Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

“The two hunters. What do you think they should do, as a matter of etiquette?”

“A tip?” gasped Coleman. Markham winced, but Coleman did not stop. “We paid you fifty thousand for this hunt. Are we supposed to tip you, too?”

Parish stared at him coldly and in silence until Coleman’s eyes found their way to his feet. “I wasn’t referring to myself. You don’t tip the owner of a hotel or the captain of a ship.”

“It’s for the girls,” Markham announced, as though he had discovered something nobody else had seen. “They took a risk, too. At least until we got there and killed the target.” He turned to Parish. “You’re right. We should give them something. What would be appropriate?” He grinned. “We don’t want to spoil them for you.”

If there was anything in Parish’s eyes that could be called amusement, neither of them saw it. He appeared to be considering. “Twenty percent should do it.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” Coleman said. His eyes looked thoughtful. “Do we split it so they each get five?”

“No,” said Parish. “So they each get ten.”

Coleman and Markham exchanged a quick glance. Markham said, “Well, thanks, Michael. Last night we were wondering if there was something we ought to do for them, weren’t we?” It was obviously a lie. “And then it kind of slipped.”

“Then I’m glad I brought it up,” said Parish. “Now, I’m going to bring Emily in to help with the critique. The scout sometimes sees things the professional hunter misses, because she’s in closer. This is for your benefit, so don’t be shy about asking questions.” He stood and carried a chair from the wall to a spot beside his own. “Emily!” he called at the open doorway. He turned to the two men and said conspiratorially, “You might want to say something about your gift.”

Emily stepped into the doorway, and the sun glowed through her dark hair for a second.

Coleman said, “Hi, Emily. You know, Markham and I were talking, and there’s something we’d like you to have, to show you we appreciate the good job you did on our hunt. We didn’t know we’d be seeing you today, so you’ll have to give me a minute to write out the check.”

Markham said quietly, “If you’re doing that, I may as well write the one for Debbie. Maybe we can give it to her after we’re through here.”

Markham noticed that when Emily saw the number Coleman was putting on her check, she looked quickly at Parish, and her blue eyes were different. They were bright and intense, and her lips were turned up at the corners, but only a little, and they were tightly closed. Markham supposed that she was feeling gratitude, mixed with a bit of awkwardness, as people sometimes did in situations like this, but it didn’t exactly look like gratitude. It looked as though she thought something was funny and was having a difficult time keeping from laughing out loud.

She took the check. “Thank you,” she said, and she seemed more attractive to Markham than before. He could see that Coleman could barely keep his hands off her. It was typical that Coleman would jump in early to be sure he was the one who gave Emily her check, leaving Markham to track down Debbie and face the barely veiled hostility he and Coleman both remembered from their first meeting, before the hunt.

He decided it would serve Coleman right if he got Emily interested enough to have a relationship. He could end up married to a woman who was accustomed to killing people for money, who was comfortable with it. Coleman had more than enough money to make her consider dropping something heavy on his head as soon as the marriage certificate was filed in the county courthouse.

The thought pulled Markham into new territory. He found himself considering what sort of target Coleman would make. It would be amazing, incredible, to hire Parish to set up a hunt with Coleman as the target. This time, Emily could be the bait, and take him to a quiet, private spot. Markham, the old friend, would arrive unexpectedly. For a moment, Coleman would wonder if it was a practical joke, a surprise party. Markham pushed the idea out of his mind. He signed the check to Debbie, tore it out of the book, and set it on the table where it could be seen. Then he went back to his chair.

“Let’s start with your reactions,” said Parish. “Did you feel that your hunt was worth the time, the money, and the risk?”

“It was the best,” said Coleman. “It’s the most intense activity that human beings do. It has anticipation, bravery, cunning, camaraderie…” He looked at Emily. “Even temptation.”

Markham detested Coleman for his eagerness always to jump in too quickly, leaving him nothing to say. “I agree.”

Parish did not seem to notice. “Fine. We wanted you to have a good experience. The rest of what we offer is training. We want you to improve each time out. That’s the spirit in which we make these critiques.”

“Fire away,” said Coleman.

“First, when you stepped in the door of the restaurant, you took the wrong approach to the target. What happens in this situation is, two men walk in the door. In a restaurant, bar, or small store, the target will always feel a blast of air from the door opening or hear it and look, or see it in his peripheral vision. He will make an evaluation. It’s primal stuff: Do I know these two men? No. Are these two going about business that has nothing to do with me, or are they a threat of some kind? Once you pass this examination and the target determines that you’re not interested in him, he won’t stare at you for a time, because it’s rude.”

“But this was a woman,” Coleman said.

“All of this works even better if the target is a woman. They’re not subject to instinctive rivalry if they see men, and they’re more likely to worry about being rude, so they stop staring sooner. But you didn’t give this target a chance to reassure herself. Instead of going to safe positions off to the side, you faced her table directly, and began to reach for weapons when you were still too far away to use them. And most importantly, you forgot to wait until the tracker, Debbie, had moved out of the way.”

“We knew we wouldn’t hit her or anything,” said Coleman. “She stood up as soon as we came in.”

Parish appeared to be considering the argument, then spoke quietly and carefully. “It seems to me that you may have underestimated the target because she was a woman. You knew that she was an experienced professional detective. You knew that Debbie had lured her to that restaurant by posing as an informant. Now, the conclusion I wanted you to draw from that information was that this target knew she was in a situation that had great potential for danger. She might be armed-as, in fact, she was. If she realized that she had been set up, then she would know it was Debbie who had done it. If you’ll remember, the plan was for Debbie to get physically out of sight before anything happened that might make the target feel threatened. Debbie was to see you come in the front door, and excuse herself to go to the ladies’ room, remember? That would get her away from the table and behind the target, to control the back corridor and the rear exit. Her act of standing up and walking back there would also distract the target from whatever was going on at the front entrance, which was your taking positions. Done right, it makes all three of you safe: the target can’t figure out whom to watch, so she tries to swivel her head to see where Debbie’s going, and back up front to see what you’re doing. But it wasn’t done right.”

“I’m sorry,” said Coleman. “I guess I was the one who got too eager.”

Markham didn’t contradict him, or chime in to share the blame. It was true. He even knew what Coleman had been trying to do. He had wanted first blood. Probably he had even hoped his first round would be fatal, so he would get the kill, and Markham would have paid twenty-five grand to fire shots into a corpse.