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  From the Editor

  When Andrew Neiderman told us that he had been dreaming up more stories starring his infamous John Milton character from The Devil’s Advocate, everyone at Pocket Books was thrilled. Even before Milton was so brilliantly portrayed by Al Pacino in the 1997 film adaptation of the book, he was an enigmatic, engaging figure on the page. And when Andrew told us that he wouldn’t just be relating Milton’s future adventures but rather delving into his past and exploring his plot to dominate his prestigious New York City law firm, well, we knew that was one dastardly career arc we just had to read about.

  So without further ado, we present to you Judgement Day, packaged for a limited time with the original The Devil’s Advocate at no extra cost. It’s a great bargain, much better than whatever deal Mr. Milton might try to make with you . . .

  Happy reading!

  For my family,

  the only reason to be

  Prologue

  Warner Murphy believed he had good reason to admire himself in the gilt-framed bathroom mirror. He wasn’t a smoker and not much of a drinker, rarely partaking in a martini at lunch with a client or other attorneys, and he never had even experimented with drugs. He was athletic, religiously attending his sports club, and unlike most young attorneys he knew, he was intelligent about what he ate. Practically a vegetarian, Warner took a lot of ribbing about his concern for his nutritional health, but also unlike most, he hadn’t gained any significant poundage to add to what he weighed when he graduated from high school. At just under six feet and one hundred eighty, he was buff, with GQ-style dark brown hair and stunning greenish-blue eyes.

  Warner wasn’t neurotic about it. He wasn’t looking for any signs of age creeping into his thirty-four-year-old body and face when he examined himself in the mirror. As far as he was concerned, age had been put on a wait list. He couldn’t even imagine the day he would dye his hair. He hadn’t slowed down at all, and was still constantly admired for his boundless energy, which he knew came from his optimism and self-confidence as well as his healthy lifestyle.

  However, he wasn’t just admiring himself in the mirror this morning. He was looking to answer a question he had asked himself most of his adult life. Do successful people really look successful? Do they stand out in a crowd even before you get to know them or know anything about them? Do their faces glow with power, their eyes reveal their new super-confidence, their smiles give other dreamers hope? Do I have that look? Was it vain to wonder?

  He searched his reflected image, trying to imagine the way others saw him. There was no question that he attracted envy. It came with the territory. He expected it. He was very successful for someone his age, and while luck always played some role in the scheme of things, he had no reason to be surprised at his accomplishments. He didn’t believe he was arrogant about it. In his mind, false modesty was worse, and he was rarely condescending. He wanted to be liked and respected, and he believed that only the most self-centered, jealous people would wish him ill.

  But that didn’t worry him.

  They’ll choke in my exhaust, he thought.

  What was going to happen today was not that much of a surprise for him. The truth was, he had been anticipating it for some time. Was that arrogance or just self-confidence? For as long as he could remember, he had been an outstanding student, successful in sports and in his social life, always making a good impression, looking mature and responsible. Without his parents pressuring him, he dressed better than his peers and was attentive to his hygiene. In college, his concern for his haircut, the sharp creases of his trousers, and the crispness of his shirts and cuffs drew some ridicule from his classmates. Some even avoided him, distrusted him because of it, as if he were some DEA plant or someone the school administration depended on for inside information about rumblings in the student body. But he couldn’t help himself. He always wanted to look and feel like a real winner.

  Maybe it was his maternal grandmother’s influence. She had lived with them after his grandfather died, and with his mother working almost full-time, utilizing her accounting skills in his father’s modest limousine company, his grandmother pitched in when it came to raising him. She would brush his hair, straighten his shirt, brush off his pants, and make sure his shoes were polished and the laces tied well before she would permit him to leave the house.

  “People say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t believe it, Warner,” she told him, her grayish-blue eyes taking on that assured look of self-confidence he believed he had inherited from her rather than from his parents. For as long as he could remember, she was the most excited about any of his achievements. “First impressions are full of glue,” she told him. “They stick on people’s eyes and in their mind, and it’s very difficult to get them to change opinions once they have them.”

  “Right, Grandma,” he whispered to his image now. It wasn’t the first time he had replayed her words and her looks in his mind and then had spoken to her. Sometimes he thought he was working harder not to let her down more than he was working for anyone else, including himself, even though she had been dead for nearly ten years. She would never be dead to him.

  And today she certainly would be especially proud of him, rising to a full partnership after just over seven years at his law firm. Simon and James were afraid they would lose him. They knew other firms were pitching offers at him frequently. He had become something of a New York star as a trial attorney, almost all of his cases high-profile, Page One stories. Even the district attorney was trying to get him to change sides. If his grandmother were alive, it would show in her smile, but she would also have that look that said, “I expected no less.” She was like that even during her final days, when she managed to attend his high school graduation and saw him deliver the valedictorian address and have his scholarships announced.

  He paused. He saw a tiny area on his jaw that he had missed when shaving and went right to it, running his fingers over his skin, searching for any other fugitive stubble. He studied his teeth, making a mental note of his next dental cleaning, and then trimmed a little off his right eyebrow.

  “I think you spend more time on your appearance than I do,” his wife, Sheila, said from the bathroom doorway. “Don’t you know vanity is a sin?”

  He had a feeling she had been standing there watching him for a while. She held their daughter Megan’s hand, and the two looked in at him with almost the same expression, his five-year-old shaking her head with playful criticism scrawled across her face, just as it was scrawled across her mother’s.

  He smiled. His angels.

  Megan had Sheila’s unique shade of golden-brown hair, borderline blond, and she had Sheila’s Wedgwood-blue eyes. Friends called her a clone of her mother and kidded him about having little or nothing to do with her looks, but he saw his smile in his daughter’s smile and laughed to himself at the way she would study people, squinting a little as he would do when she was just a little suspicious or skeptical about what someone had said to her.

  “Now, now, don’t be jealous, you two. Big day ahead,” he said. “Gotta look the part.”

  “When don’t you?” Sheila kidded. “I heard George Clooney is using your tailor.”

  She widened her loving grin, radiating her excitement. Her styled hair was silkily soft, thick, and rich. He loved brushing his lips against it and parting her bangs to
plant a kiss on her forehead. Her childlike smile, full of trust and love, always rescued him from disappointment or depression, not that either had much of a place in his life this morning.

  He straightened up quickly, taking on the posture of a commanding general.

  “How dare you speak this way?” he kidded. “Don’t you two know whom it is you are addressing?”

  “Wait, aren’t you the attorney who is soon to be a full partner at Simon and James Associates? Four successful high-profile defenses in a row the last two years alone, I believe. They know they have a winner, and so do we. We’re very proud of Daddy, right, Megan?”

  “He brought home the stars,” his daughter said. Everything was measured in stars ever since she had begun attending kindergarten.

  They laughed.

  “Reservations at Le Grenouille?”

  “Taken care of,” Sheila said. “Just the two of us. I’m not sharing you with anyone tonight.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “You have no idea,” she said. “Give Daddy a kiss, Megan, and let’s go, honey. You don’t want to be late for school, and we don’t want to make Daddy late for his big day.”

  Megan shot forward into his arms, and Warner picked her up and kissed her after she kissed him. He set her down slowly, and she ran back to Sheila. The two looked at him once again. Sheila blew him another kiss to add to the kisses she had given him this morning when they had made love.

  “No better way to start celebrating,” she had said almost the moment he had opened his eyes.

  Now, as they headed for the front door, he smiled to himself, recalling every erotic second. From the way his male friends talked about their marriages, he knew his was something special. Passion seemed to be seeping out of his friends’ lives the way air deflated from a pinhole in a tire. One day, they’d wake up in marriages that had flatlined. But that wasn’t going to be true for him and Sheila. No one had a more perfect life.

  Once again, he had pangs of guilt because of how confident and successful he felt. Maybe Sheila was right. Maybe it was vanity to believe he deserved it, but once again, he reminded himself that being humble wasn’t in his character, and he hated to see people pretending to be humble. For one thing, it was easy to recognize false modesty, and any dishonesty, no matter how small, annoyed him.

  He returned to the mirror and brushed out the small crease in his shirt, then went into the bedroom to put on his gray pin-striped Armani suit jacket. He’d had it cleaned and pressed weeks ago, anticipating this special day. He had actually been getting a little impatient. The two senior partners had no idea just how close they had come to losing him. He paused to look at himself one final time in the full-length mirror.

  “Go get ’em, Murphy,” he told himself. It was the same little cheer he muttered before taking an important exam in college or, now, stepping into a courtroom. With his smile of satisfaction and pride frozen on his face, he started out and turned left in the hallway to go to his den office to get his briefcase.

  They had a twentieth-floor two-bedroom apartment in one of the more prestigious buildings on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. From the soft furnishings to the elegant curtains and subtle but expensive accoutrements including a Lladró porcelain figurine collection, Sheila had done a great job of decorating, keeping it warm and cozy despite its size, marble floors, and high ceilings. The area rugs were worth almost half his starting salary, a salary he had more than quadrupled, but he was proud that despite their luxurious building with its private security and attentive maintenance, their jewelry and expensive watches, their designer clothing, their first-class European and Caribbean vacations, there was nothing snobby about them. Sheila was too grounded for that.

  Like him, she had come from modest beginnings. Her parents had a successful but small Continental restaurant in the Hamptons. She was only in her sophomore year at NYU when they had met that summer. He had just begun his career. If luck had played any real part in his life, it was in the decision he and two friends had made to stop at her family’s restaurant. She worked during the summers as a hostess. Her older sister was already married to a local dentist. He and Sheila had a storybook romance after that, and once they were married, they had soared together, lovebirds embraced by the clouds of glory and success.

  Was it possible to be happier, to be more self-satisfied? Really, was it arrogant to feel this way? That fear was haunting him more than usual this morning, but he was determined not to feel guilty, especially today. Besides, he was certainly no Icarus. He had no wings held together with wax and wasn’t reaching for a heaven too high. Just as he picked up his briefcase, the door buzzer sounded. He paused. She couldn’t have left without her key, could she? Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought; he shook his head and called out as he walked toward the front door.

  “Coming. What did you forget?” he sang.

  It had to be Sheila and Megan. No one else in the building would be visiting this early, certainly not without calling first.

  Any guests or visitors coming from outside the building were announced first by security in the lobby. In fact, a video image was sent to a six-inch screen on the apartment’s intercom, and the owner had to send back approval before the visitor could get into the elevator. Every image was kept on file, with the time of arrival. The building’s lobby had as many CCTV cameras as the lobby of a bank. Warner was proud of the building’s security and told friends, “We’re safer than the gold in Fort Knox.”

  He went through the living room to the foyer and was surprised when he opened the door to face a tall, stout, bald man in a dark blue deliveryman’s uniform. It was a bit ornate, with gold epaulets and gold cuffs. No matter how well the man was dressed, however, this was disturbing. Whatever he was bringing, even a congratulatory note from someone at the firm or in his family, it should have been left at the desk in the lobby, or Warner should have received a call to tell him something had to be signed for. He didn’t want to get Charlie Bivens, the morning receptionist, fired, especially today, but he would definitely lodge a complaint about this before he left for work. Details were always important to him. Success required it. As his grandmother would recite, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.”

  “Yes?” he said, not trying to hide his now quite visible annoyance.

  The deliveryman didn’t respond. His face seemed made of granite. Nothing moved, not his lips, not his eyes, and in fact, his grayish-brown eyebrows looked penciled on or enhanced with some sort of eyebrow makeup. He reached into his oversize pants pocket, took out a Pachmayr forty-five with a combat grip and pointed it at Warner, who had never been comfortable with guns. The forty-five looked like a small cannon to him.

  “What the hell . . .” He felt his fingers weaken like five melting icicles, and his briefcase dropped to the floor.

  “Move to the patio,” the man said, in a deep voice that seemed to come from somewhere below his chest. It was more like an echo.

  “What is this? Who are you?” Was it some sort of sophisticated robbery? He didn’t care about the small amount of cash in the apartment, or even the jewelry. What else could the guy take? He appeared to be alone, but how could something like this happen in this building? Whatever he was planning, he would never get away with it.

  “I want you to see something,” the man said, and waved the pistol. “I’m not going to ask twice. The next time, I’ll splatter most of you all over the walls.”

  Because he deliberately spoke out of the right corner of his mouth, he sounded like someone trying to imitate a film-noir gangster. Nevertheless, Warner felt a cold chill at the back of his neck; he backed up and watched the man enter, closing the door softly behind him.

  He waved the gun again to indicate that he wanted Warner to walk to the patio. “Let’s go. Move it.”

  “What for? I don’t understand this.”

  “You object? I know you’re a lawyer, but it’s not a request from the judge. I give the orders in this court. Move.”

/>   He had the gun pointed right at Warner’s heart. There was suddenly the scent of burned wood. It came from the man’s hair and skin, and it was a little nauseating. The coldness in his eyes seemed to chill the very air around them. Warner felt a small trembling start in his knees and move into his stomach. Reluctantly, he took a few steps toward the patio.

  The man stepped forward and opened the patio door. “After you,” he said, with only the suggestion of a smile. It was more like a sneer.

  Warner stepped back. “What is this? We’re twenty flights up! What am I supposed to see? I’m not taking a step farther until you explain.” He did everything he could to sound firm.

  The man suddenly warmed his smiled and brought light into his coal-black eyes. “Maybe it’s a banner in the sky.” He looked at his watch. “Hurry.”

  “Huh? A banner in the sky?”

  Was this man part of some sort of practical joke, the firm’s way of congratulating him? What else could it be?

  “Whose idea was this?” he demanded, now feeling brave enough to raise his voice. “The secretaries?” Maybe it was some of his friends from other firms. He knew one or two who were capable of something like this and who would enjoy hearing about how he almost pissed in his pants. “It’s not funny.”

  “Sorry,” the man said, in a far softer tone of voice. He shrugged. “Don’t get upset. I take my part seriously.” He put his pistol back into his pocket. “It’s a fake anyway,” he added. “A stage prop I used in a play last month.”

  “Stupid,” Warner said, shaking his head. “Childish, in fact.” He was still trembling a little from the shock of it, and he hated the fact that someone, part of a joke or not, had filled him with such deadly fear. “Someone’s going to hear about this.”

  “Sorry I was so convincing. Maybe I’m a better actor than I think.”

  “Whatever,” Warner said. “I don’t find it funny. What if my wife and child were still home?”