At the bathhouse entrance, Chen made inquiries about Xia.
“Yes, Xia’s here,” a young girl said, looking at her watch. “In the restaurant on the third floor.”
As White Cloud had thought, Xia turned out to be a partner in the bathhouse. She was responsible for public relations and entertainment, including the fashion shows during lunch and dinner.
Chen was asked to purchase an entrance ticket and to change into bathhouse pajamas and plastic slippers before going up. He complied rather than reveal his identity as a cop.
As the elevator door opened out on the third floor, he glimpsed Xia sitting at a table in front of a stage near one end of the restaurant, wearing the identical house pajamas as Chen. She was sitting in the midst of several other girls and giving orders with the air of a prosperous entrepreneur.
Naturally, not all the girls would end up being as lucky as Xia, as in a line from a Tang dynasty poem, “A successful general comes walking out of the skeletons of ten thousand soldiers.” Chen thought of the victims in the serial murder case.
Instead of moving to the table, he asked a girl to send his business card to Xia, who rose at once and came over.
“I saw you coming in, like a white crane standing out among the roosters, even before I recognized you,” she said amiably. She took his hand and led him to another table. “I’ve seen your picture in the newspapers, Chief Inspector Chen. So you have to be our special guest today.”
“I’ve seen more of yours, and on TV too,” he said. “Sorry for having come to you like this, but I need to talk to you.”
“You want to talk to me, Chief Inspector Chen?” she looked surprised.
“Yes. Now.”
“But now isn’t a good time. I have to take care of the fashion show for our anniversary party. It starts soon.”
The fashion show might have less to do with fashionable clothes than with bodies barely covered in clothes. For the anniversary party, however, Xia had to take care of special guests.
“Are you going to walk on the stage yourself?”
“No, not necessarily.”
“If it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t have come here without calling you first,” he said, glancing toward the stage. “Maybe we can talk during the show.”
She looked hesitant. The girls were standing at a respectful distance, waiting for her instruction. The band had already started to tune up a light melody. It was perhaps not a good place to talk.
“You aren’t here for the show, I guess,” Xia said. “How about you take a break in a VIP room, and I’ll join you the minute the show gets under way.”
“Fine, I’ll wait for you there.”
A young girl led him down to the second floor into a dimly lit room with an attached bathroom. There were two couches covered with white towels and a coffee table between them. A clothes tree stood with a couple of white terrycloth robes on it. Simple, yet cozy. Leaving, the girl closed the door behind her.
The room was warm and, sitting on the couch, he felt drowsy. A shower might help, he thought, so he took off his pajamas and stepped under the showerhead.
But the shower didn’t help. Stepping out, he felt weak and light-headed. He left a message for Yu, asking him to come over to Gilded Age after he was finished at the steel mill.
Chen lay down on the couch. Some light music floated over, faint, vague, like the chant from the temple in his childhood. In spite of himself, he fell asleep.
He woke up, aware of another person moving in the room. It was Xia, wearing a white terry robe, walking barefoot on the soft carpet, her hair still wet from a shower. She perched herself on the edge of his couch, putting her hand on his 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 won’t be good for you or for your business. So I want to talk to you first. I would hate to drag you through all that unpleasantness.”