Red Mandarin Dress

by Unknown

  Ahead, the fleeing clouds revealed the lines of the distant hills.

  SEVENTEEN

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, Chen arrived at the vacation village.

  It turned out to be a large complex consisting of a hotel-like main building and a number of villas and cabins, along with a swimming pool, sauna rooms, tennis courts, and a golf course. All of them appeared embosomed in the hills, against a large lake shimmering at the back.

  He saw no point in checking into a villa, which, as a special guest of Gu, the manager offered to him. Chen chose instead a suite in the main building. The manager presented him with a booklet of coupons.

  “The coupons are for your meals and services. You don’t have to pay for anything. General Manager Pei will have a special dinner for you tonight—a bu feast, not in herbs, but in delicacies.”

  “A bu feast!” Chen said, amused.

  Bu defied translation. It could mean, among other things, a special herb and food nutritional boost to the body, a concept embedded in Chinese medical theories, particularly in terms of the yin/yang system. But how such a banquet would work, Chen had no idea. He guessed it must have been Gu’s suggestion.

  The suite assigned to him consisted of a living room, a bedroom, and a spacious walk-in closet. Chen took out the books and put them on a long desk by the window, which looked out onto the hills wrapped in the winter clouds.

  He wasn’t going to open those books today, he reminded himself.

  Instead he took a long, hot shower. Afterward, reclining on the sofa, he fell asleep in spite of himself.

  When he awoke, it was almost dinnertime. Perhaps it was a belated effect of the extra dose of sleeping pills. Or perhaps he had already begun unwinding in the vacation village.

  The restaurant was at the east end of the complex. It boasted a magnificent, Chinese-styled façade with two golden lions squatting at each side of the vermilion-painted gate. Waitresses in red jackets with shining black lapels bowed to him at the entrance. A hostess led him through a huge dining hall and into a private room partitioned with frosted glass.

  At a large banquet table, General Manager Pei, a stout man with a pair of big black-rimmed glasses and an amiable expression, was waiting for him with several other executives, including the front desk manager he had met earlier. Every one of them started paying Chen compliments, as if they had known him for years.

  “Mr. Gu keeps raving about your great achievements, Master Chen. It takes so much energy and essence to produce masterpieces like yours. So we think that a bu dinner may help a little.”

  Chen wondered how he had become a “master,” but he was grateful to Gu for not revealing his identity as a police officer and for arranging all of this.

  As a starter, a waiter brought a huge platter called Buddha’s Head. It had but a slight resemblance to a human head—it was carved out of a white gourd, steamed in a bamboo steamer covered with a huge green lotus leaf.

  “A special dish.” Pei was all smiles, giving the go-ahead signal to the waiter holding a long bamboo knife.

  Chen watched the waiter saw a piece off of the “skull” with the knife, put the chopsticks into the “brains,” and come up with a fried sparrow—inside a grilled quail—inside a braised pigeon.

  “So many brains in one head,” one of the executives chuckled.

  “It’s Buddha,” Chen said, smiling. “No wonder.”

  “All the essences mix together to produce an extraordinary brain boost,” another manager added, “for intellectuals who constantly cudgel their brains out.”

  “A perfect balance of yin and yang,” still another said, “from a variety of fowls.”

  Chen had heard of theories regarding dietary correspondence between humans and other species. His mother used to cook pork brains for his benefit, but here it was far more elaborate than he had expected.

  Then came a lake turtle, steamed with crystal sugar, yellow wine, ginger, scallion, and a few slices of Jinhua ham.

  “As we all know, turtle is good for yin, but all you can get at the market are farm-raised, fed with hormones and antibiotics. Ours is different. It comes directly from the lake,” Pei said emphatically, sipping at his wine. “People have erroneous notions about yin/yang. In the winter, they devour red meat, such as lamb, dog, and deer, but that’s not dialectical—”

  “Supposedly a boost to yang, so it’s good in the cold winter, I’ve heard,” Chen said, intrigued by Pei’s lecture, which sounded quite philosophical, “but I’ve never learned about the dialectical part.”

  “For some people, with the yang in their system already pathologically high, the red meat choices could be harmful. In a case like that, the turtle actually contributes to the balance,” Pei said, looking flushed more from Chen’s response than from the wine. “Now another common mistake is that people believe sex leads to the depletion of yin and is therefore dangerous. They forget that hard work also consumes yin.”

  “Really!” Chen said, thinking of the “thirsty illness” he had been analyzing for his paper. “That’s quite profound.”

  “Our dinner is a perfectly balanced one. Good for both yin and yang. Confucius says, you cannot be too selective with your food. What does that mean? Surely it is not just about the taste. For a sage like Confucius, it goes much deeper. Food must be a real boost, so that you will make a great achievement for your country.”

  Whether or not it was copied from those classic books solely for business purposes, it was true that Confucian echoes still resounded in Chinese daily life.

  Pei proved to be eloquent on more than theories. The banquet continued on with one surprise after another. The gigantic-fish-head soup enriched by American ginseng; Hajia—special Guangxi lizards, fresh instead of dried and processed as commonly seen in herb shops—stewed with white tree ears; and swallow-nest congee strewn with scarlet Gouji.

  “Oh, the swallow nest,” Pei exclaimed, raising a ladle. “To make their nests on cliffs, swallows have to take whatever they can pick up and mix it with their saliva—the essence of life.”

  The swallow nest was a time-honored bu product. The dainty bowl of sweet congee reminded him of a passage in Dream of the Red Chamber, in which a delicate girl’s swallow-nest breakfast costs more than a farmer’s food for a whole year.

  “But how can the swallow saliva be so special?” Chen asked again.

  “From time to time people feel dry in their mouths, lacking saliva, especially after the cloud and rain, you know,” Pei said with a warm smile. “That’s a symptom of insufficient yin.”

  “Yes, thirsty illness,” Chen said. But people could feel thirsty for all kinds of reasons, he reflected, not necessarily because of the clouds and rain.

  To Chen’s surprise, what appeared next on the banquet table was a bowl of fatty pork braised in soy sauce. A homely dish, in sharp contrast to all the extravagances.

  “Chairman Mao’s special,” Pei said, reading the question in Chen’s eyes. “On the eve of a crucial battle during the second civil war, Mao declared, ‘My brain is worn out, I need soy-sauce-braised fatty pork to boost it up.’ In those years, it was not always easy to serve meat on the table, but for Mao, the Central Party Committee managed to provide a bowl of fatty pork every day. Sure enough, Mao led the People’s Liberation Army from one victory to another. So how could Mao be wrong?”

  “No, Mao could never be wrong,” Chen echoed, finding that the pork tasted quite good.

  The climax of the banquet came in—a caged monkey with its head sticking out, its skull shaven, and its limbs fixed. A waiter put the cage down for them to inspect, holding a steel knife and a small brass ladle, smiling, and waiting for the signal. Chen had heard of the special course before. The monkey’s skull was to be sawed off, so the diners could enjoy the live brain, so fresh and bloody.

  But Chen was suddenly unnerved, sweating, almost like he had been that morning. Perhaps he hadn’t recovered yet.

  “What’s wrong, Master Chen?” Pei inquired.

>   “I am fine, Manager Pei,” Chen said, wiping the sweat on his forehead with a napkin. “The pork is so good, reminding me of what my mother cooked for me in my childhood. She is a devoted Buddhist. So I would like to make a proposal on her behalf. Please release the monkey. In the Buddhist belief, it’s called fangsheng—release a life.”

  “Fangsheng—” Pei was not prepared for it at all, but he was quick coming around. “Yes, Master Chen is a filial son. So we will do what he wants.”

  The others agreed. The waiter carried out the cage, promising to release the monkey into the hills. Chen thanked him, though wondering whether the waiter would keep his word.

  Pei was such a warm, gracious host that soon Chen forgot all about the monkey episode. Outside the window, the evening spread out like a scroll of a traditional Chinese landscape, presenting a winter panorama against the distant horizon. At this altitude, the light remained longer. The peaks had never appeared more fantastic, as if sporting their beauty as a last plea to remain in the glow of the day.

  He was warmed with a sense of well-being, holding a cup. The bu banquet worked, if only psychologically.

  When he got back to his room later that night, he felt almost like a recharged battery in a TV commercial.

  He also felt relaxed. Reclining against the soft-cushioned headboard, he indulged in a wave of pleasant drowsiness. In the city, he had had trouble falling asleep. But he didn’t have to worry tonight. Could that be because of the dinner? The boost to yin, or to yang, to which his body had already responded.

  In the midst of his wandering thoughts, he fell asleep.

  And he slept on. He must have woken up a couple of times, but with the curtains shutting out the daylight, with no city traffic noise coming from below, and with a feeling of laziness enveloping him, he didn’t get up. He wasn’t hungry. He didn’t even check the clock on the nightstand. It was a rare, inexplicable experience, but good for his recovery, he thought.

  He fell asleep again, losing track of time.

  EIGHTEEN

  OUT OF THE BLUE, the Shanghai Police Bureau got a tip.

  The tip—if that it was—came in the Shanghai Evening News. To be exact, in a classified ad clipped from the newspaper and mailed to the bureau, in an envelope addressed to Inspector Liao:

  LET’S GET THROUGH the three-accompanying. After the singing and eating, it’s time for dancing. As for the place, which is better than at the Joy Gate? The usual time, you know.—Wenge Hongqi

  It could have been a humorous message among friends. But the message, when addressed and delivered to Liao, turned sinister.

  “It’s not a tip,” Liao said, frowning.

  Among the red mandarin dress victims, one was an eating girl, and another, a singing girl, so the next should be, as Hong had suggested, a dancing girl.

  “The usual time” sounded even more urgent. Thursday night, or early Friday morning.

  “Wenge Hongqi” was evidently not a real name. It could be interpreted as “red flag in the Cultural Revolution”—an unlikely nickname for anyone in the nineties.

  “Red flag in the Cultural Revolution,” Yu said. “Sounds like the name of a rebel organization from those years.”

  “Hold on,” Liao said. “Hongqi also sounds the same as the first two syllables in hongqipao—red mandarin dress.”

  Liao lost no time getting in touch with the newspaper. The editor maintained that he hadn’t seen anything improper with the ad. It had been paid for in cash and delivered to the editorial office through “quick delivery,” one of the newest services in the city, which anyone could start up with a bike or a motorcar, and possibly without a license. There was no way of tracking down the quick-delivery company. The man who wrote the ad left no address or phone number. It was not required in the case of cash payment.

  It was an unmistakable message from the murderer. An unbearable challenge too.

  He was going on with his killing, in spite of all the police efforts. Furthermore, he told the cops when it would happen, and where too.

  Soon information about the Joy Gate came in. The dance hall was in a six-story building located on Huashan Road, close to Nanjing Road. It had a proud history—in the glittering thirties, the rich and fashionable from all over the city flocked to its dance floor. After 1949, however, social dance had been banned as an attribute of a bourgeois and decadent lifestyle. The building was turned into a movie theater; as such it survived the Cultural Revolution, during which the name of the Joy Gate was nearly forgotten but for one incident. Its huge neon sign of dancing English letters, long unlit and broken, fell and killed a pedestrian walking underneath. The incident was then declared as symbolic of the end of an age. In the early nineties, however, Joy Gate was rediscovered in the collective nostalgia of the city. A Taiwan businessman launched a large-scale renovation of the building’s bygone glories, keeping everything the same as it was in the thirties. Time-yellowed posters and decoration were unearthed, old band members reengaged, rusty lighting fixtures and chandeliers refurbished, and the dancing girls, young and pretty, came back, wearing mandarin dresses.

  In short, business was booming there again. In the Shanghai tourist guidebooks, the Joy Gate was one of the must-see attractions.

  Yu and Liao looked at each other. There was no choice left to them. Hong had been working the case as a decoy—and now the perfect situation for it had arisen.

  Yu still had his reservations about the decoy approach. But his colleagues had pressed for it. As the Chinese proverb went, when one was desperately sick, one would seek help from any quack. So Hong had been visiting one nightclub after another, dressed like a butterfly, flipping, flashing, flirting. A considerable number of clients had approached her, according to her reports, but none of them proved to be really suspicious. In order not to alarm the real one, she had to humor them all until the last minute. Her reports didn’t mention, understandably, how much she had to put up with from those lecherous customers.

  Now the situation was different.

  “He is a devilish one,” Yu said simply.

  “She’s been with us for about two years. Well-trained in the academy and with us,” Liao murmured, as if trying to pump confidence into his voice before dialing Hong’s extension. “A clever, capable girl.”

  Though Yu didn’t know Hong that well, he thought highly of her. Sharp, down to earth, and dedicated to her job. That was quite a lot to say about a young cop. The homicide squad had come under too much pressure, and Liao’s decision was understandable.

  “This could also be a fake move,” Yu said. “If we put our people at the Joy Gate, he may strike somewhere else.”

  Liao nodded without responding immediately, as Party Secretary Li was striding into the office, panting, and declaring in a strident voice, “That’s too much. You have to stop him. Our whole bureau is behind you. Tell me how many people you need, and you will have them.”

  Hong, too, came into the office. She took a seat opposite, her hands crossed in her lap. She was outfitted like a “girl,” in a dress with thin straps and high slits. She didn’t use any makeup, her face clear and serene in the morning light.

  “I want you to understand that this is voluntary,” Liao started, pushing the newspaper clipping across the desk. “Unlike what you’ve been doing, this is not an assignment. You can say no. Still, you are the one best qualified for the job.”

  She took a look at the clipping, pushed the hair off her forehead, and nodded, her black bangs swinging softly over her arched eyebrows.

  “If you go to the Joy Gate tonight,” Liao went on, “we’ll be there too. You just let us know the moment he approaches you.”

  “How can I tell if it’s him? Those men all play pretty much the same tricks with a girl.”

  “I don’t think he’ll try to do anything to you inside the club. He has to get you outside. Once he makes such a move, we’ll stop him. We will be prepared for any possible situation.”

  But there was only half a day to get
ready, Yu thought. The cops couldn’t really prepare for anything. Perhaps Hong alone had no problem with her role—thanks to her earlier decoy experience.

  “Let’s do it,” Li said. “I’ll stay in the office tonight. You keep me informed throughout.”

  So they were going to the Joy Gate. Hong took a taxi home to change for the night. Yu and Liao took a minivan with “Heating and Cooling Service” painted on one side, which would serve as a field office. Several cops would soon join them there.

  Since the murderer might be connected with people at the Joy Gate, they decided to walk in without revealing their identity and look around like ordinary visitors.

  According to a colorful brochure Yu picked up at the entrance, the first three floors of the building were exclusively for dancing, consisting of ballrooms of different sizes and services in terms of “male and female dancing partners,” all at different prices too. In addition to the entrance ticket, there was a so-called fee system that charged by the unit, equivalent to per dance, from 25 to 50 Yuan. That, of course, did not include the tip.

  “In addition to those ‘professional dancing partners,’ ” Liao said, “there are also ‘dancing girls,’ who make money not through dancing but mainly through their service afterward.”

  It was in the early afternoon, so only the first floor was open for business. The ballroom was lined with tables on both sides and had a stage at the other end. A singer in a florid mandarin dress was performing with a small band. The neon lights produced a nostalgic mirage of money-drunk and gold-charmed dreams. Most of the dancers were middle-aged, and the dancing girls were not too young, either.

  “It’s a relatively cheap time period,” Liao said, studying the price list on the brochure.

  The people here now would dance until seven. For the evening, the balls would be on the second and the third floors. On the third floor, a group of Russian girls were scheduled to perform onstage that night, so most of the customers would be there enjoying the show. The cops needed only to focus on the second floor. The fourth and fifth floors consisted of hotel rooms.