Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 24 : Disconnected Number

December 1. The sky was still dark.

The alley behind Chengnan Station No. 1 had only one streetlight. Beneath it sat a row of electric scooters, their cargo boxes facing out, the writing across the boxes bleeding into the fog. The rolling shutter was raised waist-high. Inside, a single white fluorescent tube was lit, and the batteries on the shelves sat one against the next.

Lao Song was squatting against the wall smoking, in a blue padded jacket, a crushed cigarette butt beside his shoe. Ma Jianjun stood next to him, both hands tucked into his sleeves.

"You came early," she said.

"He goes out at seven," Ma Jianjun said. "Figured we'd catch it before anyone was at the station."

She pulled three sheets of paper from her document folder. She had written them at the office the night before, copying down what Lao Song had said sentence by sentence, only tidying the order.

"I'll read, you listen," she said. "If anything's off, stop me."

First paragraph: On the evening of November 15, after dinner, at the barbecue stall outside the station, Station Manager Sun said, "This station is contracted to me. I get twenty-five fen an order, the riders don't belong to the company, and if anything goes wrong, it's on me." Present were Lao Song, Xiao Duan, and two other delivery riders.

Lao Song didn't move.

Second paragraph: Someone asked him, "Do we actually count as people on the platform or not?" He banged his cup on the table and said, "If you want to know who sends you orders, look at your own phone."

Lao Song pulled his hand out of his sleeve and pressed a finger against the edge of the paper.

Third paragraph: "Over here I'm just a pass-through. Money comes in from that side, and I just pass it through my hands."

"That's not how I originally said it," Lao Song said.

"Which part did you say differently?"

"Pass-through was mine." He thought for a moment. "The money comes from up ahead, and I just move it through my hands. Up ahead." He raised a hand and pushed it forward. "Not 'that side.' Those two words, you wrote them."

She crossed out "that side" with her pen, changed it to "up ahead," and turned it toward him to see.

Lao Song stared at those two words for a long time. "Where 'up ahead' is, I don't know either," he said.

"Then if you don't know, write that you don't know."

She turned to the last page. The signature line was blank. The inkpad case had come from the office: a red plastic shell with a ring of old stains around the lid.

"Write your name here, and press a thumbprint below it."

Lao Song gripped the pen, first testing it on the back of his hand, and only then set down the "Song" of his name. After that he traced it out stroke by stroke, very slowly.

"Who's this paper going to be shown to?" he asked.

"For now, it stays in my file," she said. "You won't have to go to court."

"What if someone at the station asks?"

"Say you can't read."

Lao Song grinned, then the grin faded. "The ones who signed papers last month have loose mouths."

"This paper won't reach them," she said. "If it ever comes to that, I'll ask you first. If you say no, I'll find another way."

An electric scooter sounded at the mouth of the alley. Xiao Duan came over carrying a battery and hesitated when he saw the three of them.

"Got it written?" he asked.

"One part's written."

Xiao Duan set the battery on the ground and squatted to connect the wires. After a couple of tries, he looked up. "Brother Ma's case—count me in."

"Yours I'll write up separately later," she said. "Your business, you tell it yourself. Don't mix it in with his."

"I know," he said. "But first, one thing—the customer service rep who called and told me to withdraw the case, I still have that number."

"Keep it."

Ma Jianjun pulled out an old phone. The screen took half a minute to light up enough to show anything. She had him open the Rider App. The account was still logged in; the top bar was grayed out and unresponsive. She scrolled down. The order history was still there, page after page, dates running from last year to last month.

"The account's banned, but these are still here."

"Can't delete them." Lao Song leaned over for a look. "On my account, I can still pull up orders from last year. Uninstall and reinstall, log back in, same stuff's still there."

She tapped the bottom section. Under "About," a line of pale gray fine print was squeezed in. After the version number, in the developer field, it read: Hurricane Express (Jiangzhou) Network Technology Co., Ltd.

"Don't change phones," she said. "Don't uninstall the app, don't cancel the account. Don't touch anything inside it."

"Won't." Ma Jianjun stuffed the phone back into his pocket and pressed the outside twice. "Already told you that."

[Thud. The orders on the screen aren't in this phone.]

December 1, nine o'clock. The window at Hewan Community.

She passed two pages under the window: a copy of the previous case's Arbitration Award, and a photo of the settlement receipt that had been crossed through so hard it had torn.

Wu Yuhua came out from the inner room, the cap of her thermos half unscrewed. She spread the pages on the counter and flipped through them. At the second page, she stopped.

"Who crossed this out?"

"The defendant himself," she said. "Once the money was paid, he took a pen and crossed it out himself."

"And this time?"

"Still Ma Jianjun. Separate case. Different defendant."

"Then that just means the last one isn't finished."

"The money hasn't come through."

Wu Yuhua unscrewed the cap and took a sip, then aligned the two pages and pushed them back. "Whether you won the last one or not, I don't care here," she said. "My stamp goes down the same way it did last time. The Pledge Letter gets written the same, not one word less."

The ink pad and the stamp came out of the drawer. When the stamp came down, the countertop shook.

"If you lose, don't come sit in my lobby refusing to leave," she said.

"He knows what you said last time."

"What did I say?"

"You said you were afraid he'd lose."

Wu Yuhua looked up at her, wiped her hand on her apron, and went back to stamping for her.

At 9:20, on the first floor of the Arbitration Office. She took a number and waited through two rounds, then passed the materials under the window. Behind the window sat a woman in her thirties, hair pinned back, a stack of forms spread across the desk.

"Supplementing or filing?"

"Filing," she said. "Separate case. The last one was Ma Jianjun from Chengnan Station No. 1. This one is him again."

The woman turned to the first page. In the respondent section, there were two names.

"Jiangzhou Sutong Delivery Co., Ltd.," she read. "The second one, Sun Jianhua—individual?"

"Individual."

"ID number?"

"None."

The woman's pen paused. "No ID number, no registered address; we can't serve him. In labor cases, if the respondent is a private individual, you have to be able to point to where he is."

"He's on three pieces of paper," she said. "On the IOU there's the 'Sun' of his name and a thumbprint, his signature is on the shift schedule, and there's a statement saying he himself said, 'This station is contracted to me.'"

"A signature can't be served on anyone." The woman flipped further through the materials. "But that Sutong address, No. 36 Changqing Street, fifth floor—we'll send that one by courier."

"I went up to that office last week," she said. "It's been cleared out. The only thing left on the door is a sign."

The woman went through the Evidence List page by page. When she reached the photo of the Attendance Summary Sheet, she wrote a line in her notebook.

"The limitations period starts from July, so there's still time." The woman pushed out the Notice of Acceptance. "Keep the receipt."

She took it and glanced at the date.

"Let me say one thing up front," the woman said, setting her pen down. "If it can't be delivered, it'll go by Service by Public Notice. Only after the notice period expires will a hearing be scheduled. Your case won't get a hearing before the new year."

Her hand pressed down on the Notice of Acceptance.

"How long is the notice period?"

"Notice period plus the back-and-forth—three months at the fastest."

Three months. She turned that number over in her mind. Three months from now, whether those orders would still be in that grayed-out account—no one could guarantee it.

"Sign here." The woman pushed the pen toward her.

She lowered her head and signed on the line for her own name. Up in the respondent column, the two names were ones she had filled in herself: one attached to a vacated office, the other existing only on a few pages. To this day she had never seen the man. The tip of the pen paused on the paper.

She remembered the line from the hearing—he didn't even have his work badge anymore.

She folded the receipt and tucked it into the document folder.

[Thud. Two names in one column: one hollow, one who never showed his face.]

On the morning of December 4, at Zhengping Firm. Downstairs, steam rose from the stove. He Xiufen was rolling dough, the cutting board thumping once, then going still.

The phone on the desk rang. It was the Arbitration Office calling—the woman's voice from behind the window.

"Two pieces of news, both at once," the voice said. "The courier for Changqing Street came back. The post office stamped the envelope 'moved—new address unknown.'"

"The other."

"The contact number in Sutong's registration is disconnected. On the lease agreement you supplemented, there was a number. We tried it; it's out of service."

"And Sun Jianhua?"

"We only have a name." There was a pause. "There's nobody behind the name. We can't serve it."

She wrote those three phrases into her notebook: moved—new address unknown. Disconnected. Out of service.

He Xiufen carried a stack of bowls upstairs, set them by the windowsill, and glanced at her desk.

"Returned."

"Both returned," she said. "The man's gone."

He Xiufen wiped her hands on the corner of her apron, picked up the Notice of Acceptance, looked over the top half, and set it back down.

"People can run, but accounts don't," she said. "Stop staring at that sign. Where the money came from, where the person came from—follow that thread."

In the top right corner of the notebook was a line written two days earlier: the 5th. If the first case's Arbitration Award was challenged, the deadline to file suit was fifteen days, and the last day fell on the 5th. Today was the 4th.

"The 5th." He Xiufen's eyes passed over that line.

"I'll file first thing tomorrow," she said. "If I don't, this case is over, and that 21,400 yuan will have to wait on an empty sign. If I do file, there's one more party at the table."

"Is what you've got in your hands enough to bring the court before that machine too?" He Xiufen said. "Whether it's enough, you think it over."

"Whether it's enough, I won't know until I file."

She laid the things out on the desk again: three bank statements, each payer account starting with "Wang," with memos saying delivery fees and settlement; Lao Song's statement, a red thumbprint in the corner of the page; the photo of the fifth floor at No. 36 Changqing Street, a lone sign nailed to the door.

The three set side by side, and the thread appeared. Orders came out of that machine on a phone. Money moved from a private bank account. A name was printed on a sign nailed to the door of an empty room. Each of the three had its own source, and not one of them landed under the same name.

"They split that one person into three pieces," she said.

"Split into however many pieces, it's all the same," He Xiufen said, shifting the bowls along the windowsill. "As long as one piece is held in your hand."

She opened the drawer and pulled out the first case's Arbitration Award, the page corners curled. She turned to the section denying the evidence collection request and pressed her finger on that line: The requested dispatch records and work badge issuance and retrieval records are generated and kept by a system operated by a non-party.

The first to say it for her—that those records existed on a machine—had been the other side's defense, and this page.

[Thud. The sign is nailed up, the number is out of service, the man is gone.]

"I can't wait for Service by Public Notice," she said. "Three months from now, who can say what'll be left in that account?"

"Then which end do you want to move on?"

"Go after the machine." She closed the Arbitration Award. "A sign can be taken down. A person can run. But a machine still needs someone to keep the power on and someone to collect money off it. Whoever sends it orders knows exactly who he is."

He Xiufen looked at her and brushed the flour from her hands onto her apron.

"Years back, I took a case wrapped in three layers," she said. "The judgment didn't even have the full name of the man who owed him money. In the end, I ran him down through an electricity bill—whose machine, whose electricity."

"An electricity bill."

"There's an account name on the bill." She swept the flour from the cutting board into a bowl. "Go check the machine. Behind the machine, there's also a bill."

"I'll take this end from here myself."

"Go ahead," He Xiufen said. "But wherever you get to, don't talk about it yet. When you're drafting your materials, keep your mouth shut."

She picked up her phone, scrolled to that name in the rider group, and tapped call. It rang three times.

"Brother Ma, that app on your phone," she said. "Don't uninstall it. Don't let anyone touch it."

The other end grunted.

Downstairs someone was clearing the tables, the clatter of bowls drifting up in waves. She opened her notebook to the line marked "Dispatch Record." Below that line, the words in the two boxes were still there—first box: Sutong; second box: System, followed by a question mark.

She wrote below that box: server.

[Thud. People and signs will leave, but servers don't sleep.]