Red Mandarin Dress

on Huashan Road. One was disguised as a newspaper man selling the evening newspaper, another as a flower girl, and still another, a photographer soliciting tourists for instant pictures there.
    Yu and Liao stayed in the van outside the Joy Gate, each listening with a headset, waiting, like two toy soldiers, motionless, imagining all the disaster scenarios.
    The first half hour passed uneventfully. Still too early, Yu guessed, looking out at the Joy Gate. To his surprise, he saw a young mother kneeling on the sidewalk close to the entrance of the dancehall, shivering in her threadbare clothes, her hair disheveled, holding a seven- or eight-month-old baby in her arms, kowtowing on a written statement spread out on the pavement. Beside the mother and her baby was a broken bowl containing several coins. People went in and out of the Joy Gate without looking at them. Not one of them threw down any money.
    The city was breaking into two, one for the rich, and one for the poor. A tip for a dance could have kept the woman and her baby fed and sheltered for a day. Yu thought about stepping out with some coins in his hand, but a patroller came over and drove the woman away.
    Sergeant Qi kept reporting from inside, “Everything is fine.” Yu could also hear Qi whistling, occasionally, like a pro, with the music rising and falling in the background. “When Are You Coming Again, My Dear,” a melody Yu recognized as one of the most popular ones in the thirties.
    Hong contacted them only once, “I’ve had several invitations.”
    Outside the van, the lights gradually turned on and more customers went into the Joy Gate in high spirits. In the thirties, Shanghai had been called a “nightless city.”
    Around eight forty-five, there came a period of silence. About twenty minutes. Liao checked with Qi, who explained it as a false alarm. Seven or eight minutes ago, Qi lost sight of Hong in the ballroom. He started looking around and saw her sitting with a drink in a recess of the small bar. As he also had to watch the whole scene, he sat himself at a table where he could watch both the bar and the ballroom.
    “Don’t worry,” Qi said. “I am keeping everything in sight.”
    Then came another short period of silence. Yu lit a cigarette for Liao and then another for himself. Li called them, the third time in the evening. The Party Secretary didn’t try to conceal his uneasiness.
    After ten minutes or so, Qi called them, reporting in a panic-stricken voice that the woman in the bar, though in a mandarin dress too, turned out not to be Hong.
    Yu dialed her cell phone, but she didn’t pick up. The noise inside could be too loud for her to hear it ring. Liao tried as well, two or three times more. Still no response. Liao then talked to those stationed outside the building. They reported no sign of her exit, either, declaring they would not have missed her in her pink mandarin dress.
    Yu contacted the sentry outside the ballroom. They sort of assured him, saying neither of them had seen her exit. So she must still be inside. Yu ordered the two stationed outside the ballroom to move in and join Qi.
    In the meantime, Liao hurried to the camera surveillance room, where a cop was with the building security man.
    In less than five minutes, however, Yu saw Liao walking out again, shaking his head in confusion. There was no sign of Hong on the videotape recording of the activities at the front entrance.
    But the people in the ballroom called too, reporting that they had looked into every corner. Hong seemed to have evaporated.
    Something terrible must have happened.
    About thirty-five minutes had passed since Qi had first noticed her absence.
    Yu ordered an instant blockade of the building entrance. It wasn’t the time for them to worry about the public’s reaction. Liao called for emergency reinforcements before announcing evacuation of the ballroom.
    The cops rushed up and checked each and every person leaving the ballroom, but Hong was not among them.
    When the ballroom was finally empty, like a deserted battlefield strewn with cups and bottles, cosmetics on the floor, there was still no sign of her.
    “Where could she be?” Qi said miserably.
    The answer was loud and clear in everyone’s mind.
    “How the devil could he have slipped out,” Liao said, “together with Hong?”
    “Here,” Qi exclaimed, pointing to a door in a cubicle inside the bar. The door was hardly visible to the people in the ballroom unless moving in