Red Mandarin Dress

shoulders.
    “You look tired,” she said. “Let me give your shoulders a good rub.”
    “Sorry. I didn’t—” He did not finish the sentence. There was no point telling her that he hadn’t slept last night.
    “Your friend Mr. Gu talks a lot about you,” she said, her fingers soft on his shoulders, “and about your valuable help to his business.”
    That accounted for her hospitality. He hadn’t made clear the purpose of his visit, so she must have assumed it was in connection to her business. A cop could make things difficult for a bathhouse with all its private rooms and massage girls. On the other hand, he could also choose to provide “valuable help,” as Gu had phrased it.
    “Mr. Gu is always exaggerating,” he said. “Don’t take his word for it.”
    “Well, what about the huge difference you made to his New World Project?”
    Stories about his friendship with a Big Buck would do him no good, but for the moment he might as well let her believe them. He wasn’t exactly in a position to force her to cooperate.
    “Thank you for the massage,” he said. “It’s unbearable to receive favor from a beauty—and a model entrepreneur too.”
    “A romantic poet in a cop’s uniform,” she said giggling, “but one cannot be a model forever. ‘Pluck a flower while you may, / or there will be barren twigs left for you.’ ”
    The lines came from a Tang dynasty poem. It was surprising that she would quote them like that, talking about her own beauty as something to be plucked.
    But then she was rolling him over as she changed her own position, kneeling, drawing her legs under her. He thought he caught a glimpse of her breast through the opening of her robe. She started massaging his back.
    “You have a lot of knots in your back,” she said, focusing on his lower back, her red-painted toes appealing against the white towel.
    He recalled Scholar Zhang’s comment about a femme fatale in “The Story of Yingying.” It was a timely reminder as he lay there, weak and exposed, but it was strange that he would think of it at this moment.
    “Thank you, Xia. You really have the magic touch. I’ll have to come again.” He stopped her and sat up. “But today I need to talk to you about something else.”
    “Yes, whatever you want to talk about,” she said, moving over to the other couch. She sat reclining against the headboard, crossing her legs, revealing her bare thighs. As he had suspected, she had nothing on under the robe. “No one will disturb us here. The next show won’t start until six. We have the afternoon to ourselves.”
    “I won’t beat about the bush. It’s about Jia, your ex-boyfriend.”
    “Jia—why?” She added in haste, “I broke up with him a long time ago.”
    “We have reason to believe that he’s involved in a serious case.”
    “Whatever he might be involved in,” she said, sitting up, “I don’t know any more than what is in the official newspapers. That housing development case must be a serious headache to some important people.”
    She clearly thought that Chen had come about that case.
    “That’s an anticorruption case, and he’s doing a good job. A headache to corrupt officials, as you said, but it’s not my concern. I know better than to side with those corrupt Red Rats. Trust me. The reason why I am talking to you today has nothing to do with that case.”
    “I trust you, Chief Inspector Chen, but then why?”
    “It’s about another case,” he said. “Of course you’re not involved.”
    “So what do you want to talk to me about?”
    “Whatever you know about him. All that you tell me here will be confidential—kept within this room. I’ll never use it for the housing development case, I give you my word on that.”
    “That’s a lot to talk about,” she said slowly, crisscrossing her legs again. “I think I’d better talk to my attorney first.”
    He had anticipated this. Xia wasn’t one of those girls who would give in easily to a cop. It could take days for him to obtain her cooperation under normal circumstances.
    “You know why I’ve come to you like this, Xia?” Chen said. “It’s about the red mandarin dress case.”
    “What? But that’s impossible. How could he have done that?”
    “He’s the primary suspect at this moment.” He paused deliberately before going on. “The bureau will stop at nothing. Anyone connected with him will be interrogated and reinterrogated. There will be a hurricane of publicity and that