Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 100 : Boss Zhou

On the afternoon of August 29th, the landline downstairs rang.

Shen Zhixia sat at the east end of the long table counting receipts. Ninety-six of them, divided into four stacks by account name, checking names, amounts, and dates one by one. She was on the third stack when she found one underneath with only a fingerprint and no signature—Minʼan Li Building No. 6, Kong Xiulanʼs building. She set it aside at the corner of the table and kept counting.

The phone rang three times before He Xiufen came out from the kitchen, apron still on, and picked up the receiver.

”Who is it.”

The person on the other end said a few words. He Xiufen listened, grunted, and said, ”Sheʼs not here.”

She listened again. ”Thereʼs a lot of work. Backed up until next week. Iʼll have to see the goods before anythingʼs decided.”

She hung up the receiver and nodded toward the long table. ”Hongkun Certification Department. Asking when those three hundred pages of hardware fittings are being delivered.”

Shen Zhixiaʼs pen stopped halfway down a receipt.

”She didnʼt say much more.” He Xiufen untied her apron and draped it over the back of a chair. ”Just asked when the delivery was coming. I said you werenʼt here.”

”Theyʼve got this number memorized.”

”I gave them the number. Iʼll answer it.” He Xiufen sat down at the other end of the table, pulled a stack of receipts over, and casually wiped the receiver with her sleeve. ”You keep recording that ledger.”

”Still nine short.”

”Tomorrowʼs the thirtieth. One of themʼs in Dongguan. Call them tonight.” He Xiufenʼs fingers moved down the page. ”A number you canʼt read back, doesnʼt count.”

”If they come looking for me,” Shen Zhixia put her pen down, ”do they want that shipment, or do they want to see what kind of person I am.”

”Both.” He Xiufen said. ”Theyʼre not short on clients. What theyʼre short on is a stated purpose—a real one, for someone who needs to move money out. You said three hundred pages. That landed right on their scale.”

”Tomorrowʼs the thirtieth. There are still seven households on the list handing over keys.”

”Keys are keys. Money is money.” He Xiufen squared the stack of receipts. ”Keys are in the landlordsʼ hands. Moneyʼs on someone elseʼs forms. Whichever moves first, we take that end first.”

At 3:37, Shi Lei sent a voice message. Forty-seven seconds long. The first twenty seconds were the sound of three machines running paper at once, a elevator hum mixed in, and at the end someone speaking—muffled by something, hard to make out.

Shen Zhixia turned the volume all the way up and listened again. She caught four words: The certification is complete.

At 4:20, Shi Lei came upstairs. He was holding the delivery note stub in his palm, the corners softened with sweat. He walked in and put his phone face-down on the long table without sitting up straight.

”Boss, I got it on tape.”

”How did you record it,” He Xiufen asked.

”The delivery went to the sixth floor. The front desk told me to put the boxes against the wall in the hallway, not inside. The signature form had to be signed inside, so I stood by the elevator.” He said, ”The phone was in my right pants pocket. I pressed record before getting in the elevator and never took it out. Waited nine minutes.”

”During those nine minutes, did anyone watch you.”

”Yes. Someone paced the hallway twice. The second time, he stopped in front of me for a second and looked at my shoes.” Shi Lei glanced down at his own shoes. ”Theyʼre covered in dust.”

”Who signed the delivery form.”

”Last time, the guy who came out to sign was the one with glasses—a sloppy scrawl. Todayʼs form had the same hand, two characters, but the end was all blurred together. I couldnʼt make it out. I took a photo of the form—itʼs my own delivery note.”

”You can tell itʼs the same hand.”

”The strokes all slant to the right.”

”Keep it.” He Xiufen pushed the phone back toward him. ”Play it.”

The sound of paper running. The elevator hum. Then a manʼs voice, close, as if aimed straight at a doorway:

”Boss Zhou, the certificationʼs complete. That first payment should go out before next Tuesday—a small one first, to test the water.”

A second of silence. Another voice, low and slow, from someone sitting still:

”Fifty. Donʼt put Hongkun on the stated purpose.”

”Got it.”

A chair leg scraped against concrete. The paper-running sound continued, one sheet, then another.

After it finished playing, no one in the room spoke.

He Xiufen stood, took an enamel mug from the dish cabinet, set it upside down on the table, and propped the phone at an angle against the mugʼs mouth. ”Play it again.”

The sound swirled inside the mug and landed on the tabletop. When it finished, she moved the mug away, leaving a ring of water on the table with a small damp patch spreading from the edge.

”When he said ʼfifty,ʼ” Shi Lei said, ”I thought he meant box count.”

”Nobody wires box counts overseas,” He Xiufen said.

”How many people in the room.”

”Two. The one standing spoke close to the door. The one sitting was the slow voice.”

”What did the door say.”

”The small print on the nameplate was still there—same as before.”

He Xiufen collected all of these answers, then asked, ”Who did you see.”

”The door was open a crack. The person inside was turned sideways, back to the window, holding an unlit cigarette in his right hand, a set of car keys hanging around his neck.” Shi Lei said, ”Last November, when I was hauling mattresses for Youyu, he was standing downstairs the same way, keys swinging from his neck. I recognize him.”

He Xiufen stood up, pulled open the bottom drawer of the metal cabinet, and spread out a stack of business license copies on the table. Three of them. Only one had the surname Zhou.

”Zhou Keming,” she said.

Shi Lei stared at those three characters and wiped his hand on his pants.

[Thud. The man behind the voice has a name now.]

Shen Zhixia took the phone back and played it once more herself, this time focusing only on those two lines in the middle. When it finished, she asked, ”Fifty—did he say the unit.”

”He didnʼt.”

”He wouldnʼt.” He Xiufen folded the copies back up. ”Everyone in that room understands.”

”Then the paper says just ʼfifty.ʼ” Shen Zhixia opened her notebook and wrote. ”No adding ʼten thousand.ʼ”

”Boss, does this recording count as evidence,” Shi Lei asked.

”It counts as a lead,” Shen Zhixia said.

”Someone who saw it, whoʼs willing to sign their name—thatʼs evidence.” He Xiufen pulled a sheet of stationery and a pen from the drawer and pushed them over. ”Third statement.”

”Another one?”

”Write clearly: on August 29th, from 3:17 to 3:26 in the afternoon, you were at the sixth-floor elevator bay of Wanshun Building. Which delivery note was in your hand, what was on the boxes, which pocket your phone was in, whether you ever took it out. Write nothing else.” She checked off each item. ”Write what you saw, write what you heard. Write ʼBoss Zhouʼ exactly as it was said. Whether the man being called Boss Zhou is the same person as the name on the business license—thatʼs not for you to say.”

Shi Lei leaned over and wrote. Halfway through, he looked up. ”Boss, on my way out, the woman at the door asked which company I was from. I showed her my delivery form.”

Shen Zhixia paused. ”She wrote it down.”

”She made a mark on a white slip with her pen.” He said, ”Next time, they might not send me.”

He Xiufen didnʼt look up, still counting receipts. ”Deliver what youʼre assigned. If you canʼt get upstairs, you canʼt. You matter more than the packages.”

Shi Lei finished writing, signed, and pressed his fingerprint. He Xiufen picked up the page, held it to the window for a look, folded it in thirds, and slid it into the kraft paper envelope.

”This piece goes into a separate file,” she said. ”The housing case file doesnʼt include this room. Kong Xiulanʼs signature, the hundred and five receipts, the approval sheets the bank submitted—the housing case rests on those three.”

Shen Zhixia acknowledged, copied the recording to the computer, saved a second copy, and moved Shi Leiʼs delivery note photo into the same folder. She reached to pull open a drawer for that envelope, her fingertips brushing its spine, then pulled her hand back. The envelope stayed where it was, spine-down, pressed at the very bottom. She didnʼt turn it over.

”Donʼt send this to the group chat,” He Xiufen said. ”A thousand mouths, and one sentence out the door never comes back.”

At 7:50, Tang Guoʼs voice message came in: photos of the door locks for all twenty-seven households were complete. Tomorrow, the thirtieth, seven households were handing over keys, all of them in the landlordsʼ hands. Two households wanted her there in person to reconcile the numbers face-to-face. Her own household was listed on the very last line.

At 7:58, Shen Zhixia sent Lu Jibai a line: Got a name. Zhou Keming.

At 8:06, there were footsteps on the stairs. Her phone lit up.

”What about the signature column.”

At 8:10, Zhou Yu came upstairs, a jacket over his shoulder, raindrops on his pant cuffs—the flagstones outside were already wet.

He didnʼt look at the paper first. He had Shi Lei repeat those two lines in person, and only then picked up the phone to listen to the recording. For all eighty-some seconds, his eyes stayed on the tabletop. When it finished, he asked:

”You said ʼI recognize him.ʼ Do you recognize the face, or the voice.”

”The face. Iʼve only heard his voice a few times.”

”Then write face.” Zhou Yu pulled the statement from the envelope and read it slowly. When he reached the words ”Boss Zhou,” he tapped them with his fingertip. ”Keep these two words. Thatʼs what they call him, inside and out.”

”Why do we need this paper at all,” Shi Lei asked. ”Isnʼt the recording more accurate than anything I write.”

”A recording is dead. Youʼre alive.” Zhou Yu said, ”When this reaches the police, what gets reported is ʼsomeone heard.ʼ No one was ever told to record it.”

He took a USB drive from his jacket, plugged it into the computer, and had her copy the recording onto it. When it was done, he pulled the drive out and put it in his pocket. Shi Leiʼs phone stayed on the table, face-down.

Three rules: the original stays—no deleting, no forwarding, no group chats. If that landline rings again, He Xiufen answers. This statement goes into ”Separate File: Under Review,” not into the housing case file.

”Iʼm taking the name with me,” he said. ”Iʼll verify the ID number. Once thatʼs confirmed, only a Border Control Alert can stop him—and that runs on numbers, not titles.”

”I canʼt promise you tomorrow,” he added. ”What I can promise is that tonight, this recording is in my hands.”

”One more thing.” Shen Zhixia turned her notebook around. ”Fifty. A single cross-border services-trade payment over fifty thousand US dollars requires tax registration filing. Five hundred thousand—definitely over the line.”

”Iʼll go see the form tomorrow morning,” Zhou Yu said. ”That form lists the payer and the payee. The name money wears on paper is more useful than the name on peopleʼs lips.”

”What if the sixth floor switches to a different courier tomorrow,” Shi Lei asked.

”Then you deliver your packages,” He Xiufen said. ”Whatever floor you reach, report whatever floor you see.”

Zhou Yu picked up his jacket. ”I canʼt ask a delivery man to stand at that door for one thousand and forty-two households.”

”Heʼs not standing there for you,” He Xiufen said. ”His own twenty-four thousand is in there too.”

Zhou Yu stood there for a moment, said nothing to that, and then asked as he was heading out:

”That man Shi Lei saw on the sixth floor—the one with the black bag and thin black-framed glasses—have any of you ever seen him sign anything.”

Shen Zhixia shook her head. Sheʼd only ever seen half of his face and a hard-shell black bag.

”The delivery form,” Shi Lei said. ”Last time, he was the one who came out to sign—sloppy scrawl. I havenʼt seen him put pen to any other paper.”

[Thud. One hand remains.]

Zhou Yu paused at the top of the stairs:

”Then dig out the signature column. A name can ride on other peopleʼs lips, but a signature column only ever lies on paper.”

The footsteps went down the stairs.

Shen Zhixia opened her notebook and wrote three lines on tomorrowʼs page: The 30th, seven households hand over keys. Submit supplementary application for evidence collection—fund outflow records and approval sheets for both Minanli Property and Anyu Business. Wait for Zhou Yuʼs filing form.

She read it over once, then pressed flat the note on the desk calendar for September 3rd—five days left before cross-examination of evidence, six defendants, eleven rosters. After a momentʼs thought, she added two words below the third line: Signature column.

He Xiufen put the three license copies back into the metal cabinet. The last one, the character ”Zhou” faced inward.

”A seal can eat half a surname, but it canʼt eat stroke order,” she said. ”Tomorrow, we flip that form over.”