Red Mandarin Dress

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.
    “Who would want to stay in a hotel room here with the earsplitting music and noise coming up all night?” Yu said.
    “Well, it’s in a good location,” Liao said. “Some of the guests may come down to dance, and bring a girl up to their rooms afterward.”
    Both the ballroom and the hotel guests had to come in and out the front entrance on Huashan Road. There was a video camera already installed over the front entrance so they didn’t have to worry about putting up one there.
    When they moved back into the service van, Hong and several officers joined them. They made plans for what they were going to do that evening.
    Hong would go into the second floor ballroom, wearing a pink mandarin dress and carrying a mini cell phone specially programmed. If she touched one button, the cops outside would be on high alert, and another button, the cops outside would rush in. She had practiced Shaolin martial arts at the police academy so she should be able to cope with an unexpected situation, at least long enough to contact her colleagues in time. She was also supposed to call them at regular intervals, though she preferred not to, lest people find it suspicious.
    Sergeant Qi would go in with her, pretending to be a customer who did not know her. He would stay in the ballroom at all times, in constant contact with the other officers, and with the dual responsibility of covering her and looking out for anything suspicious.
    They also had two cops stationed outside the ballroom on the second floor. They would take turns sitting on the sofa close to the entrance, like a customer taking a break there. Their responsibility was to watch for Hong’s exit, either in the company of someone, or alone.
    That evening, the third floor was hardly a possibility. It was inconceivable that the murderer would approach a Russian girl who couldn’t speak Chinese, and who was onstage too. At Li’s insistence, however, they also had a plainclothes officer on the third floor.
    Finally, they put several more people around the building entrance