Red Mandarin Dress

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