Death of a Red Heroine

put his shorts back on. She guided him to the bed where he lay down, and then she turned him over. Lying on his stomach, he was very nervous as he became aware that she, too, had gotten onto the bed.
    She put both her hands on a stainless-steel bar suspended from the ceiling. With the bar bearing the weight of her body like a gymnast, she started massaging his back with her toes.
    It was a bizarre experience. The first two or three minutes, he was perspiring with trepidation. Any second, she could stamp down violently on his bare back, a complex of vertebrae, discs, ligaments, and nerves. But soon he started to have mixed feelings. Her bare toes and heels pressing upon him elicited sensations of ice and fire all over him. His pleasure was actually heightened by his trepidation.
    She must have had some professional training. Her toes concentrated on his trouble spots, working kinks out of his back, and reducing the tension in his body. He didn’t feel so bad anymore. Not about the case, nor the budget, nor the politics involved.
    “You make my feet warm.” She was finally finished, her face flushed with exertion, her brow beaded with sweat.
    “Marvelous,” he said.
    “It’s good exercise for me, too.”
    “It’s the first time for me.”
    “I know,” she said, her hand lightly touching the knot of her robe. “What about the full service now?”
    That was something he could not do. A line he must not cross. This was the time to flash his I.D. Chief Inspector Chen should now take her to the police bureau and charge her with prostitution. But what about Professor Xie? He had given her his promise. News of what had become of Xie Rong would be too terrible a blow to the old intellectual who had already suffered a lot. The arrest would also incriminate his new friend Ouyang. Also, once she was taken into custody here, he was not sure if his local colleagues would help with his investigation. He was not sure that he could work out a deal for Xie in exchange for her information about Wu Xiaoming.
    “You are sweating all over.” He sounded more like a client so that she would not grow suspicious. “Take a good shower yourself. I’ll stay here and close my eyes for five minutes.”
    “Yes, there is nothing like taking a short nap,” she said. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
    The moment she disappeared, he took a mini-recorder out of his briefcase and put it under the pillow. He put his shirt back on and buttoned several buttons before he closed his eyes for just a minute. In spite of himself, he dozed off. When he was awakened by the slamming of the bathroom door, it took him a few seconds to realize where he was.
    She stepped out of the bathroom, naked except for a large bath towel draped around her shoulders. Fine-limbed and thin, she looked more like a high-school girl waiting for a regular checkup—except for a broad patch of black hair spreading over the lower part of her abdomen. She examined herself in the mirror, the water beading on her skin under the fluorescent light, which turned her face opalescent. Then she caught him gazing at her in the mirror. Startled, she pulled the towel down to cover her hips, but then she shook her wet hair, and gave him a long, steady look.
    She started slowly toward the bed. He smelled the soap on her skin, still wet from the shower. Clean, fresh. Her body glowed.
    “You are special,” she said.
    He was so acutely aware of her, it took all his willpower to stop her from touching him.
    “Let’s talk,” he said.
    “No,” she touched a finger to his mouth, “you don’t have to say anything.”
    “We don’t know each other yet.”
    “Haven’t we talked enough?” she said. “Unless you want to talk about money.”
    “Well—”
    “Mr. Ouyang has paid for a whole day’s service, and you’ve given me a handsome tip,” she said. “So you can have the whole day, and the night, too. You don’t have to worry about it. If you want to buy me a dinner afterward—”
    “No.” He sat up resolutely. It was not just all the years studying the People’s Police Morals Manual that had made Chen immune to such provocation. “I want to talk to you about something else.”
    “What?”
    “I’m a cop.” He produced his official I.D. “I’m here to ask you some questions.”
    “You S.O.B!” She put one hand over her breasts and the other over her pubic hair.
    It struck him as an absurd attempt at modesty, as if his being a cop had suddenly changed her