Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 235: Left Pocket, Right Pocket

At a little past nine on the morning of July 24th, Shen Zhixia spread several sheets of paper across the long table, then pulled one out.

The one she pulled was Xingyao's public disclosure page. The only things visible on it were the legal representative and the date of establishment; the full ten pages had already been retrieved. The rest lay pinned at the corner of the desk: a photocopy of Guo Jianping's bank statement, the copy of the police station's notice letter, pages five and six of Xingyao's registration file, and her own notebook — the line reading "Dingchang corporate account, seven deposits in three months" copied inside.

He Xiufen came up from the stairwell, set the cup in her hand on the edge of the table, and watched her measuring the paper with a ruler.

"Don't draw boxes," He Xiufen said. "The boxes are something you built yourself. Draw a single line."

Shen Zhixia put the ruler away and switched to a pencil. She started from the very bottom of the page, first writing "Xingyao Culture Media," then above it "Dingchang," then leaving a blank stretch above that. She made two strokes in that blank space and crossed them out, scraping the paper until it turned fuzzy.

"What's missing?"

"The top end," she said. "The notice letter says the Dingchang corporate account took seven deposits in three months, from Taiying and Sheng'an. I haven't pulled either of those companies' annual reports."

"Pull them now."

She moved to the desk by the window, propped up her phone, and paged through one screen at a time. Both companies showed one insured employee. Taiying's establishment date was June 20th of this year, a few hours earlier than Xingyao's newly opened Xinghe; Sheng'an was older. When she reached the annual report page, she stopped — in the contact phone column, both companies listed the same number.

She had already counted June 20th once; today it came up again. She read the number aloud twice, then flipped back to Dingchang's page to check. Same number. Then she pulled up the photo of the May quotation sheet from her photo album — the business phone printed on it was that same number again.

"Three companies' annual reports. One phone number."

He Xiufen leaned over, glanced at it, and used a red pen to dot the paper after each of the three company names. "Print it out," she said. "Screenshots aren't paper."

The firm's old printer spat out pages slowly, one every ten-plus seconds. When all three came out, she stacked them on the long table in the order Taiying, Sheng'an, Dingchang, and drew a line upward from the bottom with a pencil, labeling both sides in small characters: one insured employee each, one phone number, one bank branch office. The line stopped halfway up, the top half still blank — where the money came from, the paper only went this far.

[Thud. The shell can change its name. The phone number can't.]

At eleven forty, someone downstairs asked if the Zhengping Firm was in.

The person who came up was Guo Jianping. Canvas bag slung across his shoulder, he wiped his shoes at the doorway, then set the bag down by his leg without putting it on the table.

"Lawyer Shen."

Shen Zhixia paused briefly. She'd been hearing that form of address for five days now and it still didn't sit right — last time he'd come he called her Little Shen. She didn't say "just call me Little Shen." She said only: "Sit."

He pulled two folded sheets of printed paper from his bag, unfolded them, and smoothed them flat on the table. One was a labor service settlement form: the header read "Jiangzhou Xingyao Culture Media Co., Ltd.," and the table held one line of text — Wenchang Road Subdistrict public legal service day, one camera position, full day, nine hundred yuan. The "Handled By" column at the bottom was blank, no signature, only a red stamp that wasn't quite round, one corner of its rim chipped away.

"This copy's the one I kept," he said. "The other copy was taken back at the time."

"Who assigned the work?"

"Xingyao. On the evening of May 19th, the group chat said: 'Tomorrow eight o'clock, Wenchang Road, all day, bring your equipment.' The person who posted the job had a nickname that was just a string of English letters. I still don't know his surname." He raised a hand and wiped his face. "The settlement form was handed out by Xingyao people too."

"Who paid the money?"

"Not Xingyao."

"Who?"

"Dingchang. Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media." He rubbed both hands on his knees. "The first few years, Xingyao paid directly. From the winter the year before last, it switched to this Dingchang. I asked once, and he said the company had merged and they were running through one account. So I didn't ask again."

Shen Zhixia flipped the bank statement over and spread it in front of him, her fingertip landing on that final entry: June 23rd.

"Have you looked at the note on this one?"

"I have." Guo Jianping's Adam's apple moved. "That string of letters and numbers in the note — it's exactly the same as on the back of the card. They use it to match the card to the job — which camera, what day it was shot, and the money is for that specific footage."

"What did you think at the time?"

"I thought it was just an order number," he said. "They told me to report it, so I reported it. The money showed up. What was I supposed to ask?"

He Xiufen shifted the settlement form under the light, studying the chipped red seal, then the blank "Handled By" column.

"Before that money arrived," she asked, "was there any movement on their end?"

"June 20th," Guo Jianping said. "The group chat sent out a notice saying payments would go through a different bank from now on and everyone should report new card numbers. I didn't switch. I was waiting on the May 20th payment."

"The money arrived on the twenty-third," Shen Zhixia said.

The room went quiet for a beat, except for someone downstairs tapping a chopstick against the rim of a bowl.

"They already pointed at that card in the note in June." He Xiufen pushed the paper back. "You only turned the card in on July 14th."

Shen Zhixia took the settlement form to the printer and made a copy. On the bottom margin of the copy she wrote a line: "Verified against original." Then she handed over the pen.

"Signature of the person who verified it. Write your own name. Write today's date."

Guo Jianping gripped the pen, wrote "Guo" first, then "Jianping," the gap between the two characters wider than usual. When he finished, he didn't put the pen down.

"Lawyer Shen," he said, "yesterday I got calls from two numbers I don't have saved. They called twice. I didn't answer."

"Write the numbers down." She pushed her notebook toward him. "Don't call back. If you need to say anything to them, come here and say it here first."

As he copied the numbers, he pressed down on the original settlement form with one hand, keeping the corner from lifting in the breeze.

"One more thing." He looked up. "Am I going to be—"

"You're not the defendant," Shen Zhixia said. "You're a witness."

"Then what do I say?"

"Just one thing: who assigned the work, and what company paid the money. You don't need to remember anything else." She tucked the photocopy into the kraft paper folder. "Take the original home and lock it up. Bring the original to the hearing. Hand it over in court."

He Xiufen lifted her apron from the back of the chair.

"Lunchtime," she said. "Go downstairs and have some noodles."

Three people at the noodle shop's small table made a tight fit. He Xiufen dropped an extra poached egg into Guo Jianping's bowl. He didn't touch his chopsticks at first; his hands wiped at his knees twice.

"Director He," he said, "those three sentences you taught me last time — I've got them memorized."

"Memorizing isn't enough," He Xiufen said. "They have to match the paper."

He filed that away and lowered his head to eat. Once the bowl was empty, the sweat on his face finally receded.

At three in the afternoon, He Xiufen laid two sheets side by side in the middle of the long table, a finger's width apart.

The header on the left-hand sheet was "Jiangzhou Xingyao Culture Media Co., Ltd." The payer on the right-hand sheet was "Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd."

Her pen circled the left sheet first, then the right. The two circles sat next to each other, and the finger-wide gap between them was empty. Nothing there.

"This isn't a chain," He Xiufen said. "This is a pocket. Pull it out of the left one, stuff it back into the right one, and the hand in the middle never has to show its face."

[Thud. On paper it says Xingyao. In the books it says Dingchang. The two ends don't match. That's the door.]

Lu Jibai arrived later, setting his briefcase on the desk by the window. He read the two sheets twice, then flipped the ten pages of Xingyao's file to page six — that certification where the principal was listed as Xingyao, the agent as Chen Maolin, entrusting himself to pass it forward.

"He did it very cleanly," Lu Jibai said. "Everything Xingyao puts out on paper lands in Chen Maolin's handwriting. But the outside contractors and the money going out — not one cent of it ever moved through Xingyao's corporate account."

"The money goes through Dingchang."

"Dingchang's money comes from Taiying and Sheng'an. Sheng'an's shareholder is Hengyue Capital; and Hengyue Capital's legal representative was changed to Chen Maolin on June 20th." He closed the file. "Treat it as companies, and it's shell after shell. Treat it as one hand — the reputation goes out from this hand to hit people, and the money comes out of this hand's own pocket."

She picked up the pencil and filled in two lines in that blank space on the diagram. First line: Taiying and Sheng'an, one phone number on the annual reports, same bank branch office as Dingchang. Second line: the financial officer column on Taiying's annual report is also Chen Maolin.

"Anyone can fill in that column," He Xiufen said, looking at the line. "Shell companies sit ignored for years. Putting down a random name happens all the time."

"He put down himself."

He Xiufen didn't answer that. She turned the red pen around and crossed out a line in the corner of the paper — something Shen Zhixia had casually written a moment before: "effectively controlled by Hengyue."

"On the diagram, only write the columns and the dates," she said. "Don't write the word 'therefore.' If you write it, it becomes your words. If you don't, it stays those pages' words."

"This statement needs a name on it," Shen Zhixia said.

"Yours." He Xiufen capped the pen. "The handling lawyer column — it's been yours since July 19th."

She gave a small nod. The practice certificate had been in hand for five days now, and more and more paper was landing with her name on it. This one, she'd have to send out alone.

Tang Guo came back in the early evening, first straightening the sticky note at the base of the livestream light. She leaned over the table to study the diagram, looking at it longer than anyone else had.

"That video," she asked, "how much did they spend to make it?"

"The quotation sheet doesn't list a video," Shen Zhixia said. "It only says payment per item — one item produced, one payment; one item posted, one payment."

"So for half a year," Tang Guo said, "I was bought one item at a time."

"Don't ask the price." He Xiufen pressed the cap onto the red pen. "Ask who paid it. Just point at these two sheets — only two names put up money: Taiying and Sheng'an."

Tang Guo didn't ask anything else. She pressed the sticky note back against the base of the light, her finger pausing over those words for a second. The light was still plugged in; the red dot hadn't gone out.

At 7:20, her phone rang. The screen showed Zhou Yu.

"You got the summons?"

"Got it on the nineteenth."

"I've looked through all the materials," he said. "The report materials you filed last time — the public security track and the criminal track don't need to go in separately. They can be pushed together."

"What's missing?"

"Two things. One is new: Xingyao's letter, the photos taken outside the gate, the call records — all of it needs to be added. The other—" He broke off for half a beat. "Write a statement."

"Stating what?"

"'The same hand.'" Zhou Yu said. "Which pages, which columns, what day you obtained them, why they count as the same hand. Just that."

"No conclusion?"

"No," he said. "Paper only recognizes what it can see."

She flipped her notebook to the last page and wrote as she listened: supplement report materials, three items; statement, one item.

"One more thing." Zhou Yu paused. "Guo Jianping — let him sort it out in his own head. Nearly half of what he earns all year sits in their hands."

"I know."

"Before the hearing, give me a number for him."

"Why?"

"If there comes a day he doesn't dare show up," Zhou Yu said, "I need to know where to find him."