Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties)

by Jenn Bennett

  “Lowe!”

  His baby sister careened his way, her blond, bobbed hair swinging as she ran. She pounced on him like she used to when she was a child.

  “Whoa, Astrid,” he warned, but when her arms went around his neck, he found himself unable to stop from lifting her straight off the ground and hugging her back with the same enthusiasm. “All right, all right,” he said, setting her back down. “Release me, she-demon.”

  She grinned up at him, running her gloved hand over his whiskers. “You look like a vagrant, älskade broder.”

  “I feel like one. And look at you! You’ve grown since the summer. Are you still just seventeen?”

  “Last time I checked.”

  “You’re wearing rouge now?”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Mamma and Pappa would roll over in their graves if they knew.”

  “I’m not a child, Lowe.”

  He laughed. “I didn’t say it was unbecoming.”

  Her nose scrunched up as she smiled. He slung an arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek as another familiar face came into view.

  “Bo Yeung,” he said, unhinging himself from Astrid to shake hands. The Chinese boy wasn’t really a boy anymore—he was twenty-one, all lean muscle and handsome grace. Once an orphaned pickpocket, Bo had been the trusted assistant of Lowe’s brother, Winter, for several years. When Bo wasn’t helping Winter with the bootlegging, he did some driving for the family and played bodyguard to Astrid. A well-paid one, at that: he wore a plaid newsboy cap and matching dark green suit that looked as if it cost more than Lowe’s entire steamer trunk of desert-friendly wear.

  “She’s right,” Bo said, giving his hand a hearty shake. “You do look rough.”

  “I’ve been through hell the last few weeks. I can’t tell you how good it is to see friendly faces.”

  “I’d say the house has been quiet without you, but that’s a lie.” Bo had lived at the Magnusson house in the servant’s hall since their parents died in a car accident more than two years ago. Part of the family, really. But the way Bo was standing over Astrid—almost too protectively—and the way she was swaying nearer to Bo—almost too close—made Lowe think something had changed between them while he’d been in Egypt.

  Interesting. Lowe loved a good scandal.

  Astrid made a distressed noise. “What happened?”

  “Oh, this? Didn’t I write you about it?” he asked as she lifted his left hand. “I lost it in a game of Five-Finger Fillet.”

  “What?” Astrid and Bo said together before Astrid continued, “—in the world is that?”

  “Knife game,” Lowe said, holding out his hand, palm down. “You put your hand on the table, fingers spread, and take the tip of your knife and stab between your fingers . . . tap, tap tap!”

  “You are a liar!” Astrid squealed, horrified, but laughing. “Is it really gone? Is it a trick?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He wiggled his remaining four fingers before lunging at her side to tickle her until she squealed some more, begging him to stop. “All right,” he said. “Enough of that. Are the two of you my entire greeting party? Where’s my big brother and this fictional wife of his?”

  A cheerful voice floated over his shoulder. “Fictional? I thought you were the one with a thousand stories up your sleeve.”

  He turned to find a small, heavily freckled woman in a red silk dress with an oriental collar. She flashed him a pretty smile and crossed her arms under a great pair of breasts.

  “You must be the spirit medium.”

  “I’m also your brother’s fictional wife.”

  “Hello, Aida.” He started to shake her hand, then leaned in and hugged her. “For the love of God, you’re family now.” He held her at arm’s length to look at her. “Are you really having Winter’s child?”

  “The doctor says I am.”

  He hugged her again as she laughed. “God help you if it’s a boy.”

  “Christ alive, don’t squeeze her to death,” a deep, melodic voice said at his side. His older brother, Winter Magnusson, the mighty bootlegger. At twenty-nine, Winter was Lowe’s senior by four years and twice as burly. Lowe accepted his embrace, clapping him on the shoulder.

  “You look like death warmed over,” Winter said. “Don’t they have a barber in first class?”

  Yes, but he was too paranoid to allow anyone near him with a straight razor. Not to mention the problem of his dwindling funds. “I’m thinking of growing a beard.”

  “Not if you want to live in my house,” Winter said.

  Married or not, Winter was still his same old dictator self.

  Lowe was too tired to fight, so he turned his attention back to Aida. How in the world his brother, with his gruff attitude and scarred eye, had been able to attract a pretty thing like her was beyond Lowe’s comprehension. “Astrid described you perfectly in her letters.” As for the breasts, Winter had mentioned those in the longest piece of correspondence he’d ever sent to Lowe. It said: I’m in love. Got married to a tiny, freckled girl with nice breasts and good sense. You’ll like her. And then a telegram a month later: You’re going to be an uncle.

  She smiled back at him. “And everyone tells me you’re the luckiest man alive.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the porter helping Hadley onto the platform, like she was an invalid, or . . . Oh, that’s right. She was still officially on the run from her fictional husband. Better put the kibosh on that, as his friend, Adam, would say, before the story spread to his family’s ears. “Excuse me,” he told Aida, before rushing back to the porter. “Thank you for everything. I’ve got her now,” he told the young man, quickly taking her arm.

  Just as quickly, she pulled away. “I can walk,” she muttered.

  After giving the porter another five-dollar bill—his last—Lowe turned to find his family staring. Expectantly.

  He cleared his throat. “Hadley Bacall, meet the Magnusson clan.” He hastily rattled off everyone’s names. “Miss Bacall and I met on the train.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Hadley muttered to herself.

  “Her father works for the de Young Museum.”

  “As do I,” she added.

  “Right, of course,” he said, mildly flustered. Why didn’t he just say that to begin with? It’s not like anything scandalous had happened between them. Well, minus the ripped the dress; his eyes instantly angled toward her coat while his brain remembered the stitched peacock feathers curving over her luscious backside for the umpteenth time.

  For the love of God, wake up, man!

  “She’s a curator,” he managed to spit out. “The museum is interested in what I uncovered in the desert.”

  There. That seemed to make sense to everyone. He struck his hands in his pockets and exhaled while Hadley politely elaborated on her undying love of mummies and the stories they told about the Egyptians’ diet and way of life . . . talk, talk. And his family acted impressed . . . Yes, yes. Good. Everything was normal and fine.

  Until Bo spoke up.

  “Do you have a car picking you up, or would you like a ride home?”

  “I’ll just take a taxi, thank you,” she answered.

  Then Winter had to insert himself into the conversation. “Bo will take your luggage to the cab stand, then.”

  Luggage. Right. Time to invent another story. But Hadley was faster.

  “Actually, your brother knocked my suitcase out of my hands in Salt Lake City during a knife fight, so God only knows if Union Pacific will find it.”

  Lowe cringed. “It wasn’t exactly a ‘knife fight,’ per se.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, her voice tarter than a Michigan cherry. “But during dinner on the train last night, when we were discussing you stabbing one of the thugs, I believe your exact quip was, ‘That�
�s what they get for bringing guns to a knife fight.’”

  Oh, boy.

  “A day in the life of a Magnusson,” Aida murmured as Winter’s face darkened.

  Lowe wanted to drag Hadley aside. What happened to his partner in crime? She’d done so well in front of the porter this morning, and they’d spent the day chatting. He’d thought they were getting along. Now she was generating arctic winds strong enough to bury him under a snowy drift of resentment. What had changed?

  He faked a smile in an attempt to charm his way back into her good graces. Or at least somewhere closer to her good graces than where he stood at the moment. “But, hey—I got us home in one piece. Mostly. Sorry about your luggage. And your dress.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, and then said, “You have my father’s check. He’ll contact you about meeting up with him.” She bid a polite good-bye to his family, nodded to him, then strolled away as if he were the last person she ever wanted to see again.

  Even then, he was unable to tear his gaze from the hypnotic sway of her hips as she threaded her way through the boisterous travelers thronging the platform.

  “Christ alive,” Winter mumbled. “What on earth did you do to that lady?”

  “Nothing,” he protested.

  Nothing he wanted to, that is.

  A slow-walking group of elderly nuns split up their group and obscured his view of Hadley. As they shuffled by, Winter whispered in his ear, “Monk Morales has been sniffing around the pier, looking for you. Word is you sold him a forgery. Some kind of miniature golden statue. An animal.”

  Lowe scratched the back of his neck. “A crocodile.”

  “You been working with Adam Goldberg again?”

  Lowe grunted.

  “Goddammit, Lowe.”

  “It wasn’t Adam’s fault—his reproduction was spotless. It was the fucking paperwork. Monk didn’t even notice the error. It was the person he sold it to.”

  Winter’s eyes briefly closed. “Which is who?”

  “No idea. It was a silent sale.”

  “So what does Monk want from you now?”

  “I think he wants his money back, but he might want my head, as well.”

  “Why don’t you compromise and give him the real statue.”

  Impossible to give what he didn’t have. The whole purpose of the forgery was to generate two sales. Lowe gave a polite nod to one of the nosier nuns as she passed. Yes, Sister, he thought, you aren’t wrong to suspect the Magnusson boys of vice and lies. We are the reason people need to purge themselves in your confessional booths. Nothing to see. Move along.

  Winter flexed his hand like he might be thinking about taking Monk’s side. “How much do you owe him?”

  “I’ve got a plan, don’t worry.”

  “One that doesn’t involve begging me for money?”

  “Never begged you before. Don’t plan to start now.”

  “Good, because my liquid assets this month are tied up in a new warehouse in Marin County, and I recently paid out Christmas bonuses to my people and—”

  “Ja, ja! I said I wasn’t asking.” Not that he hadn’t considered it, but still.

  The last nun passed by. Winter gripped the back of Lowe’s neck and whispered hotly into his ear, “Fix it with Morales. I’ve got a baby on the way. Don’t bring that shit to our doorstep.”

  • • •

  After leaving Lowe, Hadley spent several minutes calming her erratic feelings. Why she’d gotten so upset in front his family, she didn’t really know. But once they were gone, she put Lowe out of her mind and waited nearly two hours in the Twin Peaks lobby, hoping her lost luggage was on the 127. It wasn’t. So she filed a claim with the manager, listening to his secondhand account of the events at the Salt Lake City station. No one knew why the incident had happened and the police weren’t able to apprehend the gunmen. Maybe they’d follow Lowe here to finish the job.

  It was dark when the taxi took her through the Castro and the Mission District, and finally down the steep bend of California Street to her Nob Hill apartment building at Mason. The elegant nine-story high-rise was only a year old and very exclusive. Only the best, her father had encouraged when she’d decided to move out of the family home.

  Tendrils of nighttime fog clung to French columns flanking the driveway. She paid the taxi driver and breezed through the small lobby, waving at an attendant who barely lifted his head—did he even know her name?—before stepping onto the elevator.

  “Miss Bacall.” Finally, a friendly face. The graying elevator operator greeted her with his usual broad smile. “How was your trip?”

  “Hectic, Mr. Walter. Very hectic. I’m relieved to be home.”

  “No luggage?”

  She wilted against the elevator wall. “No luggage. It’s a long story, I’m afraid. Hopefully it will be delivered tomorrow.”

  He shut the scissor gate and engaged the elevator. “You’re deliberately trying to intrigue me, I think. But I won’t press. How about your class at the university? Did they like what you had to say about Egyptian cats?”

  “They were attentive.” The ones who didn’t leave or fall asleep. She knew she wasn’t the liveliest public speaker. One of her coworkers, George, said listening to her speak was akin to enduring an accountant’s eulogy. She knew he wasn’t wrong; giving seminars made her uncomfortable. But if she wanted to rise above her curation pay—and George—it was a necessary evil, and one that she’d gladly submit to. She wanted her father’s position as department head more than just about anything.

  But answering rote questions in front of bored college students at a podunk university was a one-way conversation. Not like the spirited discussion she’d had on the train that afternoon with Lowe. To her great surprise, he wasn’t just a dumb treasure hunter who’d stumbled upon the djed. He knew things. He could read hieroglyphics, and he’d even learned some of the Nubi language from the local Aswan workers on his excavation. He told her stories about the historic book market in Alexandria, and asked for details about her seminar.

  He listened. He asked questions.

  He argued.

  He might not agree with all her funerary tool theories, and he wasn’t precise with dynasty dates, but he certainly wasn’t stupid. And he had an easy, unpretentious way of talking that she didn’t encounter much in her line of work.

  He also lied about anything and everything under the sun. And beyond the seeming lightheartedness of it, she realized now that he was a master of deflection. All their chatting, all that time spent together, and he’d barely revealed a single personal detail about himself.

  Floor numbers scrolled past the scissor gates as they ascended. Mr. Walter chatted about the winter rain they’d been getting and how it hadn’t slowed a drunken hellfire party going on at the Pacific Union Club, the men’s club across the street. On the ninth floor, he bid her good night.

  In the entry to her apartment, she stepped on an envelope when she shrugged out of her coat. She weighted it in her hand. Not good, she feared.

  “Mrs. Durer?” she called out.

  Her maid did not answer.

  A fitting end to her dreary day.

  The click of her heels on polished marble bounced around the high walls of her spacious living room. The windows here looked out over the twinkling lights of the Fairmont Hotel—a beautiful building, always busy with people coming and going. And the steady rumble of cars and occasional clack of the cable cars braving the steep hill kept her company, night or day.

  Like the rest of her apartment, the master bedroom contained a minimal amount of furniture. Everything was bolted down: bed, nightstand, chaise lounge. In the six months she’d lived there, her specters had blown out two windows and three light fixtures and had overturned a large armoire. Best not to give them any extra kindling, she found.

  Her father called them
Mori. Death specters. Her mother became cursed with them after a trip to Egypt, and when she died, they were passed on to Hadley. Strong, negative emotions called them up, fueled them. Shadowy tricksters, her father had explained when she was a child.

  “Trickster” seemed too kind a word for spirits with the power to kill.

  The only companion sturdy enough to survive her angry moods was a sleek black cat. Lounging on her silk coverlet, he stretched his long limbs in greeting when she dropped her handbag on the nightstand.

  “Hello, Number Four,” she said, running a hand along his soft belly. He answered with an enthusiastic purr.

  Because of her unusual curse, she’d never been allowed to have pets as a child. A necessary precaution, even now. God knew she wouldn’t normally even consider subjecting an innocent life to her murderous moods. But she didn’t seek out Number Four—she’d found him hiding in the pantry after she moved in. And though she’d tried to shoo him away, he just kept coming back, again and again, so she finally allowed the stubborn creature to stay.

  A few months ago, he was Number Three, until he was caught in the cross fire of a fight between her and her father: the cat had hidden under a chair the specters reduced to matchsticks. But just as he’d done the first two times he’d gotten on the wrong side of the specters, the cat managed to pick himself back up and simply kept on ticking.

  Nine lives, as the superstition goes. Seeing how he was on this fourth already, by her count, Hadley figured he had five more left. He was an odd sort of miracle, that cat of hers.

  A lot like her, really.

  She tried not to think about Lowe when she stripped off her clothes and tossed the ripped dress in a wastebasket. Unbelievable that she’d spent last night and most of today with him. The whole thing felt surreal to her now, like a dream. Or a gaudy nightmare.

  Stretching out on the bed with Number Four, she held up the found envelope to her reading lamp above the headboard. The silhouette of a key and a letter appeared against the golden light. She ripped off the side of the envelope and tipped it into her open palm. Her apartment key fell out. The metal was cold against her fist as she skimmed the handwritten letter from her latest maid: Miss Bacall . . . Grateful for my time in your service . . . however, I must take my leave . . . My nerves are frayed . . . Feel as if the devil dwells inside you . . . bad luck . . . Will pray for you and that demonic cat.