Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(55)

Mr. Haig’s eyes watered. He swallowed hard and crossed his arms over his chest, knobby fingers still clutching his cane in one hand. “It all started the summer of ’27. I used to run a charter service to Marin County, carrying private parties across the Bay. But during a storm, I tore the hull on some rocks and couldn’t afford to get it repaired. I was out of work for several weeks and a friend took me out to a club to cheer me up.”

Bo perked up. “Which club?”

“A place down on Terrific Street.”

Terrific Street wasn’t marked on any map. It was something locals used to call a stretch of Pacific Street in the old Barbary Coast red-light district. Bo thought about Little Mike’s story of the dope addict striking it rich at the Pieces of Eight club.

“Where, exactly, Mr. Haig?” Bo asked.

“An old dance hall called Babel’s Tower. It’s a black-and-tan, just down from the main drag, so it doesn’t get raided as much as the others. Back before the war, I used to go to Spider Kelley’s and the Jupiter and pay ten cents to dance with the most beautiful girls you’ve ever seen. Present company excluded, miss,” he said, giving Astrid a small smile.

“Babel’s Tower is still open?” Bo said.

Mr. Haig nodded. “Not every night, and it depends on whether the cops are in a mood to jump it. But you couldn’t pay me to go back there. Especially not upstairs. That’s where they recruit you.”

Babel’s Tower, the captain proceeded to tell them, was a two-story dance hall. Anyone could pay the door fee and enter the bottom level, otherwise known to regulars as Hell. Dancing, drinking, music, gambling—Hell had all the normal attractions one would expect to find in an old Barbary Coast establishment. It also had a little something extra: its “taxi dance hall” girls. You could buy a ticket to dance with a girl.

“One song,” he said with a shy smile. “Ten cents for a dance to one song.”

Astrid inspected her nails. “If you felt greedy, would they let you buy two tickets so that you could dance with two girls at once?”

Realization was a tingling sensation that crawled down Bo’s spine and constricted his stomach. Astrid knew. Sylvia had told her. She knew!

Bo furiously scratched the back of his neck, as if he could wipe away the shame, and fought the dueling urges to either bury his face in his hand or cart her off somewhere private so that he could explain.

He glanced at her and saw pursed lips, one arched blond brow, and two almond-shaped foxlike eyes slanted in his direction. Those eyes said: Oh yes. I know everything.

Shit.

Gritting his teeth, he silently cursed Sylvia. He supposed this was her little revenge against him. No doubt he deserved it, but he damn sure wished he’d told Astrid himself. In about ten years. Or possibly when she was on her deathbed and had lost her hearing. Or possibly never, never at all—ever.

Unaware of the current crackling between Astrid and Bo, Mr. Haig just coughed into his fist and said, “Uh, no, but you could buy several tickets to watch them dance in private booths . . . err, burlesque style.”

Mr. Haig didn’t dwell on the details, and his face turned redder than a cooked lobster as he apologized to Astrid for speaking frankly.

Astrid unbuttoned her coat, clasped her hands, and settled them on her knee as her foot bounced a steady rhythm. She couldn’t possibly sit up any straighter.

“Anyway,” the man said, “there was a girl there who first told me about Mad Hammett. He’s in charge of the dancers. And he’s the one who can get you into Heaven.”

Mad Hammett was judge and jury over who was allowed in the coveted second floor of the club, where the wealthy and poor rubbed elbows. Mr. Haig was allowed upstairs after Mad Hammett discovered he could pilot boats.

“It’s a different world up there,” he said. “Everything’s fancy. The booze is better. And to get up there, you have to either be beautiful or interesting—that’s what my friend told me. But I think now that I know better; it’s that you need to be useful. Because that’s where Mrs. Cushing’s people find their marks.”

Mr. Haig began frequenting Heaven and found there was a private area up a secret set of stairs where a society of rich socialites met once a month.

“Pieces of Eight, they call themselves,” Mr. Haig said, and all the hairs on Bo’s arms rose as a terrible chill ran through him. “None of the members use their real names, and you can’t enter until you’ve put on a mask. They throw wild parties. I’m talkin’ wild. Things I’ve never seen or experienced before. Things I can’t talk about in front of a lady.”

Astrid started to protest, but Mr. Haig refused to budge on this. Bo was grateful, honestly. He didn’t want to hear about, talk about, or remember anything in the least bit wild. “Please continue,” he encouraged, nodding at Mr. Haig.

The man coughed into his hand again. “Yes, well . . . all I’ll say is that I was going through a rough time, and these people made me feel like I was part of something big. And when they asked me to pilot a yacht last December, I was in no place to refuse the kind of money they were offering, so I didn’t question why anyone would pay that much for a nighttime trip across the Bay. And it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Six fresh-faced recruits were taken aboard the yacht with six Pieces of Eight members. “And that’s when I met Mrs. Cushing. She told me where to take the yacht, out near the coast between Muir Beach and Tennessee Cove. I was to kill the engine and stay put until she came and got me. I had to promise not to leave the pilot room. But they’d given me . . . well, I wasn’t quite sober, you see. And a terrible squall came up. After my accident with my own boat, I wasn’t all that keen on piloting the yacht in the middle of a storm—especially after one of the windows blew out.”