Title Page

The

White

Devil

––––––––

a novel by

Domenic Stansberry

Molotov Editions

San Francisco, California

Copyright Page

Molotov Editions

5758 Geary Blvd. #221

San Francisco, CA, 94121

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

The opening chapter of this novel, in much different form, was previously published  in The Massachusetts Review.

Copyright © 2016 by Domenic Stansberry. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any matter whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Cover design Domenic Stansberry with Darcy Fray. Book layout adapted from template licensed through BookDesignTemplates.com

Library of Congress Control Number:  2016903713

Hard Bound: 978-0-9967659-0-9  Trade Paper: 978-0-9967659-1-6

First Edition

The White Devil

“She hath no faults, who hath the art to hide them.”

John Webster

PART ONE

1.

There’s been another murder, this one in Los Angeles, in the sand under the Palisades. Both of my husbands are dead. I am young to have been married twice, let alone widowed.

Others are dead, too—a woman I admired; a boy.

I have taken refuge in a distant city, in a second-story flat off the Avenida. It’s an older neighborhood, where the once stolid houses now smell of decay. The front gate is iron, the windows barred. At the end of the Avenida the shanties start up, sprawling over the canyons and railroad gullies onto the pampas. Before this, I lived a different kind of life. There were stories.

I do my best to stay out of sight . . . to remain anonymous . . . but I get weary sometimes . . . reckless . . .

I wander onto the balcony in my nightgown, foolish, a little bit drunk. A car door slams.

I hear a man out in the street. He speaks in Spanish, “puta”—hissing in my direction, I think, but no, a woman staggers alongside him, a girlfriend or wife, a mistress, someone used to his insults. They muck along the dark avenue, insulting each other, then embrace in a dark cranny.

I envy them, even though it’s embraces like that which have gotten me in so much trouble.

I tell myself I am safe in this sprawling city, that I have escaped—but only a few days ago a woman recognized me, I fear, a cashier who studies the gossip sites. This has happened before. I let my guard down in the way I walk or dress. I remove my glasses while examining a necklace in a window or a menu at a café—and some clerk, some passerby, a couple two tables over, their eyes spark with recognition.

There is no such thing as a secret life.

Not for me.

Blink and I am captured. Whereabouts known.

With the cameras not far behind.

And others.

Who wish me greater harm.

2.