Bitter Spirits

TWENTY-NINE

WINTER STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF DOCTOR YIP’S SHOP, GLASS crunching below his shoes from where he’d busted the door open. His stomach was knotted, his chest tight with a dull, pulsing terror.

The shop was deserted.

Not a damn piece of paper with another address or phone number. No paperwork whatsoever: the desk in the back office was completely empty. The shop itself looked as it did when Aida and he first came—minus the broken door.

And the row of glass jars behind the counter, which Winter had smashed with the register.

He now stared at the dark spot on the counter where the register had been. A twenty-dollar bill sat there, both sides painted with red symbols.

“See if Bo’s done checking the alley, would you?” Winter said to Jonte. The driver stepped outside the shop and came back with his assistant, who’d met them there with a crew of men after Winter had called him from Gris-Gris.

“You know what any of this Chinese means?” Winter asked.

Bo strode to the counter and laid his gun down to examine it. “Black magic.”

“I know that much.” He couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same bill he’d given Yip that afternoon. How many twenties would an herbalist get? Not many.

Then again, Yip was no herbalist.

Winter flipped open a matchbook, struck a match, and lit the bill on fire.

The rest of his men met them out front after canvassing the neighbors, which included an opium den, a locked warehouse, and one small well of apartments. No one knew where the herbalist lived. One lady said a black car dropped him off and picked him up every day.

He forced himself to stay calm. He would not think of the fire in her apartment, or how she’d been drugged. He would not think of what atrocities a kidnapped woman could be forced to suffer in the hands of a man who was trying to liberate Chinatown.

He only thought of what he’d do to that man when he got his hands on him.

Focusing on that, he had Jonte drive back home to keep an eye on Astrid while Bo drove him to Golden Lotus with his crew of men following. But after waking the Lins at an ungodly hour and scaring them half to death, all he discovered was that Mrs. Lin had never asked the herbalist where he lived.

“Is Miss Palmer in trouble?” she asked, gripping her robe closed as she stood in the apartment stairwell next to the restaurant, Mr. Lin standing over her shoulder.

“I think Yip is the one who had the fire set in her room and now he’s taken her.”

“Oh no. This is my fault,” she said in a pained voice. “He seemed like such a nice man, but I should have never sent her to see him.”

“Don’t blame yourself. He’s after me, not her.”

His fault, but he would fix it. He would not lose her. Not if he had to destroy half the city finding her.

He could spare a man to watch Golden Lotus, make sure they wouldn’t be left vulnerable. Mrs. Lin said she’d start calling her friends and find out if anyone knew anything about Doctor Yip. Doubtful, but Winter wasn’t going to discount anything at this point.

He asked the Lins to call his house and leave a message for him there if they heard anything, then walked out into the chilly night air with Bo to rejoin the rest of his men.

“We should go to Ju,” Bo said. “If the men who attacked you at Yip’s shop were patrolling Ju’s territory, then their replacements might be working the same area. They might’ve seen something.”

“If so, that’s great, but I’m not going to sit around waiting for information while Yip does God only knows what to Aida. We’ll drive to Ju’s, but he’s not going to be happy, because I’m going to ask him to call all the tong leaders together for a meeting. If they want to take back control of their booze, they’re going to have to help me find Aida.” He stopped in front of the car. “Doctor Yip seems to want a war. He’s got one.”

Aida entered the ship on a wide gangplank. The deck was unassuming and quiet, the picture of disuse. The inside was another story. The first-class entrance, a large two-story open room with a staircase, was filled with wooden crates of alcohol—row after row of teetering stacks, some stamped with recognizable brands, others simply marked GIN. Half of them were painted with Chinese characters.

A small fortune in seized booze.

Aida couldn’t quite determine the breadth of the haul, because the ship had no electricity. She could, however, spot the occasional guard meandering in the distance. Maybe ten or twenty men. Probably more she couldn’t see. A path of portable lanterns led them through the maze of crates to the staircase at the far end of the room. Tables had been pulled together here to create a small work area, where more armed men sorted through stacks of paperwork and labels. Nearby, several crates stood open, brimming with bottles nestled inside piles of wood shavings.

When they passed, all workers looked up at Yip, hailing him by some Cantonese name Aida didn’t catch, and bowing their heads.

“You’ve managed quite a collection here,” Aida noted. “Is this where all the booze in Chinatown went?”

“Quite a bit outside of Chinatown, too,” Doctor Yip said with a smile as he stopped to talk with someone at the tables. They spoke in hushed voices for several moments while Aida’s gaze jumped around the room, looking for anything that might be helpful: an unguarded door, a weapon . . . an escape route. The man with the cauliflower ear tightened his grip around the back of her neck.

“Just try it,” he whispered in her ear as pain shot down her shoulder. “I might not be able to hurt you in front of him, but wait until later.”

His grip softened when Yip ended his conversation and rejoined the group. “All right, Miss Palmer, onward.”

A few steps away, lanterns, fuel, and matches were lined up on a desk. Ju’s former thugs both took lanterns. Yip took out a flashlight. They were going deeper into the beached whale.

They headed down a flight of steps to the first level below, passing by more guards. The scents of gin and wood changed to something danker when they stepped into a long corridor. Yip turned on his flashlight and shone the beam in front of them.

“I hope you find your accommodations to your liking,” Yip said as he led them past doors lining either side of the hallway. Passenger cabins. First-class, from their location.

Only the best, Aida thought blackly. But this was no luxury liner built for rich European families to cruise the Mediterranean. This was an old steamer built for transporting large numbers of third-class expatriates from Hong Kong.

Yip opened a locked door at the end of the corridor. “Here we are, my dear. Please enter.” He held the narrow door open.

The cauliflower-eared man shoved her inside the tight quarters. Her knee banged against something hard. She yelped and tried to get her bearings in the dark. Yip carried one of the lanterns inside and hung it on one corner of the double-bunk berths lining one wall. One chair sat beneath the port window behind her, and a small sink sat at her left hip, on the wall opposite the berths. The room smelled of mold and must.

“It’s a tight squeeze, but you’ll make the most of it,” Yip said. “No plumbing, so the sink’s useless for anything other than a urinal. If you get desperate enough, you’ll appreciate it more.”

“How long are you keeping me here?”

“Not long, don’t worry. I have something to show you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” She suddenly felt claustrophobic, trapped in the narrow space, and tried to grab Yip’s collar.

He lunged out of her range. “Now, now, Miss Palmer. Please show me the same courtesy I’ve shown you.”

The man she’d stabbed in the face with burning incense shoved her backward into the chair as they exited.

“Make yourself at home,” Yip called out from the dark hallway. She couldn’t see his face anymore. “The fuel in the lantern should last you another hour or so. It will keep the rats and cockroaches away.”

The door shut. Aida rushed forward, throwing herself at it as the key turned in the lock. Twisting the doorknob was a waste of energy, but she did it nonetheless. “What do you want from me?” she shouted. No answer came. She pressed her ear to the door and listened to the sounds of retreating footfalls on the squeaking hallway boards.

When they were gone, she began thinking of anything she could use as a weapon. Her handbag was still tangled around her wrist, but her lancet was missing. She groaned, remembering how she spilled everything in the alley before Yip drove up. Had she lost it? Now of all times?

Disheartened, she explored the rest of the cabin. The door was solid and locked. The porthole didn’t open, nor could she fit through it if she were to break the glass.

After she’d exhausted every corner, she plunked down in the chair in defeat and thought about Winter.

“Do you even know I’m gone?” she said, despondent. If tonight was like the last few, he’d be out working until morning. The thought of him just heading out to work after their fight hurt her feelings, but that he might be doing that right now, when she’d been kidnapped? Oh, that made her furious.

Angry was good. If she was mad, then she wouldn’t worry about what Yip had planned. She wouldn’t notice that the light from the lantern was beginning to dim as it ran low on fuel.

And she wouldn’t have to regret that the last words she’d ever hear out of Winter’s mouth might be when he told her to leave his house.

Indignant and annoyed, Winter strode out of the Tea Rose brothel with Bo at his side. Several of his men detached themselves from shadows and flanked them as they headed toward the car. It would be daybreak soon. Six hours since that bastard Yip had taken her.

And he still had nothing.

Four tong leaders sat inside the parlor of the whorehouse—five, including Ju. A small miracle that he’d been able to gather them together so quickly. Not every tong in Chinatown, but some of the big players. And all of them had sat in silence while Bo translated Winter’s words. Not a single one of them knew about Doctor Yip or the Beekeeper or the Hive—rather, not one of them admitted to knowing.

They just stared at him with untrusting eyes. One of them looked at him as if he were crazy, organizing a hunt for one woman. A couple others looked at him in pity, maybe for the same reason. They knew his weakness now. A dangerous thing for someone in his position.

“All of that for nothing,” Winter grumbled, anger trumping the dread and fear pulsing beneath his skin.

“Give the bosses time to talk,” Bo encouraged. “Right now, they are intimidated that you summoned them. Once they loosen up, maybe someone will remember something.”

“And by the time they do, Aida could be raped or dead.”

“You can’t think like that.”

“The man who tried to burn her alive in her bed—”

“I know,” Bo said firmly. “But he also wouldn’t do the deed with his own hands. He’s a coward. We will find him.”

No other choice existed.

Winter eyed the lights inside a large Chinese bakery and pointed it out to Bo. “Ask to use their telephone. Check in with the house and the pier. Then call up the police station and tell them we’re coming in to talk to Inspector Manion.”

As much money as Winter pumped into the police force, the inspector better damn well be there to receive them. Manion headed up the vice squad in Chinatown. Winter normally would’ve hated like hell to ask for a favor, but at that moment, he just didn’t care. If Manion could help him find Aida, nothing else mattered.

Waving away an open car door offered by one of his men, Winter pulled his collar up and huddled against a wall outside the bakery while he waited for Bo. The adrenaline that had been pushing him forward was fizzling away, leaving him with nothing but imagined glimpses of Aida in increasingly horrifying situations. She wasn’t dead. Couldn’t be. He would know—completely illogical, but he repeated it in his head until he believed it. She was alive, and he would find her.

And when he did, he would rip out every vertebra in Doctor Yip’s spine.

Winter paced the sidewalk, watching Bo inside the bakery as he made the telephone calls; a few curious workers peered back out at him. Winter exhaled heavily and pulled down the brim of his hat. How the hell was he going to find the herbalist? Bo had been scouting Chinatown for weeks and had barely found crumbs. Winter tried to reassure himself that Aida could hold her own, but it didn’t help his mood. Even the strongest man could be pinned down when it was many against one.

Winter had never felt so impotent and useless. Scared out of his mind. Plagued with what-ifs. What if they were hurting her? Maybe using fire again, or something else just as sick. After all, this was the man who killed one of the biggest tong leaders in Chinatown with bees.

Maybe the worst of his fears was something he hadn’t yet considered. What if he never found out what they were doing to her—what if he never found her? The crushing darkness that had descended on him after the accident threatened to fall again. He pushed it away.

He watched Bo count off several bills to the bakery owner before marching out into the cold early-morning air. “The house?”

Bo buttoned up his coat. “Greta says Jonte’s sitting in the foyer with a shotgun. The men outside haven’t seen anything.”

“Pier?”

“Same there. Called Gris-Gris again—Velma said no one’s seen anything there, either, but she’ll keep the telephone next to her bed, so we can call her on her home line.”

Winter grunted in acknowledgment. He’d already begged Velma to help with magic, but she said there was nothing she could do.

“Talked to Dina down at the station,” Bo said as he tugged his gloves on. “She said she’d call the inspector to meet us at the station, and she’s putting the word out.”

“Fine. It’ll take us twenty minutes to get there.”

Bo put a hand on his arm. “There’s one more thing. Dina said you were already on the inspector’s call list. Apparently they already called the Seymours.”

Winter stilled. “Paulina’s parents . . . why?”

“The good news is I think I know how Yip has been manipulating the ghosts haunting you. Remember I told you the original rumor about the secret tong—that the leader was a necromancer? Dina said there’s been a lot of grave robberies over the last few months.”

“Digging up graves?” Winter mumbled.

“Dina said most of the graves weren’t notable. But early last night one particular grave was reported from Oakland, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Paulina’s grave was disturbed. Her coffin’s been stolen.”

The lantern’s fuel had long extinguished, but dusky tendrils of daylight from the port window outlined shapes within the cabin. For hours Aida had been listening to every thump, creak, and groan within the beached ship. She heard, at one point, the distinct sounds of a couple having sex—maybe a few rooms away—and occasionally heard doors opening and shutting, but the door she heard now was louder, and it was accompanied by deep voices: one speaking, one answering.

And both voices coming closer.

Heart thumping, Aida silently hefted the lantern then herself into the top bunk and waited. The voices were speaking Cantonese. They stopped at her door.

As the key rasped in the lock, Aida crouched in the cramped space with the lantern in hand. The door creaked open. She didn’t wait to see who was on the other side.

Using all her strength, she swung the lantern from her perch and smashed it into someone’s face. A man’s voice cried out in pain.

She leapt off the bunk and rushed the doorway, shouldering aside the body that was hunched there. She didn’t have a plan—didn’t have time to make one. All she could hope was that the surprise of the lantern would put them off guard long enough for her to race down the hall.

She shoved at the second man, trying to get past him as light from his lantern scattered dancing shadows across the walls.

He grabbed her arm and spun her around.

Cauliflower-eared man.

The air whooshed out of her lungs when her back hit the wall.

He struggled with something in his pocket.

She pounded his arm with a fist. Kicked him in the shin. He growled and slapped a wet rag against her mouth.

The noxious cloth from the car.

She tried not to breathe, but her aching lungs betrayed her. And as she inhaled the wretched herbal fumes, she heard shouting down the hall—someone had heard them. She also caught sight of a young Chinese girl carrying a tray of food, and standing nearby, the person she’d thunked with the lantern, who was, serendipitously, the man she’d stabbed in the face with incense sticks.

Should’ve aimed for your balls, she thought as darkness took her.

It was almost two in the afternoon when Winter stepped out of the runabout and onto his pier, having returned from Oakland. Another fruitless exercise. No one had witnessed the robbery of Paulina’s grave; the night watchman had been drugged. He paid a couple of men to watch his parents’ graves, which were untouched—small favors.

Leaving Bo to moor the runabout, he marched up the dock and headed into the bulkhead building that housed his shipping warehouse and offices. Several of his men greeted him. No, they hadn’t heard anything. He nodded and made his way from the reception area, bright and warmed by the midday sun glinting through its Embarcadero-facing window, back to the dark cave of his private office.

He hung his hat on the coatrack and settled behind his father’s big old desk, wanting badly to lay his head down. Lack of sleep was starting to wear on him. He’d send someone out for coffee; he’d rest when he found her.

Even though he’d just been informed no one had called, he was compelled to pick up the telephone and ask the operator for the same numbers he’d been calling every hour all night—home, Velma, Dina at the police station . . . As if all it took was persistence, and one of these times he’d get the news he wanted.

He picked up the telephone receiver but pressed the hook switch down when he heard commotion up front in reception.

“Magnusson!”

His pulse sped. He knew that voice. “Let him through,” he shouted to his men as he hung up the receiver and rose from his chair.

Ju strode through the doorway. “I thought they were going to shoot me where I stood. You need to train your people better, my friend.”

“Did the tong leaders talk?” Winter asked in a rush. “Do they know something?”

“Don’t know about the tong leaders, but someone else has been talking.” Ju smiled and signaled to the person behind him.

Sook-Yin stepped into view. He’d never seen her outside Ju’s place. She was dressed like a respectable lady, wearing a dark coat over a black dress. She looked a little older in the dreary light of his office. “Nei hou, Winter.”

“Sook-Yin.” He canted his head and looked between them. “What’s this about?”

Ju leaned against the doorway. “After the tong meeting at the Tea Rose, the girls started chatting. Sook-Yin knows another girl who works for the tong leader Joe Cheung. She’s heard a rumor. Go on, Sook-Yin. Tell him what she told you.”

“One of Joe’s girls, my friend, has a sister. Sister is another gei who is not under tong protection.”

“She’s a prostitute?” Winter asked.

Sook-Yin nodded. “She took a new job two days back. They pay big money and blindfold girls on drive from brothel to ship.”

“Ship?”

Sook-Yin nodded. “She says every day they pick up girls late afternoon, take them to ship. Early morning, take them back.”

“Tell Mr. Magnusson what’s on the ship,” Ju said.

“Zau.”

Winter stilled. “Booze.”

“Crates piled up like skyscrapers, apparently,” Ju said. “Tell him what else.”

With a smile revealing the small gap between her front teeth, Sook-Yin gave him a very particular look he’d seen before. It was a sly sort of look that communicated she had something he wanted. And though he’d seen it under different circumstances, damned if she didn’t have something he wanted more than anything she’d offered in the past. “My friend’s sister say last night they brought a white woman.” Sook-Yin repeatedly tapped a finger across her cheek. Freckles! “She’s locked up in a room on ship.”

Relief and agony flooded him in equal amounts. His knees nearly buckled. It took several moments for his brain to spin into action. “A ship. What ship?” There were dozens lining the coast. Big ships, small ships—miles and miles of them. Knowing that she was on a ship was only slightly better than knowing she was in a building. Maybe worse, if that ship was sailing before he could find it. “Does the girl know anything else that would hint where it was docked?”

Ju gave him a slow grin. “She knew one important thing. The ship isn’t on water.”

The dry docks. His mind spun in several directions at once. Part of him wanted to race over there now, gun blazing. But he might be putting her in even more danger if they saw him coming. An agonizing choice.

“It will take me a few hours to get all my men together.” He glanced at Ju. “Will the other tong leaders help if it gets them their booze back?”

“I’m sure of it,” Ju answered.

Winter turned to Sook-Yin. “One last thing. Do you think your girl can ask her sister to sneak something on the ship when she’s picked up this afternoon?”

Aida sweated through a never-ending series of bizarre fever dreams in which she was on a boat at sea, pitching and rocking during an angry storm. She woke occasionally, unable to move her limbs. And during those brief waking periods, she was sometimes able to recognize she was still on the beached ship. Other times, she imagined she was in Winter’s bed, and wondered why it was so cold.

But it was the jangle of keys on the other side of the door that woke her fully. She lay on the bottom bunk of the cabin. Her head ached, and her body was weak. She glanced down at herself. Clothes were in place, and aside from the headache and lethargy, she didn’t appear to be harmed—miracle of miracles. But if Ju’s thugs wanted to come back for her, she might not have any fight left.

It wasn’t them, however.

The door swung open to lantern light. A new man stood in the corridor—a much bigger man who looked as if he could give Winter a fair fight in a boxing match. He held keys and a lantern, and ushered a young girl inside. Aida pushed herself up on one forearm. The girl walked through a crimson column of twilight beaming from the porthole. Good grief, had she been trapped in this hellhole for an entire day?

The girl bent low, wielding a small wooden tray in front of her. It was the same girl from the hallway. She had food—a bottle of beer and something that smelled of dried fish. She murmured something in Cantonese.

“O-oh, no—I’m not touching that,” Aida said in a rough voice, waving the tray away. “It’s probably got poison in it. You tell Doctor Yip if he’s going to kill me, he’s going to have to do it properly. I’m not jumping out a window or being burned alive in my own room. And I’m ab-so-lute-ly not poisoning myself.”

The girl shook her head. She quickly tapped a napkin on the tray as she whispered something in Cantonese while giving her a strange, intent look.

The man outside the door bellowed a gruff command at the girl. She set the tray down on the chair and backed out of the room, bowing. The man snatched her by the neck and roughly shoved her down the hall, then shut the door and locked it.

Aida waited until their footsteps faded, then rolled off the bunk and crawled to the tray of food. She lifted the napkin and found the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.

Her silver lancet.