Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 26 : The Third Sign

On the morning of December 8, the fan in the firm's old laptop ran louder than the printer.

The first thing she did was type "Jiangzhou Sutong Delivery Service Co., Ltd." into the Public Information Registry. The annual report page came up. She read it line by line: registered capital of five hundred thousand yuan, subscribed, with zero in the paid-in column; one shareholder only, Wang Yuhai, holding one hundred percent; zero employees; zero people enrolled in social insurance; the registered phone number was that disconnected number; the business address was that road and that number in Old Town District, fifth floor.

She circled "zero employees." She had seen that number once before, on another company's annual report. A one-person operation, filled in just as neatly, also zero. The two companies had registered at the same door.

She typed "Wang Yuhai" into the search box and pressed Enter. Four companies came up. Sutong was one. The other three were all in Jiangzhou, all with delivery or freight in their names. Two were marked "Revoked," and one was "Revoked but Not Deregistered." All four used the same registered phone number.

One man was the boss of four companies, and in all four companies, he had never worked a single day.

[Thud. One boss, four companies; someone else works the shifts.]

She copied the name into her hardcover notebook and, when she finished, put a question mark beside it. This man—who had put him in front of this door?

Then she typed in "Sun Jianhua."

Twenty-seven results came up for that name. She scrolled down, checking the business premises column one by one. The fifth ran a noodle shop, the ninth repaired motorcycles, the thirteenth owned a building materials store. Old Town District, that road, that number, fifth floor—she had to scroll down twice before she could believe it.

Jianhua Delivery Service Department. Operator: Sun Jianhua. Registration date: November 20. Capital: thirty thousand yuan. Business scope: delivery services, loading and unloading.

She let go of the mouse and scrolled back up to look at the annual report address of the previous company. Not one word was different.

[Thud. The sign gets nailed up first, then someone steps in behind it.]

She copied the date into her notebook and added a parenthetical after it: before case filing. That day, before she even had a receipt in hand, this man had already gotten his sign made.

She suddenly remembered what Ma Jianjun had brought back last week—the station had called two people over, saying they needed to get a license. Only if they became sole proprietors could the money come out.

She pulled out the three pages of bank statements and found the July transaction. Payer account name: Wang Yuhai.

She drew a line from those three lines down to the shareholder column she had written earlier. The money had come out of a private account belonging to a man named Wang and gone into a rider's pocket. And that same Wang was the boss of the defendant company, and its only shareholder. The man who had paid the money was now sitting in the defendant's seat.

She pressed the tip of the pen against the paper but wrote nothing.

She added a line in her notebook: three printed query pages, one yuan fifty.

A little after two that afternoon, she went to the old building in Old Town District.

The hallway still had that smell, and the sound-activated light needed two stomps before it came on. At the end of the fifth-floor corridor, the mail basket was still there, with two letters lying in it, fronts facing up. She walked over and looked, but did not reach out. The letters sat there for someone to collect. Who came for them couldn't be told from the paper.

On the door, the sign on the left was Sutong's. Its corners were curled, with a gray crease pressed across it. On the right there was a new one, white background, black lettering, four screws in the corners, fixed perfectly straight.

Jianhua Delivery Service Department.

She stepped back two paces and photographed them one by one: the door number, the two signs, the same gap under the door beneath them. Last time she had photographed this door, only the old sign had been there. She had assumed the other two belonged to companies that had moved and forgotten to take them down.

Footsteps came up the stairs. A woman around fifty, a cloth bag over her shoulder, walked to the basket, bent down, pulled out the two letters, and tucked them into the side of her bag. Shen Zhixia asked, "Do you know this place?"

The woman shook her head. "I just pick up the mail."

"Who told you to pick it up?"

The woman didn't answer. She picked up her bag and went downstairs. The sound-activated light switched off once under her feet, came back on, and then there was nothing.

Close to six in the evening, she made her way over to Chengnan Station No. 1.

The van was still parked outside the station, the platform's logo printed on its side. People picking up orders, charging their bikes, and crouching on the steps eating noodles crowded together. Xiao Duan was sitting on the bottom step, helmet by his feet.

"Brother Ma's out on deliveries," he said. "If you wanted to ask him about that thing, I can tell you too."

She sat down beside him on the steps. "You went to handle it yesterday?"

"I went." Xiao Duan stuck his chopsticks upright in the rim of his bowl. "The station manager called three people. My account was still gray, so he didn't call me. I tagged along myself and stood in the back watching. On the second floor of the Government Service Hall, they didn't have them fill anything out themselves. There was a woman there handling it for them. She had the forms all typed up. They just had to sign."

"What did she say?"

"She said, from now on, you don't work for the platform." Xiao Duan tucked his chin in, imitating her tone. "You provide services to the platform. The money goes into your own account. If you need invoices, you write them yourself."

"What did the three say?"

"One of them asked, 'Then what about my first two months?'" He lowered his head and shoveled in a couple of mouthfuls. "She said that counts as before."

"Who signed?"

"Xiao Xu." Xiao Duan set the noodle bowl down. "The station said that starting in January, anyone who hasn't done it won't get orders."

She didn't respond.

Xiao Duan suddenly looked up. "There's something else I want to show you." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, wiped the screen with his greasy fingers a couple of times, and handed it over.

The Rider App had updated. At the top of the home page, a new banner had appeared, white background with red text: For settlement purposes, please confirm that you have business entity status. Below the banner were two buttons: "Later" and "Confirm." He had tapped "Later" yesterday, and today it popped up again.

She swiped up to the "Mine" page. The check-in column was still there, and the location was still the station's door number. She scrolled all the way down—the fine print at the bottom of the About page was still the same: Developer: Hurricane Express (Jiangzhou) Network Technology Co., Ltd.

"Don't tap Confirm." She handed the phone back. "Don't uninstall it, don't change numbers. Send me this banner together with those two pages from yesterday."

"Which number do I send it to?"

"My old one. Keep a copy for yourself after you send it." She stood and wiped her hand on her pants. "Can you get a shot of the form Xiao Xu signed?"

"I'll see." Xiao Duan thought for a moment. "He shares a room with me."

[Thud. Turn a rider into his own boss, then ask whom he reports to.]

Back at the office near ten. The kitchen downstairs was still going, and the smell of scallion oil crept up the stairwell.

She spread three sets of paper on the table by the window: the annual report, the sole proprietorship registration information, and five photographs. She pulled out a blank sheet and drew from top to bottom.

At the very top she wrote the name of the platform. A vertical line down from it to "Jiangzhou Sutong Delivery Service Co., Ltd.," followed by a parenthetical: Wang Yuhai. Then another vertical line down to "Jianhua Delivery Service Department," parenthetical: Sun Jianhua. At the bottom she wrote "Rider," and after it she left a parenthetical blank.

When she finished, she looked at it for a while. The company at the top had plenty of people, but not a single post under its name. The one in the middle had a hundred people standing on paper, but not one in its office. The bottom layer had only nailed its sign up yesterday—and the man who had nailed it up had just walked out of someone else's ranks.

He Xiufen came upstairs carrying two bowls of noodles, pushed one toward her, and glanced at the paper.

"The lines aren't badly drawn," she said. "But lines are just lines."

"What do you mean?"

"Signing a contract doesn't mean it's really outsourcing." He Xiufen sat down. "In a case like this, the judge doesn't ask whether the contract says outsourcing. He asks who's in charge. Who dispatches the orders, who issues the fines, who grayed out his account. The contract says it's on the outside, but the facts are full of the same party doing the managing—only when you put those two things on the same table can you see it."

[Thud. A contract rules the page; it can't rule the hand.]

Shen Zhixia set down her pen. "Of the three things you wanted, I've gotten two. The machine is on the platform's servers. The money came out of Wang Yuhai's account. The third is in Sun Jianhua's hands—he is that sign himself."

"Then put that sign in the application to collect evidence as well." He Xiufen picked up her chopsticks. "Don't wait until the hearing."

Downstairs, someone called her name from the stairwell. A courier came up and handed her a kraft-paper envelope. In the corner was a line of small print: Hengzheng Law Firm.

She opened it. One sheet of paper, no more and no less: We acknowledge receipt of the complaint and copies of evidence materials you submitted to the court. Our firm has been retained to represent… Should you release false information about this case or disclose commercial or system information related to the case to the media or third parties, our firm will pursue liability according to law. It was signed with two names: first, Lu Jibai; second, Lü Hang.

Before folding the paper in half, she paused on that signature line, then slipped it into the case file without throwing it away.

"Who sent it?" He Xiufen looked up from her noodle bowl.

"The platform's lawyers. A letter."

"What does it say?"

"That I should keep my mouth shut."

He Xiufen set her chopsticks down with a tap. "The hearing hasn't even started, and they're already trying to muzzle you."

When she returned to the desk, her phone buzzed beside the stack of papers.

That number appeared on the screen. Area code first, then eight digits. Last time it had only sent a single line.

She answered.

On the other end there was first the sound of traffic, tires rolling through a patch of water. Then a man's voice, in his forties or so, hoarse, speaking slowly.

"Shen Zhixia."

He didn't wait for her to answer. "You don't need to keep digging."

Her right hand was already pressing the red dot on the screen. Her fingertip was a little slippery; it took two tries to press it down.

"Even if you dig to the bottom, it won't do you any good."

A pause of two or three seconds. She didn't speak. The traffic noise on the other end moved farther away, as if someone had taken the phone from his ear.

A soft click, and it hung up.

She called back. The recorded female voice on the line was the same as before: The number you have dialed has been discontinued.

She set the phone flat and looked at the recording. Duration: twelve seconds.

"Who?" He Xiufen looked up.

"Sun Jianhua."

"How do you recognize him?"

"It's the number he signed on the lease agreement."

He Xiufen put down her chopsticks. "If he really weren't afraid, he wouldn't have made this call."

"This call he made—"

"It's him pressing his own fingerprint onto the page." He Xiufen finished the thought for her. "He wants you to stop digging. But what he's actually telling you is that the line you drew today is pressing down on him."

She opened her notebook to the page from that afternoon. She copied the words down exactly as they had been said, not changing a single one. Below them she added the number and the time, and after the number she added a line: This number can call out, but no one can call in.

When she finished, she drew a horizontal line beneath the "Jianhua Delivery Service Department" row, leaving the space after it blank.

She closed the notebook and nudged the desk lamp toward the papers. The line on the annual report—"Employees: 0"—still sat at the very top, black on white. She stared at those words for a moment. This chain had three names written on it. Tonight, one of them had spoken up on his own.