Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 77 : Six Characters Short

June twenty-ninth, nine in the evening. The noodle shop closed for the night. The roll-up shutter sat halfway down, scallion-oil smell seeping through the gap, clinging to peopleʼs clothes. Up on the second floor, a single light still burned at Zhengping Firm.

Tang Guo spread the signed receipt out on the long table and read it word by word. In the bankʼs column on the receipt, three characters after the words ”authorized attorney.”

”Lu Jibai.” She looked up. ”From Brother Maʼs arbitration. The one doing the talking for the other side.”

No one answered. She turned the receipt over, then back again. The edges had started to curl.

”Brother Ma said he stood up there and swore those twenty people werenʼt under the platform.” Tang Guo wiped her hands on her apron. ”Now heʼs on the bankʼs side. The bank can afford him.”

”Thatʼs what youʼre afraid of.” Shen Zhixia took the receipt and pressed it flat with the heel of her hand.

”I am.” Tang Guo said. ”Our side is me, you with no license, and Brother Ma with an IOU in his pocket. If he takes that knife again and cuts us up one by one—Tang Guo signed her own name, Xu Dayong signed his, Zhao Guangtian signed his—then we donʼt even have the right to sit at the same table.”

”He gave me all three items today, not one missing,” Shen Zhixia said. ”The original contract laid out on the table, page by page for me to verify. The payment transfer voucher and the loan disbursement statement as photocopies, with seals across the body text and the perforation edge. His exact words: the things not on the investigation order, I donʼt give. He didnʼt say more, and he didnʼt give less.”

Tang Guo stared at the half brick on the corner of the table for a long moment. Her fan group chat had been buzzing all evening. Someone was asking if they should go together to find the apartment company. Someone else said donʼt make a scene—make a scene and your credit record takes a hit first.

”Wherever the money is, thatʼs where the lawyers are.” He Xiufen came down from upstairs holding an enamel mug. ”On this chain, the landlords canʼt afford lawyers, and not one person from those three companies has shown their face. Only one end can afford Hengzheng.”

”That end is the bank.” Tang Guoʼs voice was low.

”That end is also the end he told you not to stop at.” He Xiufen took a sip and set the mug down with a thud. ”Thirty-one yuan and forty-six fen across those three accounts. If you want money, you can only reach toward the end where the moneyʼs standing. But Iʼll say this up front—when he gives you materials, thatʼs his job for the bank. If heʼs willing to answer one question for you, thatʼs his own affair. The two things donʼt get mixed together.”

”Adding the bank means one more layer of review,” Shen Zhixia said.

”Add the wrong party and the court dismisses it once; you resubmit. Add the right one, and behind those three empty shells stands one more name with money.” He Xiufen lifted her mug. ”Add it for the sake of money you can actually garnish someday.”

[Thud. The other side can afford the sharpest knife in the room, which means thereʼs still meat on the plate.]

Shen Zhixia pulled out her phone and typed three lines, then sent it: three pieces of paper plus two ledgers, tomorrow morning eight oʼclock, downstairs from my place. Come if you want.

The reply came fast, two characters: eight oʼclock.

”Why did you call him down here?” Tang Guo asked.

”To ask one thing.”

”Will he answer?”

”If he wants to talk, half a sentence is enough. If he doesnʼt, I can sit there all day and not pry one word out of his mouth.”

Tang Guo set her phone face-down on the table, then picked it up again a moment later. ”That two thousand on July twentieth,” she said. ”Theyʼll still deduct it.”

”They will.” Shen Zhixia folded the receipt. ”That part I canʼt carry for you. What I can do is turn it into a debt no one else gets to dodge.”

June thirtieth, six forty in the morning. Ma Jianjun arrived. The long table was carried out from against the wall and set crossways at the mouth of the alley. Paper strips were cut into a stack, numbers one through fifty pressed under a paperweight—half a brick wrapped in a layer of tape. A vegetable delivery trike brushed past the tableʼs edge, muddy water from the basket bottoms dripping onto the brick. At the other end of the alley, the bun shopʼs steamer had just been uncovered, white steam climbing the wall.

At seven fifty, someone came in from the mouth of the alley. Dark suit, a black document folder under one arm, no Old Town dust on his leather shoes. The sun came at an angle; his shadow stretched longer than the man.

Ma Jianjunʼs hand stopped on the paper strips.

”Ma Jianjun.” The man spoke first.

”Lawyer Lu.” Ma Jianjun straightened the strips, ladled a bowl of plain boiled water from the plastic bucket, and set it at the far end of the long table. No smile. ”Waterʼs free.”

”Thank you.” He lifted the bowl slightly, set it back down, didnʼt drink.

Shen Zhixia came downstairs with five sheets of paper under her arm. People had already started lining up—a woman in her fifties, holding a plastic bag stuffed with documents. She saw the extra person at the table and sidled closer to ask in a half-whisper, ”Is he one of ours too?”

”No.” Shen Zhixia spread the papers out. ”Heʼs on the other side.”

The woman hugged the plastic bag to her chest and took half a step back. After standing there a moment, she inched back to her original spot. She had nowhere else to go.

Five sheets of paper laid out left to right.

”First, Tang Guoʼs loan contract, page three. The merchant name field—four characters: Youyu Apartments.”

”Second, the bankʼs payment transfer voucher. The payee column has ten characters: Jiangzhou Xinhe Trading Co., Ltd. The same day, at 10:07 a.m., an entry of twenty-four thousand went into Youzhuʼs ledger. The summary matches character for character. The payer column has fourteen characters.”

”Third, the loan disbursement account statement. Twenty-four thousand in. What goes out is the two thousand on the twentieth of each month. As of this month, only one deduction.”

”Fourth, the eleventh-floor landlordʼs own ledger. January and February: account name, two characters—Youzhu. March nineteenth: ten characters. April, May, June, three blank lines, three strokes of red pen, one word: ʼNothing.ʼ”

”Fifth, Zhao Guangtianʼs bank statement, fifth floor. Twenty-two hundred a month, March nineteenth the last payment.”

Lu Jibai looked at each sheet, one by one. Slowly. At the fourth sheet, his finger stopped on the three red strokes beside ”Nothing.”

”Two landlords, last payment on the same day.” She placed the fourth and fifth sheets side by side. ”March nineteenth. And from that day, the name paying the landlordsʼ rent changed to those ten characters. The landlords havenʼt received a single drop since. The tenants havenʼt stopped paying for a single day.”

”Each tenant pays twenty-four thousand a year. The money leaves the same day. Each landlord should receive twenty-six thousand four hundred.” Her two fingers pressed on the two sheets. ”More water going in than coming out by twenty-four hundred. By June, people are still pressing fingerprints onto this companyʼs contract, handing over twenty-four thousand a time. The pool keeps filling at one end. The other endʼs been dry for over a hundred days.”

[Thud. The water in the pool always needs someone to carry it. The hands that carry it arenʼt standing at the poolʼs edge.]

”I wonʼt argue with whatʼs on these sheets,” Lu Jibai said, stacking the five pages back into their original order.

”Then what about these six characters.” She pulled out the second sheet and pushed it in front of him. ”Four characters on the contract, ten characters where the bank sent the money. Six characters short. Either it copied the name and entered the wrong number—then the wrong number is its mistake—or it chose that number itself, because it knew exactly who stood behind those characters. Pick one.”

”The tenantʼs signature is her own,” he said. ”The money followed the contract.”

”The money never passed through her hands.”

”Write that in your complaint and the judge will ask for your basis.”

”The basis is on the second sheet. Twenty-four thousand out the door, into someone elseʼs account.”

He didnʼt look at the paper. He looked at the end of the line.

”If I answer that, Iʼm acknowledging it for them,” he said. ”You called me down here to catch me letting something slip.”

”Iʼm waiting for you to answer one thing.”

”Then you wonʼt hear it.” He pushed the paper back. ”That order in your hand was signed June twenty-ninth. It expires on the tenth. If you want to add the bank as a defendant, the court has to review it. By the time itʼs reviewed, itʼll be July twentieth, and Tang Guo takes another deduction. On the fifteenth, those three characters for the eleventh floor hit their fourth month. You spend your energy on me now—what do you defend with that day?”

”I defend with the sentence I heard today.”

”You wonʼt hear anything today.”

She opened her notebook and wrote down his words exactly as spoken. Not one character changed.

”How many households have you registered?” he asked suddenly.

”Two hundred forty-six.”

”In court, that number gets taken to the knife. One missing authorization, one gets thrown out.”

”I know.”

”Good that you know.”

He picked up the bowl of water, turned it once in his hand, set it back down.

”Tang Guoʼs payment. Does it still get deducted July twentieth.”

”It does.”

”Donʼt let her stop it,” he said. ”Stop one payment and her side loses first.”

”You say that standing on the bankʼs side.”

”Iʼm standing on the side that can say the whole thing.”

”This trip,” she said, ”Iʼll put it on the bankʼs bill.”

”Donʼt.”

She turned the second sheet over. That one column copied out so gray, three handwritten characters squeezed in the grid lines. The first was recognizable as a surname. The second pressed onto the line.

”This box. Who wrote it.”

”That box isnʼt printed.”

”I know it isnʼt printed.”

”The originalʼs in the accounting archive storage,” he said. ”Youʼve got an order thatʼs still in term. Make an appointment and you can look.”

”Once I see the name, what can I ask?”

”You can ask who handled the money for it.”

She gathered up the five sheets and stacked them in order.

”The bankʼs end of it, you can see,” she said. ”What about above the bank.”

He didnʼt answer. He stood, pressed one finger on the corner of the stack, all four edges aligned flush.

”The bank isnʼt the last pocket either.”

With that, he tucked the folder under his arm and left the alley. The bowl of plain water sat on the long table, untouched.

Ma Jianjun rolled and unrolled the stack of number slips in his hand. ”Last time up on the platform, he asked if I was one of his people,” he said. ”Today the first word out of his mouth was my name.”

At eight on the dot, the first number was handed out. The woman set her plastic bag on the table and pulled the papers out one by one: contract, ID photocopy, four screenshots of deductions. When sheʼd laid them all out, she looked up and asked, ”Lawyer, that money of mine—who actually has it?”

”Itʼs in the pool,” Shen Zhixia said. ”Iʼm trying to find the breach.”

By the time she went upstairs, the sun had reached halfway up the staircase. Under the glass desk pad at Zhengping Firm lay a stack of papers, and among them was a fragment pulled from the fold of an old newspaper—half a sentence in fountain pen, blue-black ink faded to brown: ”The signature is mine,” then a comma. Nothing after. The paper had gone brittle, frayed at the edges.

She cut a strip of white paper, wrote down those eleven words from earlier, and pressed it beside the old one. The half-sentence at the bottom was nine years old. The strip above it was from this morning. Neither one was finished.