Book excerpt: Amo is a hardened journalist who smokes and drinks too much, though not nearly enough for her own taste. Assigned to profile the late jazz legend Miles Davis, she finds herself at a creative impasse. How does one approach such an overly-written about artist from a fresh angle, and what's her opinion worth anyway in a world so fast unravelling? At her wit's end, she stumbles into the mysterious Smokeasy, the only bar in Manhattan where adults are allowed to behave as such - and it is in that misty room that Amo falls under the spell of a ghostly bartender...