The Devil Raises His Own

PROLOGUE

1915

Shortly past eight in the evening on the Wednesday before Christmas, Flavia Purcell, née Ogden, sat next to the radiator reading the current number of Popular Mechanics magazine, half-listening to the piano music accompanying the motion picture playing downstairs on the first floor. She had eaten her evening meal—a pork cutlet and some stewed turnips—a couple of hours previous, alone, after which she had chucked her husband’s uneaten portion into the trash, though they could scarcely afford the waste. Their apartment was entered from the rear of the building and was not directly accessible from the motion picture house, and when she heard him tramping arrhythmically up the back staircase, she affected her best look of frosty indifference, knowing he’d want a fight.

On first opening the door he leaned in too far and nearly fell, saving himself and a sliver of his dignity by holding on to the frame. Home, he called out.

She kept her eyes on the page.

Dinner in the ice box?

She deigned now to look up at him. His fine, thin features had once struck her as noble; now they looked churlish and petty. What dinner?

You know goddamn well what dinner.

Yours is in the bin. You can dig it out if you want, I don’t care.

He backhanded her across the face. He stumbled as he did so, and the blow was glancing, but it infuriated her and she stood up and brushed past him into the bedroom. He followed her and sat down on the sagging old bed. The springs jangled. I’m sorry, sweetpea. I don’t know what gets into me sometimes. Forgive me? He made little smooching sounds.

Booze is what gets into you. You don’t come home after work and when you do get in you’re stiff as a plank and you smell like a still. And I work hard all day too, and yet I manage to do the shopping and fix you a nice meal and you can’t even be bothered to show up, and it’s the third time this week and I’ve had enough.

He waved her off. Go to Hades, you fishwife. He slid off the mattress and onto the floor, and she had to suppress a laugh. I don’t have to take this shit off of you, I know my marital rights.

Watch your language, this isn’t the saloon. She went back into the living room with the intention of getting her coat and leaving. She might be able to use the telephone in the motion picture theater’s office to call her parents and have her father come fetch her for a day or two.

Go fuck yourself, he called from the bedroom.

I won’t have talk like that in this house, she said.

You are not head of this household, missy. Soon as I get up off this floor I’m going to show you who’s the boss. And you know how I mean to do it.

You ought to know, Albert, I’ve been looking into hiring an attorney. She hadn’t intended to tell him yet.

The hell you have.

Flavia had her coat on when she passed in front of the bedroom door and saw he’d arisen, pulled his revolver out of the chiffonier and was fumbling with a bullet. She went back to the coat closet and got out the baseball bat. She’d had it since the age of eight, a tomboy’s gift from a doting father, and had kept it all this time for sentimental reasons. She was still athletic at twenty-five, and when Albert came grimacing out of the bedroom holding the gun with both hands she bounded forth and in three steps was upon him, bat cocked behind her head. She swung it with her whole body, twisting at the waist as her father had taught her, and connected with his temple. There was a crunching sound that made her think she’d cracked the bat, and as he went down to the floor the gun went off, sending a bullet into the wall.

SOMETHING STICKY AND warm dripped onto Ernie Kassler’s bald head. He was sitting between the machines in the projection room of the Marple Theater, cuing up the second reel of A Woman’s Past, a pretty good Nance O’Neil picture about adultery, set in a leper colony. It had been twenty minutes since the ruckus upstairs, nothing out of the ordinary for the two troublemakers, except for what sounded like a gunshot.

He put his finger to the substance and, examining it in the dim glow of the fifteen-watt bulb dangling naked from the booth’s ceiling, determined that it was blood. He jumped out of his chair and screeched—he was squeamish—loud enough that the pianist stopped playing, and he became aware of the auditorium full of people turning their attention from Nance’s romantic troubles and toward the projection booth. Looking up at the ceiling he saw that a goodly amount was dripping from upstairs onto the nice clean linoleum.

LATIN TEACHER BLUDGEONS HER HUSBAND

He Assaulted Her on Returning Home CITY ATT’Y WILL NOT PRESS CHARGES

She Was Unhappy that He Frequented Saloons

Mrs. Edith Purcell, of 417 East Douglas Ave., last night struck her husband Albert in the head with a blunt object, possibly a fire-place poker, causing his death. The victim had, per Assistant City Attorney Sidney Foulston, returned home from the saloon in the Eaton hotel, where several patrons affirmed that the decedent had become belligerent and had fallen down taking a drunken swing at a companion, then become enraged at the laughter of those assembled. Mr. Foulston is satisfied with the widow’s account of the incident and believes that Purcell assaulted his wife upon his return to the domicile and that she reacted in self-defense.

Albert Purcell, of the above address, was by all accounts a well-liked and successful certified public accountant employed by G. W. Gertz and Co. and was expected to advance there quickly. Mrs. Purcell is employed as a teacher of Latin and Greek at Wichita High School and is on break for the holidays. Mr. J. Calhoun Runcie, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, reports that her employment will be terminated regardless of whether she is charged.

AND THUS FLAVIA learned, from an article in the Wichita Morning Eagle that didn’t even print her right name, that she would be unemployed as well as widowed at the New Year. She had emptied the apartment of her belongings Christmas Eve morning, leaving Albert’s behind for whomever might find them tempting, except for a prized silver pocket watch that had belonged to his grandfather and which she planned to sell. The sight of her late husband’s black, coagulated blood on the throw rug next to the bedroom door excited in her neither grief nor remorse. She wasn’t proud of the deed, but she didn’t regret it, either, and she knew she would never miss him for a second. It would have been better if she’d retained a lawyer months earlier, but she hadn’t and that was that. She decided there, just before leaving the apartment for the last time, that she would not consider herself widowed, nor even divorced, but as a woman who had never married. She would have to leave town; some things could be forgotten in such a place, but the Christmas week bludgeoning of a successful and well-liked certified public accountant was not among them.

Her own grandfather lived, after decades of flitting about the country, in Los Angeles, California. He had long ago taught her the rudiments of photography, and in his letters often suggested that she should come out there and live in the healthy sunshine and assist him in his studio. She had always considered the idea as a childish fantasy, but now it seemed not only a valid solution to her troubles but something of an adventure as well.

Dear Gramps,

I don’t know if you have heard but I recently collapsed Albert’s cranial vault and though I am in no danger of legal jeopardy I will face considerable prejudice in Wichita regarding employment, matrimony et ca., and I believe it is time for me to leave the old hometown for fairer climes. I am hoping you were serious when you suggested I relocate to Sunny Southern California because I am heading there anon and will be counting on you for employment and lodging at least temporarily. Maybe I can find work in the pictures!

I will wire you details when I know them.

Love,

Flavey

1

1916

Mrs. Chen had taken to her bed with the ague. Bill’s breakfast consisted of coffee, two eggs, sunny side up, and flapjacks with butter and marmalade, consumed at leisure while seated on an upholstered stool at the horseshoe-shaped lunch counter of the local Pig and Whistle. The red-nosed, sallow-complexioned counterman had opinions about the war in Europe and about the role Freemasonry played in the United States’ potential entry therein, and though Bill let his attention drift back to the city section of the Examiner , with its lively accounts of stabbings and burglaries and boarding house sneaks, there came a point in his soliloquy where he seemed to want acknowledgment of something he’d just said.

Is that right, Bill said.

You can bet your life on it, friend. They won’t rest until the whole world’s under their thumb.

He gave the man a thoughtful frown and nodded, uncertain whether he was still het up about the Freemasons or if his fancy had meandered over to world Jewry, the papacy or the Bolsheviks or some combination thereof.

He returned his attention to the California state section. A man in the hamlet of Three Rivers had murdered his wife’s brother, embedding an iron spade in the left side of the man’s head, and at trial neither he nor his spouse would give a motivation for the crime; near Bakersfield a farmhand aged thirteen years had taken an axe to the sleeping foreman of the chicken ranch to which he was on hire from a local orphanage, after which crime he turned himself in to the county sheriff; before the eyes of a shop full of customers, a San Francisco jeweler had shot and killed a fleeing thief after the latter smashed a display case, emptied it and sprinted for the door.

A loud klaxon sounded outside, followed by the ringing of a bell, and he looked up from the paper to see a man prone on the streetcar tracks, stirring with apparent difficulty. Looky there at that, the counterman said. Trolley knocked that smart son of a bitch right over on his ass.

A crowd formed and the conductor came down off the trolley to examine the stricken man, a beefy fellow dressed sportily in an ascot and a sleeveless sweater with a carnation in its breast pocket. At his side was a petite young woman with peroxided hair done up in a permanent wave, wailing with more excitement than the matter seemed to call for. Among the crowd were a couple of newspapermen, one of whom carried a handheld rangefinder camera. The other took notes, addressing the trolley’s victim, who had risen to his feet uninjured. The conductor started berating the fellow, pointing variously at him and the train and the tracks, yelling something vehement Bill rather wished he could hear.

Approached by a policeman, the dandy held out his hand to shake, which the copper ignored. He then indicated, via the exaggerated gestures of a pantomime artist, that he was physically undamaged, upon which the patrolman gestured to the conductor to be on his way. The assemblage dispersed and the young fop and his bottle-blond companion, accompanied by the two newspapermen, crossed the street and came into the Pig and Whistle, where they took seats at the counter a few down from Bill. They were in a jolly mood, the four of them, and once they’d ordered, the first pressman got up to use the telephone booth. Bill nodded at the one with the camera.

That a Speed Graphic?

It sure is, he said.

Wonderful piece of machinery. When I started out the cameras were portable but you needed a mule to get them from one place to the next.

The man who’d been knocked over looked at him with a vacuous lack of expression. Are you all in one piece? Bill asked him. He was a handsome fellow, better dressed than Bill suspected was his habit.

I’m all right, he said. Takes more than a streetcar to get the best of Jack Strong. His accent was distinctly Southern, from Tennessee or Arkansas. He extracted a business card from his inside pocket and handed it to Bill.

Bill Ogden. He produced his own carte de visite and flung it spinning across to the young man’s side of the counter. The actor caught it with a studied insouciance that might have looked good in a picture show.

The girl’s eyes widened and she gave Bill a big, closedmouth smile. I’m Purity Dove. Pleased to meet you. She sounded just like her beau did; he guessed they’d come west together to be in the pictures, and Bill couldn’t see such a story ending up happily.

You in the pictures? he asked.

Young Jack Strong fairly beamed. You’ve seen me, then.

No, I don’t see too many of them. But your names sound made-up, like Bessie Love, and when you had your mishap there just happened to be a couple of newspapermen present, one of them with a camera.

The two of them looked nonplused, and so did the photographer, but after a moment they laughed. It’s all part of the business. Jack here gets some free publicity, we get an exclusive, the lensman said.

Which paper?

"The Examiner."

He held his copy up, tapped it and nodded. It’s a good newspaper, but I don’t see how you manage to fill a whole section out of motion picture news.

Photoplays are more popular than anything in the show world any more, the actor said, as though that were a good thing.

I suppose they are. It can be a hard life. My second wife was an actress.

The first reporter came back from the phone booth. We’re in the evening edition, but they may run it in the city section instead of the motion picture pages.

The girl was crestfallen. That’s awful luck. Jack could’ve gotten himself killed with that stunt, and we don’t even make the pictures section.

Think of it this way, Bill said. All sorts of nobodies get mentioned in the motion picture pages. But if you’re in the city section it means he’s important enough to rate a mention as real news. If you see my meaning.

She nodded and exchanged an enlightened look with the actor. I see. If some plumber got knocked down by a trolley, it wouldn’t make the papers at all, would it?

There you go. He didn’t believe it himself, but was glad to make her feel a bit better.

He picked up the evening edition after he’d finished his darkroom work for the day, just to see if Jack had made it in. The incident had been deemed worthy of the front page of the city section, accompanied by a photograph of a grinning Jack Strong that must have cost the photo editor a couple of hours’ worth of retouching.

PICTURE STAR SHAKEN BUT UNINJURED IN STREETCAR MISHAP

A streetcar accident this morning at Spring and Third Streets upended one of the Film Colony’s brightest up and coming lights, Mr. Jack Strong, whom readers will recall as the stalwart younger brother in last year’s Foxfilm production of A Tale of the Bowery. The wheaten-haired thespian was not wounded, but a patrolman at the scene warned the train’s conductor to pay closer attention to pedestrian traffic before letting him proceed with only a mild rebuke and no fine or order to appear. Our photographer at the scene snapped a candid pose of Mr. Strong, who will shortly appear on screen in the Cowper comedy production entitled The Jiltin’ Fool.

There wasn’t any mention of the girl who’d accompanied him, which made Bill a little sad.

IT SEEMED TO Grady that the trouble with Trudy was she looked like a streetwalker. Which, to be fair, she was, but this was a girl-and-girl picture, and those worked better if it seemed to be two virgin innocents succumbing to the temptations of Sappho, and not a couple of hardworn veterans of the sidewalk groping one another for the benefit of a movie camera. Not that either of them was particularly old, or looked it, but there was a hardness to Trudy’s features, and she turned resentful when told the next shot called for her to place her index finger between the other girl’s labia.

Play like it’s fun, Trudy, he said.

Go fuck yourself, Grady, you can pay me to do this dyke business but you can’t make me like it. The afternoon had grown hotter than anyone had expected, even under the mildewed rooftop canvas. The sun was at a low angle and the white reflectors shone straight at the performers, shiny with sweat.

I like it fine, the other one said. Victoria was her name. She was hopped up and game for anything, not really pretty but passably attractive, and happy enough that she did exude a sort of innocence.

Never mind which it’s about two hundred goddamn degrees on this fucking roof.

Can’t be helped. Anyway you’re in your birthday suit.

I like the rooftop, Victoria said. Reminds me of getting a tan at the beach.

Roll, Grady called again, without much optimism. This wasn’t a goddamned Lasky production, he had to make use of just about every frame of raw stock just to break even, and he was just about to call it a day in order to hire a new girl tomorrow. The sun was getting low, anyway.

Whoops, the cameraman said.

Sweet Jesus, what now?

I ain’t got enough film in here to run but about ten, fifteen more seconds. You want me to change or shall we burn through it?

Why not, Grady said. Fifteen seconds of fingerfucking was all he needed, if it came out all right, even if he had to replace Trudy tomorrow. What did a bunch of punters at an Elks smoker in Fort Wayne care if the girl changed faces in the middle of a scene, anyway? All right gals, make it look like it’s true love. Roll.

Trudy bared her upper teeth and stared at the ceiling as she bore down on Victoria’s clitoris with her right forefinger. Though her intent seemed malign, the latter made a face of such ecstasy that Grady knew he had a take. He’d never before thought of using any fancy, Griffithstyle business on a flicker like this, but now he had an idea that next afternoon he’d get Trudy’s replacement to do that same thing with her finger and get a close-up on Victoria’s face as her eyes rolled back in her head. Maybe insert an intertitle, something he’d never bothered with before. Something like:

OH! OH!! OH!!! Edna Dear! Your Finger’s Found its Way to my Naughty Pleasure Button!

As the camera ran empty Victoria let loose with an ecstatic wail, her co-star’s finger pressing spitefully hard, and Grady wondered if replacing Trudy was really the solution. There was something between these two, something that might work on the screen. He considered how many fraternal organizations there were in the country, and how many of them held the sorts of stag parties where blue movies were shown, even—especially—in the more conservative, blue-nosed precincts. Obviously Grady, a man with studio experience, could make a better product than your average moron off the street. Though he’d never considered these stag pictures to be art, maybe there was enough craft in the making of them that a real artisan could make a product that would stand out amongst the run-of-the-mill filth others were putting out. Maybe there was money to be made in a better dirty flicker.

You want me to reload, boss? the cameraman asked. His name was Milton, and he was a pretty good operator. He’d lost jobs at any number of studios for showing up pickled, and Grady suspected he was in his cups now, but his work for Grady was always acceptable, and it spared him having to shoot the pictures himself.

Let’s shut it down for the day. Want to talk to you about something.

COUPLE THINGS WE could be doing to improve the product, Milton said over a pint of Falstaff. Grady had broached the subject of improving the pictures artistically, and they’d wandered down Gower to a saloon called Kirby’s. There was a bowl of peanuts in front of them and he crushed the shell of one between thumb and forefinger, then popped the meat into his mouth with a flick. Shoot indoors with arc lights.

With the camera we’re using? That lens? We’d need a dozen lights.

Not if you bought a camera with a faster lens. One we’ve got must be fifteen years old.

Just like the camera. Can’t afford a new one of those either.

Still. Imagine converting the third floor to a filming stage.

I don’t see the problem shooting on the rooftop.

That rooftop’s lower than the buildings across the street. What if someone sees the operation and calls the coppers?

Grady took a swig and waited a moment before answering. He was still hot and the cold beer was a relief. Just warehouses. Some fellow pushing a hand truck gets a thrill looking at some naked girls.

What about aeroplanes?

First of all, the canvas blocks most of the view from above. Second, when has an aeroplane ever flown over that building?

Milton was petulant. It could happen.

Grady had thought in the past about moving out to Ventura County or El Segundo where a barn might be converted via skylight into a proper studio, but that would involve bringing performers from LA, putting them up overnight and feeding them, or wading out into the demimonde of those locales and recruiting performers, the sort of thing that could draw the interest of the police or, worse, the local pimps. Maybe the purchase of a new camera and some lights would allow him to continue the lease on the Gower property, a former paper warehouse he’d rented for a pittance. The first order of business would be a bank loan, and he pondered what his approach would be. A former director of one-reel comedies for White Star Studios wanting to reintroduce himself in the film world? Why not? He took a swig of his beer and reached for a peanut. Milton, let’s do this thing.

IT WAS GETTING dark already as Trudy strutted down the concrete, Victoria lagging behind. Slow down, Trude. What’s your hurry?

Go fuck yourself, Victoria.

What’s the matter with you, anyhow?

Can’t you take a goddamn hint? Quit following me. The fingerbanging’s over with for the night.

Victoria laughed at that. I wasn’t expecting any more of that, hell, it was just for the camera, wasn’t it?

Trudy wheeled around to face her. Listen here, we’re not friends and I don’t want you following me.

Victoria seemed incapable of offense. She gave Trudy a cheerful wave. All righty, you’re feeling cranky. See you tomorrow at noon.

SHE STEAMED ALL the way home. Tonight’s crossing of the city felt significantly longer than the usual. Even with the sun down, the trolley was hot and her fellow passengers ripe, and the city around it appeared hostile and sinister. Arriving at her third-floor apartment she opened the front door as quietly as she could, but when she entered the dark room she heard a small voice. Mama? The light burnt out.

Pearlie. What are you doing up so late?

I can’t see the clock. She stood there in the light from the hallway in her little raggedy nightdress. Trudy shut the door.

Did you eat your supper?

Uh-huh.

Don’t say ‘uh-huh.’ Say ‘Yes ma’am.’

Yes ma’am.

And you fed Ezra?

Yes ma’am.

He’s asleep?

Yes ma’am.

All right. You’ve got school in the morning.

The little girl got into bed. Trudy got some of her medicine then sat down in the dark at the window next to the table, poured herself out a dose and took it. The tiny kitchen looked out onto the rooftops of the one-story buildings behind it, and as she started feeling warm and happy she watched the night sky, and the stars started forming eddies and pools and before long she’d forgotten about the sound of Pearlie’s voice in the unlit room.

2

C ocksucker.

The speaker was a woman to Bill’s right, aged about sixty. He didn’t believe she was addressing him directly because she hadn’t opened her purplish eyelids since his arrival, though her posture was fully erect. Every few seconds she licked her lower lip as if to remove an excess of mucilage she’d accidentally painted onto it; her upper lip was delicately covered with fine white and black hairs and divided by fine vertical lines, and every couple of minutes she’d mutter another toothless, spittle-soaked cocksucker and take a sip of her beer.

His intention in stopping into this pit had been to convince the owner that he might profit from a handsome photograph of the interior of his saloon. A handsome wooden sign affixed to the exterior of the building featured a six-masted galleon and the name THE FLYING SCOTSMAN, of a quality quite at odds with what turned out to be its squalid interior, and he deduced that many years of neglect and mismanagement had reduced it to its current hellish state. This derelict contrast excited him for reasons more artistic than commercial—surely the landlord lacked the funds for a promotional photograph—and as he sipped his lager he was blocking his views in his mind’s eye.

To his left stood a small, poorly shaven man telling a story, a battered derby resting on the damp zinc beside him. He might have been telling it to Bill or the bartender or an invisible hobgoblin, but he looked straight down at the bar as he told it. A long-ago romance spoiled by the death of the beloved in a fall from a horse, filled out with a number of asides regarding poor dead Betsy’s brothers (Alf, a no-account, and one-armed, industrious Mickey) and sisters (pretty Jane, homely Gloria and wall-eyed Edna) and pets (a dog, Blue, and a kitten, Puff, tragically run down by a wagon before attaining cathood) and, finally, her appearance when naked. Betsy did sound splendid in his telling; if she was anywhere near as enchanting as his description Bill could understand his descent into alcoholic despondence