Red Mandarin Dress

startled than hers.

TWENTY-EIGHT
    “ CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN !” Yu made no attempt to disguise his surprise.
    He had hurried all the way over to the Gilded Age, not too surprised at the urgency Chen had requested for the meeting, yet wondering why Chen wanted to meet him there, of all the places, especially after his unexplained disappearance.
    Now the door opened on a scene that more than confounded Yu. There, Chen was in the company of a gorgeous woman, both of them wrapped in bathrobes, like a couple relaxing at a luxurious resort.
    “Oh, Detective Yu, my partner.” Chen sat up to make the introductions. “Xia, the most celebrated model in Shanghai, also a partner in this grand bathhouse.”
    “Detective Yu, I’ve heard of you. Welcome,” she said, smiling. “It’s time for me to go back to work. Call me if you need anything else, Chief Inspector Chen.”
    “Thank you so much, Xia.” He added, as if in afterthought, “Oh, do you still have the key?”
    “The key? Yes, I may still have it. I’ll check.”
    She walked out gracefully, her bare feet treading soundlessly on the carpet, and closed the door after her.
    Yu knew he shouldn’t be surprised by anything his eccentric boss did. Still, he couldn’t restrain himself from making a sarcastic comment.
    “You’re really enjoying your vacation here, Chief.”
    “I’ll explain everything—in time,” Chen said, “but let me make a phone call first.”
    Chen called someone he knew well and left a short message. “Come to the bathhouse, Gilded Age.”
    Chen then turned and said to Yu, “Now sit down and tell me what you’ve found about Tian.”
    “I went to the factory this morning,” Yu said, perching on the couch where Xia had reclined. The couch had a long impression, still slightly wet and warm from her body. “Most of his colleagues have retired or passed away. What I learned comes from here and there, some of which you may have already learned from the interview records.”
    “Maybe, but I haven’t had the time to grasp it as a whole. So please tell me from the beginning.”
    It was hot in the room. Yu took off his padded jacket, wiping sweat from his forehead. Chen poured him a cup of oolong tea.
    “Thanks, Chief,” Yu said. “Tian started working there in the early fifties, one of the ordinary workers. At the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, mass organizations like Red Guards and Worker Rebels sprung up everywhere. He joined a group of Worker Rebels called Red Flag, whose members came from factories all over the city. In response to Mao’s call to grab the power from the ‘capitalist road officials,’ Tian turned into a somebody overnight, beating and bullying ‘class enemies’ in the name of the proletarian dictatorship. Shortly afterward he enlisted in a Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team that was dispatched to the Shanghai Music Institute. There he was said to be even more swashbuckling, riding roughshod over the intellectuals.”
    “Was there anything unusual about his activities in the team?” Chen interrupted.
    “Normally, a Mao Team was made up of the workers from one factory and dispatched to one school, but at his own request, he joined a team consisting of the workers from a different steel factory. As for his ‘revolutionary activities’ there, I haven’t learned much. That steel factory went into bankruptcy two or three years ago. No one at Tian’s steel mill really knew anything, except that he must have bullied his way around. In the late seventies, with the Cultural Revolution officially declared a well-meant mistake by Mao, Tian withdrew from the colleges, crestfallen, returning to the factory.
    “Then a policy was formulated regarding the ‘three evildoers’ during the Cultural Revolution. Tian fell into that category, but there were many ‘Rebels’ like him, and nothing was really done about them. But surprisingly, letters against him were sent to a city government cadre whose father, an old professor at the music institute, had been badly beaten during those years. The letters claimed Tian was the one who broke the old man’s ribs, so an investigation was carried out. Some said he beat another teacher into paralysis, some claimed that he looted gold coins, and some mentioned that he had forced a woman to have sex with him through the power of his position. Nothing was really proved, but as a result, he was fired and sentenced to three years in prison. His wife divorced him and left with