Bitter Spirits (5 page)

As she bathed, her mind wandered to Winter Magnusson. She'd dreamed about him twice—unsurprising, considering what she'd seen that night. But in her latest dream, instead of him being naked, it had been
her
, and he'd taken on the persona of some tabloid gangster, fighting rival bootleggers with machine guns and sawed-off shotguns.

She wondered if he'd ever been involved in anything like that in real life. Perhaps it was better if she never found out. He was likely wishing he never saw a ghost again. Maybe he'd already forgotten her. She certainly wished she'd forgotten the melodic rumble of his voice, the two dimples in the small of his back, and other notable parts of him . . .

Shaking that thought away, she dressed in bright clothing to fortify her mood: a lapis blue dress with long, sheer sleeves and knife pleats that fell just below her knees, and a pair of matching Bakelite drop earrings. After donning her gray coat and cloche, she grabbed her handbag and headed out the door. Four flights of stairs later, she stepped through a side door into the ground-level restaurant.

Golden Lotus was in the middle of a brisk lunchtime rush, and its ostentatious red and gold decor greeted her as she wound her way past dark wood tables and velvet-cushioned chairs, inhaling the enticing aromas of ginger and garlic. Customers who dined here were a mix of locals, tourists, businessmen entertaining out-of-town clients, and young working girls—typists and switchboard operators. Servers in smart red
tangzhuang
jackets with mandarin collars wheeled wooden pushcarts brimming with tiny plates of pungent bites: slender spring rolls, buns filled with Cantonese-style pork, and bamboo trays of steamed shrimp dumplings.

She headed to the restaurant's main entrance. Near the door, a counter held a rosewood Buddha statue on one side, and on the other, display boxes filled with Wrigley's gum and cigarettes sat next to a cash register. Day or night, one of the owners stood behind the counter—usually this was Mrs. Lin, as it was today.

Aida waited for a customer to pay his check, then stepped up to the register and rubbed the potbellied Buddha for luck. “Afternoon.”

“Miss Palmer,” Mrs. Lin replied cheerfully. The kindly Chinese businesswoman was petite in height and round in girth, with pretty plump cheeks and loops of black hair pinned tightly above the nape of her neck.

“Any mail for me today?”

“Mail and more.” Mrs. Lin lifted a small key that hung on a long chain around her neck and opened a lacquered red cabinet behind the counter, which housed tenant mail and packages. She retrieved two pieces of mail. The first was from a woman in Philadelphia; Aida had performed regular séances for her when she'd worked at a club there last year, and they'd since maintained a correspondence.

The second envelope was from an address in New Orleans. The Limbo Room, a new speakeasy. The owner, a Mr. Bradley Bix, was interested in booking her later this summer. He would be in San Francisco visiting his cousin at the end of June and proposed to call on her after taking in one of her performances at Gris-Gris. If he was satisfied by what he saw, he would offer her a booking. He included a brochure printed with photographs of the club, intended for potential members; their annual fees were much higher than Gris-Gris and the photographs made it look nice. It was a good prospect, and she was happy to receive it, but part of her was growing weary of planning her next move when she was barely situated at her current job.

Or maybe she was being too sentimental about San Francisco.

A group of noisy customers approached the counter. Aida moved out of their way and turned to find herself face-to-face with someone familiar.

“I said you had mail and more,” Mrs. Lin explained. “Mr. Yeung is ‘more.' Been waiting for you the last half hour. I was going to send Mr. Lin to fetch you, but the kitchen is backed up.”

“Bo,” Aida said in surprise, greeting Magnusson's assistant, who was dressed in another smart suit and brown argyle newsboy cap. “Mr. Yeung, I mean. What a pleasant surprise.”

He politely canted his head. “Either is fine. And it's nice to see you again.”

“How's your boss doing?” she asked in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder at Mrs. Lin. The restaurant owner was making small talk with the customers at the counter.

“Much better. And no ghosts,” Bo reported. “Or at least, none following him. He sent me here to inquire if you'd be willing to get rid of the ghost in his study.”

Aida's pulse quickened as adrenaline zipped through her. “Oh?”

“It shows up mid-afternoon, so that's why he sent me to fetch you now. If it's not too inconvenient, I've got the car outside.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“So he just assumed I would drop what I was doing and rush over there?”

“To be honest, people usually do,” Bo said with a sly smile. “He wants to hire your services this time. For payment.”

Aida almost laughed. “I'm very expensive.”

“He's very rich.”

“I expect he is.”

“He's impatient as a boy on Christmas and never invites people up to the house, so you should probably come. Let's get going before everyone finishes their lunch and jams the roads.”

Calling on a man in his home? Surely wasn't a sensible thing to do, especially a man like
that
. But when did she ever shy away from a novel experience? And it certainly would be interesting to find out where a rich bootlegger lived.

Besides, she could always use the cash, so she should probably go. The dimples in the small of his back had absolutely, positively nothing to do with it.

“I can't stay long,” she told Bo. Then she slipped her mail into her handbag and waved at Mrs. Lin, whose keen look of curiosity followed her out the door into light gray drizzle.

Aida's first lesson in a bootlegger's personal life loomed at the curb near the neighboring sidewalk newsstand. There was a dark red Pierce-Arrow limousine with a polished black top—like something the Prince of Darkness would drive out of the gates of hell. And even with the nefarious coloring, it was an insanely well-bred automobile with whitewall tires, glinting windows, and gleaming chrome. Its enormous chassis looked like a steamer ship on roller skates, led by a silver archer ornament on the hood. Showy luxury. Hollywood stars owned these cars. Aida had only seen them in magazines. She dumbly stared along with the tourists passing by.

“A beauty, yes?” Bo said. “She's brand-new. Custom-built.” He held open the back door for her while she slid inside. The interior was a dream: polished wood steering wheel, chrome reading lights, crystal pulls on the window shades. It was all Aida could do not to whistle in appreciation as she settled into the leather backseat, propping her heels on the footrest below.

A long window, rolled down halfway, served as a privacy divider between the front and the back. A small handheld motor phone made it possible to talk with the driver. Bo saw her eyeing it as he started the car. “You want the divider all the way up?”

“So that I can talk to myself back here?”

He grinned in response and pulled out into traffic.

Aida stared out the window through lengthening raindrops. Stores selling silk slippers and Oriental rugs blurred as they headed west. A few more blocks and she'd be headed into parts of the city where she'd never been.

Her hands didn't know where to settle. She raised her voice to be heard over the rumbling engine. “How long have you worked for Mr. Magnusson?”

“Seven years, thereabouts. He hired me when he started helping his father with the family business—after he left Berkeley.”

Berkeley educated? Surprising. “How old were you when you started working for him?”

“Fourteen.”

Good grief. He was running around doing illegal things when he was still a child? She supposed she shouldn't feel too sorry for him. He was obviously doing well now, and she certainly knew what it was like to be hungry for money.

“At first he just called on me now and then to run errands for him,” Bo explained. “Then I started working for him every day after school. After the accident—”

“The one that caused his eye injury? What happened, exactly?”

“You don't know?”

“He didn't say.”

“I'm surprised you haven't heard talk around the club.”

“I'm all ears now.”

“He'll have to be the one to tell the story, and I wouldn't recommend asking until he's warmed up to you. Touchy subject. Anyway, as I was saying, after the accident, he took over his father's business full-time, and when he moved back into the family house, I came with him. I've got a room there.”

So Winter's
father
was the original bootlegger, which meant he must've died in the accident, Aida reasoned. How terrible. She wondered if the mother was still alive, but it unearthed memories of her own parents that she didn't care to think about, so she shifted the conversation back to Bo. “What exactly do you do for him, if you don't mind me asking?”

“This and that. Communicating instructions, scouting, relaying information . . . driving spirit mediums around.” Brown eyes met hers in the rearview mirror, sparkling with humor. “And I guess you can add ‘personal valet' to that list after that night at Velma's.”

She laughed to cover up the unwanted picture of Naked Man floating inside her head. “I imagined the life of a bootlegger being a series of gunfights in dark alleys.”

“There's a little of that. Winter's definitely more comfortable with guns than ghosts, but you shouldn't be afraid to call on him. He's had additional security at the house since the supernatural business started up, and no one working for him has ever been killed . . . at least, not on purpose.”

She almost choked. “That's, uh, helpful to know.”

He steered the car down a side street. “Honestly, I'm surprised you agreed to come today, after everything at Velma's.”

“Guess I'm a glutton for punishment.”

“He might seem irritable at times, but he's been through a lot, so I guess you could say he's a little mad at the world. You just have to grow a thick skin around him when he's in one of his moods. He's not a bad person, despite what you might think.”

“I didn't think he was. Maybe a little demanding.”

Bo grinned at her in the mirror. “You fight your way up to a certain level of success after being nothing but an immigrant fisherman's son, you'd be demanding, too. Can't command respect unless you act like you deserve it.”

In their line of business, she didn't doubt it.

Houses began to increase in both size and grandeur as Bo turned onto a street with a steep incline. The Pierce-Arrow's engine protested as it turned faster to make the climb past an eclectic mix of grand homes. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Pacific Heights. Never stepped foot here until I started working for Winter. It's swanky—where all the Nob Hill millionaires built after the quake and the Great Fire. Everyone here pays for that.” He pointed toward a spectacular view of the bay and the rocky cliffs beyond, now shrouded in quiet rain and light fog. All the homes sat shoulder-to-shoulder, cramped on horizontal streets that lined the hill in tiers like movie theater seats, where everyone gets a good view of the screen.

Bo slowed the car as they passed through an intersection. Aida read the street sign here:
BROADWAY
. Her nerves twanged as she looked at a beautiful beast of a home on the corner. Bo parked the car at the curb.

“Welcome to the Magnusson house,” he announced.

AIDA STEPPED OUT OF THE PIERCE-ARROW IN FRONT OF A GRAY
green Queen Anne mansion. Four stories high, it was twice as big as the neighboring houses and looked like something out of a fantasy tale, with steeply gabled roofs, fish-scale shingles, bay windows, and a round, turreted tower. Like the other homes in this area, it had no yard to speak of—only a short iron fence and a shallow border of grass separating its massive girth from the public street. And like virtually everything else in this city, it was built on a steep slant with half the bottom floor disappearing into the hill.

“Goodness, it's grand,” she murmured to herself, craning her neck to take it all in. She spotted two men stationed at either fence corner—security, she supposed. “He lives in this big house all by himself?”

“His younger sister, too. The help. His brother, when he comes home on holidays.”

Ah, no mother, then. Maybe she died in the accident, too. No wonder he didn't like talking about it.

Bo led her down a narrow sidewalk in front of the house, up a short flight of steps to a covered portico that harbored a wide green door. As he reached for the handle, the door swung inward to a tall, pale, silver-haired woman. She wore an apron tied around her middle and a look of aloofness that was only slightly warmed by the pink of her cheeks. She studied Aida critically from head to foot for a moment too long while Bo removed his cap.

“Greta, this is Miss Aida Palmer.”

The woman gave her a funny smile that Aida couldn't make heads or tails of. “Miss Palmer,” she said in a birdlike voice with a heavy Scandinavian lilt. “Mr. Magnusson is waiting for you in his study. Come. I will take you.”

Aida stepped into a spacious entry, bigger than her entire apartment, with a high ceiling that opened up to the second floor and dark wood floors below her feet. A labyrinth of rooms sprouted in every direction.

“I'll be eating lunch down here in the kitchen,” Bo said. “When you're ready to go, Winter will call me and I'll drive you back home. I've got business in Chinatown later.”

She thanked him before he headed down a hallway and disappeared.

Aida followed Greta's impressively fast strides through the entry. At first she thought they were headed up the massive staircase, but Greta veered to the side and stopped in front of a black elevator, a small rectangular contraption that looked like an Art Nouveau metal birdcage, with scrolling whiplash curves.

“I've never seen an elevator inside a private home,” Aida remarked upon entering.

Greta shut the scissor gate, then the cage door, and operated a lever. “The Magnussons are fond of wasting monies.”

Well. Aida didn't know what to say to that. The rickety elevator groaned and whined as it made a shaky ascent to a highly polished dark hallway on the fourth floor.

Greta led her to a set of carved doors, guarded by a man sitting in a chair, playing solitaire on a folding wooden tray table; he doffed his cap when they passed by. A wide room lay beyond, filled with standing bookshelves, a large desk, and a billiards table. Several windows on the far wall offered an expansive view of the city and the foggy bay.

A cozy sitting area surrounded an oversized fireplace. The fire was lit, and sitting on a brown leather couch reading the
San Francisco Chronicle
was Winter Magnusson.

Surely he heard the elevator or their steps echoing down the hallway, but he remained engrossed in his reading, legs crossed, lounging in his shirtsleeves. His suit jacket lay folded on the back of the couch.

“Winter.” Greta's singsong accent made his name sound more like “
Veen-
ter.”

He glanced up from the paper and looked straight at Aida. His eyes narrowed slowly, like someone playing blackjack who'd just been dealt a ten and an ace.

And Aida felt like she'd just lost all her chips along with the shirt off her back.

“You came,” he said in his low cello-note voice.

“I hope you won't find a way to make me regret that.”

He looked amused but didn't smile. “I'll try to keep my clothes on this time.”

If he was trying to embarrass her in front of his housekeeper, he'd have to try harder. “I'm only here because you're paying me an exorbitant fee for a house call.”

“Worth every cent.” He folded up his newspaper. “Hungry?”

“Not sure,” she replied honestly. She had been, but now her brain was sending some confused signal to her body, preparing her to either become sick or run for her life. Why was her heart beating so fast? She could feel her blood pulsing at her temples.

“Greta, leave us. I'll call when we're ready for a tray,” Winter said, prompting the housekeeper to exit the room as he tossed the folded newspaper aside and stood.

Aida suddenly remembered just how big he was, and took him in from head to foot as he approached: crisp white linen shirt, black necktie with horizontal bands of silver, pin-striped gray vest anchored by the gold chain of his pocket watch, black wing tips. His flat-front charcoal trousers were so accurately tailored, they hugged the muscle of his thighs in an almost obscene manner. She liked this.

“You're looking . . .”
Enormous. Handsome. Intimidating.
“Recovered,” she said.

“I'm feeling a hell of a lot better. Are you planning on dashing right back out? Or did you not trust Greta with your coat?”

“She didn't offer to take it.”

“Since she's failed at her duties, allow me.” He said this as if it were some great chore and made an impatient gesture for her to comply, but she caught a curious gaze flicking toward her under the false front of seemingly bored, hooded eyes.

She set down her handbag on a small table by the door and unbuttoned her coat. As she was shrugging it off her shoulders, Mr. Magnusson stepped closer. Several things cluttered her mind at once: That he smelled of laundry starch. That the gold bar connecting his collar points beneath the striped knot of his necktie was engraved with tiny nautical compasses. And that she was almost positive he was looking down her dress.

That realization did something strange to her stomach. She knew she wasn't unattractive—at least, she didn't think so. Not anymore. When she was a child, she was teased about her heavily freckled skin. Even now, most men only looked at her with mild interest before setting their sights on other women with flawless complexions. But every once in a while she ran across a man who actually
liked
freckles.

Maybe Winter was one of them.

Did he see her as a sideshow curiosity, or something more? Perhaps he was merely a man, and breasts were breasts were breasts. She held up her coat between them. “How's the view from up there?”

“Not as clear as your view of me the other night.”

“To be fair, I don't believe
that
could've been any clearer.”

He plucked the coat from her fingers. “You sure didn't act like you minded.”

“I didn't.” She meant that to be a question, but it came out wrong. Winter seemed as surprised by it as she was, but he didn't comment. Surely he was aware how nicely his body was put together; he probably heard it all the time. He hung up her coat, then, without touching, extended his hand behind her back, urging her to accompany him farther into the study.

They skirted around a bank of standing bookshelves in the middle of the room and came face-to-face with the head of a dragon—or the neck and head of one, to be exact. Openmouthed and baring sharp teeth, the wooden carving was about her height, on display in a glass case.

“That's Drake,” Winter said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “The bow off a Viking longship from the twelfth century.”

“You
are
Scandinavian, then?”

“Swedish. My parents immigrated here when my mother was pregnant with me.”

“An arduous journey for a pregnant woman.”

Something in his brow shifted. A wistfulness. Or guilt, perhaps. “She insisted on coming to give me a better life. My siblings were born here.”

She walked around the dragon, peering through the glass. The carving was crude, the wood cracked and splintered. “Shouldn't this be in a museum?”

“Probably. If we ever need money, we can sell him. He's worth more than the whole damn house. It was one of the first things my father had imported after the bootlegging money started flowing. I've got an uncle who's an archaeologist. My younger brother is on a dig with him out in Cairo right now.”

“Really? How exciting. Hope he's not opening up any cursed tombs.”

“My brother could fall into shit and come out smelling of roses.”

Aida laughed.

In a fluid pair of movements, Winter curved his body closer to hers while settling his forearm above his head on the top of the glass case. His fingers tapped on the glass. A big body like his possessed an unspoken dominance if the personality commanding it understood its power, and Winter did. He towered over her at an angle that forced her to tilt her face up and back to meet his gaze, and spoke in a lower, more relaxed tone, as if he were sharing a choice bit of gossip, luring her into his web. “Uncle Jakob found the dragon bow a few years ago. Found three, actually—reported one, kept one for himself, and gave my father Drake, here.”

“Lawbreaking runs in the family.”

He made a grunting noise. “My uncle is fond of shipping black market goods, and my father always had boats. That's why he got into bootlegging in the first place.”

“Bo mentioned that your father was a fisherman.”

“Crab and salmon, mainly. I've traded most of the fishing fleet for rumrunners and a couple of big, new powerboats that go to Canada. But I haven't gotten rid of the crabbers.”

“You still crab?”

“It's good money and a legitimate cover for the booze.”

She glanced at a long bay of windows lining the outer wall of the study and left Winter to survey the view. “Oh, look at that. Bet you can see the entire city when it's clear.”

Winter's low voice was closer than she expected. He pointed over her shoulder. “You can see Fisherman's Wharf and Alcatraz Island from here. If the bay wasn't foggy, we could also see the northern point of the Presidio where they're going to build a suspension bridge across the Golden Gate strait to Marin County. Have you heard about it?”

“No.”

“Will be the longest in the world, if they ever raise the funds to build the damn thing.”

“Impressive.”

They gazed out over the rooftops for a moment until Winter spoke again. “Velma said you're booked at Gris-Gris through July. What do you do, just go from club to club?”

“Sometimes theaters, but speakeasies pay better. I've worked six of them over the past couple of years up and down the East Coast. This is the first time I've been out West since I was a small child. I'm originally from here—my parents were killed in the Great Fire.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I was only seven, so my memories are limited. Our apartment building initially survived the quake. It was one of the gas pipe explosions that brought it down. I got separated from my parents when we were trying to escape. One of the neighbors got me out, but my parents never made it. To this day, I'm a little phobic of fire.”

“Understandable. I was nine when it happened, but I still dream about the city burning.”

God, so did she.

“What happened to you after the fire?” Winter asked.

“I was shuffled off to a temporary camp, then an orphanage. I lived with three families before a couple, the Lanes, took me in later that year. They were moving out east, so I went with them.” She glanced out the window. “I have a few memories of living here before the quake, but I definitely don't remember it looking like this. It's going to spoil me. I won't want to leave.”

“How do you live like that, moving around all the time? Do you travel with someone?”

“Just me and myself.”

Two deep lines etched his brow. “Doesn't seem safe for a single woman to be running around the country.”

If she had a penny for every time she'd heard that . . . “I've managed just fine.”

“Sounds lonely.”

It was lonely at times—terribly lonely. But she did what she had to in order to survive, and she wasn't embarrassed about it. A certain pride came with the kind of independence she had. If you didn't rely on anyone but yourself, you had fewer chances of being disappointed—that's what Sam always told her. Out of habit, her fingers reached for the locket hanging near her heart.

“I live for the moment, not the past or future,” she said. Another Sam mantra. “But if you must know, I do prefer private séances to work onstage. They pay better for less work. Building up a client list takes more time than—”

A loud
brring-brring
startled her out of her memories.

“Hold that thought.” Winter excused himself and strode across the room to answer the telephone. She was a little relieved to drop the subject of her career choice. It was none of his business, really. And she'd already said more than she probably should. A bad habit of hers, not controlling the things that exited her mouth.