Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (13 page)

A
nd then there was the bodyguard issue.

Although the receptionist had spent his entire adult life surrounded by hooligans big and small, he felt inadequate when it came to contacts in the underworld. Because, after all, that was probably the best place to find their security team. The sort of people who would lash out if the count, the countess, or the likes of them popped up. Not the sort of people who would ask questions first or try to talk sense into them.

One person who had spent plenty of time inside was, of course, Pastor Anders. The receptionist asked him to think about it, and the pastor thought until his brain creaked. Unfortunately, his brain creaked rather early on so he, too, failed to come up with a good security solution. On the other hand, he provided the interesting reflection that an awful lot of his fellow prison buddies had experience working as bouncers in bars.

“How about that,” said the receptionist. “Do you know any of their names?”

“Yes . . . Holmlund,” Pastor Anders mused. “And Moose . . .”

“Moose?”

“Well, people call him Moose. His real name is different.”

“I had a feeling that might be the case. Can we give Moose a jingle?”

“Nope. He's in. For a long time. Homicide.”

“What about Holmlund?”

“He's the one Moose offed.”

The receptionist's mood soon improved: Pastor Anders was able to identify the two or three gyms in Greater Stockholm that were most commonly frequented by customers of the bouncer/ex-con variety. The receptionist called Taxi Torsten (to avoid driving around in a camper) and went from gym to gym on the hunt for an entry point to the force in question.

He didn't find what he was looking for at the first or the second. After all, he couldn't walk up to just anyone and ask if he had been a bouncer and also spent time inside. By the time he got to the third gym, he was starting to despair. In contrast to the first two, it boasted a man here and there who looked sufficiently bouncer-like, and who might well have stood outside a bar, freezing his ass off. But, of course, it was impossible to tell who might have been locked up for something extremely violent and wouldn't hesitate to act in an acute situation.

Taxi Torsten had followed him into the third gym without being asked; it was so damn boring to wait in the car.

He had gotten a rough insight into the problem during the drive, so he made himself useful. He walked up to the youngster at the register, introduced himself as Taxi Torsten, and said, “Who would you say we shouldn't start something with, out of all your guests here today?”

The youngster looked at Taxi Torsten. “Taxi Torsten?” he said, instead of answering the question.

“Yes, that's me. But who should we definitely not start something with?”

“Are you here to start something?” said the youngster.

“No, far from it! That's why we want to know who we absolutely should not provoke, so that our visit doesn't go wrong.”

The youngster appeared to want to escape from both conversation and locale. He didn't know what to say or do, but at last he
pointed out a tall and heavily tattooed man in a preacher curl machine across the room. “He's called Jerry the Knife. I don't know why and I want it to stay that way. But I have noticed that everyone else is afraid of him.”

“Excellent!” said the receptionist. “Jerry the Knife, you say? Great name!” The receptionist thanked him for his help and indicated to Taxi Torsten that he had conducted himself admirably but should go now and wait at the entrance. This was something for Per Persson and Jerry the Knife to deal with privately.

The receptionist waited until Jerry the Knife took a break from working his biceps. “I understand you're Jerry the Knife?”

Jerry the Knife looked cautiously but not angrily at Per Persson. “I'm Jerry No Knife at the moment,” he said. “But things could still go poorly for you, depending on what you want from me.”

“Super!” said the receptionist. “My name is Per Persson and I represent a gentleman called Hitman Anders. Perhaps you've heard of him.”

Jerry the Knife was having a difficult time maintaining his generally surly and uninterested expression, because this conversation was becoming both unusual and exciting. Where might it lead?

“Hitman Anders, that guy who got Jesus . . . and a bunch of enemies to boot,” Jerry the Knife reflected.

“I hope you're not one of them . . . ?” said the receptionist.

No, Jerry the Knife had no bone to pick with Hitman Anders. They had never met, never been in the same prison at the same time. But it stood to reason that there were other people after him. Not least that count and his crazy old lady.

Yes, that was just it. Hitman Anders was embarking on a new career as the preacher of his own church. That sort of thing required a certain level of investment, and it would be too bad if he suddenly had to meet his Maker much earlier than anyone had budgeted for. That was why Per Persson was currently troubling Mr. Jerry, knife or no. In short, might Mr. Jerry consider taking on the mission of
keeping Hitman Anders alive for as long as possible? And while he was at it, he might do the same for Per Persson and a priest named Johanna Kjellander. “A delightful woman, incidentally.”

Jerry the Knife noted that Per Persson's relationship to Hitman Anders was of a businesslike nature and appeared to be sound. He himself was employed as a doorman at a relatively dull spot in the city and would be happy to trade it in for a new job. He identified his role in the situation as “no coward”; he could probably stare down the count in his sleep. What did Per Persson have in mind for terms of employment?

Per Persson had not completely thought through the issue of bodyguards. He had approached the task of finding an “in” to the world where bodyguards could be sourced with a certain amount of desperation. And now, partly thanks to Taxi Torsten of all people, he was standing across from Jerry the Knife—about whom he knew no more than that he had a decent vocabulary and the ability to express himself, and that he seemed impressively calm as he looked forward to protecting Hitman Anders from the count and the countess, the
hoi
and the
polloi
.

Time was of the essence. Without consulting his dear priest, he decided that Jerry the Knife was just the man they were looking for.

“I'm offering you a job as head of the security team you will create and have ready to go as soon as possible. Your recruits will be paid handsomely, and you'll get double that. If you accept the offer, my last question is, when can you start?”

“Not right away,” said Jerry the Knife. “I have to shower first.”

N
ow they had permission to start a faith community, they had a church (paving of the cemetery was under way), they had a pastor and a reserve pastor, and they had a security team under construction. They also had an immediate threat, primarily thanks to the count and countess. Beyond that, the priest had misgivings; they still didn't have a clear, alternative religious message.

She would have liked very much to take a step, or several steps, back from the teachings of evangelism. To mix the blood of Jesus with fresh blood from somewhere else. Like Muhammad, for example. The priest knew her stuff. His real name was al-Amin—the trustworthy. And he was called Mustafa—the chosen one. There was something nice about the thought of a prophet of God, rather than the idea that God himself got Mary pregnant while poor Joseph stood by and watched.

But Jesus and Muhammad on either side of Hitman Anders—no, that would never work. It was as hopeless as another of the priest's ideas: running God and Jesus parallel with Scientology. The latter involved a method of spiritual rehabilitation to fix nearly everything, and that was the sort of plan a person could make good money on.
For one thousand kronor we will liberate your thoughts. For five thousand we will think for you.
Or something along those lines.

It was just that the Scientologists drove a hard line about aliens
and other weird stuff. Even if Jesus could, in some respects, be seen as an alien, these were two faiths that would be difficult to adapt to one another. The most difficult part might be the age of the Earth: six thousand years, according to the Bible; at least four billion, according to Scientology. Even if they met halfway, the Biblical genealogies would have to be extended by two billion years, and who had time to do that?

In truth, she had known it all along: she was stuck with the Bible that Hitman Anders had embraced and now guarded so tenderly. Since the Church of Anders was primarily, secondarily, and tertiarily a commercial enterprise, the pastor decided to grin and bear it. After all, Christianity continued to be fairly widespread in Sweden. It wouldn't be a great leap for those who wanted to upgrade to the Church of Anders. The distinguishing feature of the Church would be that they had a superstar in the pulpit (as long as they could keep him alive), and that the pastor made sure to pan every grain of gold out of the Bible so that he could implement them properly.

Johanna Kjellander's personal favorite was the one Matthew had made up about the Good Samaritan. It was a story with strains of the Acts' “more blessed to give . . .” and so forth, but with the humorous twist that Matthew, after his own death, became a saint within the Roman Catholic Church and had, ever since, been working as the patron saint of tax collectors and customs officials.

There was a lot to choose from in Proverbs, too. That things go poorly for he who is stingy, that he who gives his money to Pastor Anders instead will flourish like green leaves and a number of other things. Of course it didn't literally say “Pastor Anders,” but it would be a simple matter to twist that around. But it was too bad that Proverbs was in the Old Testament. It meant she would have to bring that whole book into the package.

The priest had finished working on her plan. The Church of Anders would be a stronghold of generosity, with Jesus as a hostage and God
the Father as an underlying threat for the very stingiest members of the congregation.

According to the receptionist's calculations, five percent of the proceeds should go to Hitman Anders, five percent to the security team, five percent to general expenses, and five percent to the needy. That left just eighty percent for the priest and the receptionist, but they would have to settle for it. If they let greed get its claws into them, their venture might end poorly. Furthermore, of course, the hitman's share would be freed up in the instant he took a bullet between the eyes.

And, as Scripture so consolingly said, a generous person will be enriched.

* * *

As weeks went by, the interest in Sweden's, and perhaps Europe's, most interesting person died away. Initially, at least 150,000 kronor poured in each day via Facebook and the bank deposit account the receptionist had so hastily set up. But that amount was soon halved, and halved again a few days later. People forgot so damn fast.

Before all the pieces were in place, the number of donations to the glorified hitman had sunk to nearly zero. This made the receptionist, in charge of the budget, nervous. What if no one came, what if the priest and the receptionist had to sit there all by themselves and place their last few coins in the collection box while the hitman preached God knew what?

The priest was more relaxed. She smiled at her receptionist and said that faith could move mountains this way and that in the Bible, and that now was not the time to lose their own. She was about to start a week-long course in preaching methods with the pastor. Meanwhile, it would be great if the receptionist made sure that Jerry
the Knife and his recruits polished their procedures so that her work would not suddenly be in vain.

Speaking of which, Jerry the Knife had brought up a complaint. He wasn't happy that the church had no second way of egress in the event that the pastor was attacked as he stood in the pulpit. Any old burglar knew that you needed at least two escape routes in case of unexpected company. During a job. As a thief, that is. Or, in this case, as a pastor.

“Basically, Jerry's argument involves getting a tradesman to knock a hole in the wall to the sacristy. I said I'd take it up with you first, but . . . well, it's a holy room in a holy building, so I'm not sure how . . .”

“I'm sure a holy hole in the wall will fit in just fine,” said the priest. “A sacristy with an emergency exit. The fire marshal would love us if he knew about it.”

* * *

The priest grilled Hitman Anders endlessly for six days in a row.

“I think he's ready now,” she said on the seventh. “As ready as he'll ever be . . .”

“And the security team is on the ball,” the receptionist replied. “Jerry the Knife put together a great gang. I hardly dare to walk into the church without showing ID.”

Speaking of which, Per Persson reiterated his fear that their generous hitman was about to sink into oblivion just as they were finally prepared to act.

“But there is something we can do about that,” said the priest, looking all Mona Lisa–like again.

She'd had an idea.

Wrong. She'd had two ideas.

The receptionist smiled back without knowing what she had up
her sleeve. At this point, he had the greatest faith imaginable in her creative abilities. He felt like an Excel spreadsheet in comparison.

“You're much more than that, my darling,” said the priest, with more sincerity in her voice than she'd thought she had in her.

The receptionist was so inspired by her loving words that he found himself suggesting a little hanky-panky out of sheer momentum.

“But where?” the priest wondered, without a note of hesitation.

Right, dammit. They couldn't live in a camper with Hitman Anders for the rest of their lives. They still had to figure out the housing situation. For hitmen and good honest people.

“Behind the organ?” he suggested.