Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(30)

Emboldened by his good mood, she teased him a little. “I thought it was eau de bootlegger.”

“No,” he answered with a soft chuckle, “that smells like money and sweat.”

He was joking with her—smiling and laughing and touching her. She was far happier than she probably should be about it. Any second, her feet would be floating over the sidewalk. She forced herself to settle down and dug out Mrs. Lin’s map. “Look at this and tell me if you know where it’s at.”

“All right. No need to be pushy,” he said with good humor. As rain dripped from the umbrella onto his coat sleeve, he studied the hand-drawn path through Chinatown’s labyrinth streets and noted where he’d make a bit of a detour. “A small tong leader has a warehouse here. We’re on decent terms—Bo and I have already ruled him out as a possible ringleader for all the ghost business—but I don’t want him to think I’m sniffing around without his permission.”

The thought hadn’t crossed her mind that it might be dangerous for a notorious bootlegger to be prowling Chinatown, whether or not it meant facing someone he suspected of his recent hauntings. He must’ve noticed the concern on her face, because he opened up his long overcoat and showed her a handgun strapped beneath his suit jacket. “Just in case. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry?” she repeated, looking around quickly to make sure no one else had seen it. “That makes me even more nervous. What if you have to use it?”

He curled gloved fingers around her chin and lifted her face. “Then the other guy’ll have a bullet in him and you’ll be safe. I promise you that.”

“I don’t like guns.”

He released her chin. “Then try to keep your hand out of my jacket and you’ll never know it’s there.” He gave her a quick wink that made her stomach flip, then, with a gentle hand on her shoulder, prodded her down the sidewalk.

Light drizzle darkened the pavement and carried scents of Chinatown: dried fish, exotic spices, old wood, and tobacco leaves from a nearby cigar warehouse. Across the street, tourists huddled under dark red canvas awnings to get out of the rain and browse ceramics and toys on display in wooden crates. Tin Lizzies and delivery trucks rumbled down the street, splashing through puddles collecting near the curbs.

“Bo said he started working for you when he was fourteen,” she said as they sauntered down Grant, passing a butcher’s window where a row of skinned ducks hung above signs in English and Chinese, promising the freshest meat for the best price.

“He was half your size back then,” he said. “Did he tell you how we met?”

“No.”

“I box at a club on the edge of Chinatown, a few blocks from my pier—”

“That explains a lot,” she mumbled, eyeing a thick arm. Half of him was getting wet, she noticed, as he was tilting the umbrella at an angle to account for their height difference and keep her dry.

He blinked at her with a dazed look on his face and nearly smiled. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “Bo lived with his uncle. To bolster the family income, he took to pickpocketing. Was good at it, too. Fast as a whip—you never knew he’d been in your coat. He robbed me blind when I was getting dressed for a match.”

“Oh dear.”

“After the match was over, I caught him in the alley behind the club. He was so small, I could lift him off the ground with one hand. Little degenerate looked me straight in the eye and told me, yes, he’d done it and wasn’t sorry one bit.” Winter smiled to himself. “I knew he was either brave or stupid, so I asked him to do a little spying here and there, paying him mostly in hot meals at the beginning. He can still eat his weight in lemon pie.”

Aida laughed.

“His uncle died a couple years later, on Bo’s sixteenth birthday. Bo called me because he couldn’t afford to bury the man.”

“How awful,” Aida said, feeling for her locket.

“Damn disgrace that the old man didn’t even leave Bo a penny.” His brow lowered, then he shrugged away the memory. “Bo’s been living with me ever since.”

“I thought he told me he moved in with you after the accident? Wasn’t that two years ago?”

“We both moved back to the family home then, yes.”

“From where? Mrs. Beecham mentioned an old house of yours . . .”

Winter stiffened. “She had no business bringing that up.”

“Oh, I didn’t know—”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” he said, cutting her off.

His gruff tone stung. She’d unintentionally touched a nerve, and for a moment the air between them was awkward and tense. Bo had warned her about prying into his past.

“No one’s told you about the accident?” he said after a long moment. “Not Velma?”

“No, but I gather both your parents died.”

The subject hung in the air for several steps. “I didn’t mean to bark at you. I just don’t like talking about it.”

“I can understand that. Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead.”

His hard look softened.

“Apart from that, people talk to me intimately about death all the time,” she said. “Everyone wants to be reassured that there’s life after death, but I always beg them not to forget that there’s life before death—and that’s the only thing we really have any sort of control over. Anyway, if you ever feel inclined, I’m a bit of a specialist in these matters, and you have hired my services.”