Aida waited for a customer to pay his check, then stepped up to the register and rubbed the potbellied Buddha for luck. “Afternoon.”

“Miss Palmer,” Mrs. Lin replied cheerfully. The kindly Chinese businesswoman was petite in height and round in girth, with pretty plump cheeks and loops of black hair pinned tightly above the nape of her neck.

“Any mail for me today?”

“Mail and more.” Mrs. Lin lifted a small key that hung on a long chain around her neck and opened a lacquered red cabinet behind the counter, which housed tenant mail and packages. She retrieved two pieces of mail. The first was from a woman in Philadelphia; Aida had performed regular séances for her when she’d worked at a club there last year, and they’d since maintained a correspondence.

The second envelope was from an address in New Orleans. The Limbo Room, a new speakeasy. The owner, a Mr. Bradley Bix, was interested in booking her later this summer. He would be in San Francisco visiting his cousin at the end of June and proposed to call on her after taking in one of her performances at Gris-Gris. If he was satisfied by what he saw, he would offer her a booking. He included a brochure printed with photographs of the club, intended for potential members; their annual fees were much higher than Gris-Gris and the photographs made it look nice. It was a good prospect, and she was happy to receive it, but part of her was growing weary of planning her next move when she was barely situated at her current job.

Or maybe she was being too sentimental about San Francisco.

A group of noisy customers approached the counter. Aida moved out of their way and turned to find herself face-to-face with someone familiar.

“I said you had mail and more,” Mrs. Lin explained. “Mr. Yeung is ‘more.’ Been waiting for you the last half hour. I was going to send Mr. Lin to fetch you, but the kitchen is backed up.”

“Bo,” Aida said in surprise, greeting Magnusson’s assistant, who was dressed in another smart suit and brown argyle newsboy cap. “Mr. Yeung, I mean. What a pleasant surprise.”

He politely canted his head. “Either is fine. And it’s nice to see you again.”

“How’s your boss doing?” she asked in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder at Mrs. Lin. The restaurant owner was making small talk with the customers at the counter.

“Much better. And no ghosts,” Bo reported. “Or at least, none following him. He sent me here to inquire if you’d be willing to get rid of the ghost in his study.”

Aida’s pulse quickened as adrenaline zipped through her. “Oh?”

“It shows up mid-afternoon, so that’s why he sent me to fetch you now. If it’s not too inconvenient, I’ve got the car outside.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“So he just assumed I would drop what I was doing and rush over there?”

“To be honest, people usually do,” Bo said with a sly smile. “He wants to hire your services this time. For payment.”

Aida almost laughed. “I’m very expensive.”

“He’s very rich.”

“I expect he is.”

“He’s impatient as a boy on Christmas and never invites people up to the house, so you should probably come. Let’s get going before everyone finishes their lunch and jams the roads.”

Calling on a man in his home? Surely wasn’t a sensible thing to do, especially a man like that. But when did she ever shy away from a novel experience? And it certainly would be interesting to find out where a rich bootlegger lived.

Besides, she could always use the cash, so she should probably go. The dimples in the small of his back had absolutely, positively nothing to do with it.

“I can’t stay long,” she told Bo. Then she slipped her mail into her handbag and waved at Mrs. Lin, whose keen look of curiosity followed her out the door into light gray drizzle.

Aida’s first lesson in a bootlegger’s personal life loomed at the curb near the neighboring sidewalk newsstand. There was a dark red Pierce-Arrow limousine with a polished black top—like something the Prince of Darkness would drive out of the gates of hell. And even with the nefarious coloring, it was an insanely well-bred automobile with whitewall tires, glinting windows, and gleaming chrome. Its enormous chassis looked like a steamer ship on roller skates, led by a silver archer ornament on the hood. Showy luxury. Hollywood stars owned these cars. Aida had only seen them in magazines. She dumbly stared along with the tourists passing by.

“A beauty, yes?” Bo said. “She’s brand-new. Custom-built.” He held open the back door for her while she slid inside. The interior was a dream: polished wood steering wheel, chrome reading lights, crystal pulls on the window shades. It was all Aida could do not to whistle in appreciation as she settled into the leather backseat, propping her heels on the footrest below.

A long window, rolled down halfway, served as a privacy divider between the front and the back. A small handheld motor phone made it possible to talk with the driver. Bo saw her eyeing it as he started the car. “You want the divider all the way up?”

“So that I can talk to myself back here?”

He grinned in response and pulled out into traffic.

Aida stared out the window through lengthening raindrops. Stores selling silk slippers and Oriental rugs blurred as they headed west. A few more blocks and she’d be headed into parts of the city where she’d never been.

Her hands didn’t know where to settle. She raised her voice to be heard over the rumbling engine. “How long have you worked for Mr. Magnusson?”

“Seven years, thereabouts. He hired me when he started helping his father with the family business—after he left Berkeley.”

Berkeley educated? Surprising. “How old were you when you started working for him?”

“Fourteen.”

Good grief. He was running around doing illegal things when he was still a child? She supposed she shouldn’t feel too sorry for him. He was obviously doing well now, and she certainly knew what it was like to be hungry for money.

“At first he just called on me now and then to run errands for him,” Bo explained. “Then I started working for him every day after school. After the accident—”

“The one that caused his eye injury? What happened, exactly?”

“You don’t know?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard talk around the club.”

“I’m all ears now.”

“He’ll have to be the one to tell the story, and I wouldn’t recommend asking until he’s warmed up to you. Touchy subject. Anyway, as I was saying, after the accident, he took over his father’s business full-time, and when he moved back into the family house, I came with him. I’ve got a room there.”

So Winter’s father was the original bootlegger, which meant he must’ve died in the accident, Aida reasoned. How terrible. She wondered if the mother was still alive, but it unearthed memories of her own parents that she didn’t care to think about, so she shifted the conversation back to Bo. “What exactly do you do for him, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“This and that. Communicating instructions, scouting, relaying information . . . driving spirit mediums around.” Brown eyes met hers in the rearview mirror, sparkling with humor. “And I guess you can add ‘personal valet’ to that list after that night at Velma’s.”

She laughed to cover up the unwanted picture of Naked Man floating inside her head. “I imagined the life of a bootlegger being a series of gunfights in dark alleys.”

“There’s a little of that. Winter’s definitely more comfortable with guns than ghosts, but you shouldn’t be afraid to call on him. He’s had additional security at the house since the supernatural business started up, and no one working for him has ever been killed . . . at least, not on purpose.”

She almost choked. “That’s, uh, helpful to know.”

He steered the car down a side street. “Honestly, I’m surprised you agreed to come today, after everything at Velma’s.”

“Guess I’m a glutton for punishment.”

“He might seem irritable at times, but he’s been through a lot, so I guess you could say he’s a little mad at the world. You just have to grow a thick skin around him when he’s in one of his moods. He’s not a bad person, despite what you might think.”

“I didn’t think he was. Maybe a little demanding.”

Bo grinned at her in the mirror. “You fight your way up to a certain level of success after being nothing but an immigrant fisherman’s son, you’d be demanding, too. Can’t command respect unless you act like you deserve it.”

In their line of business, she didn’t doubt it.

Houses began to increase in both size and grandeur as Bo turned onto a street with a steep incline. The Pierce-Arrow’s engine protested as it turned faster to make the climb past an eclectic mix of grand homes. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Pacific Heights. Never stepped foot here until I started working for Winter. It’s swanky—where all the Nob Hill millionaires built after the quake and the Great Fire. Everyone here pays for that.” He pointed toward a spectacular view of the bay and the rocky cliffs beyond, now shrouded in quiet rain and light fog. All the homes sat shoulder-to-shoulder, cramped on horizontal streets that lined the hill in tiers like movie theater seats, where everyone gets a good view of the screen.

Bo slowed the car as they passed through an intersection. Aida read the street sign here: BROADWAY. Her nerves twanged as she looked at a beautiful beast of a home on the corner. Bo parked the car at the curb.

“Welcome to the Magnusson house,” he announced.

FIVE