by J. A. Marley
Godsend
A Danny Felix Adventure
J.A. Marley
Copyright © 2018 J.A. Marley
The right of J.A.Marley to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Contents
Also by J.A. Marley
1. A Mini - Mart Adventure
2. Coming up for Air
3. Heeby Jeeby
4. The Lord’s Work
5. Fisher of Men
6. Meetings of Minds
7. Step in Time
8. Sins of the Flesh
9. Old Timey Gospel
10. Hook, Line and Sinker
11. Business or Pleasure?
12. God Loves A Sinner
13. Fight, Flight or Freeze
14. Let Us Pray
15. Friends Reunited
16. Stoning Birds
17. Scarlet Billows
18. Paradise Lost
19. Mysterious Ways
20. Simple Truths
21. Daydream Believer
22. How’ya?
23. Wicked Web
24. The Happiest Place on Earth
25. Bless Me, Father…
26. Details, Details, Details
27. Of Mice and Men
28. The Third Law
29. I Will Follow
30. Finishing Touches
31. Life Changer
32. For the Love of God
33. Driving Ms Tina
34. Organised Chaos
35. The Good Lord Provides
36. Sleight of Hand
37. Judgement Day
Epilogue
A Note from Bloodhound Books:
Standstill
Acknowledgments
Also by J.A. Marley
Standstill
Praise for J.A. Marley
"This is a book that I really enjoyed, it was a very well thought out and executed plot, some great characters and twists." Yvonne Bastian - Me And My Books
"Standstill really is a refreshing read, the action is jam packed, the secrets, lies and twists are deliciously exciting, the characters are spot on." Dash Fan Book Reviews
"A hugely impressive debut novel from a talent to watch." Mark Wilson - Author
"Standstill is well written, easy to read and fast-paced. It is a gripping story throughout which builds up into an explosive finale." Gemma Myers - Between The Pages Book Club
"I can heartily recommend Standstill to existing thriller fans and those looking to discover why thrillers have so many dedicated readers." Susan Corcoran - Booksaremycwtches
"I was really surprised when I realised that this was the author’s debut, it reads more like a book from a well-established author with several works of this very competitive genre under their belt!" Donna Maguire - Donnas Book Blog
"Standstill is a clever and gripping thriller, with an interesting cast of characters. If you like UK crime fiction then this is definitely a book to add to your list!" Kate Moloney - Bibliophile Book Club
"A truly great debut novel by Marley and he shall be on my to watch list for more reads to come." Alexina Golding - Bookstormer
"The standstill that is brought about is excellent and unexpected. It’ll have you thinking about it for a while after you’ve finished the book." Mark Tilbury - Author
"The story is a wonderful introduction to the London criminal underworld, through the various characters and locations mentioned throughout the book." Steve Robb - BookieWookie
"Standstill is an impressive debut. There are characters that we care about, a pace that is unrelenting with a clever and twisted plot." Jo Worgan - Brew And Books Review
For HJ
“Since no one really knows anything about God, those who think they do are just troublemakers.”
Rabia of Basra Circa 717 – 801
1
A Mini - Mart Adventure
When the scruffy-looking kid pulled out the gun and pointed it at the chump on the other side of the cash register, Danny Felix thought, Here we go.
He felt his heart stir, his stomach muscles flex and his balls tighten.
Danny couldn’t deny it. He was excited.
Here he was, in the presence of a stick-up merchant, waving a gun around like they’d seen too many cheesy Jean-Claude Van Damme movies.
“Nobody muthafuggin move!”
Wild eyes sat atop a scarf wrapped in a hoodie, Old Navy sweats pulled high to the waist. Filthy, worn-down Converse sneakers completed an overall look that screamed desperation and deprivation.
Danny could smell the funk of nerves, bravado and good old-fashioned fear emanating from the would-be thief. It was a familiar smell, one that he had, undoubtedly, emitted himself in his early career. He watched as the gun thrashed around. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was a replica. It looked like a World War One vintage revolver, a Webley Mark IV.
To Danny’s mind, anyone who possessed a genuine Webley wouldn’t need to knock off a Tom Thumb mini-mart off Florida’s Highway One.
The bandit whipped the fake gun around for added effect, to make sure anyone present would know this was the real deal. It caused Danny to flash back, a gun in his own hand, faces filled with terror, suddenly compliant. He had to drag his attention back to the here and now.
Danny was the only other customer in the shop.
The stoner kid behind the counter looked bored, resigned to having to stick around after his shift to tell cops about a robbery they would, from his bitter experience, do jack shit about.
Danny swept the store with his eyes, his head not moving, his own familiarity with such events allowing him to clock where the closed-circuit cameras were positioned. They were usually all in the same type of spots. He was certain that they had caught an image of him as he entered through the door from the side, and the one behind the stoner’s head was probably making a movie star of both him and the stick-up merchant right now. But, still, Danny thought he could have a little fun.
“You’re making a right fucking mess of this.”
It was the smallest of movements, but Danny knew he had the thief’s attention because they turned their left foot slightly towards the door.
“Shut yo face muthafugga, what kin’ of turnt accent be that? I’m the bitch pointing the gun right atcha, so do as I say!”
Danny shrugged. Bitch? So, this is a bandita rather than a bandit. Danny adopted a look of sympathy. “I would, but I can’t stand to see someone making such a pig’s ear out of a blag that should be so simple.”
The filthy left sneaker twitched toward the door again. The eyes above the scarf widened then hardened in almost the same instant.
“Look at this, yo’ punk ass bitch. See this. I’ll smoke yo’ ass all over this sto.”
“You’re about to fail, bandita. First, you’ve wasted time chatting to me, enough to allow Captain America here to reach under the counter and hit his store’s panic alarm. The local coppers are probably en route right now. Secondly, you haven’t covered the angles behind you in the aisles since you stormed in. You don’t know about the bloke who is about to crack you
across the head with a baseball bat.”
She flinched, glancing over her shoulder enough for Danny to make his move. He closed the distance between them in one sweep, gripping her gun hand, bending the wrist back beyond its natural angle. He pivoted his hips onto one leg, his other sweeping away her feet just above the ankles. As she dropped, the gun fell. Danny simply extended his left hand, the satisfying heft of the replica revolver meeting his palm, while his right arm locked around her head, pulling her off the floor. He tucked her head into the crook of his arm as you would a football.
“See, you didn’t know if there was someone there for sure. Pig’s fucking ear. “
The girl thrashed about, trying to scratch and pull at Danny’s hair. He simply tightened his grip, denying her airways full capacity. Her fight soon waned.
Nearly limp, he lowered her to the floor.
“What you should have done, quick as you like, is march straight to the cashier. The gun should have been practically down his throat whilst scanning the store to make sure that there really was only the three of us in here. Then, demand the money, asking for it to be done fast and, if needs be, pull the hammer back on the revolver to show you mean proper business.”
As he said it, Danny carried out the instructions.
Stoner Kid’s eyes were wide with his arms in the air. He almost reached down to pop the cash register open until Danny gently shook his head at him. Bandita had pushed herself into a sitting position, her breath coming in short rasps.
Danny continued: “Except you couldn’t pull the hammer back on the gun because it’s a bleeding replica. And as for your accomplice? He or she is taking a month of Sundays to work out you might be in trouble. I haven’t heard a squeal of tires yet, which means… three, two, one…”
On cue, the shop door flew open. Bandit number two entered like a whirlwind, with another ancient-looking handgun being waved around.
The accomplice didn’t scan the scene either but came straight at Danny at speed.
Danny shifted his weight, matching the oncoming velocity of the attacker. They met halfway. Danny put all his weight into a straight-arm punch. It arrowed onto the bridge of the accomplice’s nose.
The explosion of blood was like a scene from a Rocky movie. And as suddenly as it had all kicked off, it was over. Danny turned to the stoner kid behind the counter.
“That… that was fucking cool, dude.” The stoner pushed his lank, greasy hair away from his eyes. “Man, this is fun and games, but I’m the asshole who’s still gonna have to hang around to answer dumb cop questions. Except…”
Danny couldn’t believe it as the kid slapped his own forehead. “Oh man, I forgot to push the panic button…”
Danny cocked his head. By Danny’s assessment, the stoner kid probably had a brain that was ten percent water and ninety percent THC. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Colt… Hi… What’s yours…?”
Danny strode to the door and flipped the ‘open’ sign to read ‘closed.’ “We can play this one of two ways, Colt. You can go out back and call the Old Bill, the cops, and we can waste the rest of our evening talking to Bozo the Donut Eater, or you could go back there and erase the last hour of your CCTV and report a malfunction in the little log book you keep. You have one of those, right?”
Colt nodded slowly.
“And, in turn, I will dispose of Bonnie and Clyde here for you, in a non-lethal, community-relations kind of way, and we can all go about our lives.”
“I dunno, man. I should really report this…”
Danny spread his arms wide, making a face like a cheesy De Niro in one of his later, dreadful movies.
“You won’t hurt ’em, Mister…?”
“As God’s my judge, kid…”
Colt’s face warmed with a grin. He nodded his agreement.
“Okay, Colt. Give me your belt.” Danny was already taking off his own. Colt hesitated as if to protest, but then obliged.
Danny secured the two would-be rip-off artists with the belts. Securing the late-arriving accomplice, he was surprised to discover they were both female and white, despite the attempts to sound ghetto tough. He grabbed a magic marker from a nearby shelf and pocketed it.
“When I’m gone, Colt, park their car up in one of your furthest parking bays. Make sure when you erase the CCTV that you erase all the cameras, even the one that covers the forecourt. too. ”
Colt nodded again enthusiastically as they exited out into the parking lot.
Danny bundled the pair into the back cab of his pick-up truck. Colt watched, a question hovering on his lips as Danny slid behind the wheel.
“You sure you won’t hurt ’em?”
“Promise.”
Danny reached inside his pocket, pulling out a hundred-dollar bill. “This should cover my bottle of bourbon, the marker and the Funyuns, plus your belt, too, Colt…”
“Uh, okay… and hey, Mister… How’d you know their names were Bonnie and Clyde?”
Ten miles further north in Founders Park, a local festival was in full swing, with an old fashioned drive-in movie in progress.
Danny drove straight into the park.
He looked up at the temporary big screen, impressed by the clarity of the picture on this early spring evening. Early spring? Who was Danny kidding? This was Florida, it was about nine-thirty at night, and the temperature was a balmy seventy-eight degrees.
“Whatchu doin’ to us, mofo? You some kind of rapist or sumthin?”
Bonnie and Clyde – or rather Bonnie and Bonnie – had been grizzling all the way, but only now were brave enough to go full volume.
“I’m not going to hurt you. At least not physically. But I am going to teach you a lesson.”
“What the fugg?”
Danny’s pick-up bounced across the field, past the mass of cars all pointed at the screen, turning directly under a giant image of a robbery in progress.
With the engine running, Danny leapt out, came around the cab and yanked open the back door. Before hauling the two useless thieves out onto the grass, he took a moment to scrawl something across each of their foreheads with the magic marker.
“You can’t fuggin leave us here… What the fugg, man?”
“Next time, if you’re going to rob, do a proper job. Can’t have the likes of you giving good thieves a bad name.”
Danny leapt back in the truck, horns beeping as the reflected light off the screen showed up the two girls trying to stand. A few stewards jogged towards them.
As he turned his pick-up to leave, Danny’s headlights picked out the banditas, revealing their faces, complete with the word ‘thief’ written across their foreheads in black ink.
Danny laughed.
As he pulled away, he looked in his rear-view mirror. The Dead Presidents were on the big screen, leaping over the bank counter, telling the employees to put ’em up. Danny laughed again.
“Point Break. Great film. Bank robbing like it used to be… but with added sky diving.” Danny felt nostalgic. But that thought was soon replaced by another. “Jesus, if this is my idea of great night out, my life really has become fucking boring…”
2
Coming up for Air
“Jesus Christ, I mean… Jesus H. Christ.”
Vincent Cardell was not easily shocked, but the guy zip-tied to the chair was all kinds of fucked up.
Cardell’s mind raced.
They had taken care to not draw any blood, but the victim was a mess. His eyes were swollen shut. Ugly raised welts showed across his naked torso where an electrical cord had been used to whip him. There were cigarette burns on his hands, chest, lips and ears. Cardell could not wrench his eyes away from the wounds. His tongue rested between his teeth, slightly protruding from his mouth.
He stepped into the small concrete room, having been careful not to let anyone see him enter. He pulled a pair of latex gloves tighter to his hands as he surveyed the claustrophobic space.
There were three other guys in the roo
m. The biggest looked at Cardell, following up his stare with a negative shake of his head. Cardell sighed. Nothing was ever easy. He bent close to the stricken man and spoke gently.
Cardell’s voice was a deep, rich, southern states drawl. He spoke with a tenderness that contradicted the situation. “Emmanuel, Manny… My Lord, why did it have to come to this? You could have made this so much easier for all of us, especially yourself.”
Even with two swollen, rotting apples for eyes, tears flowed down Manny’s cheeks. The sound of Vincent’s hypnotic voice was enough to move him to weep.
“Uh… uh… bebeed unyu. Uh payed wiyu.”
“Pardon, Manny? Was that you believed in me? Now, Manny, it was the Lord’s light combined with my prayers that gave you your life back.”
“Uh… ohhhhhhh… Uh lobbed yu.”
“And you can love me and the Lord again, Manny. You know how He has a merciful heart, as have I. All you have to do is tell me. Tell me how long you have been talking to them and exactly what you said.”
More tears. Manny was getting agitated, pulling against the zip ties biting into his wrists and ankles, but holding him firmly in place. “Uh neber tawked no one. Neber!”
