Grave Phantoms
Page 74

Deciding against parking his newly repaired Buick in a sketchy part of town, Bo paid a taxicab to drive them to Babel’s Tower dance hall a few minutes before nine. The surrounding neighborhoods were lively with revelers, but Terrific Street was dark and gloomy. A few drunken people shambled down the sidewalks. Music blared from a dance hall down the block. But the area in front of Babel’s Tower seemed . . . subdued.
“The streetlights are out,” Bo said as he gripped her hand a little tighter.
“What?”
“Four of them, look. And they’re all right here.”
He was right, but Astrid wasn’t sure why he was so bothered about it. This wasn’t the best part of town. She doubted the dance halls had a civic group fighting to keep the potholes fixed and was far more concerned that the club didn’t look half as busy as it had the first night they’d been there. Maybe everyone was already inside.
Bo shook his head. “I don’t have a good feeling about this. Maybe we should ask the taxi driver to wait while—hey!” He slammed a hand on the cab’s flank as it peeled away from the curb and left them stranded. Bo said something sharp in Cantonese and looked up and down the street for another cab. It was hard to spot much of anything with the streetlights out.
A stumbling man stinking of gin approached Astrid, muttering something under his breath. Bo put a steely hand on her shoulder and pulled her away, yelling at the bum to leave them alone. “Let’s just get inside,” Bo said as the man shuffled away and crossed the street. “We can use their telephone and call another cab. We’re giving up on this. I’ll find another way—”
“How?” Astrid said. “We’re already here and you’re armed. We didn’t go to all this trouble tracking this down just to abandon it. And you heard Velma. That shadow is still on my aura. Whatever that idol did to me, I want it fixed.”
Bo exhaled heavily. “All right, but if things look suspect upstairs, we’re leaving. And if Max is here—”
“I know.” Bo had drilled her on this already several times. “I stay behind you and remain aware of my surroundings. I am a Magnusson, and no one messes with me and gets away with it.”
He smiled at that. “You are a Magnusson, and you are mine. Don’t forget it.”
Not a chance. He pulled her closer, and they hurried to the club’s front door, where the same doorman from the first night allowed them entrance. But once they were inside, Astrid understood Bo’s reservations. No band played. Most of the tables were empty, and as they crunched over peanut shells, the dozen or so men that were scattered through the bar area all seemed to look up at them with hostile faces.
Astrid told herself she was only imagining this, and when everyone’s eyes fell back to their drinks, she breathed an inward sigh of relief. Any number of reasons why it wasn’t busy tonight. The establishments in this area got regularly raided by both the cops and the Prohis, and New Year’s Eve was prime time for a raid; maybe most of their regulars stayed away because of this. Or perhaps Hell wasn’t busy on nights when Heaven was active upstairs.
“No bouncers,” Bo mumbled as they headed to the inner door that had previously been guarded by two beefy men. “No one selling tickets.”
“Maybe they stepped away.” Music sifted through the walls, so clearly the back dance hall was open for business. Astrid glanced around, looking for the bouncer while Bo tried the door handle. Unlocked. She saw him reach inside his suit jacket for a moment and felt sure he was opening his holster for easy access to his gun, and that made her nervous.
“Stay behind me,” Bo said as he pushed the door with one hand. Mid-tempo jazz, tinny over the speaker, flooded the open doorway. They entered the back dance hall, following a short, dim corridor for several steps until it opened up into the main floor. Everything was as it was the first night: seats, dance floor, roped-off carousel with its bright carnival lights and nude angels.
Only, there were no people.
The music played over the phonograph to an empty hall. Deserted. The hair on Astrid’s arms rose. Bo grabbed Astrid’s elbow. “Something’s not right. We’re leaving. Now.”
They swung around to find the two missing bouncers and gilded flintlock pistols pointed at them. Max stood in the center of the gunmen, a smile spreading over his face.
If Max had looked sick before, he looked positively wretched now. His eyes were jaundiced, the circles under his eyes were nearly black, and one side of his face was peeling and covered in ugly sores.
“Happy New Year,” he said in a garbled, raspy voice. He coughed once and pointed a finger at Bo. “Nuh-uh-uh, my friend. Show me your hands, or they’ll blast two holes in your chest and have their way with your woman while you bleed out on the floor.”
Bo took his hand out of his jacket and mumbled, “Get behind me.”
Astrid did exactly that.
“Do you have the missing doubloon from my idol?” Max asked Bo, hacking up another cough.
“Maybe,” Bo said. “Are you willing to tell me what the symbol means?”
“I’ll do more than that, friend. We’ll be hosting a little demonstration for you. See, you both have something that belongs to me. You, the doubloon, and her, my missing vigor.”
Vigor? The shadow on my aura. Astrid ran a hand over her arm, trying in vain to clean it away. “I don’t want your damn vigor, you dirty pig. Get it off of me and you can have your stinking gold doubloon back.”