Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 312: Three-Page Checklist

He Xiufen picked up the key ring from the corner of the desk by the wall and set it on top of the three pages. Metal met wood with a small sound, lighter than she expected.

"Nine fifty-five," Lu Jibai said.

"Go ahead and count," He Xiufen said, pressing the apron pocket against her waist. "I'm only climbing those stairs once today."

Shen Zhixia squared the three pages in the center of the table. The long table by the window had been carried out of the document room on the sixteenth; the short leg was propped on half an old magazine, and it still creaked whenever anyone touched it.

"Three pages, three copies each, nine sheets," she said. "I'll read page by page. Item by item."

"Read."

He Xiufen sat down across from her, both hands resting on the table's edge.

"Page one. Case file indices, three volumes: file forty-three, file thirty-nine, file thirty-one. All present. Document room, seventeen boxes, labels on each, numbered one through seventeen. Legal-aid files, twelve volumes."

She paused.

"Volume four is missing the case-closure page. That case never closed. I didn't add it."

"Good that you didn't. Write anything in and it's your handwriting. Someday someone flips to that page. They'd see you."

"Four volumes in the handler column only have the single character 'He.' I filled in the full name, and under each entry I wrote a line in small print: added by, Shen Zhixia."

"Good. You add it, you own it."

"Page two. One firm seal, one finance seal, one and a half volumes of the seal-usage register. Basic account: 387,380 yuan. Legal-aid subsidy account: 620 yuan. The two deposit certificates opened on the eighteenth cost forty yuan, paid from firm funds, recorded in the expense column."

"Ask him if the figures are right."

"They're right." Lu Jibai flipped over his copy. "The three capital contributions, their dates, and which pages the vouchers are on—I wrote it under line five. The originals of the two bank certificates are with the Justice Bureau. The copies are in the file."

"Page three." She slid the paper down an inch. "One active legal-aid case; assignment notice pending from the center. One duty phone; number unchanged. One metal cabinet; key on the key ring. The noodle shop is not in this inventory."

When she finished the last line, she glanced up.

"The noodle shop is mine," He Xiufen said. "It doesn't go in here."

"What about the account books?"

"Those either. Those are downstairs books, for my own accounts."

Shen Zhixia turned back to page one and pointed at a blank row.

"Box five—I couldn't write a name. That cell is empty. I didn't dare fill it."

"Cases from the early years. No computers back then. Everything copied by hand, character by character, onto draft paper, corners sewn with needle and thread." He Xiufen said, "No need to fill it. If you ever need to look through it, wear gloves. The paper's brittle. Pull too hard and it crumbles."

At 10:20, the duty phone rang. Shen Zhixia picked it up. A man on the other end, hoarse voice, asking what was happening with those eleven months of back wages.

"Give me a date, and I'll find your case," she said.

He got the date wrong twice. She walked him back, line by line, until they landed on December nineteenth: Lao Kan, wages, 260 yuan a day.

"That's the one."

"I still need something showing how many days you actually worked." She said, "Get it to me before the twenty-ninth. Once we have it, I'll call you."

"Is Director He there?"

She glanced across the table. He Xiufen's hand moved under the table, a small shooing motion, toward her.

"Yes, she is." She said, "But this case is mine now. Talk to me."

The man grunted twice, repeated his address, and said he'd come up next time to drop off a record he'd found. She wrote the address in her notebook and hung up.

"Everything before that was right," He Xiufen said. "That last line was wrong."

"Which part?"

"'Mine.'" He Xiufen lifted her hand from under the table. "What he hears isn't 'someone has my case.' It's 'Director He isn't handling it anymore.' That hollows a person out before anything else."

"Then what do I say?"

"Two short sentences. 'Is Director He there?' You answer: yes. Then say: 'I know about this case. You can talk to me.' Don't be afraid of short. It holds."

Shen Zhixia wrote the two sentences in the margin of her notebook, then read them back aloud, to herself.

"If you can read them aloud, you can answer with them."

He Xiufen uncapped her pen and laid it on the paper. At the bottom of the three pages were three signature boxes: Transferor, Recipient, and Case Successor. Nine sheets, three names per box.

"Who signs first?"

"You sign the first one." He Xiufen said, "I sign last. Once I sign, the transfer is done."

"That's backwards."

"It's not backwards." He Xiufen turned the pen around, pointing the tip toward herself. "For twenty years I signed as the one receiving cases. Today I sign as the one releasing them. After this stroke, this box has one name left."

Shen Zhixia took the pen. The space after "Case Successor" was wider than the other two—noticeably wider—and the paper still held indentation marks from years of past signatures, ghost strokes visible through the page. She wrote slowly. When she finished she read it twice, then slid the paper an inch to the side so He Xiufen could see.

[Thud. This box. From now on, someone's signature goes here.]

Lu Jibai signed after "Recipient," the last stroke lifting slightly without smearing. He Xiufen signed last, slower than anyone. Her final stroke pressed down hard, leaving a dot of ink. When she finished, she reached out and pressed her fingertip against that line, held it there without lifting, and only after a moment drew it back.

"Three copies," she said. "One for you, one for him, one for me."

Shen Zhixia separated the three: one pushed to Lu Jibai, one into the case file, the last slid to He Xiufen's hand.

"Lawyer Li went out early this morning," she said. "The legal-aid center asked her to come in and pick up the assignment notice, and to get the paperwork sorted out for the old woman's case."

"She's only been here two days and she's already out the door."

"She said she knows the window over there. Anyone else would need two trips."

"The appointment on the twenty-third. What time?"

"Nine thirty. Number A037."

"The slip. She has it on her?"

"On her."

"The 18,000 for the Kang family."

"Before the thirty-first. I left the space after the thirty-first line blank. I'll fill it in when it's done."

He Xiufen nodded. She didn't ask again.

She stood and walked to the inner room door, looked inside. The metal cabinet's door was shut, the file cabinet's latch closed. On top lay a folded old newspaper, used as a cover. She came back and sat, then pushed the key ring across to Shen Zhixia.

"Three keys. The big one opens the metal cabinet. The middle one opens the document room. The small one is for the door at the top of these stairs—the second-floor front door. The originals are all in the metal cabinet. One cubby for the Kang family. One empty. The empty one's yours. The Kang family cubby—don't close it out until the judicial confirmation is filed. Don't move a single sheet."

"The empty cubby. I wiped it out last night."

"No need to wipe it."

"It's already wiped."

"Don't hang the keys out in the open," He Xiufen said. "If the keys are in your pocket, they shouldn't be in anyone else's."

Shen Zhixia held the key ring up. The red plastic cord was worn white in places. The teeth of all three keys gleamed, except the small one, which still had a slight burr—the one least used.

"The second shelf in the file cabinet is still yours," He Xiufen said suddenly. "That key. You kept it?"

"I did. The tape's still wrapped around the teeth."

"If you kept it, it still opens."

She picked up the phone book from the corner of the desk—a rubber band around it, edges frayed—and pushed it over.

"Legal-aid duty numbers. The Women's Federation. The neighborhood mediation committee. The police station duty rooms. The welfare home. All in here. Go through it once. If you don't recognize a number, call it and ask. Don't wait until someone asks you."

Shen Zhixia slipped off the rubber band and flipped two pages. Pencil markings everywhere: some numbers circled, some crossed out and rewritten. Tucked inside was a small slip of paper that read: call at night, first say it's not about the money.

"This number hasn't changed in over twenty years. The clients are used to it."

"We won't change it."

"You answered too fast." He Xiufen said, "Someday the line gets upgraded. When the phone technician is there, the day they do the installation, that's the day you say the number stays."

Finally she opened her canvas bag and took from the innermost layer a flat iron box, which she set beside Lu Jibai's hand. There were two scratches on the lid; one long, one stopping halfway.

"Firm seal. Finance seal." She said, "You take charge of them now."

Lu Jibai lifted the lid. The two seals rested on red velvet; each had left its own recessed impression in the cloth. He opened the navy-covered seal-usage register to a fresh page and wrote: December 20. Transfer of firm seal and finance seal. Transferor: He Xiufen. Recipient: Lu Jibai.

The pen stopped at the second line. He Xiufen reached over and turned the register half an inch.

"Write one more line under that: the finance seal gets pressed once, first, through her hands."

He wrote it. Then pushed the register back. He Xiufen looked it over and pushed it back to him.

"As the person in charge, outside, you sign your name." She said, "Inside, when something goes wrong, you still sign your name. If the firm owes money, they come for you."

"I know."

"Li Huilan asked you that once. I'm asking again for her today."

"If the firm owes money, come for me first."

[Thud. The seal changed hands. The keys changed pockets.]

Lu Jibai placed the iron box in the lower compartment of the metal cabinet. Shen Zhixia followed and locked it. The red plastic cord swayed once against the cabinet door. She wound the key ring twice around and tucked it into the inner pocket of her padded coat. The pocket's bottom swayed; metal knocked against cloth.

Eleven o'clock. Someone outside the downstairs door called out. He Xiufen answered, but didn't move.

"The firm's affairs are settled," she said.

"One thing remains." Shen Zhixia said, "The certificate."

"The certificate is the provincial office's business. The people in this firm were settled today."

Shen Zhixia sat down, rested her hands on the table's edge exactly where He Xiufen's had been.

"You've been quiet these last couple days."

"What use are words?"

"Yesterday I stood at the door about to ask."

"Then ask."

"You wouldn't have answered anyway."

He Xiufen smiled, brief, then wiped her hands on her apron. "Some things, when you say them, they're for other people. Some things, you say them for yourself. These past two days, everything I've said has been the first kind."

She pressed the inner pocket of her coat, where the folded copy of the checklist sat.

"There's one more thing at home."

Shen Zhixia looked up.

"Your father's."

Lu Jibai closed the register and set it beside the iron box without a word.

"What is it?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"I'll give it to you in a couple days. Not here."

"Which day?"

"A couple days. Pick an afternoon. You come alone."

"Alone."

"Alone."

"How long have you had it?"

"A while." He Xiufen said, "I haven't touched it all these years. Never dared to open it for you."

"Did my father leave it with you?"

"He asked me to keep it." She squeezed the corner of the apron into her palm, then let go. "When he entrusted it to me, he said something. What he said—I'll tell you. In a couple days. This is something I'll only say once. I don't want to say it twice."

Shen Zhixia wanted to ask if it had to do with that case. The words reached her lips; then she saw He Xiufen take the folded checklist out of her inner pocket and look at it once more, slowly, and swallowed the question.

"All right," she said. "A couple days."

He Xiufen stood and walked toward the stairwell. At the door she looked back across the room: the desk along the wall, the wall behind it, the metal cabinet, the file cabinet, the pothos on the windowsill, down to a single stem. Above the doorframe, four nail holes remained. She had taken down the "Director" placard as soon as she came upstairs; the wall behind it was a shade lighter, and one of the four holes still held half a broken nail.

"Eleven thirty, the noodles go in the pot," she said. "Both of you, come down."

Her footsteps went down one flight, then another.

Shen Zhixia stood in the doorway, looking at that lighter patch of wall above the doorframe. Two Novembers ago, in this same building, He Xiufen had shown her a third copy of a carbon-paper form and left her with a single sentence: if you want to ask, go ask that box of his. She'd dragged that box out once, opened it, turned to the line on the title page—Evidence speaks for itself—and hadn't dared to turn the next page. Today the sentence was reversed: the thing wasn't in that box under her bed. It was in He Xiufen's home, where it had sat for years. The person who'd left it was gone.

She turned, pulled out her copy of the checklist, and pressed it under the glass desk pad, laid side by side with her notebook. Under the glass there was still a sheet of blank paper, its edge rough and folded over, face-down. No one had touched it. No one would.

Downstairs, a pot lid lifted. Steam rose up the stairwell, and with it, the smell of scallion oil.