**Hitman ethics: A Skaldian hypothetical **
Not enough rape.
Don’t kill the husband - maybe the cops will think he did it because of the affair.
The wife violated the contract when she threatened to go to the police. I would have killed her husband for half off, but she blew the chance.
Regards,
Shodan
You went on a job without knowing what the target looked like?
You are a terrible hitman.
And no lesbians.
Honestly, I don’t see how this question could be answered by a normal person. “Imagine you have no ethical issue with murdering people”. I don’t know how to do that. I mean, I can say the words, but the person I’m describing is so far from being me that I can’t really predict what he’ll do.
The OP has a passing similarity to a short story by Archer in which a man hires a hitman to kill his lover’s husband. He duly kills the husband but the woman comes home unexpectedly so he kills her too.
There is a Lawrence Block novel featuring a hit-man named Keller. He is hired to kill the wife and her lover (IIRC) but it turns out the husband and wife have reunited and are celebrating. Keller kills the husband (client) and frames the wife for his death.
Or something along those lines.
The wife voided the contract when she threatened to go to the police so there is no obligation to complete the task.
Besides, the affair will probably come out in the investigation and the husband is the perfect fall guy.
Also, You’re going to need to retake Hitman 101: Know Your Target, before accepting any more work.
I’m with markn+. My actual ethics don’t allow me to be a hitman. If I were a hitman, I would have to have different ethics. What specific different ethics? I don’t know; I can think of multiple possibilities, and since none of them matches the ethics I actually have, I don’t know how to favor one over another.
If, say, I were playing a role-playing game, I could make the decision, but that’d be because I had already decided what motivated my character, and I’d remain true to what I’d already decided. But I might play different characters differently. And, heck, even most of my RPG characters wouldn’t be cool with murder for hire, either.
It’s also the plot to another short story:
“No Comebacks” by Frederick Forsyth
Killing the wrong person is only a problem if you’re opposed to killing people in general. For a hitman, killing the wrong target is just an annoyance.
This conflicts with the OP, which is talking about professionalism.
It’s simply sloppy work as a journeyman hitham to have not gotten this information. An apprentice could be excused because people get nervous and all, but once you’re certified then you really need to uphold the standards of professionalism.
This is why there is a checklist, for chrissakes. Kids these days.
It would seem to me that if I accept the hypothetical, I must have no professional standards in the first place to have so blatantly not known my target (getting the wrong target might be excusable under certain circumstances, but not even knowing one didn’t get the real target? Inexcusable for someone with professional standards!) so I have no problem keeping the money and not killing the husband.
Archer is a short story collection? I thought it was only a cartoon show about an unorthodox secret agent. And I can totally see Sterling Archer doing something like that.
And all the people kvetching about the hitman not knowing the target well enough to notice that the victim is not him? The wife’s side piece is the target’sIDENTICAL TWIN BROTHER!
(Actually, I have no idea if that’s true, but wouldn’t y’all feel silly if it turned out to be?)
I think that’s disputable. Professionalism for a hitman would be killing the designated victim. Any other deaths aren’t necessarily a factor.
For example, a hitman might decide to blow up an entire office building, with fifty people inside it, in order to kill one person. Or, to use an example I saw in a movie, a hitman killed a bunch of people who were similar to the intended victim. The idea was to make the intended victim’s death look like the act of a serial killer rather than a hitman. All of the other people who were killed were just window dressing.
I’ll admit I wasn’t sure who Archer was. There is the British author Jeffrey Archer and I thought this might refer to him. He writes mostly political thrillers but he might have written about a hitman at some point. There’s also a different British author named Geoffrey Archer, who writes spy thrillers, but I’m not familiar with his work.
I was wondering if he meant a story by Ross Macdonald ABOUT Archer, meaning Lew Archer, because it sure sounds like it could be a Lew Archer story.
An ethical hitman. Will commit the worst crime but won’t steal.
Anyways I guess it really depends on if there’s any consequences for your actions. The only reason professional hitman could even exist is if
(a) there was a reliable way for clients to contact these hitmen without instead getting caught by police stings
(b) there was some means by which hitmen could be reviewed
© there was some means by which payment could be given, but only if the hitman kills the target
And really, if you think about it, there needs to be
(d) some way to determine if the hitman murders clients
Because if you think about it, if you wanted to get away with murder, the only way that’s likely to happen is if everyone who knows you are a murderer is dead. You have to be the only one who knows.
I guess if clients don’t know your real identity or what you look like, that would work.
Anyways, a-c might be possible using blockchain technology. Maybe (d). So you might get a better review score if you kill the target.
The plot of the first Jack Reacher movie revolves around a apparently random spree killing via sniper rifle that disguised the intended murder of one of the victims.
Since there is no “Other” answer, I’m going with last non-joke answer, since it’s the closest. It is her fault, and her actions are indeed why you “had” to kill her.
But the issue is that you fulfilled the contract. You did your job, killing the person who was alone in the house. It’s her fault she didn’t give you better identification.
Option 1 thus cannot apply, and option 2 doesn’t apply because there is no reason anyone would ever find out that you didn’t kill your target, as you did, and the only person claiming otherwise is dead.
Options 3 and 4 are technically true, but are secondary, and aren’t professional. Option 5 is both impossible, as the original buyer is dead, and invalid, since you did do your job. So option 6 it is.