The people here now would dance until seven. For the evening, the balls would be on the second and the third floors. On the third floor, a group of Russian girls were scheduled to perform onstage that night, so most of the customers would be there enjoying the show. The cops needed only to focus on the second floor. The fourth and fifth floors consisted of hotel rooms.

“Who would want to stay in a hotel room here with the earsplitting music and noise coming up all night?” Yu said.

“Well, it’s in a good location,” Liao said. “Some of the guests may come down to dance, and bring a girl up to their rooms afterward.”

Both the ballroom and the hotel guests had to come in and out the front entrance on Huashan Road. There was a video camera already installed over the front entrance so they didn’t have to worry about putting up one there.

When they moved back into the service van, Hong and several officers joined them. They made plans for what they were going to do that evening.

Hong would go into the second floor ballroom, wearing a pink mandarin dress and carrying a mini cell phone specially programmed. If she touched one button, the cops outside would be on high alert, and another button, the cops outside would rush in. She had practiced Shaolin martial arts at the police academy so she should be able to cope with an unexpected situation, at least long enough to contact her colleagues in time. She was also supposed to call them at regular intervals, though she preferred not to, lest people find it suspicious.

Sergeant Qi would go in with her, pretending to be a customer who did not know her. He would stay in the ballroom at all times, in constant contact with the other officers, and with the dual responsibility of covering her and looking out for anything suspicious.

They also had two cops stationed outside the ballroom on the second floor. They would take turns sitting on the sofa close to the entrance, like a customer taking a break there. Their responsibility was to watch for Hong’s exit, either in the company of someone, or alone.

That evening, the third floor was hardly a possibility. It was inconceivable that the murderer would approach a Russian girl who couldn’t speak Chinese, and who was onstage too. At Li’s insistence, however, they also had a plainclothes officer on the third floor.

Finally, they put several more people around the building entrance 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 behind the bar.

Yu hurried over and pushed open the door, which led out to a corridor. He saw a side elevator in the corridor around the corner.

“He must have taken her out the side door, to the elevator, and then out of the gate-” Liao said in a husky voice, “but no, not yet, or they should have been seen and stopped by our people.”

“That’s impossible-” Yu said, but he was seized by a premonition. “Damn. Check all the hotel rooms.”

The front desk produced a list in no time. There were thirty-two rooms registered for the night. Following the list, the cops started pounding on the doors. At the third door, they got no response from inside. According to the list, it was registered for single occupancy just for the day. The waiter took out the key and opened the door into the room.

It was the cops’ worst fear. They found no one in the room, only Hong’s clothes scattered about on the floor. The pink mandarin dress, bra, and panties. In a corner, the high-heeled shoes anchored the ominous silence of the room.