Grave Phantoms (11 page)

Sitting atop a hill studded with palms, the domed Conservatory of Flowers was a great, frilly skeleton of white wood and glass. When Bo was younger, and had just started making deliveries for Winter—deliveries that took him into new parts of the city he'd never seen—he'd thought the Victorian-era building looked like an enormous wedding cake. Today it looked decidedly less festive, streaked with rain and bereft of visitors, but just as inviting as ever. Especially with Astrid on his arm.

He huddled under an umbrella with her as they sloshed from their parking space, traipsing past manicured lawns puddling with water. Fields of pansies were flooded, and a display of flowers on the face of a hill that had once been carefully groomed to spell out
MERRY CHRISTMAS 1928
now looked like a drowned rat with a head cold.

None of that mattered, though. Because inside the gabled entry it was dry and warm, and the bored docent at the ticket desk who may or may not have discreetly turned Bo away on a busier day didn't even give him a second look. She only momentarily came to life when Bo
plopped down a bill five times the entry fee and told her to keep the change. They were given a printed brochure describing the exhibits, and then forgotten. And upon stepping inside the main gallery, Bo quickly realized:

They were the only visitors.

And they were completely alone.

In public.

Buddha, Osiris, and Jehovah were all smiling down upon him.

“Ooaf,” Astrid said, peeling off her damp coat in the steamy heat that dripped water onto ferns and primeval jungle plants. “I forgot how warm it is in here. Feels marvelous. And it's so beautiful. I don't know what to look at first. Can you imagine living in a world like this? I can practically imagine dinosaurs hiding behind that . . . whats-a-doodle. Oh, the sign says ‘philodendron.' Fifty years old! How marvelous . . .”

Bo couldn't hold back his smile. For maybe the first time since she'd come home, Astrid was spilling words faster than she could think. She was radiant, head tilting this way and that as her gaze scanned the thousands of glass panels circling the conservatory's dome above and the lush tropical foliage below.

She was happy.

And in Bo's proud mind, he gave all of this to her—him, Yeung Bo-Sing. It didn't belong to the city; it was his. His to share with her. To provide escape from the all the nastiness of the turquoise idol and the gruesome visions, all the anguish and uncertainty they'd faced in reuniting. All the long months they'd spent apart.

It all just lifted away with the tropical steam.

“What's the plan?” Astrid said, running her hand over a fern frond.

“Plan?”

“Well, you said no more talking about the idol and the survivors and the pirate club once we got here. You said it was an adventure, and you said yesterday we should
pretend we're other people, so we must be playing roles. The real Bo would never ask me out on a date.”

She had that wrong. The real him
would
. The real him would have already married her and whisked her off on a yearlong honeymoon around the world. Society and circumstance did not allow him to be himself.

“Let's see. If we didn't already know each other, how would we have met? I think it must have been at Gris-Gris,” Astrid said, deciding upon their story. “You were staring at me dancing. I was so enchanting, you couldn't take your eyes off of me.”

Bo strolled next to her, his coat over one arm. “That's true enough. It was your smile that did it. I knew you were a girl who liked adventure when I saw that smile.” It was an unruly, disruptive kind of smile, and was the entrance to Astrid's unruly and disruptive mouth, which had a way of saying whatever flitted through her brain without filter. And Bo liked this quite a bit.

“My smile, huh?” she said.

“And your hips.”

“What about my hips?” she said defensively, moving her coat to cover herself. “You know I hate them.”

“Too bad, because I don't. They are so shapely, I was instantly magnetized. And that's why I had to meet you when I saw you at Gris-Gris. Smile and hips, a one-two combination.”

“Shapely,” she said, like it was ridiculous, but blue eyes slid toward his, and Bo did not miss the delight hiding beneath their surface.

“Like a professional dancer's,” he assured her. “But what would a beauty like you see in someone like me?”

“The most dashing, handsome bootlegger in the entire city?”

“Well, when you put it
that
way . . .”

“But it was your wicked tongue that did me in. You made me laugh, and you didn't give a damn what anyone thought.”

“Is that right?”

“Maybe it's my Viking blood. Mamma used to say she fell for Pappa because he never hesitated to take what he wanted, and if a mountain got in his way, he wouldn't just walk around it—he'd move it.”

Bo had spent a good bit of time with the Magnussons' father before he died. He knew the old Swede had balls of steel to build the bootlegging empire he'd passed along to Winter, but the last couple of years, the man had struggled with a mental illness that greatly affected his moods and decisions. Bo didn't say this to Astrid, though. She'd been through enough. Let her keep that image of her father. It was a good one.

“So that's why you agreed to let me call on you,” Bo said, leaning against a wooden railing along the conservatory path, where Astrid had stopped to read an iron plaque that marked an old tree.

She nodded. “Because the world is filled with boring people, but you are not one of them. I knew right away you were the kind of man who'd move mountains,” she said, giving him a confident, firm nod of her chin.

And it struck him then: they were both being truthful. This wasn't playacting. It was truth in the guise of a story. He
had
first been attracted to her smile. She really did think he could move mountains.

Could he?

“Anyway, we saw each other in Gris-Gris, and you marched in like a knight and drove away an unwanted suitor who was pestering me. That's how we met. How could I resist when you asked for my telephone number?”

“You had no chance, really,” Bo said. “I was more dashing than Douglas Fairbanks.”

“And you look even better than he did without a shirt in
The Thief of Bagdad
.”

“Oh really?” Slowly Bo turned his head to find her staring intently into the tropical flora.

“Those arms, whew!” she whistled. “It's going to be hard to pretend I haven't seen those already, but I'm willing to try.”

He could practically feel his ego doubling in size. Something a little farther south would be joining in if he didn't get control of his racing feelings. “I've seen some things I can't forget, either. Like that afternoon last year in the dressing room at the department store.”

Five seconds of time Bo mentally had dubbed the Fitting Room Incident, which occurred after driving Astrid to one of her weekly shopping excursions. One moment he'd been waiting with her seamstress, Benita, while she tried on clothes, the next he'd looked up to see her stepping outside the dressing screen without a stich on.

“That was an accident!” she whispered, face turning a pretty shade of pink.

She'd argued that a thousand times, but part of Bo had never believed this. Either way, it had been a gift—one he'd never forgotten.

Astrid quickly looked around behind them before sauntering down the path. “Oh, look. Here's the Highland Tropics gallery. Let's go inside.”

He followed her swaying, shapely hips through the door and felt the temperature drop as they entered a misty gallery that housed plants from higher elevations. He doffed his cap to an elderly lady sitting on a bench. Her small dog stretched its leash and yapped at him as he passed. No longer alone. That was disappointing, to say the least. But Bo's hope soared again when he heard Astrid mumbling that it was too cold in this room. They sailed down a long stone walkway that led to the last gallery on this side of the conservatory, the Aquatic Plants room.

Higher, humid temperature. Completed deserted.

The door swung shut on the dog's high-pitched yaps.

The rain that drummed a gentle rhythm against the conservatory's glass was reflected in a curving pool of water, the surface of which was covered in giant lily pads from the Amazon River.

“The lily pads grow to six feet across and can support the weight of a small child,” Astrid remarked as she sat along a low wall that hugged the indoor pond and set her
folded coat down beside her. “I wonder if anyone's tested that.”

Bo sat next to her and peered over the edge. “Would you like to try?”

“You'd really like to see me sink, wouldn't you?”

“Would I get to see you naked again?”

“You might see something new. I daresay some parts of me are much nicer than they were a year ago.”

“Believe me, I've noticed.”

Her eyes glittered as she pulled off her gloves and reached over the water to skim the raised, scalloped edge of a giant lily pad and encouraged Bo to do the same. It was strong, but they both decided that she would, indeed, sink. “So, Mr. Yeung, since we're on this fine date, I think you should tell me more about yourself before suggesting I jump in a pond for your entertainment—which I will not do, so don't hold your breath.”

“Damn. What would you like to know?”

“You are single, I assume, or you would not be here.”

“I am very single.”

“Have you ever been in a serious relationship?”

“I've been in a seriously
deranged
relationship for years with someone who left me behind for higher learning in the Hollywood Hills.”

She clucked her tongue. “You poor thing. Maybe you should have given her a reason to stay instead of putting her up on a pedestal where she couldn't be reached.”

“It's very complicated. Or, I thought it was. She has these two brothers, you see. And one of them adopted me when I was younger, and if he knew I so much as touched her, like this—” He ran a finger along the side of her hand. Once, twice. He stroked over her delicate wristbone and traced along the inside of her arm, back and forth, watching goose bumps spread across her skin. “He might smash my head into a sticky pulp. Or he might do something else, like send me away from the house in which I now live. I would lose my job and my family.”

“He would not,” Astrid whispered. “If he did, I would—I mean, I'm sure this girl you speak of would pack her bags and never speak to that brother again.”

“It's easy to say that now, but what would she do for money? Where would she live?”

“With you, of course.”

With him—
him!
He couldn't believe they were talking about this, no matter how remotely. It was like everything that hadn't been spoken over the last few years was suddenly out in the open. Or was it? He couldn't tell. All he knew was that his pulse was pounding in his temples and his mouth was dry.

He licked his lips. “What would I do for money? And I don't think she'd want to live in my old apartment in Chinatown. This girl likes the finer things in life.”

“She's not the only one,” she said, slanting him a critical look. “And the two of you could temporarily live with her nicer brother on Telegraph Hill.”

“You're assuming he wouldn't stand behind his older brother's wishes. And even if he took them in, that might risk dividing the entire family, and this family has already been through a lot of tragedy. I am certainly not worth the injury this could cause.”

“You should let her be the judge of worth,” Astrid said, brow lowering.

“It's not the only complication, I'm afraid.” He continued stroking her arm; touching her was like the patter of rain above them, seductive and relaxing. As long as he could continue touching her, their Pretend Conversation would continue. “Even if the family could be mended, there are other things dividing them. She is high class, and I am low. She is college educated, and my uncle forced me to drop out of school when I was thirteen so that I could earn him money by robbing people—”

“Lazy bastard.”

“—but most of all, she is a privileged white woman. I am Chinese.”

She leaned closer. “I've heard from a reliable source that the xenophobes plaguing our society have got it all wrong—that the Chinese are beautiful, resilient people with a rich cultural history that spans thousands of years. And that they came here to Gum Shan—”

“Gam Saan,” he said, correcting her pronunciation as he leaned closer.

“Gold Mountain, then. The reason they came to California was the same reason my parents came here from Sweden. Because life was hard at home, and though they loved their land, they came here to seek their fortune. How were they supposed to know that a bunch of idiots with power were already out here, and that they'd be jealous of their hard work and make life miserable for them?”