Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 78 : The Handler

He Xiufen set her enamel mug down on the table with a thump. The bottom knocked against the wood, water sloshing over the rim and onto the corner of a photocopy, spreading a small gray stain. She wiped the damp mark with her thumb, stopping at the edge of a grid line.

The smell of scallion oil drifted up from downstairs, mixed with the faint scorch of something fried.

”This morning, I want you to read that name.”

”The order only covers three items,” Shen Zhixia said. ”Contract, payment transfer voucher, loan disbursement statement. All verified yesterday.”

”I mean that box in the bottom right corner of the voucher.” He Xiufen turned the paper around, pressing her finger over the three handwritten characters. ”A bank doesnʼt have somebody pull cash out of a drawer and hand it to you. It passes through hands—whoever receives, reviews, approves, disburses, double-checks. At the end, only one handwritten name stays on the page—the handler.”

”This one is the person who did the work.”

”He signed his own name.” He Xiufen slid the paper back. ”Right now youʼve got a name. A name alone means nothing. What you want is the whole batch he processed. One transaction is a slip. A hundred transactions is a business.”

Shen Zhixia flipped the paper over, then back. On page three, the merchant name column still held those same characters; the payee line on the transfer voucher was ten characters; the bottom right box was three characters, blurred together in the scan, strokes connected, no visible pause.

”The two contracts Jiang Bo sent over,” she said, ”have the same writing on page three. But the vouchers for those two transactions arenʼt in my hands.”

”Theyʼre in someone elseʼs file.” He Xiufen picked up her mug, walked to the pothos on the windowsill, and poured out the remaining water. ”The order in your hand doesnʼt reach that far. If you want it to, get the court to sign another one.”

”Could we add him too?”

”Donʼt think about adding people yet.” He Xiufen turned around. ”You need grounds to add someone. First look at whoʼs standing behind these hands.”

[Thud. Justice Checklist item one: Where is the money? No proxy inquiries.]

Tang Guo came down the back stairs, hair half tied up, phone tucked under her arm. ”I went through the private messages for two days.” She turned her screen around. ”Seventeen mentioned the payer. April, May, June—all three months. Someone screenshotted the deposit text message. The account name column shows exactly that long string.”

”Earliest date?”

”April nineteenth.” Tang Guo scrolled up. ”A landlord in Chengxi said so. Twenty-four hundred. She asked me if the name was a scammer.”

Shen Zhixia copied the date into her notebook.

”Sheʼll need to come in with her phone,” she said. ”Look at the messages one by one, sign one by one. A screenshot in my hands doesnʼt count.”

”So is she on our roster?”

”Note it down for now.” She circled the date. ”April nineteenth.”

”Got it.” Tang Guo slipped her phone back into her pocket and stood at the foot of the stairs, not leaving. ”What worries me is something else. The more dates like this pile up, the less patient people get.”

He Xiufen grabbed her cloth bag by the door. ”Letʼs go. The vaultʼs in the back courtyard of the branch. Opens at ten.”

* * *

The vault was on the first floor of a two-story building in the branchʼs back courtyard. They arrived just after ten. A gray iron door, a printed sheet taped to it: Visitors must register. The vault keeper was a man in his fifties, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He checked the order first, then their identities, comparing every character on He Xiufenʼs ID photocopy, then copied the investigation order number into a soft-cover register.

”Phones, bags—lockers outside.”

Shen Zhixia put her phone and pencil case into the metal cabinet. He handed her a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. He Xiufen dragged over a plastic chair, sat against the wall inside the door, and set her enamel mug by her feet.

The dehumidifier hummed in the corner. Rows of kraft paper file boxes lined the steel shelves, years and serial numbers written on their spines. He pulled a box out and set it on the long table. When the lid came off, the smell of paper mixed with a hint of damp.

Tang Guoʼs file wasnʼt thick. Shen Zhixia went through it page by page: the original loan contract, page three with the merchant name still those same characters, matching the photocopy in her hands; the voucher stub—the bankʼs retained copy, one shade darker than the photocopy. Payer account, amount, the ten-character payee line, the summary ”Rent Installment Entrusted Payment”—checked off one by one. Then the disbursement account statement: the inbound transfer, the outbound two thousand on the twentieth of each month. She finished one pass, then started a second from the top.

At last she stopped at the bottom right corner.

The writing was clearer on the original than on the photocopy. The first character was ”Yin.” The second pressed against the grid line—”Jian.” The third, horizontal and vertical strokes, clean—

”Ping.” She read it aloud.

Yin Jianping.

She copied it onto the paper in pencil: name, file number, page number, date, amount, investigation order number. When done, she checked it against the original again.

”Can I photograph this box?”

”No photographs,” the vault keeper said. ”Copying is allowed. Once you walk out that door, what youʼve written belongs to you. This page doesnʼt leave.”

”Where are the other jobs this same person handled?”

”One household, one file.” He pushed the box square, spine facing out. ”This file is for this household. Other householdsʼ business is in their own files.”

”Can I see them?”

”You get the items on your order, nothing more.” He answered fast. ”I canʼt turn one extra page.”

”Hear that?” He Xiufen said from inside the door.

The vault keeper took an Archive Access Register, filled it in line by line: requester, time, file number, page count, subject. At the end he pressed a business seal over it. He tore off the slip and handed it to her. ”Keep this.”

Outside the vault, the sun was white and glaring. Shadows had shrunk to a small patch at their feet. He Xiufen tipped the last drops from her mug into a flowerbed.

Shen Zhixia pulled out her phone and texted Lu Jibai: The bankʼs system keeps records for a batch of loan disbursements handled by the same person, right?

The reply came fast. Two messages, two characters each.

They do. Need an order.

She stared at the screen for two seconds, then turned the phone face down on her lap.

”What did he say?”

”They do. Need an order.”

”Then file a supplementary application tomorrow morning.” He Xiufen stuffed her mug into the cloth bag. ”Write three lines: Who handled it, how many transactions, which account the money went out from.”

[Thud. The words he wrote hold up better than the words he spoke.]

* * *

Three in the afternoon, outside the gate of Xincheng Garden in Chengxi. Jiang Bo stood in the sun with two bottles of water, one half drunk. He handed her the unopened one.

”Found her. Worked the front desk at the Youyu Chengxi store until May. Store shut down; now sheʼs helping watch a phone shop under Building Three.”

The phone shop was on the first floor, a faded half-sheet stuck to the glass: ”Top up, get talk time free.” Inside sat a girl in her early twenties, short hair, half the nail polish chipped off. Jiang Bo called her Xiao Ru.

”I worked the front desk back then. Took materials, entered tables.” Xiao Ru nudged her plastic stool outward. ”Then the doors locked and wages never got paid. May only came through at half. Sis, does that put me on your register?”

”Thatʼs a separate ledger,” Shen Zhixia said. ”Name goes down first. Once your materials are together, Iʼll help you figure out which route to take—wage arrears donʼt get squeezed into the same box as the rental case.”

Xiao Ru nodded, rubbing her hands on her knees.

”Only one person from the bank ever came to the store,” she said. ”Surname Yin, from the Chengdong branch. A relationship manager. End of every month, sometimes Wednesdays. Picked up materials, dropped off forms. The person running the store was Boss Zhou—came once or twice a month, and when he did he went straight to the back room. One time Boss Zhou took Manager Yin to the place next door for a meal. Sent me out to buy three bottles of water.”

”Which day do you remember him coming most clearly?”

”April nineteenth.” No hesitation. ”That day I was waiting for money. Our wages were due on the fifteenth and didnʼt come. On the morning of the nineteenth I went to ask the store manager again. Yin came in the morning, parked in that spot out front, went in after ten, didnʼt come out until noon, carrying a kraft paper envelope. Nobody said anything when he left. That afternoon the store manager told me to tear down the payment QR code at the front desk and put up a new one.”

”The new one was different from the old.”

”Different.” Xiao Ru gestured with her hands. ”The old one was just a short line. The new one was such a long string I couldnʼt even read it smoothly.”

Shen Zhixia didnʼt say the three characters aloud. She rested her notebook on her knee.

”Whatʼs his surname?”

”Yin.”

”Which branch?”

”Chengdong.” Xiao Ru frowned. ”The business card was blue. I still remember that. Later when I turned in my uniform, the card was in it. But I did call his number once—store documents needed a stamp at the branch. Last four digits, three seven six two.”

Jiang Bo twisted the cap back on his bottle. ”Thereʼs one in Chengxi, too. The landlord in Building Four said she received a rent payment on April nineteenth, and the payer was that long account name. She thought it was a scam and even went to the bank to ask. Iʼve got her number on the registration form. Iʼll have her bring her phone tomorrow.”

”Thatʼs the one Tang Guo filtered out this morning,” Shen Zhixia said.

She pulled the stack of copied ledger pages from the file envelope—the hundred twenty-seven pages from the court, with corners folded by month. She opened the April fold. The April nineteenth entry sat halfway down the page.

”Summary says rent installment entrusted payment, twenty-four thousand.” She pointed it out to Jiang Bo. ”This one landed in Xinheʼs account. Same day, that account sent out another payment—twenty-four hundred.”

Jiang Bo bent down and set his bottle on the ground. ”Twenty-four hundred. Exactly what the Building Four landlord received.”

”It matches.”

Shen Zhixia opened her notebook and wrote line by line.

March nineteenth: the landlordsʼ side received its final transfers—both Zhao Guangtianʼs and Ren Dechangʼs households, on the same day.

April nineteenth: the bank side was still feeding the pool. Twenty-four thousand went into Xinhe; same day, that account sent out twenty-four hundred, which the Chengxi landlord received.

June twentieth: Tang Guoʼs two-thousand deduction went through as usual.

When she finished, she added a line beneath the middle entry: Payee, Jiangzhou Xinhe Trading Co., Ltd.

She knew that line well. Three months ago it had appeared in Ren Dechangʼs soft-cover ledger; yesterday, in the payee column of the transfer voucher; today, Chengxi, the private messages, and the bank all pointed to the same day.

[Thud. The ledger changed names, but the hand didnʼt.]

”How much is left in that account now?” Jiang Bo asked.

”Thirty-one yuan forty-six.”

Xiao Ru didnʼt understand. She looked at Shen Zhixia, then at Jiang Bo.

”Sis, my two months of wages—did they go into that pool too?”

”I donʼt know.” Shen Zhixia closed the notebook. ”Weʼll know when we find out.”

She called He Xiufen. When she said the name ”Yin Jianping,” the line went quiet for two seconds.

”Donʼt spread the name yet,” He Xiufen said. ”The moment you do, he gets a month to craft a story.”

”What time tomorrow morning?”

”Eight oʼclock. Copy those three characters for me.”

”Why?”

”I want to see what a name you picked out yourself looks like in your own writing.”

She hung up. The pencil tip had gone blunt; she pushed the lead out a notch with her thumbnail.

”Sis, one more thing.” Xiao Ru nudged her stool in. ”Two days ago I went to ask the store manager about wages. He was on the phone in the shop, and I stood there listening. Before he hung up, he said one thing—stop sending that batch of documents up the line.”

”Who was he talking to?”

”He didnʼt say. Only after he hung up did he tell me the money hadnʼt come.”

The Chengxi wind blew through the shop doorway, making the half-sheet on the glass flutter.

Shen Zhixia copied that sentence onto the last line and drew a line beneath it. The pencil tip stopped on the paper and didnʼt move again.