Godsend_a gripping, fast-paced thriller

by J. A. Marley

  Oh fuck, here we go, was all Danny could think.

  Harkness had driven north to a residential area just outside Florida City, a part of south Miami that had resisted every attempt at redevelopment. The neighbourhood was one that even Danny would think twice about entering without the protection of serious weaponry and some back up. Having glanced into the boot of Harkness’s car, Danny knew, on this occasion, he had plenty of both.

  The target was nondescript. A typical half-breezeblock half-clapboard bungalow that had a drive, a garage, and a porch sat above a small garden out front. The only thing that marked the house out as different was the number of floodlights that sliced open the dark of the night every time a car went past. And when the lights came on, Danny was sure he could see two little cameras above the front door.

  “What is this place? A crack den? A drop? A safe house?”

  Harkness shifted in the driver seat, trying to stay comfortable but keep his line of sight to the house clear. They had been sat there for at least an hour.

  “It’s a money drop. El Banco del Cocaina. Anytime now, scrag-end little dealers are going to start pitching up, unloading what they’ve made for the day. Cold, hard drug cash. There will be a steady stream of the fuckwits until about four in the morning. At which point the wanker bankers inside usually light up a bit of recreational salad, and end up off their tits. You can tell it’s a drop. Have you spotted him?”

  “Who? The kid on the edge of the roof? The one who’s sound asleep?”

  “Yep, he’s their spotter. If they catch him like that, they’ll kill the little wanker. He supposed to raise the alarm if the cops or another gang show up.”

  “And you want us to go in… right?”

  “See, you might be bored, Danny boy, but you’ve not lost it.”

  “You’re fucking stupid and nuts, Harkness. They’ll be tooled up like no tomorrow.”

  “We got bullet-proof vests. You gone chicken on me, son? Besides, once the adrenalin hits, you’ll have a hard-on the size of the Isle of Dogs… Admit it… you have soooo missed me.”

  Even in the dark of the car, Danny could feel the grin on Harkness’s face.

  ‘You want to go in there, swinging baseball bats, wearing Kevlar and not much else and expect to come out alive and with the money…”

  “Yep….”

  “Okay. Hopefully you’ll get your face blown off in the process, save me a job while we’re at it…”

  Harkness chuckled and blew Danny a kiss.

  ‘She’ll be in touch again soon. You know that, right?”

  “I told you, Harkness, I will not help June Cardell rob and kill her husband.”

  “After tonight’s festivities… you will. The fun factor will grab you by the balls again… mind you, so will June. Besides, she’s not asked you to kill her old man. Just rip him off. Her next step will be to introduce you to him. He’ll want to run the rule over you himself, he’s that type. Just don’t mention my name. I’m more a background player on this one.”

  “If that’s the case, why are we here? I thought tonight was connected?”

  “Let’s just say we are covering off more than one angle on this, okay?”

  Danny’s heart sank. It was going to be as dangerous and tricky as always with Harkness, and now, Danny was in the middle of it.

  The night lengthened. They put on the Kevlar vests. They were bulky and uncomfortable, especially in the warmth of the Florida night. Danny closed his eyes now and again, power napping. Running what might be about to happen through his mind, he tried to keep the excitement down. He did a lousy job. Each time he inhaled he could feel the butterflies in his chest. The stomach knot tightening. But what was more worrying was that these symptoms didn’t feel like the ones he experienced just before he had a panic attack. No, these were hunger pangs. Hunger for action. Hunger for excitement. Hunger for adrenalin.

  He came out of his reverie and looked at his watch. It was three-thirty in the morning. He looked over at Harkness. He was awake and still staring at the front door, his one eye illuminated by a green glow that came from the display of the car radio. It was on but at very low volume. The tinny noise of the radio distracted Danny because he could barely hear the song playing but thought he still recognised the melody.

  Harkness spoke over the tease of music. “When the next dealer turns up to dump his cash, we go in too.”

  At that, the spotter kid roused himself, climbed down from the roof and went inside.

  “What luck… pee break.”

  After a few minutes, car headlights flashed as it progressed up the street. An old Pontiac Grand Am passed them, drawing to a stop in front of the drop house. Harkness glanced at Danny.

  “Hammer time…”

  Silently slipping out of the car, Harkness passed Danny a baseball bat, ducking back into the car to retrieve another two for himself.

  “I presume you want me to go through the door first?”

  “You read my mind, Harkness. This is one hundred percent your clusterfuck. Jesus Christ what am I doing here?”

  “Jesus Christ? If you want his help, we could always stop and pray? Actually, you know what, I have an even better idea.”

  As they crossed the street towards the house, Harkness started to hum, causing Danny to quietly exhale with a shake of the head.

  What happened next exceeded all the levels of craziness that Danny had experienced in his relatively young, eventful life.

  The Grand Am pulled away, a dealer made his way up through the little garden towards the entrance of the unit, a weighty looking backpack slung over the shoulder of his dark hoodie. Harkness and Danny crossed the space between him and them in quiet, double quick time, managing to get within ten feet of him just as he said something into an intercom on the right frame of the door. As that door swung open, the dealer was startled by a sound and spun around. Danny was startled too. Until he realised the sound was coming from Harkness.

  “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide” Harkness was singing. And not just singing, but singing beautifully. His voice was that of a fifties crooner, delicately enunciating the words, and at a volume that could entertain a room without a microphone. And at the end of the lyric he swung the first of his bats straight across the dealer’s stomach, changing the look on his face from startled to agony. And suddenly the hymn was playing itself out in Danny’s head and he was singing along and aloud too, as the pair of them conducted their own recital of mayhem. “When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide with me.”

  Harkness went through the door into a long straight hallway. He dealt with the guard behind it with a vicious poke of a bat, causing his nose to burst all over his face before his hand could reach the gun hanging at his side. “Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;”

  Immediately to his right, another figure was emerging from a doorway. His gun came up, only to be met with a swing down from Harkness’s Louisville slugger, the clear crack of bones snapping in the man’s hand as wood crushed flesh against the carbon stock of a mean-looking automatic rifle. At the same time, Danny was behind Harkness, kicking past him to send a coatrack falling in front of another man, thwarting his attempt to get a bead on both of them with a sawn-off shotgun which would have turned all in its range into mincemeat.

  “Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;”

  Danny met the shotgun man’s knees with a sweep of the bat, his scream of pain blended with Harkness who was still making like a Sunday school teacher. Claret was now smeared all over the bats both men held. Danny was amazed as he saw Harkness passing him, twirling the two sluggers over his head, like a deranged band majorette, one bat smashing a wall mirror while the other caught some good luck and the head of thug who happened to be hopping in panic from the toilet. His trousers were halfway up his legs, his other hand bringing an Uzi into play. He was out cold before he hit the ground, with a huge gash opening on the top o
f his head.

  “Change and decay in all around I see; O thou who changest not, abide with me.”

  Harkness and Danny flattened themselves against either side of the next doorway, just as a hail of bullets peppered the wall and floor between them. The air filled with the sharp smell of cordite and someone yelling in Spanglish, accusing them of being ‘motherfucker pendejos’.

  What Harkness did next struck Danny as a move of genius. He screamed. A blood-curdling, ear-piercing shriek of prolonged pain, which brought the shooter to the doorway, in anticipation of a kill-shot. All he got for his troubles was baseball bats to the face and balls simultaneously.

  From behind them, the shotgun guy Danny had dealt with decided he could take a pot-shot despite his broken kneecaps. Buckshot whizzed through the air, nicking Danny’s left ear, a hot buzz of noise and pain felt as it did so. Yelping, Danny turned, instinctively launching his bat end over end at his assailant. The slugger caught him right in the throat, an ugly thump and gulp, followed by gurgling gasps as the man was left to fight for air.

  Crouching, Harkness went through the last door of the bungalow unit, into a kitchen dominated by a table that was just about the right size to allow access to the cooker and cupboards. Calmly sitting behind it was a young man, hands held in the air. He had a huge joint hanging from his lips, tattoos all over his face and neck. The sweet smoke made Danny’s eyes sting.

  “Yo, Ese… take what you wan’. Eh? I got no beef wi’ no DEA…”

  On the table in front of him was piles and piles of cash, roughly stacked with a few Tecate beer bottles dotted amongst the money, and a nasty looking Mauser machine pistol lying on its side.

  Harkness ventured into the room, twirling one of his bats in a lazy, slow arc. His eyes never left the toker as he sat, impassive. He sang again, only this time gently, turning his tune into a lullaby.

  “Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.”

  Danny joined him in the tight kitchen space, the aroma of marijuana cloying in his nostrils. He looked down at the guy behind the table. The dealer looked bemused by the singing. Harkness tapped the table with the end of a bloodied bat.

  “Did you make the call, mate?”

  He exhaled a huge cloud of smoke before nodding slowly…

  “I don’ they keel me right after joo, no?”

  Danny could see the logic of it. Harkness stepped forward…

  “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!”

  And he sledgehammered the guy with his slugger. His head snapped back from the force of the blow, blood rocketing up the cupboard doors behind him.

  “Danny, my boy. Open some cupboards, find me a bin bag. We need to oh-one-two-one fucking do-one out of here in the next three minutes…”

  It wasn’t an order or a bark. It was a gentle admission that they were on the clock.

  They were back in the Ford Mustang in four minutes and roared away with a shit load of cash in a black bag before any drug dealer back up could even see their tail lights.

  “I hope the good Lord heard our tuneful prayers this evening, Danny!!” laughed Harkness.

  As they careered away in the car, Danny could feel the hot urgency of an erection in his trousers.

  18

  Paradise Lost

  Overnight, a thunderstorm had blown through the Keys. On waking, Danny enjoyed the sound of moisture dropping off the trees and clicking onto his wooden roof, the breeze causing the droplets to descend. It made him think of the expression “pennies from heaven”.

  After boiling the kettle, he padded around his modest home with his tea, bare-ass naked, enjoying the cool morning air. He opened all the doors of his home to fill it with the freshness before the humidity and the heat of the day came.

  It was only when he absent-mindedly scratched at his hairline, and the pain it caused, that the events of the previous night rushed back into his mind. Going into his living room, he saw the black plastic bag filled with cash sitting there, confirming his memory of blood, baseball bats and Bobby Darin.

  Jesus, what a night.

  He knew he had some thinking to do, lots. But he also felt strangely calm, in a way that had eluded him for some months, if he was honest. This thought did not fill him with any pride. Was he just an adrenaline junkie? Living for the psychopathic high of violence and danger? He had never considered himself to be that base… that lowest common denominator. Yet, Harkness’s prediction that “mayhem maketh the man” in his case seemed to be more accurate than he would have ever thought.

  But still, he knew he was in jeopardy. His life was now possibly in danger, no matter what kind of animal he might be. Harkness was nothing but trouble. June Cardell, the same. Danny suddenly felt glad that he had contacted his lawyer a few days earlier. He had put in motion a call for help whilst also laying the groundwork for an escape route. But, for the moment, he wanted to enjoy his Florida home.

  Sipping at his tea, he went out onto the deck, confident that he could stand here at the back of the house without any one sliding by and discovering him naked. From here, he could enjoy the movement of the slow, green water in the canal. Leaves and sticks lazily drifted by, making patterns in the eddies of the flow as it made its way out into the Gulf of Mexico. Its shimmering waters were framed by the vegetation in front of him and a sky decorated with puffball clouds and a blue that almost hurt to look at.

  Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t hear the car pull onto his drive. The breeze was ruffling the bushes to mask it from him.

  And because she was wearing gym gear complete with a pair of Nike running shoes, June made it all the way up onto the porch, through the open doors of his house. She stood in the kitchen doorway where it gave out onto the back porch before Danny knew anyone was there.

  Startled, he turned, tensing his body, getting ready to strike out until he saw that it was her. She leaned against the doorjamb, a huge smile on her face.

  “I know you were taking in the view, and now, so am I. Is this how you greet all your guests, Mr Franklin?”

  At first, Danny felt vulnerable, but then, he suddenly thought… What the fuck. He sipped his tea and leant against the rail of his porch decking as if nothing could cause him a moment’s concern. Think of the devil and she shall appear, Danny thought. “It’s a beautiful day in the Keys. It could only be ruined by an unexpected guest. Didn’t we talk about you not coming back, June?”

  “Talk is cheap, love, you know that. And besides, if you had a bloody mobile phone, I could have called you.”

  “And if my aunt had bollocks, she’d be my uncle.”

  June chuckled in reply. She then stepped towards him. Standing close, she used a fingernail to trace a line from his collarbone to his abdomen, stopping before she reached where she had just been looking.

  “I wanted to stop by and extend an invitation to you. Except it’s not so much an invitation as one of those things the Queen used to have back home. What were they called? Oh yes, a Command Performance.”

  “I don’t go anywhere I don’t want to, June.”

  “Harkness said you’d be difficult.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed Danny on the lips, careful not to let her body touch his. “Mmmm, Earl Grey tea this morning, very English. My husband wants to meet you. To talk business. He wants you to rob him, just like I do. Except he thinks he’ll get the money back… but we can discuss all that later. You. Me. Harkness.”

  “Have you fucked Harkness, too, June? Or are you holding that little move back for a time in which you feel you’ll really need to?”

  The slap she delivered to the side of Danny’s face was a good one, making his eyes water and see stars at the same time. And then, she was leaning against him, her Lycra-wrapped thigh pressed against his cock. She pulled his head down to hers, her perfume filling his senses as she whispered in his ear.

  “You will find, Danny, that I am a twenty-first century woman. I make my own decisions and live how I choose. St
op being a sexist fuckwit and listen. Vincent will send a car for you tomorrow, Sunday. You will get in it. You will come and listen to him preach our Saviour’s word, and you will meet with both of us after to talk… business.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll have you killed. And I don’t need my husband’s permission or Harkness’s help to do it, either.” She stepped back, looking him up and down. “And that, Danny, would be a shame, because I want to have a lot more fun with you, whilst we do the Lord’s work. And, by the way, can I start calling you Danny Felix now? Not Franklin? Harkness has told me all sorts of lovely stories about you.”

  And with that, she walked away. Danny watched as she went back through the house to her car.

  He sighed. Like all criminals, he hated loose ends, and he had a feeling he had just become one for all concerned in this plan.

  Bollocks. What was that classic Milton poem called? Oh, yeah… Paradise Lost.

  19

  Mysterious Ways

  On a bright and shining Saturday afternoon, there is one thing Americans really love to do.

  Barbecue.

  And if you are ever in any doubt, the large, hand-painted sign that was strung across the entrance to Founders Park declared that everyone was welcome to the “Annual St Thomas More Society Alzheimer’s Cook Out!”

  The heat of the day was being nicely tempered by a breeze which carried with it a delicious medley of smells. Hamburger, spicy chicken wings, sausages and corn on the cob all fought for sensory attention as families gathered to have fun in the name of a good cause.

  In the middle of it, Father Simeon was like a cheerful MC, greeting friends and parishioners, announcing the raffles, prizes and who had won at horseshoe tossing. Children were busy licking sticky fingers and playing tag with each other. They were ducking in, around and under adults, showing that turn of pace and fleetness of foot that only an eleven-year-old could generate, never breathless, constantly moving.