The Devil Knocks

by Frank Rich

  "Half the pie," I agreed.

  George was trying to talk philosophy with the pair of bodyguards when I came out. All they did was nod and stare at the gun he waved around.

  "They give you any trouble, Shiny?" I asked.

  "No trouble, boss."

  "Let's go, then."

  Back at the car, Monique said, "How'd you do?"

  "Ten rifles and ammo for two grand."

  "Yow!" Kerry said. "How'd you get it so cheap?"

  "I told him what he needed to hear. If you want a man to give you a dog, tell him you're gonna use the dog to find him a horse."

  "We don't have a horse," Monique pointed out.

  "Don't need one. Sometimes the promise is enough. Greed is a great aid to the imagination." I handed the address to Kerry. "You know where that's at?"

  "Yeah, it's off Blake."

  "Groovy. We pick up the guns in an hour."

  "You don't waste any time, do you?"

  "I didn't want to give him too much time to think it over."

  16

  "There comes the time in the life of every man when he must spit in his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats." I looked around the practice room. "Mencken said that."

  "We're gonna become pirates?" Kerry asked.

  "No," I said. "It means even sensible, even-tempered gentlemen must at times become ruthless and violent."

  "You talking about us, Jakie baby?" Tomas asked.

  "Now you're getting the drift." I walked to the chalkboard. "But how is a small, albeit motivated, group with no indigenous support and extremely limited resources supposed to overcome and conquer an entrenched power structure with a centralized command, well-organized military and almost limitless resources?"

  The band looked at each other, supremely confounded.

  "Let me put it another way. If you're a small guy with no friends or weapons, how are you gonna take out a big guy with a gun?"

  "I'd cheat," Tomas said. "Kick him in the balls when he wasn't looking."

  "Excellent," I said. "When all the odds are stacked against you, you have to resort to extreme methods. We're going to hit them hard and fast. We will obey no rules and spare no lives."

  "Just throw morality away, right?" Monique asked.

  I shrugged. "Machiavelli said a man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore it is necessary to learn how not to be good, and to use that knowledge or not use it according to the case."

  "Who's this Machiavelli cat?" Tomas asked.

  "A ruthless sixteenth-century Florentine nobleman."

  He nodded. "So this ruthless dead cat thinks you have to be bad sometimes or the bad cats will wax you."

  "Something like that. Against evil, you cannot be accused of committing evil — everything is justified."

  Monique said, "Why does everything have to involve killing and violence?"

  "Against an entrenched military power structure, there is no other way but the gun. To accomplish Heaven we must understand the machinations of Hell."

  "I don't believe that," Monique said.

  "Listen," I said. "When I was a kid my dad took me to an old-fashioned carnival. I rode the merry-go-round and came off crying because I didn't get the brass ring, my arms were too short and I couldn't reach it. Then my dad explained it to me."

  "What'd he say?" Monique said.

  "He told me if I really wanted the brass ring I had to get off the goddamn horse and take the damn thing."

  "But that'd be breaking the rules," Stevo said.

  "That's what they want you to think. The truth is, there are no rules, there never was."

  "So," Kerry said, "we have to become totally ruthless."

  "That's right, in all things we do. It's the only edge we have. Over the next week I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about ruthlessness, these weapons…" I pointed at the stack of M-16s in the corner "…and urban warfare."

  "You mean you're going to give them a crash course in murder," Monique said.

  "Call it what you like."

  "When do we start?" Kerry asked.

  "Now."

  Five minutes and a short march later we stood in the gravel of a vacant lot two blocks distant. I faced their ragged line.

  "The first exercise will be the side-straddle hop," I shouted.

  "The what?" Stevo asked.

  "The jumping jack. Does everyone know how to execute a jumping jack?"

  "Yeah," Kerry said. "But what does jumping jacks have to do with revolutions?"

  "We have a great feat before us," I explained. "To attain it we will have to be mentally and physically fit. What are you going to do when it's time to storm the palace and you find yourself out of breath halfway up the steps? Die, that's what you'll do. In cadence, exercise!"

  I counted out the cadence, and they flopped their arms and legs as if it were a silly game, afraid of taking it too seriously. My initial urge was to start yelling and cuffing them, but I held back.

  I led them through push-ups, knee bends, bend overs, sit-ups, flutter kicks, lunges and more push-ups. Then we began a slow three-mile run through the warehouse district. I expected the run to be the hardest for them and I wasn't surprised.

  "How's everybody feeling?" I asked, running beside the ragged pack.

  "Tired!" they chorused, panting furiously.

  "Part of the reason is your form. Swing your arms forward and back freely. Good. Now straighten your backs like there's a skyhook attached to the top of your heads. Good. Now relax, take it easy. Now, how do you feel?"

  "Tired!"

  "That's because you're not running as a team. Look at yourselves. You're just a bunch of individuals who happen to be running in the same direction at the same pace. Let's try running together. Fall into line behind each other."

  They formed into a single file. I repeated a simple cadence until they ran in step. "Good. Now how do you feel?"

  "Tired!"

  "That's because you're not in the proper frame of mind. Let's do a little singing to get your mind off the run. Now, whatever I say, you repeat, minding the inflection. One, two, three, four, hey!"

  They echoed the cadence, and I began singing songs from my Ranger days. Over the next two miles, their responses steadily gained volume, except Mack's. He had fallen twenty yards behind.

  "How far we gonna run?" Kerry panted.

  I pointed at a stop sign a mile distant. The band perked up. The end was no longer black and unfathomable.

  "Follow me," I said. I turned the formation around until we were running the way we'd come.

  "I thought we're gonna quit at the stop sign," Kerry complained.

  "We are. But we have to finish as a team. Remember that, in all things, we're a team."

  When we passed Mack, I turned them back around. "A rebel never lets a fallen comrade fall into the hands of the enemy," I said. "Fall in, Mack."

  "I'm too tired," he said, not sounding too tired at all.

  We passed him, and I turned them around again. And again.

  "Why don't we just slow down to his pace and we'll finish together?" Kerry shouted.

  "The mission is everything!" I replied. "One man cannot be allowed to thwart the efforts of the many. A paradox, isn't it?"

  A mad intensity ran through the group as we came up behind Mack, and I knew it was the teetering point. The balance depended on that moment; either they would mutiny to their old identities or fall behind a new banner.

  "C'mon, Mack," Kerry sneered. "Fall in line, goddamn it."

  "What?"

  "Get back in formation," Stevo said. "Quit screwing the rest of us."

  "Let's go, Macky baby," Tomas said. "Don't go poofty on us."

  "Shit!" Mack cried, and fell in line.

  "We're a team again," I said, and we closed to within a hundred yards of the stop sign. "All right, this is it, rebels. Stay with me."

  I took the lead
position and dramatically increased the pace. Their panting and fatigue level visibly increased. The last twenty-five yards I took at a dead sprint.

  The stop sign flew past my shoulder, and I slowed to a walk. I took a look behind me.

  Kerry and Mack had kept up, Mack's face a twisted mask of defiance. Tomas and Stevo finished five seconds later, and George lumbered in dead last, puffing like a locomotive.

  "What," Kerry gasped, "was the purpose of that?"

  "It was the final charge," I explained. "The last glorious assault. The last-ditch effort that wins the day."

  After warming them down with more calisthenics, I marched them home. When we got back to the gravel lot, I noticed Monique smoldering in the doorway.

  "Who wants to quit?" I asked.

  They looked at each other and said nothing.

  "Good. I'll be back at six in the morning. Be dressed and ready for morning PT. Any questions?"

  "Yeah," Tomas said. "What's PT?"

  "Physical training."

  Groans went up. Stevo raised his hand. "What about our day jobs?"

  "Quit them. From now on all your time belongs to the revolution. George will stay with you to ensure all your basic needs are met. Dismissed." They limped inside, moaning.

  I turned to George. "You'll have to stay here and play first sergeant until we can trust them. Ensure they eat properly, get enough sleep and maintain a positive attitude. Have them outside by six for PT."

  "Not wasting any time, are you?"

  "I don't want to give them too much time to think it over. An occupied soldier is a happy soldier."

  I walked to the car with Monique.

  "You're starting out kind of rough, aren't you?" she asked.

  "It's the only way to get them ready for what's coming."

  "Hardship is going to make them better?"

  "It made me what I am." I got behind the wheel, and she sat beside me. I started the engine and pulled from the curb. "I don't want you coming to training anymore."

  "Why?"

  "You're detrimental to the learning process."

  "Because I ask questions? Because I don't understand why everything you teach has to involve so much violence and hate?"

  "There's no nice way to overthrow a dictatorship."

  "That doesn't give you the right to drop all your morals, either. You're teaching them to be monsters, not soldiers."

  "I'm teaching them to be ruthless and resourceful. Killers, yes, but they'll kill for a good cause. History will forgive the means — it's the end I'm worried about."

  "Yeah, and so what if a few boys get chewed up in the process, as long as the job gets done."

  "You don't understand. I'm teaching ruthlessness so they won't get chewed up. It's the aggressive, not the meek, who survive on the battlefield."

  "Is that how you survived? Ruthless amorality?"

  "Yes, of course. There is no substitute. I thought you knew that by now."

  * * *

  They were waiting for me in the morning, blurry-eyed and grumbling. Calisthenics and a three-mile run brought them to life, and by seven-thirty we were back in the practice room for a weapon orientation class. I introduced them to the M-16, showing them how to disassemble, clean and operate the weapon. By noon we'd made reasonable progress and they were getting the feel of their new tools. I broke them for lunch and took George aside.

  "I want you to handle the classes this afternoon," I told him. "Indoctrinate them on the necessity of absolute ruthlessness in combat. Quote Nietzsche and Machiavelli."

  "Okay. Where you going?"

  "I'm going to find religion."

  I drove the Caddy down to Cheesman Park, where a gusty wind rumpled the blanket of leaves covering the yellow grass. Cheesman lay in central Denver, between the botanic gardens and Remi Jonson's School of Industrial Technology. I walked the hundred yards from the school's parking lot to the gathering of the faithful.

  Nearly half the large audience wore the robes of the Children of the Yellow Rose. An ancient man in the garb of a Catholic priest stood stiffly behind the microphone, speaking of God as if reading a script at gunpoint, more apathy than conviction in his voice. He seemed strangely melancholic, as if speaking of someone gravely ill.

  "Sounds like a worn-out siding salesman," said a burly man next to me.

  The Muslim clergyman who came on next was more impassioned, but it was the desperate shouting of a man stuck aboard a sinking ship without a life jacket. One felt his deity was only a few years behind the priest's on the road to ruin. As he ranted, the crowd shifted impatiently, like music fans waiting out a lame opening band.

  The imam finished and received tepid applause. Minutes ticked by but the stage remained bare. A restless energy began moving through the audience. Spectators shuffled their feet, whispering nervous rumors and lies to pass the time.

  Three tall black women in dazzling tube skirts took position behind a trio of mikes, and the mob gasped. The trio began chanting in a low harmony, slowly, meticulously working up the octave ladder until their voices reached a crystalline soprano climax.

  Babbit leapt on stage, and a wild bolt of energy shot through the crowd, who cheered and shouted with abandon. Babbit danced and skipped about the platform, working the crowd with confident ease, molding their wild shouts into spirited chanting. When he had them in a wild-eyed chanting frenzy, he took the mike.

  The three backup singers danced in sync behind him, laying down a soulful groove above which Babbit's voice ranged, sonorous and soothing. There was no melancholy or hesitation in Babbit's words, and his faithful knew their god was not false because he was right on stage in front of them, breathing the same air as they. The collective eye of the audience focused on his every syllable and gesture, and he played them like an old familiar instrument.

  The performance ended, the crowd roared, and Babbit bowed and danced to greater adulation. He floated off the stage only to be enticed back by shouts for an encore. He returned triumphantly and bowed graciously again and again. I looked around at the shouting mob with both fascination and horror.

  "That guy really knows what he's saying," the burly worker gushed, clapping furiously. "Goddamn, what a show!"

  "Yeah, but what did he say?" I asked.

  He frowned, and I could see he was trying to remember. "Hell," he said gruffly. "Doesn't matter what he said, it's what he means that matters."

  "What does he mean?"

  He turned on me. "Look, buddy, you don't like the show, you can leave. Just don't ruin it for the rest of us." He took a step toward the stage and resumed clapping and cheering.

  After a minute of sucking up adulation, Babbit took a final bow and retired from the stage, leaving the crowd to disperse. I drifted toward the platform. Babbit hung out with a band of pandering groupies for fifteen minutes, touching hands and speaking in hallowed tones. Eventually a phalanx of robed bodyguards surrounded him, and they moved toward a row of limos parked on the grass.

  I walked quickly back to my car and wheeled in behind the departing limos. They moved at a slow, pious speed, so it wasn't hard to keep up.

  I followed the entourage south to Cherry Hills, an affluent neighborhood of Denver. The long machines turned into a circular driveway, and I pulled over a half block away. Babbit and his entourage piled out in front of an old-fashioned mansion with an ornate sign in front that said, Daddi Babbit's New Eden. The Catholic and Muslim clergymen were among the security and sycophants surrounding Babbit. Both now wore the yellow robes of Babbit's followers. Quite a show you have there, Mr. Babbit, I thought as the entourage disappeared inside the mansion.

  I drove past and turned right at the next block, followed a winding street up a hill and parked in the lot of a dilapidated Presbyterian church. Debris littered the steps, graffiti streaked the ornate exterior, and the two tall windows flanking the padlocked doors were boarded up with old gray planks. I turned around and faced Babbit's home. From the tar of the weed-filled lot I couldn't see over
the villas ringing the hill.

  I walked a flashlight, tire iron and binos up the concrete steps to the church. God Was Executed was painted across the doors in crude red letters. I bludgeoned the padlock with the tire iron until it fell apart, then muscled open one of the heavy doors.

  It was black as a tomb inside, and the moldy smell of decay hung in the stagnant air. I followed the flashlight beam up a stairwell to the second floor. Indignant squeaks and the scratch of claws on wood indicated that it was a congregation of rats and spiders the church served now. I continued upward, and the creaking stairs narrowed and ended in a belfry.

  No bell hung in the tiny room. I moved to the east aperture and took in the view.

  It appeared the good guru was an ardent believer in Buckner's maxim about not having to make a hell of this world to enjoy the paradise of the next. From my high perch I could see the full spread of his estate. The mansion was big enough to accommodate half his congregation, and the sprawling backyard, complete with a small pond spanned by a wooden bridge, was nearly as large as the park in which I'd caught his act. Pairs of the yellow-robed faithful strolled leisurely by the seven-foot-high brick enclosing wall. I trained the binos on a pair of robes and thumbed the magnification button until the black objects they carried filled the digital image. The wicked-looking subguns clashed badly with their delicate robes.

  I leaned against the wall of the belfry and watched the sun lower its bulk to the horizon. The cold crept in like a thief. After two hours the only thing I learned was eight pairs of guards patrolled the wall and mansion, a pair passing any given point every forty-five seconds.

  While I was doing deep knee bends to stay warm, a white-robed figure appeared in the backyard from the direction of the mansion. I pointed the binos at him and turned up the volume and light intensity. It was Babbit. I glanced at my chrono. The glowing dial read 7:31.

  He strolled along the cobblestoned path, humming to himself, his long shadow his only company. He reached the bridge and lingered at its middle, dropping pebbles in the pond and watching the ripples.

  He walked the entire circuit of cobblestones and returned to the mansion in near darkness. I checked my chrono. It was 7:55.