by J. A. Marley
Cardell looked up at the biggest of Manny’s tormentors who could only shrug in reply, a look of uncertainty on his face. Turning back, Vincent laid a gentle hand on the stricken man’s arm, reaching under the chair with the other.
“Okay, Manny, okay. Take it easy, I believe you, I do. I’m only sorry we had to do this. But, you know, we had to be sure. There can be no room for doubt. Our work. It’s too important. I promise you. We’ll make this up to you. We’ll put it right.”
With his eyes the way they were, Manny wouldn’t have been able to see the roll of duct tape Cardell had picked up. Flicking at the end of the tape, he got his gloved index finger under the start, and with his other hand, he slowly unravelled a good length of the silver insulation material.
Taking his cue, the biggest torturer quickly swept a thick, black, plastic masonry bag over Manny’s head, and before Manny’s struggling could begin in earnest, Cardell wound the duct tape around the bag and his throat, sealing it to his victim’s skin as surely as any weld.
Manny bucked in the chair, panicking at the sudden darkness. Terror would have been pushing his heart-rate sky high. Vincent could only imagine how, in this moment, Manny’s head would suddenly fill with the lies he had been told. All of them. In one chilling, heart-breaking moment, Manny would know all his trust had been betrayed. His devotion, his recent life, all built on sand.
It took all four of them to keep Manny upright and in the chair. Cardell was entranced by the way the heavy bag pulsed flush with Manny’s mouth every time he attempted to breathe.
It took less than three minutes for the convulsions to stop. The air in the tight little room was heavy with the odour of their joint efforts.
Slowly, Vincent stood upright, and stepped away from the lifeless figure in the chair. He carefully snapped off the surgical gloves.
“Am I all right?” He raised his arms out from his side, slowly turning in a circle for the others to inspect him, then he smoothed his tie and hair.
“Yes, Mr Cardell. You seem to be fine.”
“Check the corridor.”
“All clear, sir.”
Cardell slipped out of the room, glad to be out of the fug of the small room. He walked down the long concrete corridor. Bare pipes and insulated ducting lined the low ceilings above him. He progressed through the bowels of the huge complex, turning from one corridor to another, soon starting to encounter other people. He kept his gaze straight ahead as he passed them. A few reached out to touch him lightly on the shoulder or back. The air grew fresher the further he walked.
Sounds were increasing, every step brought him closer to the noise, the excitement. His heartbeat slowed as he approached. He could feel it: ‘inspiration’ settling on him, calming him. He was, once again, ready to do what he was on this earth to do.
He felt invincible.
People clapped his shoulders, applauded his presence. They told him that he was great, devoted and sincere.
He arrived at a huge curtain. He accepted the microphone which was pressed into his hand by a young, eager helper.
And then, out he stepped onto a stage. He felt the rush of the balmy air of the outdoor stadium.
Bright lights filled his eyes, and a wave of adulation washed over him. The noise, the cheering, the applause, the hysteria, the energy. The sheer forceful excitement his mere presence generated in this sprawling amphitheatre seemed to jump like electricity from the crowd, straight into his body, his veins, his heart.
Raising his arms wide, looking this way, then that, every single one of the thousands of souls before him leaning forward. Each believed in that moment that he was looking at them and only them.
Finally, Vincent Cardell lifted the microphone towards his mouth. The crowd duly settled for him. Breath was exhaled and then held, waiting for the first words to come from his lips.
“My Friends. My Florida Friends. All praise to our Lord Sweet Jesus. I am here with you tonight to bear witness to his holy, healing light!”
The crowd went wild.
3
Heeby Jeeby
Deputy Sheriff Amparo Sosa of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department turned her attention back to the young, and she had to admit pretty dumb, store clerk who stood shuffling in his oversized jeans.
“Look, Cody, bro. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble here, but what did you think would happen if that abandoned car sat there for more than a day?”
“It’s Colt…” He shrugged, staring intently at his battered sneakers.
“Let’s step outside, hombre.”
He followed her out into the car park, staring dolefully as two men hooked up a battered Camry onto their tow truck.
“Go ahead. Have your cigarette, I know you are Jonesing…”
Colt instantly scrabbled for the pack of Marlboros in his pocket, lighting up and inhaling in a rush of eagerness.
“So, let’s go over this again. Stick-up artist number one comes into the store waving a gun around. Super Customer, the only one in the store at this point, tells them they are messing up. Then, he disarms the stick-up artist and turns the gun on you for a second. He then predicts the arrival of stick-up artist number two, who then arrives and runs straight into customer’s fist. Really, Cody? I mean, Ese… seriously?”
“Pretty much… unhuh… errr… it’s Colt.”
Deputy Sheriff Sosa started to gently chuckle, shaking her head. His eyes followed her dark ponytail, a faintly mesmerised look coming over his face.
“So then, Super Customer suggests that you erase the security camera footage and that he will clear the mess up, and you could get on with your night without having to worry about cops and questions and your boss, Mr Tomaski, calling you a dumbass. And you agreed? Dude?”
“I… I had somewhere to get to, Ms Sosa… Depu… ah…”
“Mr Tomaski might have a point here, Colty. I could be hooking you up for obstruction of a criminal investigation.”
“They… they didn’t take nuthin’… The big guy, he… he stopped all that. I just thought no harm, no foul… and my name…”
Sosa stared at him. He tailed off… staring back, focusing again on her hair.
“Colt, you gotta give me something more, man. Else I’m going to have to haul you back to the Sheriff’s Station. It could become an even longer night, and into a few days, until I can get to the bottom of this. See the car… the car’s your problem.”
She pointed at the Camry being towed away from the store. “It’s on my BOLO list. Know what that means?”
He shook his head, all lank hair and sullen resignation.
“Be On the Look Out for. It’s been used in a couple of robberies across the bottom half of the state. That puts this automobile high up my priority list. And when you decided to listen to Super Customer… well, you just made my priority list, too, Colt. And that’s not a list you really wanna be on.”
“I… I done told you all I know.”
“No, you told me what happened, and then, you told me Super Customer was real big, but I need more than that.”
Colt’s eyes were wide now. She could see she was scaring him and that was exactly what she wanted.
“If I search your car, Colt, will I find anything else that will push you further up my priority list? Maybe a little recreational plant product?”
Colt’s eyes were now threatening to break free from his head. “Uh...uh, hold on, I remember... I remember.”
“Remember what?”
“The dude. He was… was… big yeah, but he had a weird voice too. Even the robber bitch… I mean, the robber… she even said it was weird sounding, too.”
“Really? What kind of weird?”
“No, no… he was like not from around here? Dude sounded a bit like the spy… in the movies.”
“The who?”
“The double-oh one, the one who always wins and gets laid…” As he said the last bit, Colt swallowed involuntarily, his throat clicking as he did so.
“James B
ond?”
Colt nodded furiously.
“He sounded British? He had a British accent?”
“Yeah… an accent… which made it even crazier.”
“What? What was crazy?”
“He was a British dude… but he drove a pick-up…”
At that, the walkie-talkie on Sosa’s hip squawked, a garbled but insistent voice breaking the moment. “Sosa! Sosa! Where in the name of all Christ’s saints the hell are you?”
Sosa sighed out loud, embarrassed by the interruption from her dispatcher. “This is Sosa… Annie, what have I told you about…?”“Never mind all that horseshit… they need you down at the festival drive-in. Some kind of crazy clusterfuck’s happening…”
Sosa sighed again and looked at Colt. “You’re going to have to give me a moment here, Colty…”
“Uh… okay… I just need to… to check on something…”
As Sosa turned to reply into her radio, Colt shot to his car like an Olympic sprinter. She presumed it was to dispose of something recreational and plant-like.
She glanced at her watch… it was still only midnight.
As he pulled onto the oyster-shell drive to his home, Danny could feel it starting. He had been thinking about his own flashback as the first bandita had waved the gun around in the store earlier. His memories had played out like one of his beloved movies. Holding the gun. People’s compliance. The control he had over them. Their fear. Fear. That’s what triggered him.
It was happening… again.
Set back from the main road through the narrow strip of land that made up Islamorada in the Florida Keys, it was his safe haven, a bolthole. But right at that moment, he couldn’t step out of the truck.
His knuckles, wrapped so tight around the steering wheel, were glowing white in the night air. His heart hammered, his ears filled with a rush that felt like his head was about to explode, his breathing faltered. It came in sharp, jarring shudders.
Danny was having a panic attack.
What made these episodes worse was that once he was in one, he was both terrified and powerless to stop them at the same time (and they were gradually increasing in frequency).
“Come on… come fucking on… stare at something. Pick a spot and stare at it and breathe!”
His mind was suddenly full.
This was the bit he hated most. His brain became a tumult.
Images of flames reaching high into a London sky. Ear-piercing screams. People’s faces melting before him. A thick acrid cloud of explosive dust seemed to be swirling around him, billowing into his eyes, up his nose, into his ears, leaving a stench of blood, burning flesh and gunpowder within the pores of his skin. Like a waking nightmare, Danny couldn’t help but be overcome by his own terror.
And then, nothing.
It was as if a switch had been flicked in his head and heart simultaneously. These fits always ended as sharply as they began.
Danny howled as his lungs finally found their ability to inhale and exhale in a sledgehammer moment of normality, and as his primeval scream subsided, the tears came. They always did.
Huge, wracking sobs causing fat, hot tears to cascade down his face, and a tide of desperation to match them settled in his chest.
Danny eventually managed to open the door of the truck, almost falling out of it. Twenty minutes earlier, he had been chuckling to himself at the sight of two would-be robbers. Now, he was a quivering wreck.
He’d come to know the symptoms, able to spot the build-up of his “heebie jeebies” as he now called them, but not with enough warning to stop them coming, or even have time to seek refuge. They swept over him whenever, and wherever.
Danny slid out of the suddenly stifling air of the truck. He half crawled, half walked to the porch of his clapboard house, collapsing into a swing chair where, most nights, he loved to sit, drinking Bourbon and listening to the sounds of a Florida night.
But now, he was weeping. Feeling drained, sub-human, he realised that the images he had just conjured in his own head, along with the millions of pounds he had brought from London, were the real legacy of what had happened there. They were his heebie jeebies… and he believed he deserved everything they could throw at him.
4
The Lord’s Work
The set was brightly lit.
A white-haired woman sat off to one side behind an old-fashioned wooden church organ. On the other side, a bank of ten volunteers were on telephones, frantically scribbling down credit card details on yellow legal pads; donations were pouring in as fast as the old organist could play What a Friend We Have in Jesus.
In between was a six-foot-high cross made from plastic, the facade designed to mimic stained glass. Coloured light spewed from behind its facia, reaching right down onto the floor of the set itself. Sat amidst the “holy light,” three presenters were gripping red, leather-bound bibles, earnest looks on their faces.
A grey-haired man with a thickening waist, the anchor, was clutching his bible to his chest.
“There is no love, if there is no Word. There is no life, if there is no Word. There is no hope, if there is no Word. The Word is all, and without it, we are but leaves in the wind. Praise be Jeeee-sus, our Lord.” He elongated the name, like it was tearing his very heart out when he spoke it aloud with his rich, Georgia accent.
Two guests, who sat next to the anchor, quietly amen-ed at this. The host stood up, his guests following suit, cameras adjusting so not a single moment was missed.
“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank this great man of God, Vincent Cardell. In joining us today, he has brought added grace to our annual Century Crusade Drive here at Shining Light. And thanks also to his beautiful wife, June.”
Smoothing down his tie and puffing out his chest, Cardell responded. “Zachary, June and I both know how vital the work is that you do here. It is nothing but God’s Glory in action. It’s our privilege to come and bear witness with you and all the mighty pilgrims here…”
Cardell turned to the camera with the little red light on top, knowing it would reframe and zoom into his close-up. He focused his mind on the lens, putting the sparkle in his eye by shifting his feet slightly so that the key light up in the ceiling of the studio was beaming right onto him, making it hard for him to see properly. Exactly as he wanted it. He knew that now he had the ‘twinkle’ going full pelt.
“These pilgrims are spreading the Holy Word, breathing good back into our troubled and Satan-obsessed world. If you value lost souls, if you value Scripture, if you value your own souls, you’ll pick up that phone today and you’ll donate whatever you can…”
As he said this, he reached out with his arm, resting it on the attractive, brunette-haired woman next to him, pulling her into his shot, intensifying his stare a further notch.
“It’s the right thing to do… it’s the Lord’s work.”
June Cardell took her own, deep breath. “And remember, South Floridians, you’ll be able to join my husband and I, and a dazzling array of young evangelical talent, at our annual Soul Reclamation Prayer Meet at the beautiful Miami Urban Convention Centre in just six short weeks. But in the meantime, please keep praying and keep helping Zachary Getz and his faithful flock reach out to those who need the Lord’s touch the most.”
All this was delivered in a voice that was caught somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the lilt of an upper-class English accent mixed in with the elongated vowels.
“Praise be and God bless you, Vincent and June. Let’s finish this hour of our prayer and fund-raising drive with Martha’s beautiful music…”
Zachary nodded at the white-haired woman who immediately launched into Lord of The Dance as though her very life depended upon it. The lights dimmed slightly, leaving the protagonists on the set silhouetted by the multi-coloured cross as they shook hands and hugged their on-air goodbyes.
Zachary whispered into Cardell’s ear as he drew the man close, making sure his mouth and lips were averted from the line of t
he camera’s sight and his mic muffled. “If you raise as much fucking money up at that convention this time as you did last year, I’ll know the devil is married to a Brit…”
“The Lord’s work, Zach… The Lord’s work.”
Then, it was June Cardell’s turn, not failing to notice Zach’s hand brushing her ass as he pulled her in for her hug. She benefited from the whisper treatment too.
“When you want a man with a real cock, you just come a-running, June dahlin’…”
“Now, Zach, you know I couldn’t possibly handle you. From what I hear, you’re circumcised, and yet, you have all these people thinking you aren’t Jewish by birth.”
Zach stepped back and chuckled as he appraised her. A floor technician declared that they were off-air.
House lights came on, and the set became a blur of movement as cameras were repositioned, and a lady armed with make-up fussed around Zachary Getz.
“We hope to see you in Miami, Zach. Your presence always brings in a few more souls…”
“I’ll be there, Vincent. If only to see this English rose of yours…”
June sidestepped the second hug, managing to avoid another ass grab as she did.
A serious young woman in a trouser suit appeared beside them, looking at the couple over the top of her iPhone.
“I know, I know, Ms Kravitz. June and I are needed somewhere else right this second…”
“You are both due at the Everglades City Country Club in an hour, Mr Cardell. It’s for the local Baptist community mission drive launch. And that’s fifty minutes from here…”
“The Lord’s bidding never rests… Zachary, God Bless, we’ll see you in Miami…”
They swept out of the industrial pre-fab unit that housed the small studio. Vincent noted the warmth of the outside air, which for this time of year, still felt unusual to him, a native of Nashville, where early Spring could still mean frost and snow.
