The Devil Raises His Own

by Scott Phillips

Genres: General Fiction; Westerns; Thrillers; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

From the master of Western noir comes a provocatively entertaining crime saga set in the early days of the film industry.

This dark historical adventure captures the beginnings of the Hollywood studio system and the “blue movie” industry that grows up alongside it.

Los Angeles, 1916: Photographer Bill Ogden has opened a portrait studio in the seedy noir world of early Hollywood, where he is joined by his granddaughter, Flavia—a woman in need of a fresh start after bludgeoning her drunken, abusive husband to death in Wichita. Though his business is mainly legit, Bill finds himself brushing up against the “blue movie” porn industry growing in the shadows of the motion picture mainstream.

When a series of grisly murders take place across the city, Bill and his capable granddaughter are pulled into events as tricky and tangled as anything this side of The Big Sleep. We meet dreamers, opportunists, washed-up former stars and starry-eyed newcomers, a cast of unforgettable characters living on the margins looking to make a quick buck, launch a career, or just keep their family together. The Devil Raises His Own is at once a stripped-down noir thriller and a panoramic look at Los Angeles at the beginning of motion pictures—a Boogie Nights set in the era of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin from one of the best crime novelists working today.

Release date: August 6, 2024

Publisher: Soho Crime

Print pages: 384

Sample

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