by Curt Colbert
“I thought I’d check it out.”
“Good. We’ll pick you up at 9. What’s your address?”
Matt waited outside his apartment block so that Harry couldn’t see the hole he called a home. Not that standing outside helped. It wouldn’t be hard for him to work it out from the address. The five-story converted residential hotel on the wrong side of I-5 looked almost as bad from the outside as it did on the inside.
A horn tooted and a blue-black SUV pulled up in front of him. Harry was driving, but he wasn’t alone; three other men sat in the vehicle with him. Matt wandered over and the guy in the back flung open a passenger door. Matt got in.
“Guys, this is Matt,” Harry said. “Okay, quick introductions. Riding shotgun with me is Brett Chalmers. Sitting next to you is Frank Tripplehorn. And taking up too much room in back there is John Stein.”
The Taskmasters smiled and nodded. Matt tried to do the same, but they were nothing like he’d imagined. Matt had taken the trouble to dress up, nothing too fancy, but then again he didn’t have anything too fancy. Surprisingly, however, he was the overdressed one. Everyone else was in jeans, polo shirts, and windbreakers. They all had Harry’s muscular build, except John Stein, who was another X-size up. His head scraped the underside of the SUV’s roof.
Introductions over, Harry turned the car around and took Madison over the freeway and into downtown. The Taskmasters bantered with one another, talking about nothing much. Matt interrupted them.
“Where are we going?” He hadn’t intended the level of fear in his voice. It didn’t go unnoticed by the others.
“We have a clubhouse where we meet,” Tripplehorn said.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” Chalmers asked. The jagged edge the man placed on his question didn’t invite further questioning. Matt shook his head and the Taskmasters returned to their conversation.
The clubhouse was an exaggeration of mammoth proportions. Before Matt had called Harry’s number, rich Corinthian leather and dark mahogany had sprung to mind. All that went out the window when Harry drew up in front of a largely ignored stretch of Yesler Way. By day, this area was home to the court and city workers. By night, it was nothing. Matt was checking out the restaurants dotted along the streets when Harry pointed across the road at a decayed building. Graffiti-strewn boards covered old busted-out windows.
“Home sweet home,” Stein said, sliding out of the SUV.
Harry popped open on a giant padlock on a security shutter protecting the entrance from bums and thieves and slid it back. He unlocked and opened the dark wood doors with amber-colored, leaded glass insets.
Stepping inside, Matt remembered this place. It was going to be some fancy five-star restaurant headed by some TV chef and financed by a dotcom millionaire. When the dot-com bubble burst, it took the millionaire and his restaurant dreams with it. The place had been festering ever since. It was a shame. The turn-of-the-century brick structure gave the place class, but only when it was in tiptop condition. In its current shape, the heavy brick construction turned the place into a dungeon. The place was rainproof, but the brick held the damp and didn’t let go. Someone had gotten into the building at some point. Graffiti covered the walls and either the contractor or opportunists had made off with anything that had salvage value. Someone at sometime had urinated in the building. A startled rat scuttled across the floor to hide in a darkened corner.
Harry closed the doors and locked them. The dead bolt sounded like a gunshot and echoed off the walls.
If the Taskmasters owned this place, they had a lot of work to do. But Matt knew these guys probably didn’t own it. Something was very wrong and Matt started planning how he was going to get out of this. He knew when he was out of his league. Harry and Co. weren’t the kind of guys he could punch his way past. He wondered if the Taskmasters were connected to someone he’d hurt, but couldn’t think of anyone with that kind of muscle on tap. Harry dropped a heavy hand on Matt’s shoulder and guided him toward a circle of raggedy looking La-Z-Boys.
“Don’t be put off by the surroundings. Take a load off and have a beer.”
Tripplehorn carried over the cooler he’d retrieved from the SUV’s trunk and deposited it at the center of the circle. He flipped it open and tossed Matt an MGD. “You’re in good company.”
Matt did as he was told and sat down.
Harry took a beer from Tripplehorn and flopped into a chair next to Matt. “I declare this meeting of the Taskmasters is now in session.” He raised his bottle and so did the other Taskmasters. Matt shifted in his seat. “Only two items of new business tonight,” Harry continued. “The first being our new member, Matt.”
“Good to have you, Matt,” Stein said, and raised his bottle to him.
“I think Matt can be an asset,” Harry said. “I believe he has a good heart, but he’s a little misdirected. I hope becoming a Taskmaster will straighten him out and put him on the right track.”
Harry’s character assessment embarrassed Matt. It made him feel like a kid at parent-teacher night forced to listen to a report being given about him. He hid his embarrassment behind his beer, drinking it too fast.
“I don’t know if Harry has explained what we do here at the Taskmasters,” Tripplehorn said.
“Not really,” Matt replied.
“Well, once a month we challenge each other.”
“One person from the group is given a specific task chosen by the others,” Chalmers chimed in.
“Which must be completed by the next month,” Stein added.
“Which brings us nicely to our second piece of new business,” Harry said. “This month’s challenge.”
Tripplehorn fished out a pack of playing cards from his pocket, but Harry stopped him.
“No low-card winner this time.” He looked at Matt.
“Taskmaster rules state that the new Taskmaster member is automatically assigned the challenge.”
Stein and Chalmers grinned at each other. An invisible noose tightened around Matt’s throat and he shrank into the damp-smelling La-Z-Boy.
“Harry, you’re right. I forgot the rules.” Tripplehorn did nothing to hide his smirk. “Matt, you’re this month’s automatic low-card winner.”
“Don’t let these goofballs scare you, Matt,” Harry said. “There’s nothing to worry about. As fellow Taskmasters, we’ll make sure that everything goes smoothly.”
“What do I do?” Matt’s fear began bubbling to the surface.
“Didn’t I tell you Matt is a born Taskmaster?” Harry said.
“You guys give speeches, right?” Matt asked. “Like Toastmasters do, right?”
He knew his assumption was wrong. This was no conventional organization. They were something else and their burst of raucous laughter confirmed the fact.
“I think you need another beer,” Chalmers said, and tossed another bottle at Matt.
“No,” Harry said. “We do things a little differently. Stein, why don’t you tell Matt here what you did for the Taskmasters last month.”
“Surely.” Stein wiggled in his seat, making himself comfy. “I killed a no-good pimp. Put a bullet,” Stein put a finger to his own forehead and made a popping sound, “right between his eyes.”
Stein handed around half a dozen Polaroids of a stick-thin Latino man lying dead in a gutter with a small hole in his face. He went on to describe how he’d stalked the pimp, some guy named Hernandez, and finally lured him to his death with the promise of a big score. The Taskmasters laughed and joked with each other as Stein walked them through the story. Matt didn’t laugh. He was too busy trying to hold it together. His worst fears struck him with freight-train intensity. He’d guessed the Taskmasters weren’t on the up and up when they’d picked him up in the SUV. Philanthropic tendencies were the last thing he felt from them now. He remembered Harry’s words in the alley. When he’d said that he could help Matt turn his life around, Matt had thought he would help him straighten up his act, not teach him how to hone his
violent tendencies.
Chalmers fished out a letter-sized manila envelope from inside his jacket and tossed it over to Matt. Matt opened it, failing to hide his trembling hands. The Taskmasters glanced at each other, exchanging naughty schoolboy smiles. Matt scanned the details on the plain typed sheet and the handful of photographs.
“That’s Terrance Robinson,” Chalmers said, confirming the details Matt held in his hands. “He’s a hit-and-run driver. Killed a little girl six months ago.”
Matt examined a surveillance picture of Robinson crossing 1st with Pike Place Market behind him. He was twenty or thirty pounds overweight. According to the CliffsNotes, he was the same age as Matt, but his extra bulk aged him a good ten years.
“Why haven’t the police arrested him?” He hated how his fear brought the formal out in him.
Stein snorted. “A friend is giving him a bogus alibi.”
“So what do you want me to do? Get him to confess?”
Harry laughed at Matt’s suggestion. “We don’t give anyone a shot at redemption.”
“We don’t solve problems,” Chalmers said. “We eradicate them.”
“You’re going to kill this guy,” Tripplehorn explained.
It wasn’t a shock. When this went south, he knew it was going all the way to China, but it still left him cold. He was glad the poor lighting hid his expression.
“Don’t worry about the cops. We’ve got them covered,” Harry said.
Stein handed Matt a small semiautomatic. “It’s untraceable. Just use it and lose it.”
Harry went into fine detail about how Matt should stalk and kill his prey. Matt nodded, taking in the words, but he was too numb to comprehend the ABCs of killing a complete stranger. When Harry finished his speech, the Taskmasters drank and joked amongst themselves for a while. Matt drank but didn’t join in the hilarity. He waited for them to have their fun and take him home.
They dropped Matt off first. Harry followed him to his apartment block’s entrance, under the watchful gaze of the other Taskmasters. He stuck out a hand for Matt to shake.
“Now, you’re cool with this, right?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
“You went a little quiet on us.”
“Well, you know.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, nodding. “It’s a big step up from bar brawls every other night, but this will be good for you. This will put some meaning in your life. Look, don’t worry, son. It’ll go great. You’ll see.”
Matt attempted a confirming laugh. “Yeah.”
“Remember, this guy isn’t innocent. He’s guilty as hell. You’re just doing what the law can’t. You just have to keep telling yourself that.”
“That helps. Thanks.”
“So the Taskmasters can trust you? There’s no going back after tonight.”
“You can trust me.”
“Good man.”
Matt sat at his kitchen table with a mug of coffee in his hands, watching the dawn creep up on the city. Daylight spilled over the skyline, casting fingers of light between the gaps between the buildings. Sleep hadn’t come easy, not while a loaded gun and a picture of the person he was meant to kill sat out on the kitchen table. This was way beyond bar brawls. He had to kill a man. If he failed to follow through, his imagination didn’t have to wander too far to know what the Taskmasters would do to him.
He’d made such a hash of his life. The really embarrassing thing about it was he didn’t know how he’d achieved the feat. There were no excuses for his predicament. He wasn’t a total idiot. He was reasonably smart. His parents had been good people who’d only wanted the best for him. So how come he couldn’t hold down a job or go for a drink without bruising his knuckles on someone’s face? Questions without answers, he thought—or not ones he could answer, at least. He picked up the gun and examined it.
Time to answer some of those questions.
Terrance Robinson left his bank job twenty minutes after 5, having had a pretty easy day of trying to arrange loans at a branch of Bank of America. Matt knew this because he’d spent the day in Westlake Plaza watching Robinson through the glass-fronted building. He’d even gone into the bank to ask about opening an account, just so that he could get a close-up look at the man he was supposed to kill. Matt didn’t get the impression that Robinson’s child-killing escapade weighed heavily upon him. He was easygoing around his colleagues and the people at the sandwich place where he went for lunch, and he negotiated rush hour traffic with infinite patience.
Robinson pulled up in front of his home on Queen Anne Hill, a respectable slice of suburbia where nasty crimes could be hidden from the world. He parked on the street to let his two sons, around seven and nine, continue playing a little one-on-one in the driveway. Pulling his tie off, he jumped into the fray, snatching the ball away to attempt over-ambitious layups, which his offspring managed with equal accomplishment.
Matt slid past the Robinson home and parked a couple of blocks away. His aged Ford Escort stuck out in the neighborhood, but he wouldn’t be staying long.
He wandered back up the street for a closer look. Excited giggles and shrieks carried on the air. Robinson exhibited no signs of remorse about his deadly action and the lives he’d wrecked. A man like that deserved to die, didn’t he?
“Hate is the key,” Chalmers had said during their meeting. He tapped Robinson’s file. “To kill him you have to hate him. Read what this man has done and hate it. Stare at his picture and hate him. Do that and this will be easy.”
Matt watched the man at play with his children. Did he hate Robinson? He’d let that girl die instead of doing the right thing. He despised Robinson for that, but did he hate him in the way Chalmers and the Taskmasters wanted him to hate him?
Matt found himself staring at the kids and not their father. Killing Robinson meant destroying those boys’ lives too. Devastating another family didn’t make up for what had already happened. Matt couldn’t kill Robinson. He returned to his car and drove to the one place that would end this game.
Matt stopped his car in front of the Seattle Police Department’s West Precinct and stared at the industrial-looking building. In there was salvation. Harry told him he could make him a better man and he had. He was going to do the right thing. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he was planning to spill it all—the Taskmasters, their clubhouse, the unregistered gun, Terrance Robinson, the lot. He guessed he’d be dropping himself in the crapper along with everyone else, just by association with these madmen, but he couldn’t help that. The Taskmasters had to be stopped and he had to take some responsibility for once in his life. He left the car parked on the street and went in.
The clean and modern but drab reception area was awash with people. Victims wandered around waiting to be helped, while those in custody needed a different kind of assistance. Cops floated between both sides of the law, in front of and behind the bulletproof barriers. Matt stopped a passing policewoman reading a report.
“Hi, I wonder if you could help me?” Matt said. “I need to talk to a police officer about a crime.”
“You’ll have to check in first,” she replied, and pointed at the occupied people behind bulletproof shields. The policewoman went to leave, but Matt sidestepped her to counter her escape. Her features tightened.
“I’m not here to report a stolen VCR or anything. This is important,” he said, scanning the room for eavesdroppers.
The policewoman read his face to determine whether he was genuine or a whack job. She made her decision after a long moment. “Wait here.”
She retreated into the depths of the building after punching a code into a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. A couple of minutes later, the policewoman opened the security door with a uniformed sergeant in tow and pointed at Matt. The sergeant approached him.
“Officer Hansen says you want to speak to someone?”
Matt didn’t answer.
“Sir?”
Matt still didn’t answer.
/> “I don’t have all day.” An edge of irritation crept into the cop’s voice.
Matt wasn’t answering because he recognized two familiar faces in the crowd—Harry and Tripplehorn—and both of them were wearing police uniforms. His urge to do the right thing for once turned to lead in his throat and he struggled to swallow it down.
“I’ve made a mistake,” Matt said, backing away.
The sergeant placed his hands on his hips. “What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is this a joke?”
Seeing the Taskmasters there, it did seem like a joke—a bad one. Matt continued to back away, tuning out the angry cop. The Taskmasters, engrossed in their conversation, hadn’t spotted him and he wanted it to stay that way.
Matt’s back struck the double doors and he thrust them open and bolted. He left his car. He’d come back for it later. He didn’t want them knowing what he drove. He tore down Virginia until he hit 8th. He glanced back and saw the sergeant was surveying his escape from the doorway, but the Taskmasters were nowhere to be seen. Matt kept on running.
The apartment building manager was gone for the night. Tuesday was singles’ night at the VA social. Matt hoped the old coot got lucky tonight, and even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t take long for Matt to skip out. He crammed all his belongings into an army surplus duffel and a box for an RCA TV. It was depressing to see that his worldly possessions accounted for so little, but he’d change that. The Taskmasters had given him a new perspective on life. He hooked the duffel over his neck and carried the box down to his Escort.
With no lot at the apartment building, he’d been forced to find street parking. He’d left his car four blocks from his place. He half-walked, half-jogged to his parking spot.
Reaching the spot, he slowed to a crawl and cursed. Another car rested in the space that had been filled by his car only hours earlier. He could be on the wrong street, but he knew better. His car was gone. He couldn’t believe someone had stolen the heap of junk on the one night he needed it.
Well, there was no way Matt was going to report the theft, and it wasn’t going to stop him from leaving town. The loss of the car meant he would be traveling even lighter. He carried the box of possessions over to a nearby dumpster. He’d hefted it to head height when someone kidney-punched him. Matt crumpled and the box crashed down on his head.