Red Mandarin Dress

by Unknown

  After the others moved out, a waiter came in, put a fruit platter on the coffee table, and handed over the menu to him. Too embarrassed to study the menu carefully with the girl nestling against him, he settled on a cup of tea, and she, a cup of fruit juice. Juice wouldn’t be too bad, he thought, having heard stories of how these girls made a huge killing by ordering the most expensive wine.

  “I’m beat tonight,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  “That’s fine. Whatever topic you like—about the cloud and rain, coming and becoming each other, about the peach blossom giggling at the spring wind, or about boring holes to steal a sight of each other. You must have seen the world. By the way, my name is Green Jade.”

  Cloud and rain again, so much quoted in the classical love stories, and boring holes for a sight of each other was a negative metaphor from the Mencius. She was clever, perhaps like in Liu Guo’s poem, capable of wiping a hero’s tear with a red handkerchief pulled out of her green sleeves.

  Except that her slip was sleeveless, backless. She kicked off her high heels, drew her legs under her, and cuddled up closer on the sofa.

  “Please tell me something about your work here,” he said.

  “If that’s what you’d like, sir,” she said, taking a gulp of her juice. “The job doesn’t bring in easy money as people would like to think. Of course, I earn a tip from a generous client like you, two to three hundred Yuan. On a lucky streak, I may have two customers a night. With so many girls competing, however, it’s possible to go without a client for days. The club doesn’t pay me a single penny. On the contrary, I have to pay the club the ‘table fee.’ ”

  “Why? That doesn’t make sense. You do the work, not the club.”

  “According to the club owner, he has to pay the rent, for the management, and for protection too—both to the gangsters and the police.”

  “What about other services apart from the karaoke part?”

  “Depends what you need, where and when. You have to be specific,” she said. “Let me sing a song for you first.”

  Perhaps his manner of questioning bothered her. She had to sing a song or two for her tip, anyway. Her choice was a surprising one—Su Dongpo’s “Shuidiao Getou,” about the mid-autumn festival. She started singing and dancing, her bare feet floating sensually like lotus flowers on the red carpet, flowing to the second stanza of the poem.

  Moving around the vermilion mansion, /coming through the carved window, / the moon shines on the sleepless./ No cause for it to be /so spiteful as to choose / to appear full, bright,/ when we stay in separation? / As people have sorrows and joys, / meeting or parting, / as the moon waxes and wanes / in clear or cloudy skies, / things may never be perfect. / May we all live long, sharing / the same fair moon, / though thousands of miles apar. . . .

  The madam came back like an apparition from the moon. “What a marvelous girl! You know what, she used to study ballet. May we all live long, sharing the fair moon. A generous tip for my introduction, please.”

  “You did not tell me that,” he said, producing two ten Yuan bills.

  “Every Shanghainese knows that,” she snapped, pocketing the money as she stalked out. “So cheap! You want me to live on the howling western wind?”

  His Big Buck connections might have paid more, but he didn’t know.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Green Jade said, perching herself on his lap. “She’s no real madam. Just a pimp.”

  Perhaps he’d better ask his questions quickly, and then call it a night.

  “I’ve heard that there’s a serial murderer stalking around, going after girls in the entertainment business. Are you worried, Green Jade?”

  “You bet,” she said, squirming uncomfortably against him. “One of the victims worked in a nightclub like this, I’ve heard. Everybody is on alert. But it’s useless.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? You are a new customer here. A successful man—not simply a money-stinking upstart, but a man of learning, a successful attorney or something like that. That much I knew at first sight. But that’s about all. Still, if you ask me out, I will follow you without raising any questions. Our business has suffered because of the case. Customers are worried about police raids, like at the Joy Gate. Some of them will wait until the storm blows over—”

  There was a light knock on the door.

  Before she said anything, the door opened and a boy of five or six came in. “Mom, Uncle Brown Bear wants you to sing the Weeping Sand for him. Madam wants me to tell you that.”

  “I’m sorry. He’s my son. There’s no one to take care of him at home tonight,” she said. “Brown Bear is a regular customer. It’s his favorite song. I’ll come back soon.”

  “Brown Bear is your regular customer,” Chen said. Whether it was a deliberate arrangement with the madam, he didn’t know. Green Jade must have figured out he was anything but a real Big Buck.

  “You are different, I know,” she said, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead before she turned to her son. “Go back to the office. Don’t come out again.”

  For a moment, Chen didn’t know what to do, left alone in the room. Looking around, he saw it was not so different from other KTV rooms, except that it was more luxuriously furnished. And he was disconcerted by the light footsteps pattering outside the room. Perhaps the child’s. She shouldn’t have brought her boy to such a place. Fortunately he was “different,” not a regular. Or the little boy could have stumbled upon a traumatizing scene. . . .

  Suddenly, he shivered.

  Now he had one suspect with a motive—Mei’s son.

  On that fatal afternoon long ago, when Mei’s son returned home, what he stumbled upon was his widowed mother having sex with another man. That explained his running away in shock and her running out naked after him.

  All the information gathered about him was coming back. He had the motive, he knew the dress, and he was familiar with things about her life.

  That would explain a lot of things—the revenge against Tian and Jasmine, the exact duplication of the dress, the location of the first body. . . .

  But what kind of a man was he now? Neither Professor Xiang nor Comrade Wong knew much. He hadn’t disappeared, however. He had come back and sold the Old Mansion for understandable reasons.

  All of this fit into a psychological profile Chen had discussed with Yu—a loner with a trauma in his childhood, possibly during the Cultural Revolution, and possibly with an attachment to his mother. . . .

  Another waitress walked into the room, this one wearing an apron that bore an image of a bag of popcorn. She placed a small basket of popcorn on the coffee table. Chen took out a ten Yuan bill.

  “It’s fifty.”

  “Fine.” He tried to behave like a good customer, taking out his wallet. For the moment, he would like to, for a new scenario had just dawned on him in this very room. He put a hundred Yuan bill on the table and motioned to her to leave.

  “Thank you, sir. I used to be a model, but it’s a profession of only three or four years.”

  It was then that Green Jade returned, staring at the popcorn girl like an intruding alien, who turned to leave in a hurry.

  “Sorry,” Green Jade said. “Can I have another cup of juice?”

  The drink came, along with another fruit platter. Maybe it was conventional in the house. The waiter didn’t even bother to ask for his approval.

  That concerned him. The small fees were adding up, though he didn’t have to worry about extra service, like “the rain and cloud,” Green Jade had suggested. She started peeling an orange for him.

  He excused himself and went out into the corridor toward a restroom in the corner. Closing the restroom door after him, he counted the money left in his wallet. He still had about nine hundred Yuan. That should do for the night. But he didn’t want to go back immediately. He wanted to straighten out his thoughts, and it was difficult for him to do so with Green Jade and other waitresses coming and going all the time.

  But
he noticed a hot towel on a white dish being pushed in through under the door—possibly by the restroom attendant kneeling on the ground. Chen was revolted. Pushing open the door, he put a handful of change on a white bowl on the sink and left.

  When he seated himself on the sofa in the private room, Green Jade leaned over to feed him a fresh tangerine with her slender fingers, the candlelight incessantly flickering from the animal-shaped container.

  “Where are you going to spend the night?” she softly inquired. “It’s so late. The frost thick, the road slippery. Don’t leave. Really, few walk outside.”

  It came almost like an echo from a Song dynasty poem, he recalled, about the rendezvous between the decadent emperor and a delicate courtesan.

  Seeing no response from him, she placed his hand on her bare, smooth thigh.

  “Sorry, I have to leave, Green Jade,” Chen said. “Please give me the bill. It’s been a great night. Thanks.”

  “If you insist,” she said. “You may pay me the tip now.”

  After he paid her three hundred Yuan, she had a waiter send in the bill.

  A glance at the bill showed him the trouble. A cup of fruit juice cost one hundred Yuan. She had two cups. Plus his tea at one hundred twenty. The two fruit platters at two hundred fifty each. The four small dishes of dried fruits on the table came with a price too, with eighty Yuan each. And there was a twenty percent service fee. Altogether, the bill amounted to one thousand, three hundred.

  It was a ripoff. But he was not in a position to protest, not as a chief inspector. As such, he might be able to get away for the night, but the stories about it would cost him much more.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’m so sorry, Green Jade, I don’t have enough cash with me.”

  “Well—how much do you have?”

  “About nine hundred—now six hundred after the tip.”

  “Don’t worry. They won’t kill you if you really don’t have enough money,” she whispered in his ear. “But you have to say you have paid me only one hundred Yuan.”

  That was probably why she had wanted him to pay the tip first. An experienced girl, Chen reflected, seeing a heavy-built man enter the room.

  “He is Manager Zhang,” she introduced.

  “Sorry, it’s the first time for me, Manager Zhang. I don’t have enough money with me.” Chen took out all his money and placed it on the coffee table.

  “How much do you have?” Zhang said without counting the money.

  “About six hundred,” Chen said. “I’ll bring seven hundred next week. I give you my word.”

  “Has he paid you the tip?” Zhang turned to the girl with a frown.

  “Yes, he has. One hundred Yuan.” She added, “He’s been here for about only two or three hours. And I had to be away with Brown Bear for quite a while.”

  “Do you have a card?” Zhang asked.

  “What card?” He wouldn’t give him his business card, whether as cop or as a poet.

  “Credit card.”

  “No, I don’t have one.”

  To Chen’s surprise, Zhang glanced at the money on the table, picked up two twenty Yuan bills, and pushed them back to Chen.

  “It’s the first time for you,” Zhang said. “Those small dishes are on the club tonight. So are the fruit platters. You have to have your taxi money, Big Brother. It’s a cold winter night outside.”

  It was almost anticlimactic. Perhaps it was in the best interest of the business to let a customer leave like this. It wasn’t the time for Chen to find an explanation for his luck.

  “Thank you so much, Manager Zhang.”

  “I have seen many people,” Zhang said. “You are different, I know. If the hill does not turn, the water turns. If the water doesn’t turn, the man turns. Who knows? We may bump into each other one day.”

  Zhang walked him out to the elevator. When the elevator door opened, a late customer emerged. A group of girls hurried to offer their services to the new guest with a silver ring of laughter. Chen saw Green Jade among them, running out barefoot.

  She didn’t look at him.

  “Come again, Big Brother,” Zhang said as the elevator door was closing. “It may be easier for you to get a taxi at the intersection of Henshan and Gaoan Roads.”

  Outside, Chen didn’t get into a taxi.

  It was almost four o’clock. He thought of a proverb: “Full of joy, the night is short.” He wasn’t sure he had enjoyed himself inside the club, but time had passed quickly there.

  It was a cold night, though it was coming to its end. The exciting ideas he had while inside seemed to be somewhat chilled by the wind.

  While some of the details in the case fit, others didn’t.

  The meeting with the retired neighborhood cop in a couple of hours would be crucial.

  Afterward, Chen would check into the background of Mei’s son, starting with the document concerning the sale of the Old Mansion, on which the seller, as the inheritor of the house, had to sign his name and perhaps provide some other information.

  It was already Thursday, a day he couldn’t afford to waste in the wrong direction.

  But for the moment, he was wandering aimlessly. He had to move. It was cold. With most of the lights off, the street presented a vision he hadn’t seen before. He turned into a side street, made another turn, and to his surprise, he emerged within sight of the Old Mansion again. It looked dark, deserted, desolate. A night bird flashed out of nowhere.

  He thought of the poem by Su Shi, “Swallow Pavilion.”

  The night advanced, I awake, / no way to renew my walk / along the old garden: / a tired traveler stranded at the end of the world, / gazing homeward, heartbroken. / The Swallow Pavilion is deserted. / Where is the beauty? / Swallows alone are locked inside, for no purpose. / It is nothing but a dream, / in the past, or at present. / Whoever wakes out of the dream? / There is only a never-ending cycle / of old joy, and new grief. / Someday, someone else, / in view of the yellow tower at night, / may sigh deeply for me.

  It was a sad poem. The pavilion was renowned because of Guan Pan-pan, a gifted Tang dynasty poet and courtesan who lived there. Guan fell in love with a poet, and after his death, she shut herself up, receiving no visitor or client for the rest of her life. Many years later, Su Shi, a Song dynasty poet, visited the pavilion and wrote the celebrated poem.

  Chen imagined Mei standing in the back garden of the mansion, holding the hand of her little boy, shining like a radiant cloud in her red mandarin dress. . . .

  Shivering, he made his way to the food market. Several leaves fell in the fading starlight, dropping to the hard ground with a sound like the falling of the bamboo slips used for divination at an ancient temple, darkly portentous.

  There was no one visible in the market yet. Near the entrance, he was surprised to see a long line of baskets—plastic, bamboo, rattan, wood, straw—of all shapes and sizes, stretching to a concrete counter under a sign that read “yellow croaker,” a fish very popular in Shanghai. Those baskets evidently stood for the wives who would soon come here, securing their positions in the line, their eyes still dreamy with their families’ satisfaction on the dinner table.

  He wondered whether it could be a scene that he had seen before, and he lit himself a cigarette against the wind.

  Bang, bang, bang. There came a sudden clatter. He was startled by the sight of a night-shift worker cracking a gigantic frozen bar of fish with a huge hammer. Aware of Chen’s approaching footsteps, the night worker turned around, appearing headless against the upturned collar of his cotton-padded imitation army overcoat. It was a ghastly image in the early morning.

  Chen’s nerves were still bad.

  Soon, however, several middle-aged women entered the market, heading to the line to replace the baskets and bricks that marked their place. The market began to come alive.

  Then a bell sounded, possibly an indication that the market was open for business, and peddlers started appearing everywhere, all at once. Some put their
products on the ground, and some moved in behind stalls rented from the state-run market. It was more and more difficult to draw the line between the socialist and capitalist.

  He saw an old man enter the market wearing a red armband.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE OLD MAN WEARING the red armband was examining vegetables here, checking fish there, yet was carrying no basket. He must be Fan.

  Not too long ago, Chen had witnessed a similar scene, that of Old Hunter patrolling another market. Fan’s function here was different, however, as “private peddlers” had become the norm in “China’s brand of socialism.” In an age of “everybody looking forward to money,” those peddlers were problematic because of their unbridled deceptive practices. It was no longer simply a matter of putting ice into fish or injecting water into chickens but of painting their product, selling spoiled meat, hawking poisonous fungus. So Fan’s responsibility consisted mainly of controlling those fakes, which were sometimes fatal.

  Chen walked up to the old man, who was questioning a shrimp peddler.

  “You must be Uncle Fan.”

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  “Can I talk to you—alone?” Chen handed over his business card. “It’s important.”

  “Sure,” Fan said, turning to the peddler. “Next time, I won’t let you get away so easily.”

  “Let’s have a pot of tea there,” Chen said, pointing to a small eatery behind the “yellow croaker” counter. “We can sit and talk.”

  “They don’t serve tea, but I’ll ask them to make a pot for us,” Fan said. “Call me Comrade Fan. It’s a form of address no longer popular, but I’ve just gotten used to it. It reminds me of the years of the socialist revolution, when everyone was equal and working toward the same goal.”

  “You are right, Comrade Fan,” Chen said, reminded that comrade was becoming a euphemism for “homosexual” among the young and fashionable in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He wondered whether Fan knew anything about the changing meaning. Linguistic evolution, like that of thirsty illness, was so very reflective of ideological change.