The Devil You Know
The Devil You Know
By
Richard Levesque
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any reference to historical settings or individuals is a product of the author’s imagination and is not intended to be an accurate description of people or events.
Copyright © 2014 Richard Levesque
All rights reserved.
Kindle Edition
Cover Art and Design Copyright © 2015 Duncan Eagleson
Used by Permission
All rights reserved
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Brandi Bowles for her support and editorial input on this book.
Special thanks also to my wife, Kari, who read several versions of the book with her usual eye for detail. Her support at every stage of the project has been invaluable.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Author’s Note
Sneak Peek: Take Back Tomorrow
About the Author
Prologue
With a tumbler in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other, Julian Piedmont pushed through the oaken doors and led the way into the high-ceilinged room. Bookcases lined the walls, and a larger than life portrait of his father hung above the ornate mantle. Julian stood for a moment below the painting, swaying slightly as the others gathered around him, and then poured himself yet another whiskey. The old man seemed to stare down at him, but his disarming smile failed to fool Julian, who knew the truth behind it and how it concealed the ruthlessness that had helped his father build an empire.
A dozen drunken young men in disheveled tuxedoes had gathered around Julian, their hair mussed and their faces flushed. They stood as though in formation, making a horseshoe with Julian at the open end, his back to his friends. The way they formed a barrier between him and the open doors to his father’s library, an outsider might have mistaken them for bodyguards. And as rich as Julian was now with his father in the ground, a cadre of protectors might have been appropriate, but the loyalty these young men felt toward him ran deeper than anything felt between hired guardians and their employer.
“There he is, boys,” Julian said, unaware of how loudly he spoke. He raised his glass, not turning to see if anyone else toasted the painting with him. “Man of the hour. 1875 to 1946. Meanest son of a bitch this side of . . .” The toast trailed off as Julian tried to think of something clever to say. Nothing came to him, so he drank.
His friends carried glasses, bottles, and flasks of their own, and now they drank as if on cue. None of them seemed to know what to say, but a hesitant chorus of “Hear, hear!” and other grunts of approval echoed Julian’s toast to his father. Their voices blended with the sounds coming into the room from the rest of the mansion—loud music and the buzz of the revelers who filled the house. If Hedda Hopper ever got wind of the debauchery taking place in the mansion, Julian knew, the ink she’d need to tell the story would fill an entire issue of the Times. It didn’t matter, though. Nothing that happened in the house tonight would make it into the papers tomorrow. Anyone who spoke to gossip columnists would be out of a job at best, but what they all dreaded more was being tossed out of Julian’s circle of friends.
“Hell with him, then,” Julian muttered. He flung the empty glass into the fireplace and turned his back on the portrait as the tumbler exploded among the ashes and soot. He regarded his friends as he swayed before them. Nowhere in Hollywood or Beverly Hills could there be found a more impressive group of men tonight, not one of whom had ever stood in front of a camera. All sons of rich men, boys who had grown up free of want and need with fathers who pulled the strings at one studio or another. And every one of them, Julian knew, practically worshipped the ground he walked on. They stood before him now, some smiling foolishly, waiting for the next outlandish thing to come out of his mouth while others nodded at him, enthralled.
“I am looking,” he slurred, “at the next generation of geniuses. Fox, Mayer, Laemmle, the Warners . . . they’ll be nothing compared to what we’ll do in this town now it’s ours. Nothing. And all this.” He waved the whiskey bottle in the air, taking in the whole room with it. “All this doesn’t mean a goddamned thing. All the money . . . all the fucking money he spent on this . . .” Before he could finish his sentence, he reeled and would have gone to the floor, the Persian rug he stood on seeming to rise up to meet him as his knees turned to rubber. The young man closest to him was Colin Krebs; sandy haired and slight of build, when Colin tried to catch Julian, he lost his balance under the other man’s weight, and the two of them ended up sitting on the floor, their legs entangled.
Julian laughed. It took a few seconds for the others to join in, but once they saw that their leader had found amusement at his own expense, they followed suit, some of them sitting down on the rug to join them. Only Colin appeared uneasy, and Julian looked at him with mock reproach. “Don’t be such a sourpuss, Colin,” he said. “Or you won’t be invited to the next funeral.” He laughed again. “You thought I was going to say ‘party,’ didn’t you? I knew it! Oh, Christ.” He slapped Colin on the back, a bit too hard. “I was going to say before you fell down that we should burn these damned books. My father loved them so. What’s the most valuable book in the place you think?”
“The oldest one probably,” Dick Sheridan said.
“Anything by Shakespeare,” Mike Lowell managed to slur.
“Anything with pussy in it,” Eddie Teagarden added with a chuckle and an elbow to Colin Krebs’ ribs.
Julian listened and nodded, smiling absently. He noticed that Bill Templeton and Jack Durant were no longer paying attention to him, the pattern on the rug having captured their drunken minds. Normally, Julian would have called them out like a schoolmaster hovering over incorrigible boys, and they would have forced themselves to listen to what he was saying, but now he paid them no mind. The idea of spiting his dead father by destroying some of his prized possessions suddenly interested him far more than keeping the troops in line. He pulled himself away from Colin and crawled toward the nearest bookcase, the bottle still in hand and splashes of whiskey spilling onto the rug as he went. Using a shelf to pull himself up, he fingered the rows before him and pulled out a leather bound copy of Paradise Lost. He considered it for a moment before tossing it to the floor. Then he selected again, bringing forth a book whose spine had faded completely, its red leather binding cracked and chipped. Taller than the other books near it, though not nearly as thick, the book looked like it should be light in Julian’s hands, but he was surprised at the weight of it. He stared at it for a moment and ran a finger over the embossed cover; it bore the image of a single eye that seemed to look out at him through the ancient cracks of the aged leather.
When he turned around, most of his friends were still seated on the floor, and Julian stood above them like a priest before a congregation. Eddie and Colin seemed to be arguing over whose flask was whose. Fools, Julian thought. Still swaying and holding his whiskey bottle by the neck, he opened the book, not mindful of how roughly he treated it.
“Read something, Julian,” Dick said.
“Something juicy,” Mike added.
Julian smiled, ready to oblige. He cleared his throat, but quickly the bemused expression that drink and anger and some form of grief had put on his face transformed into one of confusion, and then disgust. “Damn thing’s in Latin,” he shouted, and was about to drop it carelessly to the floor when his eyes caught Colin’s. “Colin, you still a goddamned Catholic?” he shouted, prompting laughter from the group.
Like most of the other men in the room, Colin Krebs had known Julian Piedmont since boarding school. At the time, the film industry had been young enough that its executives were new to being rich, and many of them had sent their sons off to learn how the other half lived. Though no wealthier or more special than the others, Julian had quickly risen above the rest, his cavalier attitude, irreverence, and quick wit making him attractive to the other boys; he had held court ever since. Colin gave no reply to Julian’s insult, nodding in response. Struggling to get to his feet, Colin approached their undisputed leader while the others gathered around them. Some looked genuinely interested in the drama unfolding; others feigned interest to appease Julian.
“Now read,” Julian said, shoving the book into Colin’s hands.
The book felt fragile, as though the heavy leaves would slip free of the binding if Colin turned the pages. Julian had opened the book to the title page, and Colin looked at it with some confusion, trying to remember the Latin his parents had forced upon him years before. “It’s not like it’s the Mass or anything,” he said in a hushed voice, speaking to Julian alone.
“Oh for goodness…Just read it.”
After a few seconds’ hesitation, he said, “It’s called Gelamen Malum Lacuna. A gathering of evil words.”
“What?” Julian said, stunned. “Dirty words, in Latin?”
Colin smiled. “I don’t think so. Evil words, it says. Spells. Curses. See, here it says ‘maledictus’ and ‘diabolis.’”
“Witchcraft?”
Colin shrugged. “Not sure. Something like that.”
“Witchcraft!” Julian repeated with some glee. “In my father’s library! Oh, that is a hoot. Well, go on then.”
Colin turned the fragile pages and studied them for a moment, reading what he could translate. “A curse to blight thine enemies’... crops. And this one’s on harnessing the power of ... goats. No, that can’t be right.”
“Well pick one,” said Julian. “Cast a spell. Turn Jimmy into a cat or something.” The circle of drunken young men laughed on cue.
“On conjuring…” Colin read and stopped. He raised an eyebrow for a moment and then turned the page.
“Conjuring what?” Julian demanded.
Trying not to look resigned, Colin turned the page back. “On conjuring a demon lover.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the other men began cheering and making catcalls.
“Oh, Jesus. You’re kidding,” Julian said.
“No.” Colin read further down the page. “It’s an incantation.”
“Well do it, then. There’s not a girl in the house who’s not taken yet. The best looking bunch of us, and probably the richest, too...all stuck with each other. A little love slave’s just what we need. Right boys?” Julian laughed as Mike and Eddie started arguing about first dibs.
“And if that doesn’t work, we can drive down to Tijuana. Be there by sunrise,” Jack Durant offered.
Colin laughed with the men and moved to close the book, but Julian stayed his hand. He took another sloppy pull from the whiskey bottle and said, “Do it. Read the witchcraft.” It was half dare and half order.
Quietly, but nervously, Colin opened the book again and with another glance at his eager audience began to read. “Diabolus quod adnihilo audite mihi. Ego inflecto.” He looked at Julian doubtfully.
“Louder!” his friend shouted, a cruel smile on his face. The spell went on for almost a page, and Colin read it haltingly, unsure of some of the words, and became more and more frightened by all of them. And as he read, he felt along with the fear a real desire to please Julian, a desire that made no sense to him but which drove him nonetheless, as it had for years. It drove him to make more of a performance of the last several lines, his voice gaining even more volume and his expression echoing the meaning of the words he read.
When he finished, no one spoke or even moved for several seconds. Colin stood with the open book still in his hands, his breathing a bit rapid from the adrenaline that had begun to course through his system as he neared the end. Nothing had happened.
“So where is she?” Julian asked. “Oh lover girl?” he called, swaying his hips. Along with Colin and the others, he was looking around the room, expecting the chandeliers to sway or the lights to flicker; anything that would be a precursor to having a willing woman appear before them, ready to do devilish things. Only the distant laughter from the rest of the house suggested anything sinful. Julian laughed a bit nervously and then said, “D’you get it wrong, Colin? Leave out a word?”
“No,” Colin said, shaking his head. “I read it all.”
“Well, then?”
He shrugged. “It...it’s just bunk, I suppose. Just a bunch of mumbo jumbo.”
Julian took a step toward him, a menacing look on his face. “You’re saying my father spent a good deal of my inheritance on hokum?”
Colin could think of no response.
Then Julian laughed loudly at him, making him jump. “Of course he did!” he brayed and then looked to the others to share in the joke. They all laughed, and Colin joined in, a bit relieved. But then Julian turned back to him, a fading smile on his lips. “Still. Maybe you made a little mistake. Let’s try that again, shall we?”
Colin swallowed once and saw that Julian wasn’t joking. Then he started over, not looking up once as he read.
* * * * * * * *
Julian was still getting the giggles over the whole thing by the time he made his way to his bedroom. Dawn was breaking, a spreading glow of red and orange against the clouds that rose up from the eastern horizon, and he pulled his curtains shut after giving the sunrise a cursory glance. The music had finally stopped and most of the partygoers had gone. It would be up to the servants now to put the place back in order, and even then he figured there would still be a handful of hangers on who wouldn’t or couldn’t be chased out for a few more days. It didn’t matter to him. If they were the right types, he would just start the party again this evening, the servants and his father’s memory be damned.
He had coerced poor Colin into reading the spell several more times, joking that if Colin had gotten it right, soon enough there would have been a demon lover for each of the men in the room. The last time they even chanted all together. He thought the whole thing stupid now, of course, and the idea that his father had bothered collecting such a pile of trash—rare antiquity or not—only added to the contempt he had long felt for Leonard Piedmont. No doubt some of his friends had found real women to warm their beds once Julian had dismissed them. It had been a long twenty-four hours, though, and Julian wanted to do nothing but sleep. Not even a demon lover could keep his head from his pillow, he thought.
Still in his tuxedo, he fell asleep almost immediately, promising himself that he would call a fledgling starlet the next day to make up for any debauchery he had missed during the wake. His thoughts led into a dream, an extremely vivid one in w
hich he sat at his father’s desk trying to make sense of the headlines in Variety. In a flash, he realized the words were in Latin, and he cursed Colin Krebs and all Catholics for what they had done to the movie industry. But the curse was not directed at the trade paper in his hand now; he spoke it aloud to Veronica Lake, who sat inexplicably across the desk from him, her long blonde hair parted on the side and hanging halfway across her face, obscuring one of her eyes the way it had in those scenes in The Blue Dahlia. He had never met Miss Lake, and she had never done any work for his father’s studio, but that didn’t matter. She was here now, and the hair that hid part of her face was like a curtain he wanted to see behind, one that she invited him to lift with every movement of her full lips.
Strangely, the hair stayed in place, hanging mysteriously across half her face as she crawled across the desktop, suddenly nude. Her breasts hung down as she advanced, and Julian reached out to cup them as she finished crossing the desk and met his lips with her own. They both opened their mouths hungrily, and he felt her tongue against his. At the same time, he kept telling himself that this was a dream, and then felt a mixture of surprise, alarm, and delicious curiosity as he realized that he was really feeling her tongue flicking against his, her breath against his cheek, her fingers running down his body. She felt as real as any other woman could feel. Then the desk was gone; they were in his bed, their legs entwined, and it felt like nothing he’d ever known, a sensation of electricity running from her body into his. He felt it deep inside, a surge of pleasure running up into the pit of his stomach with intensity he’d never thought possible. It took only moments for him to reach a climax that made him feel as though he were leaving his body, floating out of himself in waves he wished would never diminish.
But he was brought back into himself when she smiled at him, finally tossing back that curtain of blonde hair to reveal to Julian that there was something not right about her face. It was her eyes, he saw. They were not quite right, not quite Veronica Lake’s. Then the alarm he was beginning to feel turned to revulsion when he realized that they were a man’s eyes looking at him from this woman’s face. And when she murmured in his ear, “That was good, Julian. Let’s do it again,” he was horrified to hear a man’s voice.