Bitter Spirits

FOUR

A FEW HOURS AFTER LEAVING GRIS-GRIS, WINTER SAT IN A leather armchair in his study, staring out a long set of windows that overlooked twinkling city lights ending at the bay. A splendid view. One of the best in the city. He never grew tired of it, and right now it was a small comfort he needed in order to ground himself after the evening’s unsettling events.

The hot tea his housekeeper, Greta, had brought up was doing little to take the chill off his bones. He was slowly feeling normal again, but he couldn’t get the taste of Velma’s satanic brew out of his mouth.

Once he got his hands around the party responsible for what happened tonight, he was going to choke the life out of them or break their neck trying. But he had his work cut out to find the culprit: all they had was the chop mark of the sorcerer who’d issued the spell, scribbled among the arcane symbols on the paper left on the table when he was poisoned.

Black Star.

Bo had never heard the name; maybe someone around Chinatown would know it.

In the meantime, Winter wouldn’t be imbibing any more strange drinks. And there was still the matter of the resident ghost inside his study. “Maybe she can get rid of it, too,” Winter said, but he didn’t really have the ghost at the top of his mind. He was thinking of the way the spirit medium had looked at him in Velma’s bathroom. That look was telling. Maybe she didn’t find his scarred face attractive, but she was interested on some sort of base level. No virgin blush on that curious face of hers. No one had looked at him like that in years. Perhaps he’d been hallucinating under the poison’s dank influence.

Leaning against the window frame nearby, Bo stuffed his hands in his pockets and said nothing for several moments. “She’s witty.”

“She’s got a sharp tongue. That’s always trouble.”

“Trouble’s better than demure and boring. And I’ve never seen someone with so many freckles. Kind of exotic, don’t you think? Looks a bit like Louise Brooks.”

“Far better-looking than Brooks.”

“Same big brown eyes,” Bo argued.

“Mmm. Bigger, I think. Should probably ask her to come up here.”

“You mentioned that already. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Winter felt himself becoming irritated. “Considering what I’ve been through tonight, I think I’m feeling pretty damn good. I won’t pretend to understand what happened to me tonight, but somebody’s screwing with me, and I don’t want to see another damn ghost again if I can help it. Miss Palmer is an expert on spiritual matters, and I want her to come out here and get rid of it. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s right, nothing.”

Bo gazed out the window. “She should come out here because she’s an expert.”

“Exactly.”

“And her eyes are bigger than Louise Brooks’s, as well as her breasts.”

Damn that impudent kid and his smart mouth. But he’d made his point, and now Winter was angry at himself for saying too much, maybe a little embarrassed as well. He also didn’t like Bo noticing her. At all.

“Might take some convincing to get her out here,” Bo said. “Maybe you should go call on her. Apologize for flaunting your balls in her face and nearly smashing her to death.”

He hazily remembered her last words to him—I’d rather be horsewhipped—and wondered if she’d already had her fill of him. She’d not only seen him naked; she’d seen him weak and sick and delusional. God only knew what she must think of him. His mood blackened.

“I’m sure Miss Palmer—” Bo started.

“Enough!” Winter snapped. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to hear her name again. You just concentrate on finding someone in Chinatown who knows the hellish name on that cursed piece of paper.”

Winter fully expected the matter would be solved. People were always trying to muscle him out of business, and they always failed. But after a couple of days had passed, Bo hadn’t tracked down the name and the ghost in his study appeared like clockwork every afternoon at a quarter past two, sticking around for a minute before it disappeared. And this was probably the only reason why Winter still found himself thinking about the spirit medium. The deviant fantasies his mind had been conjuring of the two of them together weren’t unusual; after all, she was a pretty girl, and he was a healthy man.

But with those fantasies haunting him before bed and the damned ghost in his study haunting him by day, he got fed up. Three nights after the hexing, on his way to a midnight meeting with a bootlegging client, he stopped by Gris-Gris. He told himself it was merely a business transaction: he’d ask the spirit medium to get rid of the ghost in his study, she’d do just that, he’d pay her. End of story.

But he arrived too late to speak to her in person. Miss Palmer’s show was already starting. Since he’d gone to the trouble of coming out here, he might as well see what she did. So he stood at the back of the club, hat in hand, and watched from the shadows.

Faces turned to the stage and scattered applause broke out as the house lights dimmed. A dark-skinned middle-aged man in a top hat and tails strode to a standing microphone—Hezekiah. The smiling compere’s good humor and witty commentary between scheduled acts was legendary. In one hand, Hezekiah carried a small, three-legged table, and in the other, a glass bowl filled with the torn halves of the lottery tickets that they’d been passing out in the lobby.

“Good evening,” Hezekiah said in welcoming voice. “Please take your seats and locate your tickets. Mrs. Monroe, my dear, I think yours has fallen into the front of your gown, but I’m sure that young man at your side will be happy to retrieve it for you.”

A booming chorus of laughter followed the master of ceremonies as he placed the table near a secondary microphone to the right of the spotlight and set the glass bowl on top. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to welcome the famous spirit medium from the East Coast, recently transplanted to our fine city. Please give a warm Gris-Gris Club welcome to Madame Palmer.”

Velvet curtains parted. A burst of applause filled the room as the medium made her way across the stage. All of his muscles tensed at once as she stepped into the spotlight. Some childish part of him hoped that he wouldn’t find her as attractive onstage as he had the night of his poisoning.

No such luck.

His attention roamed the length of her champagne-colored gown, tracking floral beading that ran down her stomach and arched over gently curving hips. Elbow-length gloves hid half her arms, and her golden stockings were opaque—a pity to cover up all that freckled skin, but it made what skin he could see that much more enticing.

She was stunning.

“Good evening,” she said into the tinny-sounding microphone after the applause died down. “To those of you who are new to my show, I am a trance medium. Tonight I will call forth spirits of your loved ones from the beyond, temporarily welcoming them inside me so that they may use me to converse with you. They will speak with my voice. I am fully aware during this experience. I do not lose consciousness or forget what’s happened.”

The reverent quiet gripping the club was only punctured by the occasional tinkle of glass at the back bar or a single sneeze from someone in the audience; she had them all in her sway. How different she was onstage, so serious and reserved. But the confidence was still there. He remembered how she’d boldly spoken to him in Velma’s office and smiled to himself.

“Before we start, I’ll mention one last thing concerning memento mori,” she continued. “As it states in the program, I need to touch an object owned by the deceased in order to establish a connection, preferably something beloved that was handled frequently. I see that many of you have come prepared, so shall we proceed with the first participant?” She nodded at Hezekiah. “We will call as many numbers as we can during the next hour. Please be patient. If your number is called, please walk to the front with your memento and hand your ticket to Hezekiah.”

Hezekiah retrieved the first lottery number. “Number one-five-eight.”

A man in a green suit near the stage raised his hand and stood. His table clapped as he proceeded up a small set of stairs at the front of the stage and handed his ticket to Hezekiah.

“What is your name, sir?” the medium asked.

“Hannity.” He nervously thrust a pocket watch in her direction.

“Who does this belong to, Mr. Hannity?”

“My brother, Lenny. He was killed in the war and—”

Miss Palmer held up a gloved hand. “Don’t tell me anything more. Please give me a second to prepare myself. If I am able to summon your brother, you will only have a minute or so to speak with him once he enters my body. I cannot hold on to him indefinitely. So I will advise you to keep your wits and don’t waste time. To ensure you’re speaking to the right person, I’d suggest you immediately question him about something only the two of you would know. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Mr. Hannity said.

The club waited with bated breath like children around a campfire listening to stories. Even the balconies above the sides of the stage were filled with spectators hanging over the railing. The medium placed her left hand over Mr. Hannity’s pocket watch and balled up the other against her thigh. Winter watched, curious. She closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she inhaled sharply and her right leg twitched as if someone had kicked her. Her eyes flew open.

She exhaled.

Her breath floated out in a cloud of mist . . . just as it had the night they’d met.

Goose bumps pricked the back of Winter’s neck.

“Go on, Mr. Hannity,” Hezekiah encouraged from the stage. “Ask your question.”

The lottery winner hesitated, wringing his hands. “Uh, Lenny? If it’s really you, can you tell me where we buried the dead cat we found in the street on my sixteenth birthday?”

Miss Palmer looked down at him. Her manner didn’t change. Ghostly breath continued to flow from her mouth as she spoke. “In Old Man Henry’s field.”

Mr. Hannity gasped.

“Hello, Michael,” she said. “Happy to see you’re finally going bald.”

Her voice was unaffected. And even though Winter had already witnessed what she could do to an existing ghost, it was startling to see her possessed—if that’s what this was called. A couple of weeks ago, he wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but now . . .

What was that thing she’d done with her hand when she was calling the spirit? Winter tuned out the conversation between her and Mr. Hannity and concentrated on figuring out her process. It was almost as though she were holding something, but what?

After a few exchanges between Miss Palmer and Mr. Hannity, Winter gave up cracking her method. His eyes roved over her sleek caramel bob and the freckled neck and shoulders below. He found himself desperately wishing he could set fire to her long gloves.

Then her gown.

His cock pulsed appreciatively at this thought. Christ, he needed air. Seeing her again had been a mistake. If he’d already had trouble tamping down fantasies of her in his bed, then watching her perform onstage, radiating poise and confidence . . . It wasn’t something he’d soon forget. After taking one last look at her, he slipped away and—quietly pocketing a program with her photograph printed on the inside—headed back through the lobby to his waiting car.

Aida rented a room in a five-story building in Chinatown over Golden Lotus Dim Sum, at the northern end of tourist-laden Grant Avenue. All the residents were single working women like her. Cable cars clanged down the street during the day, and local streetcars ran until midnight, so she usually didn’t have to pay for a taxi after work or worry about straining her calf muscles hiking up and down the hilly streets alone, which made the six-block walk from Gris-Gris seem twice as long. Weekly room and board included free dim sum—as the proprietors owned both the apartments and the restaurant—and her room contained a Murphy bed that folded up into a closet, an armchair, a desk, a telephone, and a private bath.

But the best part was the black iron fire escape that stretched outside her window. It doubled as a meager balcony, upon which she sometimes sat at night to stare out over pagoda roofs lined with swaying paper lanterns and the gold dragons entwined around Chinatown’s lampposts.

Four days after the incident with Winter Magnusson, when Aida rose at her usual late-morning hour, she rubbed goose bumps on her arms and pulled back curtains from her window to peek outside past the fire escape. Nothing but gray skies and drizzle. Mark Twain supposedly once joked that a summer in San Francisco was the coldest winter he’d ever spent, and from what Aida had experienced since she’d arrived, this wasn’t an exaggeration, especially at night when the fog rolled in.

“Better than the blistering heat out East,” she said to the small oval photo inside her gold locket. “And cold weather just means more customers stopping by the club tonight to warm up with a drink. See, Sam? I’m still thinking positive.” She snapped the locket closed and headed to her humble bathroom.

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.