Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (8 page)

F
ourteen point four million kronor later, the receptionist and the priest each packed a large, newly purchased suitcase, one yellow and one red, for their scheduled and permanent departure that afternoon.

The market had responded enthusiastically to the firm's new, more violent offerings. The priest and the receptionist were surprised by how many people wanted to pay to have those around them cleared out of the way. The last, just a few days earlier, had been a feeble man who told them about a neighbor who had built a chicken run fourteen feet from the property line, violating the stipulated fifteen feet. And when the feeble man pointed this out, the neighbor had made faces at the feeble man's wife. The feeble man was far too feeble to be capable of pounding justice into his neighbor, and if someone did it for him the neighbor would go for the feeble man as soon as he recovered. So the neighbor had to be cleared out of the way once and for all.

“For the sake of a chicken run?” said the receptionist. “Why don't you complain to the city? Rules are rules, aren't they?”

“Yes, but it turns out that chicken wire doesn't count as a fence, so technically he was in the right.”

“And for that he has to die?”

“He made faces at my wife,” the feeble man clarified.

The priest could tell that the receptionist was about to forget that
the neighbor with the chicken wire would be spared, and the only thing that would happen if they made a deal was that the feeble man would find himself with feeble finances as well. So she broke in and changed the subject: “How did you hear about Hitman Anders and his available services?”

“Well, first there were a bunch of articles in the newspapers, and I made a mental note of it because this isn't the first time he's acted out, my neighbor. And when the situation became acute, all I had to do was ask how to get at . . . well, slightly shady places . . .”

The story sounded plausible. The priest informed him that justice, in this case, would cost eight hundred thousand kronor.

The feeble man nodded, pleased. That was all his life savings, but it was worth it. “You'll have the money on Wednesday. Will that do?”

Yes, it would. Their departure had been planned for the Thursday that had now arrived. All the priest and the receptionist knew about their joint future was that it was fully financed, that it was about to start—very soon, today—and that it did not include any recently saved former hitmen.

“Are you going somewhere?” Hitman Anders asked, on his way out to fill his belly with some of Christ's body and (above all) blood. Incidentally, he almost always went all the way into the capital city's most central neighborhoods these days, changing pubs as often as was necessary. Out in the suburbs there was no longer anyone to spread the Word to, not without getting abuse in return. People in his home district had learned that the former hitman was now harmless, so when he insisted on reading aloud from Holy Scripture while Arsenal was playing Manchester United on TV they dared to tell him to get lost.

The suitcases were visible through the door from the other side of the reception desk, but luckily the same was not true of the piles of money they were about to be filled with.

“Was there anything else?” asked the receptionist, who did not consider himself duty bound to report to the striking hitman. Not
to mention that, by now, there were only a few more hours until he would never have to see him again.

“No, that's all. Go in peace,” said Hitman Anders, making up his mind to try one of the neighborhood pubs in Södermalm. That area was overflowing with beer, but the hitman was sure he could find himself a glass of plonk instead.

He took a seat at Soldaten Å vejk on Östgötagatan and ordered two glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon. The waitress soon arrived with a tray and placed one glass before Hitman Anders, who drained it as she was wondering where to put the other. The hitman exchanged his first glass for the second and ordered glasses three and four. “As long as you're here, miss.”

The blood of Jesus mixed with that of Hitman Anders, granting him a Christ-like tranquility. He looked around the place and made eye contact with a stranger. Wait . . . There was something familiar about him. A man in his forties, with a pint in his hand. Well now, if it wasn't one of the guys from his most recent bid in prison—his
last
bid! They had been in the same support group . . . Wasn't he the guy who never stopped talking? Gustavsson or Olofsson or something?

“Hitman Anders! Nice to see you,” said Gustavsson or Olofsson.

“Same to you, same to you! Gustavsson, isn't it?”

“Olofsson. Can I sit down?”

Of course he could, no matter what his name was, because Hitman Anders had immediately identified him as a potential convert. “I walk with Jesus now” was his friendly opening.

The reaction was not what he had expected. Olofsson started laughing, and when Hitman Anders continued to be earnest, he laughed even harder. “Well, hello to you, too!” he said at last. He took a big gulp of beer.

Hitman Anders was just about to ask what was so funny when Olofsson lowered his voice and said, “I know you're going to off Ox.”

“Huh?”

“Don't worry, I won't say anything. My own brother is the one who ordered the hit. It'll be terrific to be rid of him. What a fucking swine! You remember what he did to my sister?”

Ox was a big, stupid gangster among many others, in and out of prison, so huge that he thought he had the right to beat up anyone who wouldn't do his bidding. He had once attacked his own girl in accordance with the same logic. She, in turn, was not exactly one of God's greatest gifts to the world: she was a home care worker and spent a lot of her time making copies of the keys to old people's homes to give to her brothers. They would wait for a bit, then go over and empty the house in question of any valuables. If the old people were at home, they took the opportunity to scare the shit out of them.

But Ox had been of the opinion that the keys should go to him, and for this reason he beat first his girlfriend, then one of her brothers to a pulp. At that very moment, the other brother was sitting across from Hitman Anders at a Stockholm pub and thanking him for . . . ?

“What do you mean, off Ox? I'm not going to off anyone. I just told you, I walk with Jesus.”

“With who?”

“Jesus, for Christ's sake. I'm saved.”

Olofsson looked at Hitman Anders. “Then what about my brother's eight hundred thousand? You already have the money.”

Hitman Anders asked Olofsson to calm down. He who walks with Jesus does not contract to kill his neighbor on the side, and that was that. Olofsson would have to look for his brother's eight hundred thousand somewhere else.

Somewhere other than in the pocket where the money had evidently ended up? Olofsson was no coward. He stood up and took a step toward the pig who was about to cheat his brother out of almost a million kronor.
And wasn't that bastard drinking wine to boot?

One second later, Olofsson was sprawled on the floor. Recently saved or not, Hitman Anders couldn't turn the other cheek. Or even
the first. Instead, he fended off Olofsson's attack with his left arm (or was it his right?) and knocked him out with a straight right (or maybe left). This turning-cheeks thing was something he'd have to work on in the future.

The waitress came back with two more glasses of wine, caught sight of Olofsson, and inquired as to what had happened. Hitman Anders explained that his friend had had a little too much, but he was sure to come around very soon, and the last thing he'd done before he'd dropped off was promise to pay for both of them.

Then he knocked back one of the glasses from the waitress's tray and said that the guy asleep on the floor would probably want the other when he woke up. Hitman Anders stepped over Olofsson, thanked the waitress, and took off. He was on his way to a specific hotel in the southern reaches of Greater Stockholm where, at that very moment, suitcases were being packed, one red and one yellow, for what one might assume would be a departure later that day.

“With how much money?” Hitman Anders mumbled to himself.

He was, to be sure, a slow thinker and then some. And no one could say that he had much in the way of a gift for words.

But he wasn't stupid.

O
ne hour more and they would never have had to see that foolish hitman ever again. But at the pub Hitman Anders had met the wrong person and drawn the right conclusion. And that was why he was now standing in the center of the room, next to the yellow suitcase and the red one, opening them and finding bills everywhere.

“Well?” was what he said.

“Fourteen point four million,” said the receptionist, in a resigned tone.

The priest tried to save her life and the situation: “Four point eight million of it, of course, belongs to you. You can spread it around however you like: the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and wherever else seems right. It's important to us that we don't leave you empty-handed. A third of it is for you. Definitely!”

“For me?” said Hitman Anders.

“For me” was all his brain could handle in that moment. It had been so much simpler before, when he hadn't had to think so much. All he would have had to do was:

        
1. beat the priest and the receptionist to a pulp

        
2. take the suitcases full of money

        
3. leave.

But these days it was more blessed to give than to receive; it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who was rich to enter the kingdom of God. And you weren't supposed to covet either one thing or the next.

Although . . . no, there were still limits. And he heard Jesus speak to him. “Get rid of these two fakers, these Pharisees who have been using you for so long. Take all their money and start afresh somewhere else.”

Those were Jesus's exact words, and Hitman Anders conveyed them to the priest and the receptionist.

At that point, the receptionist began seriously to despair; he felt that it would soon be time to get down on his knees and beg for his life. Meanwhile, the priest was mostly just curious.

“Did Jesus really speak to you? Just think, in all my years as an ambassador between Heaven and Earth, he never said a word.”

“You don't think that might be because you're a fraud?” said Hitman Anders.

“I suppose that could be it.” The priest nodded. “If I survive the next few minutes, I'll try to check with him. Just one quick question before you start getting rid of us.”

“Yes?”

“What does Jesus say you should do after that?”

“Take the money and go, as I told you.”

“Yes, of course that's right. But more specifically? Practically everyone in this country knows who you are. You realize that, don't you? You'll be recognized everywhere. And you have almost every half- and full-blown criminal in the area after you. Did you tell Jesus about that?”

Hitman Anders was silent. And then he was silent a little longer.

The priest assumed he was trying to make contact with Jesus again, and perhaps was not receiving a response. If so, she said, Hitman Anders should not take it personally: maybe something had just come up for Jesus. He had so much to do: fill empty nets with fish,
bring widows' dead sons back to life, drive demons out of men who couldn't speak . . . There was proof to be found in chapter five of Luke and chapter nine of Matthew if Hitman Anders didn't believe her.

The receptionist squirmed. Was this really the best time to provoke him?

But Hitman Anders didn't feel provoked. She was right! Jesus must have his hands full all the time. He would have to figure this out on his own. Or ask someone else for advice. Like, for example, the goddamned priest. “Do you have any suggestions?” he asked sullenly.

“Are you asking me or Jesus?” wondered the priest, and was met with an angry look from the receptionist:
Don't go too far!

“I'm asking you, for Christ's sake,” said Hitman Anders.

Ten minutes later, the priest had managed to get the story of what had happened at Soldaten Å vejk out of him: about how the valiant hitman had laid a threatening Olofsson brother out cold (“first a left block and then a straight right, and that was that”), and about the conclusion the hitman had drawn from the conversation that had preceded the knockout—that is, that the priest and the receptionist were in the process of cheating the pants off their business partner.

“Former business partner,” the receptionist attempted. “This all started when you went on strike.”

“I found Jesus! Is that so goddamn hard to understand? And just for that, you fucked me over!”

The priest broke in to put a stop to the fight they didn't have time for. She agreed with the hitman's description of the state of affairs, even if he might have chosen a different expression. But now it was time to look to the future and act quickly, since there was no way of knowing when Hitman Anders's friend from the pub would choose to get up off the floor, gather up his fury and take off. Probably in a beeline to his brother to inform him of this and that.

“A little while ago you asked if I had any suggestions of how we could move forward. The answer is yes!”

The best plan was for them to leave together. The priest and the
receptionist's task would be to protect Hitman Anders from discovery, with all that that implied. They would divide up the money in the suitcases in a brotherly and sisterly fashion; after all, there was a little over five million each if they included the priest and the receptionist's more honestly saved money (not much more honestly, but a little).

They weren't quite sure where they would go, but the receptionist had visited Hitman Anders's old acquaintance the count the day before and purchased a small camper; there was room for all three of them to live in it for a limited amount of time, even though it was originally meant for just two.

“A camper van?” Hitman Anders said. “What did you pay for it?”

“Not much,” the receptionist confessed.

Per Persson had driven away in the vehicle with the promise that Hitman Anders would call in the following Friday to pay for it and also give details of the execution of the double murder the count had ordered.

“The double murder the count ordered?”

“Yes, it's ordered and paid for, but not committed. One of the count's main competitors in car dealing, and ditto for the countess, but in the pill-pushing trade. I imagine they want fewer dogs in the race, and they thought it was worth one point six million.”

“One point six . . . which is now in this yellow suitcase?”

“Yes, or the red one.”

“And the count and countess won't be getting their murders?”

“Not unless Jesus insists you return to work, and we have no reason to hope he will. They will, however, have had a camper stolen from them too. There's a chance the count and countess will soon be the clients who are angriest with us, in company with a number of other angry clients. So perhaps we ought to take off, on our journey to an unknown destination.”

At that moment, it was not easy to be named Johan Andersson. And nothing was made easier by the fact that he was better known as Hitman Anders, that he was recently saved—and that his
only friends in the world seemed to be the two sincere enemies who suddenly wanted to move into a camper with him instead of being beaten to death.

Jesus continued to remain about as talkative as the Wailing Wall, while the priest and the receptionist chattered on. Despite everything, they seemed to have come up with the only reasonable solution he could think of.

“Can I tempt you with a half-bottle of the blood of Jesus for the road?” the receptionist tried.

Hitman Anders made up his mind. “Yes, you may. Or a whole bottle on a day like this. Come on, let's go.”