their life story through the dirty underwear placed over their heads, encouraged by the crazy police dog barking at their naked genitals. I don’t get it. I was just a hitman. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. And now I’m to blame? I focus on simpler things. I have to keep talking.
    “You kill Munita?” I ask my old friend and former roommate, while discretely pushing the tip of my left shoe against the heel of my right.
    “Munita?” Niko repeats with a smile and a short nasal blow.
    “She had a great body,” Radovan says. “But an ugly head.”
    Niko laughs. Niko laughs and this is the right moment. I push the bottom of my right heel with my left toe, quite hard, until the sole breaks loose from the heel: I manage to “open” the shoe at the back, and by raising the foot, and shaking it a bit, the small gun gently rolls out from the back of my shoe. It’s on the floor now. I step on it with my left leg. I’ve done this a hundred times. Been practicing hard all winter. Niko doesn’t notice a thing. He’s still laughing.
    “Ugly head,” the meatloaf repeats.
    He then turns off the main road and heads down a dirt road in the direction of the mountains. The snowdrifts are almost gone. The moss on the lava is green. The nothingness around us is absolute. No trees, no birds, no nothing. Just some scruffy rocks and splashes of moss here and there. This lunar landscape is pretty far from the white cliffs, decorated with cypresses and olive trees, that I know from the hills around Split. I’ve started to appreciate the ice cold emptiness now, but I have to admit that I still miss my Adriatic spring. Suddenly I start humming our Lijepa na š a , the national anthem of Croatia:
    “Drava, Sava, keep on flowing,
    Danube, you know where you’re going.”
    Niko pricks up his ears, but he can’t make out the song, nor the words. I hum a little louder. My eyes get warm. Every time you hear this song, some twenty thousand Croats appear in front of your eyes, all dressed in the red-and-white national jersey, roaring in the stands and crying their lungs out before our last game in France ’98.
    “Tell the sea and tell the sand
    That a Croat loves his fatherland.”
    “SHUT UP!” Niko shouts. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
    “OK,” I say. “Can I have a cigarette before you kill me?”
    “You started smoking again?” Niko asks.
    “Don’t worry. It won’t kill me.”
    He looks at me as if he wants to shoot me immediately. He probably would, if the Audi were more than two hours old.

CHAPTER 34
BOK
    05.12.2007
    Radovan parks the car in a rough parking area next to the road and the silence of the land takes over. I try to keep my cool as Niko gets out of the car, leaving the door open. He makes some quick modern dance moves, showing the surroundings to his great gun. Yeah, man. You better watch out for those White Hats. I casually bend forward and manage to pick the small gun up from the floor, without the driver noticing. I mean