The man in the backseat weighed most of two-hundred jin. He took up a whole row and was speaking in a mixture of dialects that came from who knew where, wildly chatting on the phone with someone.
There were people who ordinarily didn't speak loudly but started shouting as soon as they got on the phone, always suspecting that the cell phone signal couldn't promptly transmit their voice. This fat man had plenty of breath, and his voice was clear and resonant, nearly raising the roof of the car. When he finally finished howling, the driver's ears were ringing somewhat. He couldn't resist looking at the fat customer in the rearview mirror, meeting his gaze.
The driver hastily offered a rather professional smile. "What business do you do, sir?"
"I had a mine back home before, but business has been bad these last couple years, and we shut down, but some friends of mine called me over here to get into something else." The fat man shifted around somewhat uncomfortably on the seat. He spoke Mandarin with a bit of a lisp. "This car of yours won't do. Can you drive a better one next time? Last time, we took one in, where was it…some country where they all have big, bushy beards, their hotel sent a Rolls-Royce—sitting in this one, I feel like I can't really stretch my legs out."
The driver pretended not to have understood his complaint and said deprecatingly, "The cars are all the same, company standard."
"Oh, a company car." The man's lip curled. "Not like us. When we do your kind of business, you use your own car working for the company, doing any business the company needs, and you can get private jobs, be financially responsible. You pay insurance monthly, and if you get hit, you're responsible for it."
The driver smiled politely and didn't respond.
But the customer in the back seat seemed not to be able to read people's expressions. He wouldn't let him off, sticking his head out and asking, "If you guys scrape someone's car while you're out driving, who's responsible? Do you take the loss?"
"The company pays," said the driver, cherishing words like gold.
The earthy tycoon in the backseat slapped his thigh and leaned back hard. The seat let out a creak at the burden. "Aren't they gambling with their lives, then? If it was me, if I came to a patch of broken road, I wouldn't go around, just drive right through. What's it to me if I get a flat? Normally I'd go out and get some private work, then say a customer had made an appointment. I could even get reimbursed for gas. Pure profit!"
Hearing these lines, the driver felt appreciation for the nature of domestically produced tycoons and finally couldn't resist smiling. "The company has a management system. We all drive fixed cars when we go out and get centralized repairs at fixed times. If the gas and repair expenses are too high, it'd be visible at a glance. We'd be called to account."
The man in the back seat gave an "oh." Probably he didn't sincerely want to know about a hired car's management system. He quickly started rambling pleasantly about something else, pulling idle judgements about Yan City's city planning from thin air. He'd just reached an impassioned point when, suddenly, he clutched his belly. "Oh, no. Driver, how far to the golf course?"
"About fifteen minutes."
The fat customer sucked in a breath and turned left and right. As though he were nine months pregnant with a frog, his belly gave a series of croaks, then produced an indescribable gas. The fat man cried, "Ouch!" as he looked fretfully around. "Won't do, I can't take it. What did I eat… Stop the car by the road at once."
The customer didn't know what he'd eaten, but the driver could already smell the contents of his intestines. The corners of his forehead twitched. Not breathing, he said, "Sir, this is an overpass."
The customer used the resonant voice he'd used on the phone to howl, "I know it's an overpass, but you have to find a way to let me out!"
He not only said this, his belly also gurgled in agreement. The driver involuntarily held his breath. Unable to bear it any longer, he found a place to force his way off the bridge. When he'd just stopped the car by the road, the fat man in the backseat, like a biological weapon about to go off, impatiently shot out.
Fresh air flowed in through the open door. The driver felt that his lungs were about to explode. He got out of the car soon after and lit a cigarette by the road, opening the car windows to vent the air inside.
The unfortunate customer hadn't come back yet when he finished smoking the cigarette. The driver was feeling somewhat cold and was about to turn around and get back into the car when suddenly someone patted his shoulder from behind.
Before the driver could turn his head, there was a heavy thump on his neck, and his eyes went dark. He didn't know anything more.
When his consciousness returned, he found that he'd been blindfolded. Before he'd fully awakened, an extremely pitiable scream came out of nowhere, passing through his ears. The driver gave a start and felt that all his limbs were tightly bound and his mouth was taped shut. He couldn't resist starting to struggle.
Someone stepped on his back. "Settle down!"
The driver sucked in a breath. This person perhaps had practice; he stuck a foot into the hollow of the driver's lower back, and it hurt so badly that half his body went numb. His face rubbed against the ice-cold ground. He didn't know where he was now; the tip of his nose moved slightly, and he smelled a scent of blood that was difficult to ignore. A layer of cold sweat rose on his back.
But soon after, following his initial panic, the driver calmed down, struggling to curl himself into a ball and adjust his breathing—he knew there was a GPS chip on him. He was "old staff," having worked at the place for two or three years. The company couldn't simply abandon him…
He picked people up and drove them back each day. He knew too much.
Then he heard another man's voice. This voice sounded very pleasant, with a trace of careless indolence. There seemed to be a smile in it. He unhurriedly instructed, "This person is only an underling. Beating him to death won't be any use. Don't hit him anymore.—See if there are any other devices on him."
"There was one in the pocket of his uniform, one on the bottom of his left shoe, one each on his phone and walkie-talkie, and one on his belt buckle. While we used a blocking device driving over, we still dealt with them all for the sake of security." This was a familiar voice. It was the fat man who'd pretended to be a customer!
This time, there was no trace of an accent in his voice. He was entirely a Yan City native!
With all the hidden tracking devices located, the driver's heart sank.
Someone roughly tore away the tape over his mouth. The fat man said, "On the sixth of November, the car you were driving today picked someone up in Beiyuan. You said that you're responsible for your particular cars, so the driver that day must have been you?"
"No-November?" the driver stuttered, then deprecatingly said, "It's been nearly two months, who'd…who'd still remember that? Dage, don't you think there's been some misunderstanding here?"
A hand deftly snatched up the nameplate on his shirt. The pleasant-sounding voice read out his name: "Sun Xin."
"Yeah, that's…that's me." The driver struggled to raise his head in the direction of the voice, showing a fawning smile. "Tell me your instructions."
"I know your wife works as a caddy at the Beehive's golf course. She's pretty good-looking. We have nothing against her. We're not planning to do anything to a young lady. But you have to cooperate."
"Try me, I'll cooperate, I'll cooperate with anything!"
"Midday on November sixth, you drove today's car to Beiyuan's Longyun Center and picked someone up. This person was around forty, male, hiding his face and wearing gloves, cross-eyed—"
"Uh, well…" All kinds of thoughts went through the driver's mind, but he dragged out his voice, seeming slow to react. "I…I'm thinking about it, cross-eyed…"
But the other side wasn't having this. The pleasant-sounding voice said, "I see he isn't very well-behaved. Dislocate his shoulder."
"Wait…"
The driver had just spat out one word when the rest suddenly turned into a scream. His shoulder had been neatly dislocated and hurt so much he nearly passed out. His other arm was grabbed, too.
"Wait…a minute…"
"Wait a minute," said the person whose words had just proved deadly. "Lao Lu, who told you to actually dislocate it?"
The driver's whole body was covered in cold sweat. He trembled involuntarily, lying on the ground gasping for breath, feeling he was about to lose control of his bladder. Then he heard the person go on in a leisurely way: "You can still put it back when it's dislocated. It's a pain. Look, just chop off the other arm, it'll make sure he knows to be afraid."
"That was one of the company's employees!" the driver cried out, unable to endure this.
Everything went quiet. Even the constant screams stopped.
"He's…he's with our company, he said he had business at the Longyun Center, and asked, asked me whether I could take him." The driver swallowed hard, his eyes rolling constantly under the blindfold.
The fat man's hand was still on his shoulder. The tip of a knife was under his chin. "One of your company's employees? What's his name? What does he do?"
"He's called Lu Lin," the driver said in a trembling voice. "He's, he's an electrician… What do you guys want him for? Do…do you have some kind of grudge against him?"
These people's style was too barbaric. They didn't seem like the police.
As long as they weren't police, he could say anything.
His dislocated shoulder hurt so much he was half-dead, but the driver relaxed slightly.
He knew that there were dangerous individuals among the people he came into contact with regularly. It was normal that they would have enemies, and that if they weren't careful going out, one of their enemies would get eyes on them. When they encountered these things, the higher-ups asked them to be tight-lipped, but if their lives were truly in danger and they couldn't cover up anymore, they could give up whoever it was whose business had stirred up the problem, only they shouldn't say too much.
The person who'd said he wanted to cut off his arm seemed to lean forward slightly. Almost in a whisper, he said, "Lu Lin—did you know that his real name is Lu Guosheng? He's killed before, more than once. Do you hang out with that kind of person?"
"I…I didn't know. Brothers…no, bosses, no matter what he did before, it has nothing to do with me. We're, we're just ordinary coworkers, I don't even know where he comes from originally, how could I know what he'd done before?" The small knife travelled over his neck, passing by his face. The driver felt his nose itch and knew that the blade was too sharp; it had scraped off a bit of his skin and eyebrow. He didn't dare to move a muscle. "I…I have his phone number. How, how about I help you arrange to meet him? Don't, don't kill me…"
"You don't know his true identity." This time, another voice put in a word. It seemed to be the person who'd kicked him at the very beginning. "Does he know your true identity?"
First the driver was surprised. Then he froze.
"Your papers say you're called Sun Xin, but in fact it's a false name and false papers. Your real name is Sun Jiaxing, from G Province. You have a criminal record for committing fraud. You have an old mother at home, and a wife and child. The whole family thinks you're in Yan City working hard to earn money, doing your best. They don't know what business you do, and they don't know that you've hooked up with a little girl around twenty and tell people that she's your wife. Right?"
This time, the driver's face at last altered. His ashen lips shook ceaselessly. Fingers snapped at his ear. An ice-cold phone pressed close. A hesitant childish voice came over it: "Papa?"
Hearing that voice, the driver struggled wildly, but a hand covered in a handkerchief covered his mouth.
The child's breathing remained on the speaker, and there also seemed to be an accented woman's voice, calling "Jiaxing."
The child said, "Why isn't Papa talking? I miss Papa…"
The phone was suddenly taken away. The person whose voice had always been low and soft gave someone an order: "Small children have delicate skin. Try letting out a little blood."
Faced with a coffin, the driver at last shed tears, wetting the blindfold over his eyes. The hand holding him had loosened at some point. As he cried, he crawled towards the source of the voice like a worm. The top of his head knocked against something. He didn't care, following the voice to rub against the pant leg of the person in charge, scraping the ground with his head. "Don't…don't…"
A soft-soled leather shoe gently pushed his head aside and stepped on his face, rubbing it against the ground. "Don't what, Mr. Sun? I hear the darling isn't in very good health? A congenital heart disease, isn't it? A true pity for a parent's heart. Listen to me, this child won't grow to adulthood. Give up now. Letting him go on ahead and reincarnate is also a kind of merit."
Sun Jiaxing hopelessly lay on the floor—he'd only been tricked into evil ways in the first place because he'd wanted to make some more money to pay for the child's treatment.
Unfortunately, his luck had been bad. Before he could make the money, his den had been raided by the police. It had all been frost on top of snow. If he was locked up, even if it wasn't for long, it would be hard for him to find proper work when he got out. And meanwhile the child needed surgery at once, and no matter what, he couldn't get enough money for the life-saving operation. But just then, someone had gone through his lawyer to tell him that they'd sent the money to his home. As long as after he got out he did some work for them that required being tight-lipped, they'd give him a new identity, and no one would know he had a record.
He clearly knew that pie didn't drop out of the sky and that these people definitely had bad intentions, but his family's safety was in their hands. He didn't dare to be disloyal. He knew he was running a risk and might be dragged into something one day.
In order to deceive outsiders, he'd found a fake wife to use as a shield, so even if he was dragged in, it wouldn't fall on his true family… They'd even sworn up and down to him that his fake identity was rock solid; unless the police came to investigate, no one would be able to find a weak point.
But why…why…
"I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything.—Lu Lin…Lu Guosheng booked my car a day in advance. He said he wanted to go to the Longyun Center to see a client. When those people want to go anywhere, they have to set it up with the company first, so the company can make arrangements for them to be dropped off and picked up, but he…he didn't go through the higher-ups, he contacted me privately."
"He used your car privately?"
"Yeah. Officially he's an 'electrician' at the company. He has an employee card, that's how he's described to outsiders. Whenever he goes out, he first has to go to the Beehive. When he wants to use a car, he has to apply for it, and he has to pass through the Beehive on the way back… This way, if someone gets their eye on him outside, or if he stirs up some trouble and someone follows him, at most they'll only get to the Beehive. They won't find where he lives… He comes and goes often, we get on pretty well, and we gradually struck up a friendship. He often asks me to privately drive him places…to, to get some air or something."
In other words, the Beehive was a firewall.
The Louvre had likely been one of the dens where they had kept the wanted criminals, but there'd been a leak, and they'd nearly been tracked down by Gu Zhao. Perhaps their memory was long; they later used the Beehive, a place very like The Louvre, as a front. If someone else investigated, they'd only be able to find this layer. If there was anything stirring, there'd be enough time for them to move!
"Where does Lu Guosheng live?"
"I don't know." The driver noticed that the questioner didn't seem satisfied with this answer and made to walk away. He quickly used his body to block the person, desperately saying, "I really don't know, it's a secret, we don't dare to ask about these things. I beg you, don't touch my wife and child…"
Luo Wenzhou and Fei Du exchanged a look in the dark, ice-cold basement. Fei Du patted the fat man on the shoulder, and the two of them went out one after the other.
"It's lucky we didn't rashly charge into the Beehive." Luo Wenzhou let out a heavy breath. The location of the interrogation had been Fei Du's terrifying basement. Even the air inside it was oppressive. He paused, then said, "I've violated more than one regulation this time. If we can't catch them, this won't end with one or two self-examinations. If I really can't continue in my career, I may end up having to rely on selling my body for a living. What do you think, lord? Will my looks do?"
Fei Du very cooperatively looked him up and down. That look was like the tongue of a large feline, licking over the clothes on his body with a layer of barbs, turning them to garlic skin. Luo Wenzhou couldn't quite take it and raised a hand to block his gaze. "Hey, I'm not selling yet, behave yourself."
Fei Du laughed and was about to say something when his phone suddenly rang. He picked up, listened to only two sentences, and his expression altered.
"President Fei, the management at the Beehive is too strict. They're always tracking their drivers' locations. They seem to have noticed when the tracking devices on that person we caught suddenly lost contact."
Fei Du said gravely, "Got it. Be careful. You guys leave."
After noon, the City Bureau was more bustling than a produce market.
Director Lu's few remaining hairs became increasingly scarce. He called Tao Ran into his office. Smacking his desk, he howled at him, "Not one of you pays attention to organization or discipline. Tao Ran, tell me the truth… What is that joker Luo Wenzhou up to? Why won't he pick up his phone?"
Tao Ran's hair was a bird's nest from rolling around on the narrow bed in the study. His face was full of innocent blankness. "I don't know. He's not picking up my calls, either."
"Making such a big shambles and then losing contact…" Before Director Lu had finished speaking, a tearful shout came from outside.
"Why are you holding my son? Who gave you the right? I'm reporting you for violating a citizen's personal rights!"
"What did my daughter do? Do you have an explanation now? Listen, even if something happened to that girl, it must have been a boy who did it, right? What does it have to do with us?"
"Where's your superior? I want to talk to your superior. What are you supposed to be? Do you know who I am…"
Director Lu took a deep breath, glaring fiercely at Tao Ran. He strode over and went out, kicked open the door of the little conference room that had temporarily been given over to the parents to make their disturbance. He smacked the door heavily. "This is a public security bureau. We called you in to be investigated. What are you shouting about?!"
The conference room went quiet.
The expression of the man who had just been yelling the loudest relaxed. Observing Director Lu's body language and expression, he could just about guess his identity. He immediately became polite. "And you would be…"
Director Lu looked him over. He could hear that this had been the individual shouting, "What are you supposed to be?" He directly ignored him, grabbed Tao Ran's shoulder, and tossed him like a chick into the crowd of parents glaring like tigers. "This is the deputy-captain of our Criminal Investigation Team. He's responsible. If there are any problems, take it up with him. Anyone who makes a scene again, you'll all be dealt with as jeopardizing public safety!"
Tao Ran: "…"
Just then, the security camera in the corner of the conference room, covered in dust for ten thousand years, suddenly moved slightly, circling the room full of babbling people, at last falling on Wei Zhanhong in the corner.
The phone in Wei Zhanhong's pocket vibrated. Without turning a hair, he got it out to take a look. Then his expression changed slightly, and he pressed a few times to answer—