Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 102 : Testing the Waters

At 10:15, her phone buzzed three times on the corner of the desk. Voice messages from Shi Lei, each one longer than the last.

She played the first. Through the receiver, she heard the elevator's "ding" first, then wind in the hallway, and beneath it all, the sound of paper feeding through a machine—a sound she'd grown familiar with over the past two days.

"Sis, I did like Director He said today. Just delivered the goods." Shi Lei kept his voice low. "Got to the sixth floor. Front desk was empty. The door was ajar. Someone inside was packing things up."

Second message: "4:30. Two cardboard boxes went down the elevator. Their own boxes, yellow tape with writing on the seals. Not the freight I delivered."

The third was the longest, and the clearest. He was in the elevator, the doors not yet closed, and someone behind him said: "Move one batch first. See if the channel's open."

"That's all I got. Phone was in my pocket the whole time. Never pulled it out."

She replayed all three from the start, copying those nine words into her notebook. He Xiufen came out of the kitchen, flour still on her hands, listened, and asked just one question: "This time the front desk didn't ask which company you were with?"

"He didn't mention it," Shen Zhixia said. "Front desk was empty. Nobody asked."

"Then the boxes were his own." He Xiufen untied her apron. "Goods delivered as usual, boxes packed by them—he got in and out clean on this run." She took the notebook and read over the nine words. "This one goes in the separate file. The housing file doesn't take recordings. The housing file only takes paper."

"And when it goes to the police?"

"When it goes to the police, it's reported as 'someone overheard.'" He Xiufen said. "How many floors he stood in that elevator, where his hands were—he writes that himself. Don't organize his words for him."

[Thud. The money's about to move.]

At 10:40, the landline rang. He Xiufen answered, listened for a moment, then held the receiver out. "Zhou Yu."

"The filing form moved." Papers rustled on his end. "I took another look at that tax form before leaving work today. The line filed on August 26—status changed this afternoon. Went from filed to accepted, now it's in the bank's queue."

"And after acceptance?"

"The bank accepted the paperwork. They're reviewing documents, verifying the stated purpose, running foreign exchange settlement. Could take a day or two if it's fast." He paused. "It was filled out for 500,000. Payer Hongkun, payee still that foreign name. The one that moved is the trial batch."

"You said you'd submit tomorrow morning."

"Submitting tomorrow morning just adds a stack of papers to someone's desk. Money doesn't wait for desks." Zhou Yu said. "Tonight I'm pulling everything together and going to the branch bureau. Mass fraud, absconding with funds abroad—if the duty officer can take it, he takes it. If not, I'll wait outside the door."

"What's enough to make him take it?"

"Four items." He Xiufen was already counting. "The 1,042-household roster copy. The tax filing form. Shi Lei's written statement. And the nine service-fee entries from the eleven bank pages. Stack those four together, and 'mass fraud' stands on its own."

"I've got all four," Zhou Yu said. "Still need one more piece: the border control alert. Zhou Keming's ID number's been verified. File it against the number, not the name."

"How many names do we submit?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"One for now. More names, thinner paper. Border control's on the checklist. Third item." He paused. "One more thing you should be ready for: once the branch bureau takes it, they'll come to the firm to take statements based on Shi Lei's lead. Last time he stood on the sixth floor waiting for the signed receipt, he was there nine minutes. He needs to explain all that himself. If you write it for him, you're hurting him."

"He wrote the third one himself. Already thumbprinted," He Xiufen said from the side.

"Then he tells it exactly as written."

After hanging up, He Xiufen started pulling things from the metal cabinet. Eleven roster volumes, stacked one by one onto the table, the two thickest anchoring the pile. The filing form copy was paper-clipped to the cover of the first volume. Shi Lei's statement went by itself into an envelope, flap unsealed.

Shen Zhixia pulled out the eleven-page ledger, kept only the stack with the nine entries, and slid the other two pages back into the folder.

"Give him all of it."

"All of it," He Xiufen said. "Those eleven pages are the bank's paper. We didn't write those words."

"What about the three pages?"

"Which three pages."

She didn't answer. He Xiufen didn't look at her either, just squared the top roster volume. "The separate file is the separate file. If you want to show him, first be clear about which case you're showing him."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Then don't bring it up here." He Xiufen laid the envelope face-down on the rosters. "You've been absent-minded these past few days. I'll remember for you."

At 11:00, Tang Guo's call came in: "Sis, 105 are complete. The Dongguan household I called myself—she's on the factory floor, said she'd send photos after her shift. Marked her down for now. The 11th-floor unit on Minsheng Road handed theirs over too. Gave me the key, two deposit receipts, and he pulled up the deduction records on his phone for me to photograph."

"Meter numbers?"

"Water and electric, both photographed."

"Good. No more door-knocking today."

"I know," she said. "Light's on here. Phone's on too."

Shen Zhixia laid the receipts out by number, one over the next, two columns left to right. He Xiufen sat across from her reading the list: name, unit number, amount paid, date. She read one, Shen Zhixia flipped one, checking the amounts and dates against the notebook. Midway through, she pulled three out and held them under her palm.

"These three. The deduction dates don't match the landlord's end of the books." She said. "The day the money left the bank is exactly the day the landlord's flow went dry. The landlord never saw a cent of it."

"The pool drinks first," He Xiufen said.

"These three go into the housing case file tomorrow."

Around the 60th receipt, He Xiufen stopped, pulled one from the bottom of the stack, and pointed at the signature line.

The signature line was blank. Only a thumbprint, pressed where the name should have been.

"You said last time—the one at the very bottom," Shen Zhixia said.

"Min'an Li, Building 6. Surname Lü, in her sixties." He Xiufen's finger tapped the roster twice. "Can't read or write. Son's down south. When she pressed her thumb, she asked me if it counted."

"It counts. Whoever wrote for her needs to sign." She turned it over to check the back. "Tomorrow, have her son write one line—'confirmed by my own thumbprint,' and the proxy writer signs with a thumbprint too. Nothing missing."

"Mm." He Xiufen moved it aside. "This one doesn't go in today's stack. Keep it separate."

When the last receipt was read, two columns of numbers filled the notebook. 105 households. 2.52 million yuan.

[Thud. 105 transactions. One by one.]

"Out of a 24-million-yuan pool," He Xiufen closed the notebook, "these 105 households are the first batch who could produce paper."

She stared at the two columns for a while, then pulled out the nine entries copied that afternoon and laid them beside.

18, 22, 26, 31, 24, 19, 28, 33, 27. Nine transactions, 2.28 million yuan. Dates crammed between July 21 and August 9. Not one exceeded 360,000.

She wrote another number in the corner of the notebook: 50,000. U.S. dollars.

360,000 yuan. 50,000 U.S. dollars. The two numbers side by side on paper for the first time.

[Thud. 360,000. 50,000 U.S. dollars. He picked one that crossed the line, to see if anyone would raise a hand.]

"They've had these numbers calculated for a while," He Xiufen turned the notebook around to look. "All nine kept underneath. Clean on the surface, nothing to report on the forms."

"Underneath, nothing to report. On top, one to report." Shen Zhixia said. "August 26, he deliberately filed that 500,000—put it on display for people to see."

"He's had the bank's screening process mapped out for a long time," He Xiufen picked up her enamel mug, then set it down again. "What he's testing is who's standing behind that gate."

At 11:40, the phone lit up. One line. Six characters:

Money doesn't know roads. It knows people.

She read it twice. At this hour, his light was still on too. She didn't ask what he was working on. She set the phone face-down on the desk.

"Who's that?" He Xiufen asked.

"A reminder."

"As long as it's useful."

She didn't write it in the separate ledger. She wrote it on the back of the last page of the receipt book.

At 11:50, Zhou Yu called again. Short. "Materials accepted. Two duty officers are reviewing. They say it's going up the chain."

"Any result tonight?"

"I can't guarantee tonight," he said. "What I can guarantee is that stack of paper is on his desk right now. If it'd stayed in my bag, tonight would've been wasted."

In the deep hours, He Xiufen cooked two bowls of noodles. One each. They ate by the window. The roll-up shutter downstairs had long been pulled down. The only sound in the alley was an electric scooter crossing a puddle. She bound the 105 receipts into three stacks by unit number, secured them with rubber bands, and set them on top of the rosters. On the desk calendar, September 3 was circled in red pen. Under the glass desk pad sat the paper strip bearing only the words "the 30th," with three sheets laid parallel beside it.

"The third is the court date," He Xiufen lifted a mouthful of noodles. "These three stacks are worth more than those three sheets."

"When do we use the three sheets?"

"After the strokes are gathered."

At 1:50, the phone rang.

Zhou Yu's voice was heavier than before, and faster: "Case accepted. Mass contract fraud. The branch bureau accepted it tonight. The formal decision still needs to go up for approval."

"And the freezes?"

"Three accounts, emergency freeze first. Hongkun Investment, Min'an Li Property, Anyu Business. I made sure the assistance paperwork went out. Bank duty staff signed for it." He paused. "That settlement payment's stuck at the acceptance stage. It's not going anywhere."

She set her chopsticks down.

"How much was in the accounts?"

"Listen." Zhou Yu said. "When they froze it, Hongkun's account only had that 500,000 in it. But the bank took a look back at today's in-transit queue—same foreign payee, a whole string of documents, lined up waiting for the next batch. Not a small number of transactions. Each one small."

She looked down at the two numbers in her notebook. 360,000. 50,000 U.S. dollars.

"Splitting it small to get through."

"Split small, no reporting required." Zhou Yu said. "The documents sit queued inside the bank, one or two a day. Anyone looking sees a normal service fee."

"Then all I stopped tonight was one transaction."

"What you stopped tonight was the one transaction he wanted people to see." Zhou Yu said. "And don't thank me. This case is in my hands tonight. Which desk it lands on tomorrow, I can't say."

The line went dead.

He Xiufen pushed her bowl away, pulled a pen from the holder, and cut another strip of paper. "What should I write?"

"Three characters."

"Which three?"

"Next batch."

He Xiufen finished writing and slid the strip under the glass desk pad, next to the one that said "the 30th."

[Thud. One transaction stuck. The whole pot still on shore.]

Outside the window, dawn was breaking. She turned the calendar page over. The 31st.