Bitter Spirits (26 page)

Christ alive.
The curse worked.

“No identification on the bodies. No registration plates on the truck,” Bo added. “Cops think it might've been stolen. I'll check in with one of our guys on the inside and see if I can get any other information.”

After Winter muttered his thanks, Bo retreated, leaving him alone in the kitchen with nothing but his incoherent thoughts. His world was breaking apart. He was numb on the inside, worn down on the outside. He couldn't move or think properly. Could barely focus his eyes on Greta when her silver head appeared in the doorway.

“Are you all right,
gulleplutten
?” she asked.

He stood up and pulled the front of his suit into place, trying to wrestle some control over his feelings, and heard the crinkle of paper from his inner suit pocket. Emmett Lane's check to Aida. He could've handed it over, given her the chance to make an informed choice, but he wanted her to choose to stay for him, not money.

He'd put his heart on a plate for her, and she wouldn't say the words back. Maybe he'd been fooling himself to believe she felt the same way.

He glanced up at Greta. “Have her things packed and brought down to the foyer.”

 • • • 

Aida's last performance at Gris-Gris was her all-time worst. Unable to call spirits for not one, not two, but three audience members—and unwilling to fake it—she was booed off the stage.

A career first.

Maybe a career last, if word got back to her future employer down South.

“It happens to the best of us,” Velma said generously, patting her on the back as she handed over the last of her wages. “Maybe you're distracted by something you want to talk about?”

Aida shook her head. She would only start crying again.

After Hezekiah and Daniels both hugged her, after she'd said all her good-byes, she left in disgrace, heading through the back delivery door.

Pausing under the doorway light, she pulled her gloves from her handbag and stared up at the fog tenting the narrow alleyway. Well. What now? All her new things were at Winter's house.

And so was Winter.

She closed her eyes and exhaled heavily, then slipped her hand into a glove. “Okay, Palmer,” she muttered to herself. “Let's think about this rationally.”

Maybe he'd been right that no one would care about their affair. She wasn't leading a Girl Scout troop, after all. And how could she argue that they didn't know their own feelings well enough after a month, but insist that he make a public demonstration to last a lifetime?

Right or wrong, it didn't mean she had to leave the state to prove her argument, stomping off like a petulant child. Yes, she loved this city, and some insistent part of her
did
feel like it was home. So he was right about two things.

And really, when she considered, she
could
get a bank loan—he was right about that, too, damn him! Just a small one, enough to pay for a few months' rent at a cheap place, perhaps one with an apartment attached, so she could live and work out of the same place to save money.

He's come between me and the woman I love.

Did Winter mean that? Did he really love her?

On a sigh, she let her arms flop to her sides. Her handbag slipped off her wrist, dropping to the pavement. The contents of her handbag scattered. She bent to collect them all.

“You all right, Miss Palmer?”

She looked up. One of the club's guards, Manny, was leaning out of the back door.

“I'm fine,” she lied as she scooped everything back into her handbag. “Thank you.”

“Miss Palmer!” A new voice called to her several yards away, at the mouth of the alley. A man stood next to a car with the door open, waving to her. Clouds of exhaust pumped from the tailpipe as the engine rumbled. It took her a second to recognize the man's face.

“Doctor Yip,” she said with a smile, standing to greet him. “What brings you out to North Beach?”

“A long story,” he said as she approached. “Would you have time to listen to it, over tea perhaps?”

She hesitated, wanting to get back to Winter and talk. But the herbalist's face was friendly, and perhaps he had some information they needed. “Is this about Mr. Magnusson?”

“Yes, in fact it is.” He gestured toward the backseat of the waiting car. “Please.”

“You all right, Miss Palmer?” Manny repeated from behind her.

She lifted a hand in answer. “It's okay.”

“Please,” Doctor Yip said again, encouraging her into the car. “Won't take long. I think you will be quite interested in what I have to tell you. We can drive across the street to the Automat.”

It was silly to be hesitant about getting in a car with the old man. He'd helped them, after all, and they'd attracted Ju's thugs into his quiet shop. She glanced down and saw he was still wearing his quaint Chinese embroidered slippers. The least she could do was listen to whatever news he had. He gave her a kind smile.

She slid in the backseat, bumping into a man who was already sitting inside. “Excuse me,” she said. “I didn't know anyone was in here.”

She looked up. The man held a rag in his hand that smelled of noxious herbs. A dark scab marred his cheek, just below his eye.

All at once, she noticed the driver's nose was taped up; his hat nearly covered up his cauliflower ear.

The door shut behind her as Doctor Yip spoke from her side. “Now, my little spirit medium—are you going to play nice, or shall I have one of my new worker bees make you go to sleep?”

AN HOUR AFTER AIDA LEFT, WINTER FELT THE AFTERSHOCKS OF
their fight lessening. Two hours, and his heart was heavy with regret. By the time eleven o'clock rolled around, he was pacing the floors, working himself into a state that seesawed between impatience and desperation.

“Should I fetch her from the club?” Jonte asked.

Her show would be ending now. It usually took her a half hour to sign a couple of autographs, get out of her stage clothes. “I'll go with you,” Winter decided, grabbing his hat and coat. A couple of minutes later, they were pulling out of the driveway.

In the dark of the car, Winter watched his sleeping neighborhood sail by the window. It was selfish to have withheld the news of Emmett Lane's check from her—he understood that now. Stupid, stubborn pride. She was obviously worried about a safety net if she was talking about marriage.

Marriage.

He still couldn't believe she brought that up. She knew how he felt about the subject. Never again, not after what he went through with Paulina. Maybe she was trying to wrestle some kind of sacrifice out of him, because she saw leaving her club career as a compromise. Because what else could it be if she wasn't after his money—and of course she wasn't, so ridiculous of him to even entertain that idea for a second—and she wasn't in love with him.

Was she?

She wouldn't say the words. And that upset him more than he cared to admit.

Maybe she would come to love him. If it took her more time to get to that place, better it be here than somewhere across the country, days away by train. Christ, when it came down to it, he'd rather she hate his guts and open her business here, where he could protect her and watch her and keep her safe.

“You should let her drive the Packard.”

Startled, Winter glanced at Jonte in the rearview mirror. “What's that?”

“If you marry her, you should let her drive the Packard. She's been taking it out with Astrid all week. Whether or not Astrid learns to drive is one thing, but a girl that young in a family this notorious should not be driving alone. One of your rivals could harm her. Miss Palmer is older—she's not naive like Astrid. Miss Palmer should drive the Packard.”

Winter sat in silence, unable to believe what Jonte was saying. The old man never butted into his business. Granted, everyone
else
in the household did—God knew Greta couldn't go two hours without giving her opinion—but Jonte was an island, silent and stoic.

And second, his driver had just made the assumption that Winter might marry Aida. Where did that come from? Surely half the staff heard them arguing, and five minutes couldn't have passed before they told the other half what they'd heard. Was Jonte so far removed from the gossip that he didn't know what had happened?

“Not my business,” the old man said. “But she would make a fine wife. Help you forget about the first one, which, by the way, I told your pappa many times was a bad match. Your mother was only trying to look out for you, but she made a mistake.”

“Maybe some people aren't meant to marry. I might be one of them. My job is dangerous and disreputable.”

“It's the same job your pappa had, and he was married and raising a family.”

“Mamma hated it.”

“She was afraid one of you would get killed or end up in jail. She was not ashamed of the work. She was proud of your pappa. Proud of you, too.”

Winter glanced out the window in silence.

“And if you don't mind me being frank, Miss Palmer is made of sterner stuff than your mamma ever was.”

“I had no idea you had an opinion about such matters,” Winter admitted.

“You don't pay me for advice. That doesn't mean I don't have opinions.”

“I'll be damned. Maybe all that running you did when you were chasing down Astrid and Aida knocked some of those opinions loose, eh?”

“Maybe so,” Jonte said with a quirk of his lips, then returned to his usual silent self.

Winter lifted his hat and swiped his hand over his hair.

How had life gotten so complicated?

All he could wrap his head around was that he'd made a terrible mistake in sending Aida out of the house like he did. She probably thought he was a monster, the way he yelled at her. He didn't want to be that person anymore. Especially when it came to her. All of this bullshit with hauntings and the fire and the goddamn Hive or Beekeeper—whatever the hell the enemy was calling himself—all of it was making him agitated, bringing out the worst in him.

Because that wasn't really him . . . was it? It couldn't be. He didn't want to live the rest of his life being that person.

He would not.

An accident at Broadway and Columbus held them up. When they finally made it to the club, it was almost midnight. They idled by the curb for several minutes, then Winter sent Jonte to see if she was still inside while he scanned the taxi line out front. He didn't want to miss her.

He waited five minutes for Jonte to return. Ten more. When the old man finally strode back, he knew something was wrong.

“Daniels claims she left half an hour ago.”

“Where did she go?”

“Men working the entrance said she didn't leave that way.”

Winter directed Jonte into the alley. He'd go up and find Velma. Maybe Aida told her where she was going. He could call home and see if they'd crossed paths.

Stepping out of the car, he spotted one of the club's bouncers guarding the door. One of the men who'd carried him up to Velma's apartment the night he was poisoned.

“Evening, Mr. Magnusson.”

“Manny, is it?”

“That's right.”

“I'm looking for Miss Palmer. Did you happen to see her leave?”

The man nodded. “Half an hour ago, thereabouts.”

“Did she happen to say where she was going?”

“No, but she seemed to know the man she left with.”

Every muscle in Winter's body tightened. “Which man?”

“Old Chinese man pulled up and waved her into a black Tin Lizzie. I asked her if she was okay. She seemed surprised to see him, but she said it was fine.”

Winter's heart began pounding. “Did he give a name? What did he look like?”

“She called him ‘doctor.' Funny old man with a long gray braid. British accent.”

Doctor Yip. Confusion clouded Winter's thoughts.

“The man said he had some information about you, in fact,” Manny said. “Said he wanted to talk about it over tea. I asked her if she was okay, and she said yes,” he insisted again. “Did I make a mistake?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw silver shining on the asphalt. He picked up Aida's lancet. His mind raced to fit puzzle pieces together, and he suddenly remembered the way the herbalist had flinched when he set eyes on Winter—not in fear, but in
recognition!
—and he remembered the man's Chinese slippers, embroidered with honeybees.

Shock struck his solar plexus like a physical blow.

“No,” he told Manny. “I think I did.”

 • • • 

Doctor Yip's car sped out of North Beach. But instead of heading to Chinatown, as Aida expected, they took side streets through Telegraph Hill and turned south on the Embarcadero.

She was trying to stay levelheaded about the fact that she was being kidnapped, and that the man who'd held her hostage and put his hand on her breast was now pressed against her side and sporting a hard-on. He was also still in possession of the noxious cloth. Though it had been put away inside an old shaving tin, he held it like a threat, and if it weren't for the window being cracked, she might pass out from the fumes.

And on her other side was the man who was haunting Winter, who'd killed the fortune-teller, set her apartment on fire . . .

“Where are you taking me?” she asked for the third time as they motored up the coast. They'd passed Winter's pier and the China Basin almost half an hour back, and had since crossed three sets of railroad tracks. All she could see now were warehouses on one side of the road and freight slips on the other, and the signs she glimpsed hinted they might be driving through a meatpacking district. Best she could tell, they were heading out of the city, somewhere along the coast. Definitely unfamiliar territory.

Doctor Yip finally answered her, speaking for the first time since she'd gotten inside the car. “We are going somewhere Mr. Magnusson will never find you. You might call it my little nest.” He smiled.

“You are the Beekeeper?”

“Some call me that.”

“That afternoon we came to your shop—”

“Oh yes. That was quite a surprise. For a moment, I thought you'd uncovered my identity. Very surreal to see Mr. Magnusson standing in front of me. Providence, as you say here in the States, was smiling down on me that day.”

“These two were working for you?”

“Not when they came into my shop that afternoon.” The herbalist crossed his legs, pushing himself closer as he settled an arm on the back of the seat like they were old friends. “But Ju-Ray Wong is a weak boss who is uninterested in expanding his territory. After he banished the boys from his tong, I convinced him to work for me.”

“Because you are going to take over Chinatown by controlling the liquor supply?”

“I was chosen by celestial deities to lead a quiet rebellion. My
shen
spirits brought me across the ocean from Hong Kong to save my people from the
Gwai-lo.
The Chinese have been treated like slaves in this country, captured like pigs, forced to build your railroads. After the Great Fire, the city tried to move Chinatown and seize our land, and when we resisted, you kept us in cages on Angel Island, separating our families for years.”

“
I
didn't. And
you
were in Hong Kong.”

“But my brother was not. He was detained on Angel Island for almost a decade before he died. He was jailed for no crime, but they treated him like a criminal.”

Aida certainly could empathize with grief for a lost sibling, but she didn't lash out and kill people for revenge when Sam died.

Yip rocked his foot. “I am here now, ready to avenge my brother's life and lead my people to reclaim what is theirs. But I will do it my way, by my own creed. My mission is a peaceful one, because the
shen
spirits have given me a prophecy: I will help my people gain control of the city without spilling one single drop of blood.”

It took several moments for this to sink in. Winter's hauntings, the “voice of God” telling the bootlegger to turn himself in, the tipoff for the raid, all the unrest in Chinatown . . . her fire. And the way Yip had gotten upset when these two thugs had broken into his shop—he'd shouted at them not to spill blood, claiming his shop was holy.

“I'm a peaceful man, a healer—not a killer,” the herbalist said. “I have no blood debt on my hands. I am clean.”

“Just because you didn't pull the trigger doesn't mean you're not guilty.”

He gave her a patient smile. “Death is part of war, Miss Palmer. That is hard to hear when you are on the losing side.”

“And on whose side are the tong leaders in Chinatown? Haven't you halted their business?”

He rocked one bee slipper near her shins. “They were given a chance to be on the winning side, but they all chose money over honor. And regarding guilt, every soldier knows that there are both good and bad ways to kill. I am taking the higher path by avoiding death if possible. And if death
is
necessary, I arrange for the killing to be done by the victim's own hands.”

“Like the fortune-teller?”

“Suicide was the only honorable option. Mr. Wu violated an oath of silence and betrayed his own people to the enemy.”

“And what about me, huh? That fire nearly killed me. How is that not on your hands?”

He sighed. “The fire was to scare you away from Mr. Magnusson. I only found out about the laudanum after the fact. They took it upon themselves to stray outside the guidelines of my orders and took things too far. Ah, look—we are almost home.”

The car slowed as they headed past a sign for Hunter's Point, then another for a dry dock, where several massive ships sat inside channels, moored on land by networks of planks and stilts. “What is this?”

“Where unseaworthy ships are repaired. The rusting hulk in front of us is the ship that brought me over from Hong Kong. Unfortunately for the Royal TransPacific Steamship Company, the
Jade Princess
would not be able to make the return trip to China, because a strange and terrible fever struck her crew several days before entering port, and during that time her boiler went defective. The repair expenses were too high for the owners to manage, and permit problems seemed to plague them. Luckily I was there to pay the dry-docking costs, so she was signed over to me.”

In the moonlight reflecting from the dark bay water in the distance, the beached passenger ship looked like a great derelict beast. Faint lights flickered inside a couple of the port windows; someone was inside.