Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(17)

“Your family’s infamous. And I asked one of the waiters,” he added, hunching over the small table to speak in a lower voice. A gaudy signet ring on his finger flashed in the candlelight when he set his hand on the table, inching closer. “You are the Viking Bootlegger’s baby sister, yes?”

The warning bells that had dinged inside her head when he first mentioned her name now grew louder. He was toying with her, and she didn’t like the edgy eagerness in his eyes. Maybe he was one of her brother’s business rivals. Winter and Bo had both warned her a hundred times to be cautious in public. Being in Los Angeles had made her forget to be guarded. She remembered now.

“If you’re hoping for a discount, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said, pulling away from him while trying to keep her voice light.

“No, no discount. I’ve got more cash than I know what to do with and plenty of booze back home.” His suit looked expensive enough, so maybe that was true. Glassy blue eyes squinted as he smiled down at her. “I’m only interested in you.”

“Me?”

“Indeed,” he assured her, rapping his knuckles on the table to underscore the word. There was something awfully familiar about the design on that ring, but she couldn’t quite place it. “Tell me more about you, Miss Magnusson.”

“Not much to tell.”

“I doubt that’s true. Word is you were at your brother’s warehouse last night when that yacht crashed into the pier. That had to be interesting.”

She didn’t like where this was going. Maybe he was a reporter. Magnussons do not speak to reporters. That was one of Winter’s (many) house rules.

“Hold that thought,” she all but shouted at Max, pasting on a fake smile as she clinked the melting ice in her glass. “I just decided I need some gin. I’ll be right back, and then we can chat.”

She all but leapt away from the table in her rush to get away from him and wove around tables looking for Daniels, who was nowhere in sight. She glanced over her shoulder to see if Max was watching her. He was. She waved and darted behind a column. A small crowd of people had descended on the bar. She’d have trouble getting the bartender’s attention. She also couldn’t make a dash for the lobby, because it was in Max’s line of vision. Her anxious gaze fell on the door to the ladies’ restroom—out of sight, and that was good enough for her. She stepped inside the bright room, leaving behind the chatter and smoky haze of the club.

SIX

Bo held out a chair as he stealthily scanned the dim speakeasy, looking for the telltale flounce of blond hair. Gris-Gris wasn’t as busy as it should be this time of night, but there were still enough people to make it difficult to spot someone across the tangle of candlelit tables and dancing bodies.

“You owe me for this, Yeung Bo-Sing,” Sylvia said in Cantonese as she sat down in the chair he offered, using the formal Chinese surname-first pattern to emphasize that she meant business.

Then again, Sylvia Fong always meant business. The twenty-year-old switchboard operator lived with her twin sister in an apartment two floors above the one Bo grew up in—one he still kept but rarely used—just off Grant on the northern edge of Chinatown. She occasionally helped him when he needed to listen in on telephone conversations, and he made sure the building superintendent knew that he couldn’t screw her over on rent or bamboozle his way out of repairs.

“You said you weren’t busy tonight,” he told her. The house band was loud, so they had to practically shout at each other to be heard. “Besides, I’m buying you a drink. Your boyfriend surely won’t mind two friends catching up.”

“No, he won’t.” Her ruler-straight short bob swayed as she slowly shook her head. “But no club in the city would make you pay for drinks, and you wouldn’t beg me to race over here with you in this nasty weather if you didn’t want something.”

True.

Thanks to the widow Cushing moving the Plumed Serpent, Bo had been able to oversee the loading of tonight’s runs from Pier 26 instead of staging everything across the Bay. This saved him a couple of extra hours of work, but it was already past ten. He hoped Astrid hadn’t already moved on to another speakeasy—or decided against coming here altogether.

“Only one thing would make you look that nervous,” Sylvia said. “She’s home from college, isn’t she?”

Bo sat where he could see the bar and the door. “Who do you mean?”

“Pssh. Don’t play dumb. The blond Swiss girl.”

“Swedish.”

Sylvia widened her eyes and pretended to pant, mimicking small dog paws with her hands. “This is you, wagging your tail and begging for her to scratch your ears.”

“A bit lower down than my ears,” he said with a smile.

She laughed. “Lucky her.”

“You’re a boon to my ego, Miss Fong.” Bo had known Sylvia several years, and even though things started off lustily between them, it had been quick burning and short. But she was funny and easygoing, and they had not only remained friends but become closer. A rare joy, she was. “Why aren’t we together again?”

A stupid question, because they both knew why. She’d been uninterested in being hampered by a serious relationship, and he’d been harboring, well, whatever this was for Astrid.