Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 313: It's Heavy—Help Me Carry It

At five minutes to ten, the hallway light clicked on, and two people came up the stairs. The one in front wore a dark gray jacket, in his forties, both hands empty; the younger one behind him carried a thin briefcase. At the doorway, neither stepped inside. They stood there and looked the place over first.

"The wooden sign at the top of the stairs says 'Zhengping Law Firm,'" the younger one said, pen already in hand. "The application is for Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm."

"Come in. Have a seat inside." Shen Zhixia pushed the door halfway open.

The long table had been wiped down yesterday and again this morning. The inspectors didn't sit at the long table. They sat at the small desk by the door—the seat He Xiufen normally used. He Xiufen had come up at nine-thirty, coat still on, the case intake register spread open in front of her to the page for December 19th. She'd said that once the list was signed, she wouldn't climb these stairs again. But this visit couldn't be avoided. Li Huilan set a cloth bag on the corner of the long table, the mouth of it untied.

"First, the premises," the man in the dark gray jacket said.

He sat down, left the briefcase on his lap unopened, and let his eyes sweep the room: a desk farther in with a pane of glass on top; a long table by the window, one leg propped with half an old magazine; the wall behind the table with a wooden sign nailed to it—the sign was bare; a metal cabinet in the corner, paint worn off around the lock; and a door beyond it leading to the document room.

"Both rooms are used by the firm?"

"The hallway up to the stairs counts too," Shen Zhixia said. "No one else is on this floor."

"Who owns the property?"

"I do," He Xiufen said.

"Is there a signed lease with the firm?"

"No."

The younger man looked up. The older one spun his pen half a turn between his fingers. "Then we'll need a statement. Write out which rooms, that it's rent-free, sign it, and date it today."

Shen Zhixia was already on her feet. She pulled a blank sheet of paper from the drawer beside the metal cabinet, set it in front of He Xiufen, uncapped the pen with her teeth, and handed it over.

He Xiufen wrote slowly: two rooms on the second floor, one document room, shared hallway, rent-free. When she finished, she wrote "He Xiufen," put the date as December 21st, set the pen down, and slid the paper back.

"Fingerprint."

She pressed her thumb into the ink pad, pressed it down beside her name, then raised it to look at the red mark and wiped her finger twice on the corner of the paper.

"How many practicing lawyers?"

"Four," Shen Zhixia said. "Three partners, plus me."

"Three partners."

"Three."

"Cases in progress. One at a time."

"I'm not taking any more," He Xiufen said. "Mine are done."

The younger man's pen stopped. "Not a single one?"

"The last one, signed on the ninth." She pushed the register forward half an inch. "Going forward, the firm's cases won't pass through my hands."

"If you're not working cases, why remain a partner?"

"Money," He Xiufen said.

The older man didn't press further. He wrote a line in his notebook, then looked up. "Who's the person in charge?"

"Until the license is reissued, me," He Xiufen said. "Once it comes through, that box will say him."

The older man glanced at Lu Jibai. "From the day the license is reissued, the 'person in charge' column in the case intake register is to list the new person in charge, and the same goes for any outgoing correspondence. Just so you're clear."

"Clear," Lu Jibai said.

"You were at Hengzheng."

"The change of registration went through on July 17th. I transferred over."

The older man added two more strokes to his notes and didn't pursue it.

"Lawyer Li, your turn."

"Three." Li Huilan laid the case files from her cloth bag out on the long table one by one, the covers marked in pencil on the edges with numbers. "This one's a wage claim—eleven months of wages, two hundred sixty a day. The Arbitration Commission accepted it; hearing's on the twenty-ninth. This one's an elderly support case—a fifty-nine-year-old woman. Her son gives her three hundred a month. What she wants is for him to come visit. This one's legal aid—the assignment letter is still making its way through the center."

"Without the assignment letter, it doesn't count as an active case."

"It's not on paper yet, so I won't count it," Li Huilan said. "But I'm keeping it in mind."

The older man read the cover of each of the three files. He didn't open a single one.

"Lawyer Lu."

"One. A contract dispute, first instance, came in last week," Lu Jibai said. "The firm's affairs just finished changing hands. New cases are on hold for now."

"Lawyer Shen."

"One is mine," Shen Zhixia said. "One is a will mediation agreement—I'm submitting it for judicial confirmation on the morning of the twenty-third. And there's a wage claim, handled by Lawyer Li, with my name on the 'accepting attorney' line."

"What about the legal aid case?"

"The assignment letter hasn't arrived. When it does, whoever handles it will sign their name."

The older man copied this down, his pen hesitating for a beat on the word "one," without looking up. "Going forward, don't leave the 'accepting attorney' line blank. Whoever takes the case signs."

"It's already signed," she said. "Signed December 20th."

The younger man copied the lines down neatly, then raised his chin. "Where are the archives?"

"Seventeen boxes in the document room, three volumes of the case file index." Shen Zhixia said. "Originals submitted by clients are in the metal cabinet."

"Open it."

She pulled the key ring from the inner pocket of her coat. Three keys on the ring: the large one for the metal cabinet, the middle one for the document room, the small one for the second-floor door; all tied with red plastic cord, the other end still tucked into her pocket. The room was very quiet when the deadbolt slid back; the sound seemed loud.

The cabinet door swung open. The top shelf was empty; the middle had several stacks of kraft paper envelopes, each stack with a white label giving the case name and page count; on the bottom shelf sat an old envelope with a single character written on the front: "Kang."

"You don't need to open that one," the older man said. "Clients' property—we don't look at contents, only at storage conditions."

"How do you handle moisture?"

"Two packets of lime in the cabinet, replaced once in the fall."

"Was the replacement recorded?"

"It's in the first page of the handover list, on the line for the seventeen boxes." She added on her own, "The two packets in the cabinet weren't logged separately."

"Going forward, log them separately."

"Understood," she said. "Starting today, logged separately."

The younger man walked to the stairwell, took another look at the wooden sign, came back, and wrote two lines. "The name hasn't changed. No need to replace the sign."

"The day the license is reissued, it needs to be displayed," the older man said.

"Where?"

"Somewhere visible the moment a client walks in, in the same room as case intake."

Shen Zhixia glanced back at the wall. The wooden sign was bare. Beyond it, above the doorframe, there was a ring of four nail holes. One of them still had a broken nail stub in it, and that small patch of wall was lighter than the rest.

The younger man pulled a sheet from his briefcase. The header was printed; the middle had several lines for inspection items; the last two boxes were for the signatures of the inspector and the head of the inspected unit.

"Sign here."

He Xiufen read the page from top to bottom, then read the last line again, and signed "He Xiufen." The pen tip lingered an extra half-second on the final stroke.

[Thud. Inspection items: three. Premises, archives, personnel. All three in order.]

The older man tucked the paper into his briefcase and stood. "We'll review and report up. The province decides. When a decision comes down, we'll call the firm."

"Call the duty number," Shen Zhixia said.

The younger man wrote the number in his notebook. The two of them went downstairs; the stairs creaked seven or eight times, the door below groaned once, and voices carried in from the alley.

He Xiufen stood at the doorway, watching the lower section of the stairwell. "Both of them had polished shoes," she said.

Shen Zhixia locked the metal cabinet and wound the key ring twice before tucking it back into her inner pocket. Li Huilan stacked the three files in their original order and put them back into the cloth bag one by one.

"That line you said—it got written down," Li Huilan said.

"What I said was the truth."

"The truth still has an order to it." Li Huilan tied the bag shut. "He asked why you're still a partner if you're not working cases. You answered with two words: 'Money.'"

"That's what it is."

"Next time someone asks, say 'One case still in progress. When it's done, I'm not taking any more.'"

He Xiufen closed the register and pressed the cover flat with her palm. "It's done."

"This visit was official business, so I came up." She walked to the top of the stairs and rested one hand on the railing. "If people come again, you handle them yourselves."

Li Huilan didn't say anything more.

At eleven-forty, the noodle pot downstairs came to a boil. All four of them were downstairs. He Xiufen ladled soup for everyone, giving Li Huilan's bowl an extra half-scoop, and said nothing else. She carried her own bowl to the stove to eat, then put the bowl in the sink when she was done.

At two that afternoon, Shen Zhixia spread the Kang family's materials out on the second floor and counted them through: the mediation agreement, four pages; the judicial confirmation application, two pages, with the signature lines for both applicants left blank for them to sign in person; photocopies of the ID cards of Kang Wenying and Kang Youxing, one each; a copy of the mediation committee's agreement; and one queue ticket, A037, for the 23rd at nine-thirty in the morning. She used a binder clip to fasten everything into a packet and wrote on the cover: "Kang family, the 23rd, A037." Below it she added a smaller line: remaining balance eighteen thousand, before the 31st.

A little after three, the duty phone rang.

"Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm."

"This is the District Labor Dispute Arbitration Commission." A woman's voice. "Old Kan's case. The 29th at nine-thirty, Courtroom Two. Let him know to bring his ID. We'll try mediation first; if that fails, the hearing starts then and there."

"Noted." She wrote the date on a slip of paper, then copied it onto the corner of the case cover in pencil, in careful block letters.

She dialed Old Kan's number. On the fourth ring, the line opened to the sound of wind.

"Old Kan? This is Shen Zhixia from Zhengping Firm. The 29th at nine-thirty, Arbitration Commission Courtroom Two. Mediation first; if it doesn't work, the hearing starts immediately. Bring your ID."

"Is Director He in?"

"She is," Shen Zhixia said. "I know about this. You can talk to me."

The wind died down a little, and the line went quiet for a beat. "...Then there's my work log. It's still in someone else's hands."

"Whose?"

"The guy who tracked hours at the site, surname Yang. Every day he'd write a line on the blackboard and another in his own notebook. He took the notebook with him. He's at the site up in Chengbei now. Whether he'll hand it over is another question."

"I'll go," Li Huilan said from beside her. She had been staring down at a file the whole time; now she looked up. "I'll make a trip the day after tomorrow. If the papers aren't in hand, I'll still be there on the 29th."

Shen Zhixia nodded at her and spoke into the phone. "Lawyer Li will go the day after tomorrow. Give us the details on this man Yang—which site, which gate—and a phone number if you've got one."

After hanging up, she clipped the note into the file.

"Today's visit—it means we've reached the review stage?" she asked.

"Accepted on the 18th," Lu Jibai said. "Twenty days for review, then it goes to the province, ten days for decision. Today is day three."

"Latest deadline?"

"On paper, from the 18th, thirty days total." He paused. "Some go faster."

"What about the signing authority?"

"Until the license is reissued, the 'person in charge' column in the intake register and any outgoing correspondence lists her," Lu Jibai said. "Her signatures remain valid. They remain valid even after the change."

Shen Zhixia pressed the pencil line on the case cover with the pad of her finger to make it firmer.

At four, footsteps sounded on the stairs—slow, one step at a time. Shen Zhixia pushed the kraft envelope in her hands to the corner of the table and looked up.

He Xiufen had come up. Her apron was still on, both sleeves rolled to the elbows, and she carried nothing in her hands.

"I'll bring the things tomorrow."

Shen Zhixia's hand went still on the envelope.

"What things?"

"Your father's."

Downstairs, someone set an aluminum basin on the counter with a clang.

"I'd originally planned for you to come over alone," He Xiufen said. "I've changed my mind. Keeping them at my home—I don't feel easy about it. Keeping them here—those things of his were written in this very building anyway."

"How heavy?"

"Heavy," He Xiufen said. "Help me carry them."

"Is one of me enough?"

"I can't carry them up by myself." He Xiufen said. "Tomorrow at nine. I'll wait for you downstairs."

"Should I call him?" Shen Zhixia tilted her chin toward the desk by the window.

Lu Jibai raised his eyes for a moment, then lowered them back to his papers.

"Just you," He Xiufen said.

With that, she walked toward the desk farther in, pressed her palm flat against the glass top, then drew her hand back and looked at her palm. She said nothing. She turned and went out the door, down the stairs, one step at a time.

Shen Zhixia stood by the table without moving. Under the glass were a few sheets of paper: her handover list, her notebook, and a blank sheet of paper with a worn corner, flipped over face-down. He Xiufen's palm had landed exactly on that spot.

She set the kraft envelope back at the table's corner, opened her notebook, and wrote a new line: December 21st, tomorrow at nine, go downstairs and carry things up.

When she finished, she studied the word "carry" for a moment, capped the pen, and closed the notebook. Downstairs, the pot lid rattled once.