The Devil's Advocate (30 page)

"Yes, yes. What you are telling me is very, very interesting. He knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of people, predicts, perhaps even encourages it, and then, like a true leader, stands by his troops, supports and defends."

"No matter how heinous the crime or how guilty they might be," Kevin added, as if he and Father Vincent were solving a great mystery together.

The short, grandfatherly man pressed out his lips and clasped his hands behind his back. "Intriguing. Manifesting himself as a lawyer. Of course. All the opportunities ..." He shook his head, his face brightening with excitement. "I have some observations I'm going to want you to make. In time .. ."

"Oh no, Father. You don't understand. I've come here tonight because I'm desperate. There is one thing I haven't yet told you. It involves my wife. I believe she is in great danger and must have an abortion, only I don't know how to get her to believe what we are saying."

"An abortion!"

Kevin related what he knew about Gloria Jaffee's death and Richard Jaffee's suicide, and then he began to describe what he had first thought were the strange erotic dreams. He reiterated Helen Scholefield's warning concerning Miriam and finished with Miriam's announcement about her own pregnancy.

"As soon as she told me, I knew I had to see you immediately."

"Children of the devil," Father Vincent said, quickly sitting himself down again as if the weight of this information was too heavy. "Completely his own, of his essence. Children without conscience who could imagine things more evil than ordinary people ... Hitlers, Stalins, Jack the Rippers, who knows what?"

"Intelligent children," Kevin said, feeling the need to contribute to the scenario Father Vincent envisioned. "Clever, conniving people who work within the system to carry out the devil's orders."

"Yes." Father Vincent's eyes lit up with the realizations. "Not only lawyers, but politicians, doctors, teachers, just as you suggest: everyone working within the system to corrupt the soul of mankind and defeat God Himself."

Kevin took a deep breath and sat back. Could it really be that he had discovered the greatest conspiracy of all time? Who was he to have been chosen to bring down the devil himself and be the defender of God? And yet there was Miriam to think about.

He would fight devils and demons to protect her, he thought, especially since he had brought her to this ... this hell on earth, just as Richard Jaffee had brought his wife.

Only he wasn't going to choose suicide. Helen Scholefield had told him Jaffee had two choices. Well, there were three: join Milton, commit suicide, or destroy him. Miriam's immediate danger made this paramount.

"The analogy you made between the weaknesses in the physical body and the weaknesses in the soul might be closer than you think," Kevin said. He described Miriam's tendency to develop black and blue marks. "I've been telling her it could be a nutritional deficiency."

"Evil draws from good, feeds on it. It will be the reason why the evil child will take its mother's life in the end."

"That's what I thought," Kevin said, excited because Father Vincent had reached the same conclusion so quickly. "What can I do?" he asked in a voice that was no more than a shade above a whisper.

"I don't doubt any of the things you have told me, things you have seen and heard, things you have felt, and if what you tell me is true, there is only one course of action,"

Father Vincent said, nodding after his words as if to convince himself first. "Only one course—we must destroy the devil in the body he has chosen.

"First," the elderly priest continued, "you must carry out two additional tests to satisfy yourself that you are indeed in the presence of Lucifer." He rose from his seat and went to his bookshelves to pull out an old Bible, its brown leather cover quite faded. The words "Holy Bible," however, were still remarkably bright, almost as if they had been retouched. He brought the Bible to Kevin, who took it slowly and waited for some explanation.

"The devil can't touch the Holy Book. It burns his fingers. God's words sear his polluted soul. He will howl hideously."

"But knowing that, he will never touch it."

"Yes. I want you to give this to John Milton, but. .." He looked around the room a moment and then went to a cabinet and took out a plain brown paper bag. "Here.

Put the Bible in this bag. Offer it to him as a gift. If he is truly the devil, when he takes it out and sees what he has touched, he will drop it as if he has grasped the center of a flame and howl in pain."

"I see." Kevin slipped the Bible into the paper bag carefully. He handled it as gingerly as he would handle an explosive. "And if he does what you have just described?"

Father Vincent stared down at him a moment and then turned and went to the bookshelves again. He reached into a corner of a shelf and came out with what looked to be a gold cross with a silver replica of Christ crucified upon it. The cross was nearly eight inches long. Father Vincent held it at the bottom in a tightly closed fist.

"Take this out and put it as close to his face as you can. For him, if he is truly the devil, it will be like looking directly into the sun. It will blind him momentarily, and in that moment he will be a helpless old man."

"And then?" Kevin asked.

"And then ..." Father Vincent opened his fist. The bottom of the cross was a sharp dagger. "Drive this into his corrupted heart. Don't hesitate, or you and your wife will be lost forever." He leaned closer. "Eternal forever," he added.

Kevin barely breathed. His heart was pounding, but he reached up slowly and took the cross from Father Vincent. The small face on the statue of Christ looked different from any he had ever seen. The expression was one more of anger than forgiveness, a face intended to depict a soldier of God. The cross was heavy, the end very sharp.

"Once you have driven this into his heart, he will fall."

"But what about my wife and that.. . child?"

"When the devil is killed in one of his human forms, his progeny will die with him. She will abort naturally. And so," Father Vincent concluded, pulling himself into an erect position, "you will have saved your wife.

"But do nothing," Father Vincent warned, "if he does not meet the two tests I have described. Come back and we'll talk some more. Is that understood?"

"Yes," Kevin said. "Thank you." He stood up, pressing the Bible in the brown bag under his arm and clutching the gold cross dagger. He inserted it between his belt and his pants.

Father Vincent nodded. "Good. Go, and may God be with you, my son." He placed his hand on Kevin's shoulder and mumbled some prayer under his breath.

"Thank you, Father," Kevin whispered.

The apartment house was quieter than usual. Even the security guard, a man named Lawson who replaced Philip for the night shift, was nowhere to be seen when Kevin drove up and looked through the glass doors. He turned into the driveway and pressed his clicker. The gate lifted, and he drove into the garage. It was deadly still. The sound made by closing his car door echoed through the dimly lit garage and then died. He heard the soft hum of motors.

Kevin saw that all the associates' cars were there. Way down in the far right corner was the firm's limo. For the first time, he noticed a doorway that he now understood must be the way to Charon's apartment. Charon ... it came to him because now he was thinking about definitions. Wasn't Charon the mythological boatman who took dead souls on the ferry ride down to Hades? His name was surely another one of John Milton's jokes, but their Charon did ferry them deeper and deeper into hell, didn't he?

The joke's been on us,
he thought

Kevin went to the elevator. First, he would go to Miriam and tell her all he had learned, make her understand the danger, force her to see. If need be, he would call Father Vincent and have her speak to him, too, he thought, but when he arrived at their apartment, she was already gone. She had left him a note on the kitchen table.

"Forgot, tonight the girls and I had tickets to the ballet. Don't wait up. We'll probably stop for something after. There's a gourmet lasagna in the fridge. Just follow directions and microwave as directed. Love, Miriam."
Is she mad?
he thought.
After
all I said to her, after the way I ran out of here, to just go on with her schedule, not
wait for me!

She's lost,
he thought. Talking to her would have done no good. It was all in his hands now. Kevin's gaze fell on the small table by the phone in the kitchen. There lay a godsend, the gold key. He could go up and face John Milton and put an end to it all. He grabbed it, and with the Bible in the paper bag under his arm and the gold cross dagger in his belt, Kevin rushed out to the elevator.

He inserted the key and pressed "P" for penthouse. The doors closed, and he began to ascend, imagining that he was truly rising up out of the confines of hell. He had his soul to save and his wife's life.

The doors opened slowly, more slowly than they opened on any other floor, he thought. The great room was dimly lit, the lights in the ceiling turned down, most of the lamps off. Candles burned in the candelabra on the piano. Their tiny flames threw enormous, distorted shadows on the far wall. A very slight breeze in the room made the small flames flicker, making it seem as if the silhouettes trembled.

The stereo was on very low, the tape deck playing a piano piece that was at first only vaguely familiar. But after a few seconds of listening, Kevin realized it was the concerto Miriam had been playing the night of the party. In his mind he could almost see her sitting there, playing it now.

Kevin stepped out of the elevator and paused to listen for other sounds. At first there were none. Then, as if he materialized right before Kevin's eyes, John Milton was suddenly sitting at the right corner of the sectional couch, sipping wine. He was in his burgundy velvet smoking jacket.

"Why, Kevin. What a pleasant surprise. Come in, come in. I was just sitting here, relaxing. And, as a matter of fact, I was thinking about you."

"Were you?"

"Yes. I know you took the day off. Are you feeling better, rested?"

"Somewhat."

"Good. Once again, congratulations on a wonderful defense."

"I didn't have to do that much," he said, stepping farther forward. "It was handed to me when you had that note delivered."

"Ah yes, the note. Still wondering about that, are you?"

"No."

"No? Good. As my grandfather used to say, 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth.'"

"My God."

"What?"

"It was my grandfather who said that."

"Was it?" John Milton's smile widened. "Everybody's grandfather probably said things like that When you're a grandfather, you'll say the same sort of things, too."

John Milton put his glass of wine on the table. "Come on in. You're standing there like some sort of messenger boy. Would you like a glass of wine?" He held the glass in the light so that the red liquid looked more dazzling.

"No, thank you."

"No?" He sat back and studied Kevin for a moment. "What's that you're carrying under your arm?"

"A gift for you."

"Oh? That's kind of you. What's the occasion?"

"Let's call it gratitude, appreciation for all you've done for me and for Miriam."

"I've already gotten my gift in seeing you do so well in court."

"Nevertheless, I wanted to give you some small token of our . . . affection."

Kevin moved forward until he was standing before him. Slowly, he brought the brown bag out from under his arm and handed it to John Milton.

"Feels like a book."

Kevin reached in under his jacket and grasped the gold cross.

"Oh, it is. One of the best."

"Really? Well, thank you." He put His fingers in the bag and pulled out the Bible. It wasn't until it was completely out of the bag that the words "Holy Bible"

were visible. The moment they were, John Milton's eyes bulged. He screamed just as Father Vincent had predicted, howled as if he had tried to seize the center of a fire, a hot, burning coal. The Bible fell to the floor.

Kevin pulled out the cross and extended his arm, shoving the face and body of an angry-looking crucified Christ in John Milton's face. He screamed again and brought his hands to his eyes, covering them as quickly as he could with his palms, and fell back against the sectional. Kevin clutched the cross as he would a dagger, and without a moment's hesitation he drove the sharpened end into John Milton's heart. It cut through the garment and his flesh with the speed and precision of a heated knife cutting through soft ice cream, the cross cooling down as it entered. Blood spurted out and over Kevin's fingers, but he didn't retreat until he had driven the cross as deeply as he could.

John Milton never lowered his hands. He keeled over and died on the luxurious couch, with his palms still pressed firmly against his eyes to block out the light. Kevin stepped back. The replica of Christ on the cross was planted firmly in John Milton's chest, only now Kevin thought the small face looked satisfied, fulfilled.

Kevin stood there, staring down at the body until his own body stopped shaking. It was over, he thought. He had saved his soul and his wife's life. He went directly to the telephone to call Father Vincent. It rang and rang and rang. Finally, he heard the old man's voice.

"I'm here," Kevin said. "In his apartment, and it all went as you described."

"Pardon?"

I've done it, Father. He couldn't touch the Bible, and he howled when it was in his hands, and then I showed him the crucified Christ and he was blinded, so I drove the dagger into his heart just as you directed."

There was only silence on the other end.

"It was what I was supposed to do, wasn't it?"

"Oh yes, my boy." Father Vincent burst into a hollow laugh. "It was what you were supposed to do. Don't do anything else. Just stay put. I'll call the police."

"The police?"