Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 98 : The Sixth Floor

The search page spun three times before spitting out a line of text.

Jiangzhou Hongkun Investment Management Co., Ltd. Registered Address: Room 609, Sixth Floor, Wanshun Building, No. 188 Wenchang Road, Jiangzhou.

Shen Zhixia wrote "August 27" in the top right corner of her hardcover notebook, then kept copying. She paused at the Legal Representative column: Zheng Hongbin.

This wasn't the first time she'd seen that name. She flipped back through the earlier pages—Minanli Property and Anyu Business had the same Legal Representative. The number Old Cao had saved in his phone had a single character written under it: Zheng. Seventeen companies under his name, eleven deregistered. Same name, but now there was a new footprint: Sixth Floor, Room 609.

Scrolling further down, the business scope stretched out line by line: translation services; business information consulting; investment consulting; corporate management consulting; certification consulting. A company with "investment" in its name, and the first item on the list was translation.

At the bottom was the change record. On April 22, three items changed at once: Legal Representative, shareholder, and contact person. The public filing only showed what changed and when—not who changed to whom.

Then came Xinhe and Youzhu. All three companies' annual report contact numbers were identical, down to the last digit.

She flipped back to the photo Shi Lei had taken of the courier waybill. Under the recipient name "Jiangzhou Hongkun Investment Management Co., Ltd." was an eleven-digit mobile number—different from the one on the annual report.

One sign, two numbers. One posted on the public registry, one printed on a shipping box.

She copied two more room numbers onto the margin of the page: Fourth Floor, 409 and 411—Minanli Property and Anyu Business. Hongkun was in 609. Same building, fourth floor and sixth floor, one name.

[Thud. The fourth floor is the pocket. The sixth floor is the counter.]

Shen Zhixia drew a line under that message and looked up.

Tang Guo was sorting the roster at the far end of the long table, her phone propped between two case files, the screen light washing her chin pale. Shen Zhixia closed the hardcover notebook. "Come up to the sixth floor with me."

"Now?"

"This afternoon."

Tang Guo rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and turned off her phone screen. "What identity do I go as?"

"Colleague."

"Not the boss's wife?"

"The boss's wife would have to spend money."

Tang Guo laughed and yanked her jacket off the back of the chair. As they were heading out, Shen Zhixia said: Prosecutor Zhou gave instructions—nobody goes to that building alone. "So that's why you brought me?" Tang Guo asked. "That's why I brought you."

On the way over, Tang Guo ran through her cover story twice: hardware parts documents, need translation, need certification, urgent. When she finished, she said, "You made it sound believable."

"We're just asking about prices." Shen Zhixia said. "Asking about prices isn't a crime."

The lobby of Wanshun Building wasn't wide. A row of mailboxes lined the wall, the rusted lock plates still showing their years. The directory was old-style—the two slots for the fourth floor held pale yellow printouts, and the sixth floor slot had a small line tucked in: Jiangzhou Hongkun Investment Management Co., Ltd., followed by 609.

Only one elevator went up to the sixth floor. Next to the other elevator's button panel was a handwritten note: Fifth Floor and Below.

When the doors opened on the sixth floor, the first thing that hit was the sound.

Three photocopiers running paper at once, sheet after sheet stacking up, no pause. Along the corridor wall stood a row of cardboard boxes, the tall ones waist-high, the short ones to the knee, white slips taped over their openings. Each white slip had a blue circular stamp on one end, and two handwritten characters on the other: "Certification." Some slips didn't have characters—they had numbers, half-hidden by box corners. She only made out a 29. One box wasn't properly sealed; the corner of a document stuck out, the letters on it curving with hooks and hats she didn't recognize from any language she knew.

At the end of the corridor was a glass partition. Behind it sat three machines in a row, each with a stack of paper at its output tray. Behind the glass door was a long counter, and behind the counter sat a woman, twenty-seven or twenty-eight, dark short-sleeved top, nails clipped short, one hand resting on a stack of white slips.

Shen Zhixia walked up to the counter and slowed her speech. "We have a batch of hardware parts documents that need translating. Urgently. I heard you can rush the certification too."

The woman looked up at her. The look wasn't quick—it traveled from her hair to her face, from her face to the bag in her hand, and finally paused for half a second on the hand gripping that bag. Tang Guo stood half a step behind and to the side, and she got the same head-to-toe scan.

"Who referred you?"

"A friend from Chengnan." Shen Zhixia let the words sit on her tongue for a beat. "He didn't give a name. Just said go to the sixth floor."

"We don't take walk-ins."

"Not even for a rush job? Money isn't a problem."

"I'm not the one who takes the money." The woman lifted her hand from the white slips, then set it back down. "Leave a number. Someone will get back to you."

Shen Zhixia recited her number. The woman nodded once. The pen on the desk didn't move.

"She's with me." Shen Zhixia gestured at Tang Guo.

"If she's with you, she leaves one too."

Tang Guo gave her number. The woman behind the counter still didn't pick up the pen.

Tang Guo's hand was already at her pocket. Shen Zhixia bumped her with an elbow. She said, "We'll wait, then," and stepped back—two steps back, into the corridor. Inside the glass door, the woman had already looked down at the next form, her hand on the paper exactly where it had been.

As they walked toward the elevator, the doors opened. A man stepped out and moved aside to let them pass. He was carrying a hard-shell black bag, the strap digging a white crease into his fingers, his glasses frames thin as a wire. She only caught half his face—he moved fast, through the glass door, and the woman behind the counter stood up for a moment.

The elevator doors closed. It started down. Shen Zhixia put her hands in her pockets and ran Shi Lei's description through her head—thin black-framed glasses, hard-shell bag; and Old Cao had said the man on the fourth floor doesn't look at people when he talks. She had the name, and half a face. Two details matched. What didn't match was the man himself.

[Thud. No entry for walk-ins. That door recognizes faces, not contracts.]

They were out of the lobby before Tang Guo spoke. "She never wrote down your number."

"She never planned to call back."

"Then why'd you recite it?"

"I was reciting my own face." Shen Zhixia said. "She'll remember me."

Tang Guo looked back at the building and pulled her hand out of her pocket. "If we could've gotten footage of this—"

"Can't." Shen Zhixia said. "And I don't want to."

Standing on the steps, she tallied what she had. Shi Lei's delivery note stub and the two written statements could go into the file, but what they contained was three sentences—not three machines on a sixth floor. The photocopiers she'd seen, the boxes with certification slips, the blue circular stamp, the 29 half-hidden under a box corner—all of that existed only in her eyes. And what was in her eyes couldn't go into a case file.

"I'll memorize it." Tang Guo said. "Eleven boxes along the wall. Blue stamp is circular, with a small notch missing on the edge."

"You and your counting."

"I don't film. I remember."

They got back to the apartment above the noodle shop at 4:40. Tang Guo pulled a sheet of paper from her bag and spread it on the long table, corners folded twice and weighed down with her phone.

"Twenty-seven units. All accounted for."

One line per unit: room number, landlord's surname, date. Shen Zhixia ran her fingertip down the page—eleven units fell on the 30th and 31st, with seven on the 30th alone.

"What about these two?"

"The Chengxi one—the landlord's son is getting married next month, they want to repaint early, pushing for the keys back." Tang Guo pointed at the last two lines. "The eleventh-floor one, the landlord's out of town, sending his nephew to pick up the key. Said he won't go inside, just want to check the door."

"How many door lock photos?"

"Nineteen units done, the other eight will get theirs in the next two days." Tang Guo flipped through her photo album to show her—one screen, eight photos, all of locks on doors, the rental notices stuck in a different spot on every door.

"Where's your own unit in the list?"

"Last line." Tang Guo said. "Everyone else goes first."

Shen Zhixia picked up the paper and walked to the windowsill. Under the glass desk pad was a layer of cut paper strips; the one on the far edge bore only a date—the 30th, which she'd pressed in the day before yesterday. She folded the roster in half and laid it beside it.

He Xiufen came up after five, setting two plastic bags on the floor first, then pulling a square slip of paper from her pocket and placing it on the desk calendar. "The police station took it. This time it went in as a lead—the receipt has a case number."

She pulled out a second slip. "Cross-examination of evidence is set. September 3, morning."

"Of the hundred and five transactions, how many confirmations can we have by tonight?"

"Sixty-three."

"All of them by the 30th." He Xiufen untied the plastic bags. "On the day of evidence cross-examination, we read them out one by one. Any number we can't read out doesn't count."

After hearing about the sixth floor visit, she reached out and flipped the calendar forward a page, then back. "She wouldn't even take the documents."

"No."

"Then they're not in the walk-in business. Bulk shipments get delivered and picked up; a walk-in asking one more question is one more mouth." He Xiufen looked at the line with 29 on it twice. "Keep that number to yourself. Don't assign it any work yet."

"I know." Shen Zhixia said. "Everything in my notebook is what I saw with my own eyes."

"To get it into a file, you need someone who can say he saw it—and who's willing to sign his name to it." He Xiufen picked up the plastic bags. "Three machines matching Shi Lei's three sentences—that's today's earnings. Everything else stays on the shelf."

She opened the drawer and pushed the kraft paper envelope lying face-down a little further in, then shut the drawer. The September 3 slip sat on the calendar; the 30th lay under the glass.

[Thud. Three days.]

After eight at night, she was alone upstairs. She sent Lu Jibai a line: The sixth floor is a certification printing operation. Three photocopiers, boxes with "certification" handwritten on them.

Twenty minutes later, the screen lit up: Did anyone ask who you were looking for.

They did. Who referred you, she replied.

Two minutes passed, then another line from him: Remember that face.

She set her phone face-down on the desk and went to close the window. He hadn't asked a single question about whether they'd gone up or what they'd seen.

At 9:40, she opened the hardcover notebook again, flipping to the page where she'd copied the numbers. The eleven digits on the waybill were a mobile number. She pressed them in one by one, only remembering she was standing by the window after she'd finished.

It rang twice. No person picked up.

"Hongkun Certification Department. Please enter the extension number."

It repeated once more, each character enunciated flat and even. She didn't have an extension. After listening to it a third time, she hung up.

She copied the line under the number: Hongkun Certification Department, please enter extension. When she finished, she added one more line in the empty space below: No walk-ins. Faces over money.

Downstairs, the noodle shop's roll-up shutter had long been pulled down, but the light by the door still burned. Before turning off her own light, she thought back to the order of that look—hair, face, bag, finally resting on the hand that held the bag. That half-second was a count: how many people were standing at the door.

That extension line was still blank.