Red Mandarin Dress

printout.
    “It really doesn’t mean any—anything,” the manager stammered, swallowing hard. “They are just good, regular customers.”
    “Good customers, I see,” Yu said. “How regular?”
    “The basic fee is not expensive, but with drinks and tips, it could be easy to spend five or six hundred Yuan an evening. A regular customer comes at least once a week.”
    “Has any of the regulars stayed in the hotel above?”
    “The hotel is not so fancy. Not too many care to stay here, what with the noise all night long. Nor is it always a good idea, either. People make assumptions about what a customer and a dancing girl are up to in a room upstairs. So many would rather go to another place.”
    “That makes sense,” Yu said, nodding.
    It was a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers. Some of them also indicated their profession or preferences. It was possibly a PR list.
    “When we have special events,” the manager explained, “we like to notify them.”
    He would make calls to some of the people on the list, Yu thought. Then one of the names seemed to jump out at him. Jia Ming, his profession indicated as a lawyer. It was a name Yu remembered. Chen had asked him to check into him with regard to a high-profile housing development case.
    It was strange that Jia, a well-known lawyer, busy with a controversial case, would have the time to be a regular customer here.
    “Can you tell me something about this man?”
    “Jia Ming,” the manager said with an apologetic smile, “I am afraid I cannot tell you much. He’s not that regular.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Most of the people on the list are Big Bucks. They come here to ‘burn money,’ squandering it on girls and services. Jia comes, but he pays only for an entrance ticket, sits in a corner, watching over a cup of coffee, seldom dancing, and never asking anybody out. He’s here just once or twice a month.”
    “Then why is he on your list?”
    “We wouldn’t have noticed him but for a phone call from the city government several months ago. Someone wanted us to report on any of his improper behavior here. But he didn’t do anything out of line—we’ve never seen him taking out a girl—and we reported truthfully. A strange request, you may say, but we always cooperate with the authorities.”
    So the authorities had been following Jia, trying to find something against him in an effort to wreck the housing development case. Jia’s visits here might not mean anything. Intellectuals could be eccentric. Chief Inspector Chen, for me, still met with an ex–singing girl.
    Yu grew upset at the thought of his partner. Since Wednesday, he’d repeatedly tried to contact Chen, but without any success. Last night Yu marked his call “urgent,” requesting an immediate call back, but still no response. Early this morning, he had Little Zhou drive over to Chen’s place, but no one was there.
    How could the chief inspector have disappeared at this particular juncture?
    Yu decided to revisit the cemetery. He didn’t really think he would find something new there. Still, in the daylight, he might be able to see more.
    The cemetery was taped off as a crime scene. In the distance, a mud-covered hut stood silhouetted against the rugged hills. No one seemed to be caring for the place. He moved to the spot where they had found her body. He lit a cigarette against the chilly wind, shivering, as if going through the nightmare again. The image would be with him forever: she had been lying with the top part of her body half hidden by the tall wild weeds. Her legs, wide apart, were stretched out on the damp ground. Her skin appeared slightly bluish, with her black hair falling across her cheek. She was barefoot, and dressed in a mandarin dress that slipped up her waist, leaving her thighs bare. . . .
    A lone crow was circling overhead, crying, homeless in the winter.
    In the bureau, there were wild theories about the location. Unlike the places where the first three victims were dumped, the cemetery was far from the center of the city. Party Secretary Li declared that the criminal had dropped the body there because of police pressure. Little Zhou incorporated a Qing dynasty ghost story into his earlier theory. Yu didn’t believe either of them, but he didn’t have a convincing theory of his own.
    To his surprise, he saw a boy coming over to him carrying a bag of newspapers, shouting, “Special edition! Red mandarin dress victim found in the cemetery