Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 33 : The Yellow Vest on Back Street

The long table wasn't long enough.

The tabletop at Zhengping Firm was two tables pushed together, the seam down the middle misaligned. Twenty powers of attorney were spread out, pressed down from left to right. By the fourteenth, there was no room left, so the remaining six were stacked on the windowsill with an enamel mug holding down a corner.

People were still standing in the stairwell. The building was narrow, and the steps at the turn only fit one foot. When anyone spoke, the sound carried from the second floor all the way down to the noodle pot downstairs. He Xiufen had moved a plastic stool to the bend. If anyone tried to squeeze past, she called them out by name.

"One at a time. The papers aren't going anywhere."

By nine o'clock, everyone was there. Downstairs, a row of electric scooters leaned against the wall, helmets hanging from the handlebars, arranged more neatly than the papers upstairs. Deng Wei stood at one end of the table calling names. Ma Jianjun leaned by the window, a helmet tucked under one arm. Whenever someone filled in the wrong spot, he glanced at it and pushed the paper back.

The first three already had problems.

On one, the fingerprint had been pressed outside the box and landed on the words "Client." On another, the ID card read "Chen Liqun," but the signature column said "A Qun." On a third, the lower right corner was smeared and the paper wrinkled—it had been signed under the tarp yesterday, and that tarp blocked the wind but not the rain.

She picked out the three and set them on her right.

"Anyone who signed a nickname has to sign again. Anyone whose fingerprint went out of the box has to press again. This damp one has to be rewritten." She drew three lines on the back of a scrap sheet. "The name and fingerprint have to land in the same place."

He Xiufen poked her head over from the stairwell. "Why?"

"These papers are going to be shown to other people."

"Add one more rule," He Xiufen said. "After they press their fingerprint, have them press a finger over their own name. On the name, not in the blank space."

Once the papers were sorted, it was the accounts' turn.

She spread the settlement sheet from the recovery disk at the other end of the table. Chengnan Station No. 1, July through September, twenty-three accounts, 36,406. She had counted that figure three times the night before. Today she had to break it down into people.

When she finished, three accounts still weren't tied to a person.

One was someone who had changed accounts once. The old account still owed four hundred seventy-something, and the new one hadn't been settled either. But both batches were run by the same rider, so she combined them into one row and wrote the last digits of both accounts after it.

Another was Lao Chang. He had been running orders on his brother-in-law's account. He took the orders, but the money went into that other account. The settlement sheet only recognized the account, not him.

The last one had a family member's name written in the account-holder column.

She added a note after each of those three rows: "merge," "bring the person in," "bring the person in."

"Accounts recognize accounts, not people," He Xiufen said. "If you want a person to claim an account, the person behind that account has to come press their own fingerprint."

"My account, I can't even log into it myself," Lao Chang said, crouched by the table leg. "Couldn't get in yesterday."

"Not being able to log in doesn't mean you didn't run orders." She handed him the pen. "Can you still see the orders on your phone?"

Lao Chang gripped the pen and didn't write a single word for a long moment.

"The ones you can find, screenshot them and mark the date on each one," she said. "For the ones you can't find, write 'to be supplemented.'"

It was Lao Chang himself who wrote the words "to be supplemented," at the far right, smaller than everyone else's names.

"Put the question of combining cases aside for now." He Xiufen came down from the stairwell and sat at the corner of the table. "Let me ask you this. If twenty people submit together, who's going to stand in front and speak for them?"

She looked first at Ma Jianjun. Ma Jianjun took the helmet out from under his arm, set it on the table, and shook his head.

"My case is already filed in court. If I step forward again, they'll put the two case files side by side and ask me, 'Who do you represent?' I won't have an answer. That question from last time, I still haven't answered."

"Then nominate someone for me."

Xiao Duan spoke first. "Deng Wei."

"Why him?"

"Yesterday under that tarp, with all those people, he was the only one who first asked, 'If the accounts are banned for a month, what do we do?'" Xiao Duan said. "He was asking about everybody's problem."

Deng Wei stood at the other end of the table and didn't answer right away. He neatened the stack of ID copies in his hands, running a finger along the edge. The stack was still warm, just brought upstairs from the copy shop below.

"I just brought my son here from our hometown to go to school," he said. "If I put myself out front here and they come looking for me, they'll find me."

"Remember those words," she said. "If you don't want to take it on, say so now."

"I'll take it." Deng Wei said. "I'll add one thing: for anything they haven't agreed to, I won't speak on their behalf."

She took out a fresh sheet and wrote on the spot: Deng Wei is nominated as representative of the joint applicants, authorized to submit materials, make statements, and sign for documents. Any admission of claims, waiver of claims, or amendment of claims requires the consent of all joint applicants. When she finished, she read it aloud from the first line to the last. When she reached "waiver of claims," Deng Wei raised a hand to stop her.

"Read that part again."

She read it again.

Following the order of yesterday's signature sheet, the twenty came forward one by one to sign. Ma Jianjun was first. After signing, he didn't leave. He stood by the table and watched the other nineteen sign.

[Thud. Unsettled Ledger: Chengnan Station No. 1, Ma Jianjun—beneath those twenty lines of small print, one representative has been added.]

After the nomination form was signed, she carried another stack of printouts to the table: twenty account ban screenshots, with the three-column list she had copied yesterday while sitting on a plastic stool clipped on top.

"Write three things on the back," He Xiufen said. "Who captured it, when, and from which phone. If those three aren't clear, they'll throw it back with one phrase—'source unknown.'"

The twenty bent over the table to write. Some wrote slowly, the words "my own phone" coming out crooked. Xiao Duan wrote quickly, and when he finished, he drew a circle around the time: 23:57 to 00:19.

At the bottom, she wrote one line: The twenty screenshots above were captured by the individuals themselves, from 23:57 on December 15 to 00:19 on December 16.

At noon, as she went downstairs, the scent of scallion oil still hung in the stairwell.

She rode to Back Street behind Chengnan Station No. 1. The repair stall's tarp was still up, and beneath it stood an extra empty plastic stool. Lao Song sat outside the stall, holding a screw that hadn't been tightened.

"That man in the yellow vest who stood on Back Street that day," she said. "Would you still recognize him?"

"I would." Lao Song set down the screw. "In November, the one collecting ID cards at that folding table in the station was him. He called people in one by one, put their ID cards on the table, and aimed a phone at their faces."

"How did you recognize him?"

"Our yellow has the same logo front and back," Lao Song said. "The one on his back had words printed on it: Copy, Agency Services. Real uniform vests don't have that stuff printed on them."

"Where can I find him now?"

"Go north, past the intersection. By the hospital wall there's a shop with a 'Copy, Photos, Agency' sign," Lao Song said. "His surname is Dou. It's written under the sign. Back then, people from the station went over there every day. If they couldn't get it done, they came back and got chewed out."

The print shop's door was glass, with a sheet taped to it: Copies, 0.5 yuan; one-inch photos, 10 yuan per sheet; license agency services. Inside, a copier was running. A blue cloth backdrop stood in the corner, and a laminating machine sat on the floor. The man behind the counter was in his forties, wearing blue cloth sleeve covers and a yellow vest over his shoulders. Six words were printed on the back: Copy, Photos, Agency.

She pushed open the door.

"Copies or photos?" the man asked.

"Mr. Dou," she said. "On the morning of the 15th, outside the repair stall on Back Street, standing with your arms crossed. That was you."

He pushed his sleeve covers up a little and didn't answer. In the back room, the copier still ran, paper stacking on paper in the output tray, untended.

"I don't know you."

"You counted twenty people."

"Who told you that?"

"Someone who helped carry that table."

"The table's none of my business," he said. "The station bought that table."

"What about the forms?"

He picked up the stack from the output tray, shook it twice to square the edges, and set it on the counter.

"The forms were given to me," he said. "Stack after stack. The names were already written on the paper. My job was to get people to press their prints. Thirty per person, paid by the trip."

"How many trips did you make to Chengnan Station No. 1?"

"Two." He held up two fingers. "Once last month, once in November. That November trip had too many people to finish in one day, so I came back the next day."

"What about the trip on the 15th?"

"The 15th wasn't for handling paperwork," he said. "Someone told me to go over and take a look. I just stood outside and looked."

"Look at what?"

"How many people there were." He looked up at her. "Twenty. I counted them row by row."

She didn't push further. She finished writing that line in her hardcover notebook, then looked up.

"That day, you saw that paper too."

"I saw it. I took a photo."

"Who did you send the photo to?"

"I sent it."

"To whom?"

"The account that gave me the forms."

"Whose account is that?"

"Sun," he said. "Don't ask his name. I never wrote his name. I only passed things along."

Her pen stopped on the page. Below those two lines, there was a stretch of empty space.

"I'll give you this much," she said. "I won't write your name. I'll only write that I came to this shop today and asked about a form."

"If you write my name, I'll lose this work," he said. "I only make so many thirty-yuan trips a month."

"Then tell me something I can actually check."

He stood for a moment, walked to the counter, flipped through the top stack of unopened forms, then shoved them back into the drawer, quick, as if they were hot.

"I'm not taking this work anymore," he said. "Since last week, the station hasn't called me either."

As she put away her notebook, he added from behind, "Can you get the money back?"

"I'm working on it."

"I haven't been paid the thirty from the month before last yet," he said. "If you get yours back, stop by and let me know."

[Thud. Justice Checklist: What you can still submit is those twenty screenshots. The paper he mentioned is not in your hands.]

As she left, she glanced back. On the glass door, the "License Agency Services" sheet had a corner torn half off.

A little after five in the evening, she called the Arbitration Office. Shao Hong was on the other end.

"Submit once the materials are complete," Shao Hong said. "Three things. First, all twenty people have to sign the application. The signatures have to be in their own hand, and their IDs checked. Anyone who can't come in person needs a power of attorney. Don't substitute a piece of paper for a person."

"Second."

"Second, the person speaking on their behalf needs a nomination letter stating exactly what he can and cannot do for them. Otherwise, at the hearing, when they ask him, 'Can you agree to this for them?' your own side will fall apart first."

"Third."

"Third, whether one employing entity and the same set of facts can be combined onto one sheet depends on whose desk the materials land on." She paused. "If you're missing one thing, I'll send it back. The days are yours to lose."

She wrote "send it back" at the edge of her notebook. Three days left until the 19th.

Deng Wei came up the stairs, bringing a chill into the room. He held a paper with a number written on it.

"This afternoon two people got phone calls," he said. "Lao Chang was one. The one using the family member's account was the other."

"What did they say?"

"They said, 'Withdraw that paper, and the account gets unbanned for you first.'" He put the paper on the table. "Their exact words: Withdraw it, and the account gets unbanned for you first. They also said there are limited spots for unbans."

She stared for a moment at the two lines in her notebook that said "bring the person in."

The other side had this list too. Out of twenty people, they had picked the two softest papers.

"The calls went to exactly those two," Deng Wei said. "The two whose names and accounts didn't match."

"Lao Chang wants to withdraw," he said. "He says the account was never his."

"He can't withdraw." She pushed the paper to the edge of the table. "He took the orders, he ran the routes, and the money went into someone else's account. The ledger doesn't recognize him, but the work was his. Have him screenshot his order records from the past few months one by one—as many as he can get."

"He can't manage that phone himself."

"Then you teach him," she said. "One lesson is faster than a day of him figuring it out alone."

"The window requires people to appear in person," she said. "All twenty. Not one can be missing."

"If they have to appear, they'll appear," Deng Wei said. "The accounts are all banned, so there are no orders to run anyway. I'll go door to door."

"When you go, remember two things," she said. "Don't argue with anyone. When someone speaks, don't nod for them. Don't speak for anything they haven't agreed to."

"Got it." He walked to the door, then looked back. "What were you saying this morning—you found him."

"Found him," she said. "The one who counted people on Back Street the day they signed."

"Then I'll pass that on."

"Passing it on is enough."

Deng Wei went downstairs. The stairwell's sound-activated light went out, then as he walked down step by step, on the seventh step it lit up again.