Solomon's Porch (5 page)

Saul Cohen, in his words, had been a “disappointment” all his life. His two younger brothers were both lawyers, but he was quick to add that neither one would speak to him anymore, much less help him. His father had been an accountant, and Saul, being the oldest son, was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. Seymour Cohen told Saul literally from birth that the family’s two room, modestly successful accounting practice in the Bronx would someday say “Cohen and Son” on the door.

Saul remembered thinking that he would rather be dead than live to see that day.

Coming of age at the end of the Vietnam era in the early seventies, Saul managed to stay in school through
1974
, earning a degree in accounting from Cornell almost by default.

“I hated accounting, always have,” Saul told Peter, “but I hated the idea of dying in some Southeast Asian jungle even more.”

As soon as his student draft deferment was no longer required, Saul quit his pursuit of a master’s degree. He had always played his cards close to his vest with his father, not wanting to risk getting his financial support cut off. Seymour Cohen believed that Saul was dropping out of graduate school in order to return to New York City and set up shop with him.

Saul told Peter that all he could think about at this stage of his life was, “I’m free!” No more threat of Vietnam hanging over his head, no more stupid, boring accounting classes to suffer through, and no longer any need to placate his overbearing father.

Saul recalled going home, getting really loaded on pills and whiskey, and telling his dad just what he could do with the dreary life he had planned for him. It was an ugly scene, filled with petty name calling and sharp tongues. It left scars that were not healed by the time of Seymour Cohen’s death fifteen years later.

It wasn’t as if Saul Cohen didn’t have other plans. He had found a much more enjoyable and profitable way to make a buck than doing tax returns, growing and selling marijuana. So rather than becoming what he called “one of the living dead” with Mr. Cohen, Sr. in the Bronx, Saul and two of his college buddies moved to Albany, set up shop in an old warehouse, and proceeded to become the reefer kings of the upstate.

Life was sweet until
1980
. The money was great and the perks were better. It was then that the New York State police moved in and shut down their operation. Saul caught three years prison time, an incredibly short sentence if you consider that someone convicted in the twenty-first century of conspiring to sell five thousand pounds of marijuana would be lucky to get a term of only twenty years.

“Peter, you know what stands out most to me when I think back on those days?” Saul said, reflecting on his former life.

“What?”

“How incredibly selfish I was. Didn’t give a damn if my folks suffered, which they did. Women were nothing but disposable objects of pleasure to me. I got mine and thought the hell with everyone else.”

“Been there, done that, Saul.”

“But prison didn’t even slow me down, man. I just learned a new trade.”

During his sixteen month stay at a New York State prison (three years minus good time), Saul Cohen earned an advanced degree in the art of bank robbery, courtesy of Mr. Dan Weber, a.k.a. the “Happy Bandit.”

Weber gained limited fame in the Northeast during the late seventies for his ability to walk into a bank with a big grin on his face, wave a gun around almost nonchalantly, and demand cash in such a polite manner that Emily Post would have been proud. Many people robbed by Weber described him as a “nice guy” or a “gentleman.” He always left the bank laughing, hence the nickname the “Happy Bandit.”

Dan Weber was doing state time for a bad check scheme he had also “happily” run when Saul became his cellmate.

“Danny taught me to be truly amoral,” Saul explained. “The world to him was nothing more than an opportunity for gain, at whose expense it mattered not. Laws, he always said, were written by fools and obeyed by suckers. “Get some while you can” was his philosophy on life. It became mine.”

So Saul Cohen gave up growing reefer to pursue a career in armed robbery. He managed to hold up some fifty plus banks in the mid-eighties before getting caught. He told Peter that he “pissed away” all of this money, well over a million dollars. The FBI was able to tie Saul to ten bank heists. He was sentenced to twelve years. He did the better part of ten.

“You might think,” Saul testified, “that after getting caught and being punished for dealing dope and robbing banks I might have slowed down. Wrong.”

The very day he was released from federal prison in
1997
, Saul Cohen robbed another bank. Amazingly, and as a testament to his considerable talents at disguise and target selection, the feds didn’t catch up with Saul again for years.

Who finally busted Saul? An FBI agent who was a white man, about thirty, with light brown, curly hair.

“This agent, Gabriel, of course, appears out of the blue in a parking garage at my car door and says, ‘You’re under arrest.’ I swear he popped up out of nowhere. Believe me, I know what I’m doing, Peter. I wasn’t followed from the scene. There was no doubt that I’d gotten away clean.”

Saul said that he had never been arrested so “gently.” In fact, once he got to jail and was booked he thought back and couldn’t remember if “Agent” Gabriel had brandished a gun or even handcuffed him.

“I never thought to run or resist,” Saul told Peter. “For some reason I just obeyed. Bizarre, to say the least. I knew that if I got caught again it was over for me. But now it all makes sense.”

Gabriel made the arrest solo, which should have made Saul Cohen suspicious. FBI agents don’t go out for coffee unless their partner is with them, much less make an arrest.

“On the way to the jail, he said the strangest things to me,” Saul recalled. “I thought I’d been popped by a preacher or something.”

“Gabriel starts off by telling me that God loves me despite my sins, and that He has given me a ‘sound mind,’ which I have seen fit to ‘misuse.’ What kind of cop talks like that? Then he starts chanting in Hebrew. I knew it was Hebrew because I remember hearing the language as a kid.”

At this point in his narrative Saul pulled up. The expression on his face changed from someone who was matter-of-factly describing events to a boxer who was getting ready for a fight. Peter read equal doses of fear and intensity.

“Well, don’t leave me hanging. What happened after Gabriel spoke to you in Hebrew?”

“He gave me a gift.”

“Sounds wonderful, what was it?”

“An ability.”

Peter wondered why getting Saul Cohen to offer complete thoughts was like pulling teeth. Rather than ask him “what ability?” Peter flashed Saul a “get on with it” look.

“I can see demons.”

“Come again?”

“I can see demons. They are everywhere, Peter. Believe me, you have no idea how much I hate the little bastards and how much they hate me.”

“Is there one on me, Saul?”

“No. They’re afraid of you, man.”

“What about Malik?”

“Nope. Clean as a whistle.”

“What about that guy over there. Sam Harris. Decent enough person, got caught embezzling from his boss. As criminals go, he’s bush league. Gets released next week.”

Saul shifted his focus on to Mr. Harris. He was fifty feet away, busily engaged in an animated discussion with another inmate about last weekend’s stock car race. He seemed oblivious to the world. However, after a few seconds of Saul’s attentions, Sam Harris stopped talking, glared over at Saul and Peter and flipped them off.

“If you were to go ask Sam why he just gave us the bird he’d look at you like you’re crazy,” Saul explained. “He was very likely unaware that he did it.”

“Wow. He has a demon on him then?”

“Three, no wait. Four.”

“Lord have mercy!”

“Exactly.”

Saul Cohen then explained what life had been like for him since receiving Gabriel’s “gift.” It hadn’t been easy.

He told Peter what happened the first time he washed his face in his jail cell after Gabriel arrested him.

“It was hideous. In the mirror I saw some nasty devil creature and twenty odd of his imps. They were all over me, taunting me.”

“To think for all those years I was stupid and prideful enough to believe that I was in control of my life, robbing and lying and blaspheming at will. The truth is it was me who was being played for the sucker. The evil one was controlling me through my weaknesses like a puppet on a string.”

“What did you do, Saul?”

“I dropped to my knees and said God, my God, save me! Have mercy on me Lord! By His grace I remembered the twenty-third psalm from my childhood. You know, Peter, the one with “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil,” in it? I focused my conscious mind on the psalm all the while another part of me, my soul, was praying for deliverance.”

Saul stopped. Tears cascaded down his cheeks; he turned pale and began to shake. Clearly any recollection of the events in that jail terrified him.

“Steady, brother, I’m here. You have nothing to fear now.”

“Peter, you are so smart, yet still so green. Of course, I have something to fear. So do you. Let me tell you what those rotten sons of hell did to me.”

“For the next three days they kept at it, trying to get me to curse God. If I would do that, they promised, they’d go away and leave me alone. Somehow I held on, but it was the most difficult and horrible thing I’ve ever been through.”

“When they could see that I wasn’t going to break, then they really turned up the heat. For awhile they threw me around my cell like a ping pong ball. Then they made me scream and foam at the mouth. It took eight guards to get me strapped down. One of them is minus an ear, another a finger. I bit them off.”

Peter tried to visualize this battle, to experience it through Saul. He knew as an absolute spiritual principle that his only enemy was Satan, but like a genius who believes he can read a blueprint once and then be able to build a house, he really can’t, because there is simply no substitute for learning how to use a hammer to drive in a nail. Peter would have to learn how to beat the devil simply by doing it, but Saul’s insights added much to his already considerable knowledge and strength.

“My strap down chair, you ever see one? They put people all strung out on dope or poor sots suffering through the Delirium Tremens in them. You’re sitting there slightly tilted back and tied down tight enough to where Samson himself couldn’t break free.”

“Well, my strap down chair floated four feet off the ground, Peter. People freaked. I’m sure they considered shooting me. Thanks to that little demonstration, many of those guards are God fearing men today, let me assure you.”

“But you won, Saul. You’re here now, alive and well and free of them.”

“True, by the grace of God. But know this, Peter, they are relentless. You see how they are from the Bible, and nothing has changed since those times. Demons delight in torturing humans, because Satan hates man. He will never understand why God loves us primitive, imperfect mortals more than he does His angels. The evil one fears he’s ultimately doomed, but he’s going to get his by hurting us before he’s through.”

“Can you get demons off of people, Saul? Exorcise them I guess is the right term.”

“Sometimes.”

“How often is sometimes?”

“Maybe just over half the time. But some of them, Peter … let me say this. I’m glad I’m here with you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because some demons are much, much stronger than others, and while none of them are more powerful than our Lord, it’s faith and grace that beats them, drives them away.”

“You have faith, Saul. I know you do.”

“True, but not like you do. The Holy Spirit is exceptionally strong in you, Peter.”

“Well, Saul, if you see one of these super strong devils headed my way, be sure to give me a heads up, okay?” Peter said, chuckling, trying to lighten things up a bit.

“How much notice do you want?” Saul replied.

“How much can I get?” Peter asked, still smirking.

“In this case about thirty seconds. See that guy coming toward us from across the yard? It’s the same son-of-perdition who beat me up in jail, and he looks like he’s ready to try you.”

Five

Peter shut his eyes and silently prayed for strength. When he opened them he was looking right into the face of evil.

It was a very pleasant face, actually.

The unfamiliar man wore a utility workman’s uniform and appeared benign. At five foot ten inches, and maybe one hundred and sixty pounds, his stature inspired no fear. Styled hair, a slight build, and small, round gold-rimmed glasses gave him the look of a banker, not Beelzebub.

This was the ultimate proof that looks can be deceiving.

“Been dying to meet you, Mr. Kallistos,” the man said, extending his hand. “You’re a very special person. Between my buddy Saul over there and that meddling Gabriel, I’ll bet you’ve heard enough lies about me and my kind to where you’re sh***ing your pants about now.”