Bitter Spirits

TWENTY-TWO

WINTER TOOK A TAXI TO THE FAIRMONT THE NEXT DAY. WHEN HE left Aida the night before, he’d asked her to meet him there at the same time today, but he half expected her to change her mind—maybe she’d have regrets about the things they did with each other. It seemed too good to be true.

A rap on the hotel door made his pulse jump. He rushed to answer it too quickly, but when he threw open the door, it was only an attendant from the kitchen with a cart. The boy cowered under Winter’s glare and waved a gloved hand at the pitcher of orange juice and coffee service. “Your order, sir?”

Winter exhaled heavily and signaled the attendant inside the room. After he wheeled the cart into the sitting area, he asked if Winter required anything else, then acted like he was going to bolt for the door; Winter stopped him.

“You know who I am?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anyone asks, you don’t.” Winter pulled out a stack of bills and removed a gold money clip, then peeled off what was likely a month’s worth of the attendant’s wages. “Make sure my men outside get coffee and food at lunch. If I’m back tomorrow, I’ll give you the same.”

The attendant brightened considerably. “Yes, sir. You can count on me.”

As Winter handed over the tip, a figure appeared in the doorway. Winter’s chest squeezed.

“This is a private room, miss,” the attendant said quickly, pocketing the money as he strode to block her entrance.

“Yes,” Aida said, tapping her handbag against her leg. “I’m . . . Mrs. Magnusson.” She arched one brow Winter’s way: teasing, playful, attractively arrogant. Only a day ago—no virgin—she’d been nervous about her sexuality, and now she was brimming with confidence. It gave him a deep-seated satisfaction to know he was responsible for that change.

“Mrs. Magnusson?” The attendant gave her a pointed look of disbelief.

“Ah yes,” Winter said. “Please don’t disturb my . . . wife and I again until I call, unless it’s an urgent matter with my men.”

The attendant cleared his throat and nodded before exiting.

Aida locked the door, then dropped her handbag and dashed to Winter in a delirious rush. With her arms around his neck, he lifted her off the floor and kissed her like she really was his wife and he hadn’t seen her in months. She smelled so good, felt so warm and soft, that if relief and gratitude hadn’t weighted him down, he might’ve floated away in happiness.

“What have you done to me?” she said breathlessly when they broke for air. “You’ve turned me into a fiend, Winter Magnusson.”

“There is a God,” he mumbled against her neck as he pressed kisses on her rapid pulse.

“I went to sleep thinking of you,” she whispered, “and woke up wanting you.”

A big, bright happiness flooded his senses. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

She gave a little squeal of delight as he pushed her back against the wall. “Please tell me you brought more Merry Widows this time.”

“I cleaned out the druggist,” he said, grinning down at her. “At the rate we’re going, I should own stock in the damn company.”

Her happy laugher followed them to the bed.

The Fairmont became their daily routine. Nothing in the outside world interrupted them—not ghosts nor raids nor threats of any supernatural nature. The primary anxiety that plagued Winter came in the form of regular updates from Ju about the liquor trade in Chinatown spiraling out of control. Warehouses had been burned, robbed, smashed up. Infighting broke out among friendly tongs. Everyone suspected their neighbor, but no one knew who was actually leading the shake-up.

It even made the newspapers. Headlines questioned how safe the “new tourist-friendly” Chinatown truly was. Rumors spread of the old pre-earthquake tong wars being revived. It was all anyone talked about at Golden Lotus, Aida reported, and her landlady was worried because the restaurant’s business was starting to suffer.

Businesses outside Chinatown were feeling the effects of St. Laurent’s raid. The Fairmont was hurting. Winter managed to sneak in a few cases of champagne and whiskey for their important guests, but the manager refused to risk anything more. Winter put more men watching the hotel, but no one had seen or heard anything.

Not until the sixth afternoon, when Winter got the call about Black Star.

Bo’s voice was barely audible over the hotel’s telephone wire. He had to plug his free ear with his thumb to even hear him.

“Say again, Bo.”

“Ju found the man. He’s a fortune-teller at Lion Rise Temple, but only on Saturdays, when the tourists come. We’ve got three hours before his shift finishes, so we need to leave now.”

“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“A couple more things. Ju says the guy isn’t affiliated with any tongs. He’s probably just a hired gun.”

“Then we’ll just convince him to tell us who’s paying him. What’s the other thing?”

“Anthony Parducci turned himself in early this morning.”

Winter froze. “What?”

“Showed up at Central Station, spooked as hell, saying the voice of God had spoken to him and told him to turn himself in. They thought he was doped at first, but now they’re saying he just went crazy. Police chief tried to talk some sense in him and get him to calm down, but two Feds had stopped by the station and heard what was going on, so they arrested him. Parducci gave up the locations of all his warehouses, suppliers—everything.”

“Holy shit.”

“Whoever’s conducting all this is starting to land some blows.”

“I don’t want to be the next one. Pick me up out back,” Winter said before hanging up.

Aida started dressing before he could even finish telling her. “I’m going with you. If there’s any ghost business, you’re safer with me along. Especially after the business with this other bootlegger turning himself in. Let’s hope this Black Star is your guy.”

He watched her rolling the welt of her stocking over a pink garter that sat snugly on her lower thigh, just above her knee. “I might have to threaten him. I don’t want you to see that.”

“You mean that you don’t want me to be repulsed by it,” she clarified.

“Yes.”

“Well, I won’t be. And I trust you will protect me if something goes wrong.”

He watched her pull on the second stocking, amazed by her nonchalance. By now he shouldn’t be surprised. “All right.”

Both stockings were in place now. She stood up, wearing nothing else. Absolutely gorgeous. But something was changed about her today, even before Bo called, and Winter could see it in the line etched between her brows. He captured her wrist.

“What?” she asked.

“You seem different.”

“Do I?”

“Something wrong?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you sure?”

Her chin dropped. “No.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s silly. I just got something delivered to me at Golden Lotus this morning that made me sad.” She gently tugged her arm away and picked up a shell pink chemise. “I met with my future employer a week ago. He came to the club and offered me a gig in New Orleans. A new jazz hall called the Limbo Room.”

The unexpected news unstrung his nerves. “You’ve already got another job?”

She stepped inside her chemise and shimmied it over her hips. “They’re offering me room and board at a hotel next door to the club. Will pay me double what Velma’s paying. The most money I’ve ever been offered in my life.” She slipped silky straps over freckled shoulders. “It’ll keep me employed through October. The owner bought my train ticket. That’s what was dropped off at Golden Lotus this morning.”

“Do you know anything about this man?”

“He’s middle-aged. Owns another speakeasy in Baton Rouge. Seems nice enough.”

“And you’re just going to run off to a strange city halfway across the country to work for a complete stranger?”

“It’s what I did when I came here.”

A rising panic tightened his chest. “You won’t have anyone there to look after you.”

Slender fingers tucked the front locks of her bob behind her ears as she bent to pick up her skirt. “I’ve made it this far on my own.”

God only knew how—a miracle she hadn’t been raped or robbed or killed in some dark alley after leaving one of her shows in the middle of the damn night. The only unescorted women roaming the street that late were . . . Christ, he didn’t know if there were any. Even prostitutes had sense enough to stay behind closed doors. It panicked him to think about her off somewhere, out of his reach, where he couldn’t be there in minutes. “New Orleans is a vice-ridden port city, cheetah.”

“San Francisco is a vice-ridden port city, Mr. Bootlegger.”

Swearing in Swedish under his breath, he hunted down his clothes, trying to hide the unsettling mix of anger and hurt churning inside. This was preposterous, her traipsing off. He knew she had to leave—of course he knew. But in the back of his mind, he’d pictured her in Seattle or Portland, maybe Los Angeles. Somewhere on the West Coast, where he could take an afternoon train and be there in time to catch her show. And where the hell were his socks? He didn’t for the life of him remember taking them off.

“Here.” She handed him two limp black dress socks.

“When do you leave?”

She stilled and bit the center of her upper lip.

“When?” he insisted.

“About a week.”

His throat felt as if he’d swallowed wet cement. “One week?”

She nodded. “Now you know why I’m sad.”

That was nothing—no time at all. “What if Gris-Gris offered you a longer contract?”

“Velma already has a telepath booked, and don’t you dare storm into her office and force her to keep me. I can already see the wheels turning. I won’t take something I haven’t earned honestly, and I can’t stand being in debt to someone else. I’m not sure if you understand that, but it’s important to me.”

Unfortunately he did understand. Even if his work was illegal, it was hard work, and he didn’t cut corners to get it done. His father had always told him there were few greater shames than debt. It was a matter of pride.

But what they had together was bigger than pride—his or hers.

“A week, a month—it makes no difference,” she said. “We both knew I’d be leaving eventually. You didn’t want anything permanent when you suggested we share a bed, remember?”

Yes, he remembered. He buttoned the fly of his pants and plunked back down on the bed. “I can’t believe you’re really going.”

Her stockinged legs stepped between his. She cupped his cheeks with small, warm hands. “Only live for today—that’s what Sam taught me. But if I’m being honest, I’ve never wanted to leave a place less . . . or a person.”

If that was really true, then why was she going?

The temple was located in a narrow, nondescript three-story brick building crowded between a dozen others just like it. A steady stream of locals and western tourists paraded under strings of triangular orange flags that hung above the entrance. The main sign, from which swaying lanterns hung, was painted in Chinese characters. A secondary cloth banner below read LION RISE TEMPLE.

Winter tried to summon up the will to care that the man who poisoned him was inside, and that he might soon be where Parducci was if he didn’t watch himself, but his mind was fixated on Aida’s news. Every time he looked at her, she was staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts, unreadable. Meanwhile, he was slowly sinking.

Only live for today. Complete and utter bullshit.

In a week, she’d be gone, on to some new adventure. Maybe even another lover. The thought of someone else touching her made his stomach harden into a black lump. His hands curled into fists.

She acted as though she had no qualms about walking away and never looking back. As though he was merely a choice for dinner—beef or chicken, and tomorrow she’d be dining somewhere else. Goddamn casual affair. Possibly the stupidest idea he’d had in years. Casual was Sook-Yin, or Florie Beecham.

Casual was not Aida.

Had all of this meant nothing to her? The time she spent in his arms? He stole a look at her as Bo parked the car across the street from the temple. That same deep line divided her brows. She chewed on her bottom lip. Either he was a fool, falling for someone who didn’t feel the same way, or she was lying through her teeth with this breezy, live-for-today act. God give him the strength to figure out which it was before it was too late.

Spice-tinged floral smoke drifted from the temple. Winter surveyed the area and found nothing out of the ordinary, so he, Aida, and Bo approached by foot. A few cars behind, four of his men shadowed them to the entrance.

An attractive pair of girls wearing embroidered red silk cheongsams collected donations from entering patrons. Winter stuffed a bill into their tin as they stepped into a wide chamber—something between a lobby and a museum. Gilded columns, elaborately carved wooden screens, and ornate statues of Chinese deities filled the low-ceilinged space. Two red doors at the far end of the room opened into a courtyard, open to the sky, where a red and gold pagoda housed the temple’s shrine bookended by a pair of iron Chinese lions.

The smoke was thicker here, nearly choking. Coils of burning incense hung from the pagoda’s ceiling. Temple employees sold incense sticks and bundles of joss paper. Beneath the pagoda, visitors carried their offerings while chanting prayers.

Winter’s gaze lit on a table where two women were distributing cylindrical bamboo cups. THE KAU CIM ORACLE: CHINESE FORTUNE STICKS, as the sign proclaimed. Querents knelt on their knees in front of the shrine and held the cups sideways, shaking them until a single stick fell onto well-worn cobblestones. The sticks were numbered, each one corresponding to a fortune. People carried their fallen stick to a small canvas tent in the corner of the courtyard, where a fortune-teller provided interpretation.

His fortune-teller. The goddamn pissant who poisoned him.

“That should be our man,” Bo confirmed.

Winter nodded. “Let’s have our oracle read.”

After a customer exited, Winter ducked into the tent’s opening under a line of gold fringe and found himself inside a dim space not more than six or seven feet wide. An oil-burning lantern sat on a small portable table, behind which sat a wizened man dressed in a black ceremonial robe with gaping sleeves. A long gray queue lay braided across one shoulder.

“Please, sit,” the man said without looking up from writing something. He waved his hand toward two folding chairs in front of his table. A flat box containing slips of paper, numbered fortunes, sat near his elbow. A placard off to the side identified the man as Mr. Wu.

Aida took a seat while Winter unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat beside her, stretching out his legs in the small space as best he could. Bo untied the tent flap and closed it behind them.

“Your fortune stick, please,” the man said, then glanced up at Winter and flinched.

“I’m here to get some information about my past, not my future, Mr. Wu. Or should I call you Black Star?”

A muscle in the man’s eye jumped. “What do you want?”

“I want to know why you tried to poison me with Gu.”

Knobby fingers tightened around the pencil he was holding.

“Know who I am, now?” Winter asked. “Or do you poison so many people that you can’t remember?”

“Magnusson,” the man whispered.

They held each other’s gaze as discordant sounds from the temple seeped under the heavy canvas of the tent. “You drank the Gu but are unaffected?” The old man was genuinely surprised.

“Another magic worker removed the curse.”

Shadows clung to bags of loose skin beneath his eyes. “I should’ve never taken that job.”

“You really shouldn’t have.” Winter moved his jacket aside and watched Wu’s gaze settle on the gun strapped next to his ribs.

The old man gave him a dismissive wave. “I lost my wife ten years ago, and with her passing, the will to live, so threatening me is futile. I am looking forward to the afterlife far too much to worry about dying. Save the violence for someone younger who is still under the illusion that there is happiness on this plane.”

If anyone understood apathy born of grief, Winter did. And when he pictured harboring that kind of hopelessness for an entire decade, he almost pitied the old man. But not enough to excuse him. “Your problems are your own. I just want information.”

“All you had to do was ask—I have no loyalties. What would you like to know?”

“Everything.”

Wu leaned back in his seat. “I was hired to do a job, and was told that an anonymous party was interested in ensuring that you do not work anymore. That you have a family history of mental instability—that you had inherited your father’s fragile mind. I was asked to make a potion that would draw ghosts to you and make you crazy.”

He hadn’t inherited his father’s mental illness. The doctors said it could be genetic, but no one else in his family had showed any signs of it. His father had been ill since he was young man—Winter’s mother knew about it when she married him. It just didn’t get out of hand until a few years ago, when the frenzied episodes worsened.

“So you are telling me that someone paid you to mix up a poison that would draw ghosts to me because they believed this would drive me insane,” Winter said. “And when the poison didn’t work, you were hired to conduct additional spells to draw ghosts to me with coins and buttons.”

“I just found out from you that my Gu was unsuccessful. I was hired to make the poison, nothing more. That is my speciality.”

“What about Parducci? You make any poison for him?”

He looked at Bo and began speaking rapid Cantonese.

“He doesn’t know Parducci. Says he was hired by an old Chinese man in May,” Bo interpreted. “He came to his tent, gave no name. Asked for the poison and paid him half up front, half when he came back to pick it up two weeks later.”

“Talk to me, not him,” Winter said to the old man, patience wearing thin.

“He mentioned your name specifically—no one else’s,” he replied in English. “The poison is custom-brewed for one individual. Can’t be used on everyone.”

If that was true, and Wu was a hired gun, then it stood to reason other magic workers were being hired for their specialties. Maybe whatever had been done to Parducci was a different kind of magic.

“In early June the man who hired me collected the Gu I made for you,” Mr. Wu added. “Haven’t seen him since.”

“The man gave no name at all? Surely you must have some idea who he was. What did he look like?”

“Western clothes. Maybe fifty, sixty years old, maybe younger. Average height and weight. Nothing special about him. He had a forgettable face and he never gave a name. Apart from what you already know about the poison, he was insistent that the Gu not kill you directly. Some recipes for Gu are used for other purposes—sometimes to kill. He said I must be absolutely sure it wasn’t deadly. It was only meant to cause a nervous breakdown.”

This just didn’t make sense. It was cowardly. Passive.

“He claimed he was working for someone with a higher cause,” Wu said.

“What kind of cause?” Aida asked, speaking for the first time since they’d arrived.

“One that would liberate Chinatown from the Gwai-lo.”

Aida’s brows knitted. “Who are the Gwai-lo?”

“White men,” Bo said quietly.

Winter shook his head. “Nonsense. I have no business in Chinatown.”

Wu spoke in a hushed voice. “I don’t know for certain, but I think they mean to liberate Chinatown from the entire city. A quiet rebellion, the man told me. Take power not by force, but by controlling the money.”

A quiet rebellion. And one of the easiest ways to control money these days was to control booze. Winter thought of all the booze problems in Chinatown . . . St. Laurent getting nabbed by the Feds in the raid. And now Parducci. Sweat bloomed over Winter’s forehead. “Have you heard of a secret mystical tong?”

The man shook his head.

Winter pressed further. “One that’s headed up by a purported necromancer?”

Wu’s eyes narrowed. Bo rattled off a longer explanation in Cantonese.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Wu said. A lie. Winter had seen something in the old man’s eyes when Bo was talking. “I’m sorry. I’ve already told you more than I should have.” Before Winter could protest, the man was scribbling something on the back of one his fortune cards. He slid it across the table. It read: the Hive.

Winter’s mind was jolted back to something Bo had told him back when all of this started. He’d said that a tong leader who dealt in booze had died locked in a room filled with bees. A chill raced down Winter’s spine. “Where can I find them?”

Wu shook his head, a look of defeat, maybe even commiseration behind his eyes. “I truly do not know. This temple isn’t under tong protection, and my work is the only thing that holds my interest. I am uninterested in politics and would prefer to be left alone. I only helped the man who requested the Gu because I needed the money.”

Winter stared at him for a long moment. The man finally held out his hands and made an appeal to Bo in Cantonese.

“He says that’s everything he knows,” Bo translated.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but Winter suspected he wouldn’t get anything more out of the man by threatening him. He’d have the old man monitored night and day, find out who he visited, who visited him. And in the meantime, they now had the name of the secret tong. Something small, to be sure, but hope is often kindled by small things.

Winter leaned closer. “If anyone else comes to you asking for any more of these kinds of favors, I’d appreciate if you’d get word to me at Pier 26 before accepting the work. Whatever they pay, I’ll pay more. I can be a good friend for a temple like this. I can even ensure that you are left alone to live out the rest of your hopeless, depressing life in peace and quiet.”

The man laughed. “Now that’s something. Much more motivating than a bullet.”

“Then we have an understanding?”

“Yes, Mr. Magnusson. I believe we do.”

“One more thing,” Aida said, surprising Winter. “Can you really see the future?”

Mr. Wu gave her a tight smile. “If I could, I very much doubt I’d be wasting my talents in a place like this.”