Bitter Spirits Part 19

"I certainly hope so. Makes me look good."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. "You, sir, are no gentleman."

"Aren't you glad?"

"Delighted," she admitted.

He started to kiss her again but held still, listening to something. She heard it, too, out in the hallway. Loud knocks on nearby doors. People shouting. Next to the bed, the telephone rang, startling both of them.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Winter mumbled, pus.h.i.+ng himself up to reach the nightstand. He growled an agitated, "What?" into the mouthpiece. Every muscle in his face tightened as he listened for several moments. He hung up without responding. A stream of curses spilled from his mouth-half of them in what she could only a.s.sume was Swedish-while he gripped the ma.s.sive bulge in his pants as if he were trying to will it away.

"What is it?" she asked.

Aida got her answer from a shouted word that shot through the hallway outside their door.

Raid.

Winter pulled her up and said, "Get dressed. Feds have already secured the restaurant and the ballroom."

"Can't we just wait it out up here?"

"They're sending agents up to search the rooms." He s.n.a.t.c.hed his s.h.i.+rt off the floor. She watched him slip it on over his unders.h.i.+rt as she pushed her dress down and struggled to tie her gown's golden cords over a shoulder. "The hotel sends booze up to rooms when guests call the front desk and ask for a 'birthday treat,' or some other such nonsense code."

"But we didn't."

He stopped dressing for a moment and gave her a hard stare. "No, but I'm the one who supplied it to the hotel."

"Right." She tied one shoulder of her dress into place and twisted to find the second set of cords.

"And I'd prefer that our photograph doesn't end up on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper, no matter if all they did was question me-which they will, if they catch me."

"I wouldn't think anyone would bat an eyelash over a bootlegger caught in a hotel room with a speakeasy performer."

He lifted her chin with one knuckle. "I couldn't give a d.a.m.n about myself. It's your reputation I'm worried about."

Perhaps he was a gentleman after all. She ran her hand down his stomach, pausing over loose s.h.i.+rttails. "I'm sorry. We weren't finished."

"I'm not happy, either, believe me. Rain check?" She nodded, and he kissed her briefly before returning to dressing and strapping on his gun. He didn't bother tying his bow tie. "Don't leave my side," he said calmly as he herded her out the door. "And don't panic." She barely had time to s.n.a.t.c.h up her coat and handbag as they left the room.

Out in the hallway, guests talked excitedly as they breezed past, headed for the stairs behind another couple. Near the elevator, Aida nearly b.u.mped into a half-dressed man who was hunched over a potted palm, turning up a gurgling bottle of gin into the potting soil. Toilets flushed behind doors on either side of them as other guests got rid of their own incriminating evidence. Winter and Aida might've been the only people on the whole floor who hadn't ordered a birthday treat from the front desk.

They clattered down several flights of stairs, others joining their exodus along the way. Winter guided her away from the small crowd and took her on a circuitous route around the Palm Court. When two men with shotguns appeared around a corner, he ducked into a pair of doors, pulling her along, before they could be seen. They found themselves inside a ballroom where a private party was in the middle of hysterics. Tuxedoed guests were emptying champagne gla.s.ses when cries broke out near the front of the dining area. Several men in suits charged into the room, brandis.h.i.+ng guns.

"Federal agents," the leader shouted. "Everyone stay where you are. This is a raid."

Chaotic shouting broke out. Tables toward the back of the room emptied as diners joined several waiters who were fleeing out a back door. A Fed stepped into the doorway, blocking their retreat. He raised his gun in warning and the line reversed direction.

Winter yanked them against the wall and surveyed the mounting chaos, looking for an alternate escape route. "There," he said, nodding toward a shadowed door hidden behind a standing screen, where pitchers of water sat on a console table. They slipped around the edge of the anxious crowd and made their way there.

It may have taken a minute, but it felt like an hour to sneak toward the unwatched door. She kept her eye on the Feds as they went. When they were a few feet away, one of the younger agents looked their way.

"Winter," Aida whispered as the man raised a rifle.

"Go." He shoved her behind the screen as the Fed shouted in their direction. Her hand shot out for the door handle. Unlocked! They burst through the door and found themselves in a small back hallway.

"Kitchen?" she said, hearing clamor behind a set of swinging doors.

"Obvious place to find liquor-might be blocked with Prohis on the other side," he said, pulling her down the hallway. "We need to get to the front desk without being seen."

That sounded like the last place they needed to be.

"Trust me." They sprinted together, Winter leading her through back corridors of the hotel, inside a supply room, up stairs, down stairs, squeezing past rolling luggage carts until they finally made it to the front desk. Two Feds guarded the front entrance as another argued with the concierge and someone who appeared to be hotel management.

They hid behind an elaborate floral arrangement and waited. Aida's heart knocked inside her chest. Winter gripped her hand so hard it began to throb. She peeked around the flowers to see the hotel manager's face reddening as his voice rose-the raid was an outrage, he was saying. They were ruining his guests' evening and besmirching the hotel's sterling reputation. When the Fed turned his back to answer the manager, Winter jerked her toward the registration desk. "Up and over," he whispered, lifting her by the hips onto the curved counter. She scooted across as he leapt the desk neatly and helped her down on the other side.

At the end of the counter, a door led to a small room with several large safes. Dead end. "Can we wait it out here?" she whispered. "We can't walk out the front door. Will they recognize you? Do the Feds know you?"

"Oh, they know me, all right. And we're not going through the front door. He stood on tiptoes and touched something on the wood paneling. Part of the wall opened to reveal a small door; he opened it.

Aida peered into darkness until he flipped a switch. A string of temporary warehouse lights illuminated a steep set of stairs, from which cool, dank air wafted. "What is this?" she whispered. "A bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"This," he said as he urged her down the stairs, "is a tunnel that runs beneath the road. They dug it when prohibition pa.s.sed. Used to be a gla.s.s bridge between the Palace and the building across the street-before the earthquake leveled the hotel, which gave someone the idea for the tunnel. We drop off s.h.i.+pments at a gentleman's club called House of s.h.i.+elds, and the hotel stashes it there and only takes what it needs a little at a time through the tunnel. That's why the Feds aren't going to get the big bust they want tonight. They'll haul a few people away-high-profile guests, if they can nab 'em-but the hotel's fairly clean."

The tunnel was narrow and poorly lit, the walls lined with brick and patchy concrete. Winter's head nearly b.u.mped the arched ceiling . . . the head that had been between her legs a half hour ago. Had she really just let him do that to her?

His shadowed face peered down at her. "h.e.l.lo."

"h.e.l.lo."

"Still okay?" he asked in a teasing voice.

G.o.d, yes. "As long as we don't go to jail." She felt a low, erratic rumbling in the soles of her broken shoes and looked up.

"Cars and trolleys," he said.

"We're under the street right now?"

"We are."

Rather exciting. The pa.s.sageway was barely wide enough for the two of them to walk abreast. Their feet kicked up dust from the concrete. "Does this happen a lot?" Aida asked.

"Raids? Not really. It did in the early days, or so my father said."

"Do you worry about your customers giving you up if they're caught? Your employees?"

"I don't have a paperwork trail leading away from my customers, and my people know that they'll make more money keeping their mouth shut than ratting me out. Feds questioned my father once in '23. They couldn't make the charge stick."

"Are they watching you?"

"Off and on. I employ a lot of people-dispatchers, truck drivers, s.h.i.+p crews, warehouse workers. So on one hand, I generate a lot of money, and that always gets the Feds' attention. But I don't make as much as a couple other bootleggers in town, and I don't pursue other illegal enterprises-gambling houses, narcotics, that sort of thing."

"Do you worry?"

"All the time," he said, steering them around a murky puddle. "But I've made some changes to the way my father set things up. I've ditched most of the high-risk customers, I pay taxes on the fis.h.i.+ng business, and I bribe the police, which keeps things quiet."

He sounded nonchalant, but she knew better. Though half the city might see bootleggers as Robin Hood figures, if his illegal import operation was ever uncovered, he could go to jail. For years and years. Lose his house. Be unable to take care of his family. Maybe his dead wife had legitimate reasons to worry. This kind of business certainly wasn't for the faint of heart.

Then again, neither was what she did for a living.

He changed the subject. "You know President Harding died here four years ago."

"Sure. Everyone knows that. Apoplexy in a penthouse suite at the hotel."

"Nope. He died across the street in an apartment above the House of s.h.i.+elds, drunker than the devil with a bed full of women. His aides dragged his body through the tunnel so that he'd be found in his hotel room and his family spared the disgrace."

"No!"

"Oh yes. He-"

The sight blocking their path halted them in their tracks.

A short man stood in the middle of the tunnel, his face lit by the string of crude lights scalloping the wall. His suit was so wet, Aida could hear water dripping from his sleeves onto the concrete floor. His face was striated and bloated; his eyes were solid white-no pupils or irises.

It didn't take Aida's cold breath to prove to either of them that the bloated man was a ghost.

EIGHTEEN.

NOT AGAIN.

Winter stared at the bloated corpse of Arnie Brown standing several yards down the tunnel while his mind flashed back to the day he died. It was almost three years ago, right after he'd married Paulina and moved them into their Beaux Arts home on Russian Hill. He'd been fighting with her about Bo. Winter thought she was worried about Bo's character, as she complained that things were missing around the house, and the obvious culprit in her mind was a boy who'd been raised as a thief. But there was more to it. She didn't trust Bo because his mind and mouth were both sharp. She also didn't trust him because he was Chinese.

Winter and Bo had stayed out late one night making a deal at the pier-rather, trying to save a deal that Winter's father had nearly lost after berating a client during one of his manic fits. After the deal was salvaged, Bo was telling Winter he'd rather move out of the Russian Hill house than have Paulina insult him with accusations of stealing. Winter knew he hadn't stolen anything. h.e.l.l, he knew Bo's character better than he knew his own wife's. Spent more time with him, too. But Bo had his pride, and Winter was caught between it and the burden of having to placate his parochial wife.

That long-ago night, as Bo locked up the back door on the pier, Winter had walked the dock and came face-to-face with the man he'd just renegotiated the deal with-Arnie Brown. Arnie had a gun and was prepared to kill Winter so he could rob the booze being held at the pier. But the bullet grazed Winter's arm when Bo sneaked around and grabbed Arnie from behind. The three of them grappled, but it was actually Bo who shoved the man off the pier. He couldn't swim.

And now he was slowly shuffling down the tunnel toward Winter and Aida, bloated as he was the day the police found him floating a mile down the bay.

"Coins," Aida said, already rummaging through his coat pockets.

As they backed away from Arnie's ghost, he checked all his inner pockets . . . pants pockets. Nothing.

"Nothing tasted funny at dinner, did it?" she asked. "You aren't poisoned again?"

"No, no-I felt strange almost immediately last time."

Aida pulled off his hat and felt around under the band. "Shoes?"

"I've had those on the entire time we were in the room together."

Arnie's ghost picked up speed, shuffling with greater intent.

They backed up several feet, but Winter realized now that they were trapped. Couldn't go back the way they came dragging a ghost with them into the middle of the raid. Couldn't go forward. He hand went to his gun holster. The last ghost was solid-if Arnie was, too, could he be shot?

"No," Aida said when he withdrew his handgun. "You might slow him down at best, might not. Let me see if I can send him away."

"Absolutely not."

"Absolutely yes. It's a ghost, for G.o.d's sake. This is my territory, not yours. Let me try."

He hesitated. Released the gun's safety. "I'll stay right behind you."

"Don't shoot me."

"I'll do my best."

Aida stalked down the tunnel toward the ghost a little too fast for Winter's preference. The inexperienced woman in the hotel room was all confidence now. No fear. Winter supposed it was good that he had enough for both of them.

The ghost was grotesque, his face an unearthly color. No life behind his eyes, yet he walked. And unlike the brutal shock Winter had felt when he recognized the ghost of d.i.c.k Jepsen, he felt something different now: a slow-building anger.

A few feet from Arnie, Aida blew out a hard blast of cold air and charged forward with one hand extended. The slap of her mortal flesh against his ghostly chest echoed off the tunnel walls. White sparks shot through his form. The tunnel lights dimmed and popped on and off.

"Arghh!" Aida jerked her hand back like it was on fire and shook it out. "That hurt!"

Enough of this bulls.h.i.+t. Winter grabbed her around the waist and pulled her backward, away from the ghost.

"He won't budge," she said, breathing hard as she twisted out of his grip and stood her ground. "Feels strange-solid, but unreal."

"Move behind me or so help me G.o.d, I'll put you over my shoulder. And do not touch that thing again. It's dangerous, Aida. Jesus! Here he comes again. Move!"

"All right, I'm moving." She ducked under his gun arm and started to shuffle past him, then grabbed his coat. "b.u.t.tons . . . Winter! Four of your b.u.t.tons don't match. They're-"

He glanced down quickly, s.h.i.+fting his gaze back and forth from the coat to the approaching ghost. She was right-they didn't match. They weren't cabochon. In fact, they were embossed with dragon heads and looked as if they'd been hurriedly sewn, with loose threads sticking out like spider legs.

Four coins. Four b.u.t.tons . . .

Some rat b.a.s.t.a.r.d had switched them out during dinner when he'd checked his coat. He'd been so desperate to get Aida's clothes off-and back on, when the raid started-that he hadn't noticed. That was careless and stupid.

Aida didn't wait for permission. Just ripped them off and spun around to face Arnie. "After these, are you?" She held the fisted b.u.t.tons above her head.

The ghost's head tilted as dead eyes tracked the magic inside them.