Short, Light, Free

Chapter 116: Seeking Individuals, Dead or Alive III

I picked the file up and opened it.

There were quite a few things inside.

There was a silver name card that said, Yun Huateng, Director of Horse Brand Red Wine.

There was also a mobile phone number made up of 8s and 6s. How auspicious.

“Looks like this is his contact details. Look at all the 8s and 6s, how rich,” I sighed.

Fatty came over to take a look at the card as well. “Silver name card with an auspicious number to match.”

I put the name card down and moved on to the legal document.

Yun Huan. This must be his grandson.

I handed it to Fatty. “Look through this carefully. It’s about our target.”

There were two other items, Yun Huan’s identification card and a bundle of photographs.

I browsed through them. They were all photographs taken of Yun Huan. He looked delicate and fresh, not typical of murderers.

I handed the identification card to Skinny. “The identification number and registered residence may be of some help. See if you can find anything.”

“Don’t you think all of this is too simple?” Skinny asked as he took the card.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Think about it. I just have to bring this card to the bank and request for a bank card. The teller will discover from the records that I’m a criminal and call the cops. I will be arrested and Yun Huan will be called out to see me. Upon realizing that I was merely forging his identity, he will be sent back and I will be given a warning and perhaps get locked up for three to seven days. Yun Huan will need to be imprisoned again, and we can just follow him to find his cell. Things will be easy from there.”

“Oh my God! Yes, that should work! We can just pay a beggar a few hundred dollars to settle it?” I proposed.

Skinny gestured for us to be quiet.

Fatty and I turned to look at him suspiciously.

Skinny kept a finger over his lips. “We will do it tomorrow. Let’s think of what to eat now. We have the money so let’s eat out to celebrate and look forward to the day of our payout.”

He stood up and walked into the toilet. He left the door open and waved for us to enter.

Now understanding that something was up, we followed after him.

It was a rather awkward situation.

Skinny whispered, “I think there’s a listening device in the briefcase’s lock. It’s ridiculously huge.”

Fatty and I were stunned.

“No way!” Fatty whispered back.

Skinny held onto the identification card and said, “All of this is just too strange.”

“Strange? How so?” Fatty asked.

Skinny waved the card around. “If you were him, would you really hand us your grandson’s original identification card instead of just a copy of it?”

“That makes sense. He shouldn’t have done that. Then again, he’s a rich man and rich people think and act differently,” Fatty responded.

“This isn’t a difficult problem to settle so why would he need us?” Skinny questioned softly.

“Are you saying that he has an ulterior motive? Is he thinking about rescuing his grandson? How is he going to do that, though? And a listening device? How would you prove that?” I asked, puzzled.

“There are many ways to save him and we might just be pawns in his game of chess,” Skinny answered.

“But wouldn’t he have thought about the possibility that we might just keep the 10,000 and not do anything for him?” I asked.

“10,000 is nothing compared to the 5,000,000 we’ll get for a finished job. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to aim for the higher price?”

“Wait,” Fatty said quietly.

“What is it?”

“Logically speaking, the old man should know where his grandson is being locked up, right? He’s his only relative and he will have the right to visit him. It’s impossible for the police to conceal such information from him. Plus, he said that he will give us details, yet he didn’t tell us the location of his grandson’s prison. He gave us a detailed background but he left out the most important information. It’s as if he wants us to start from this identification card. Don’t you find this odd?” Fatty explained.

“Right, speaking of his crying, did you smell something weird?” Skinny asked.

“Something weird?” I repeated.

“You two seldom cook. It’s the smell of onions. I smelled that earlier but I couldn’t be sure,” Skinny mused.

“What? Are you saying that he was just faking it?” Fatty asked, shocked.

I exited the bathroom and tiptoed to the seat that the old man had been on earlier. I re-enacted the old man’s actions. Him taking out his handkerchief, covering his face with it...

From what I remembered, he only started to cry after he brought the handkerchief out.

After wiping his tears, the old man stuffed it back into his pocket. I observed the left handle of the chair and saw a little bit of substance on it. Figuring that it was left over by the handkerchief, I swiped my finger over it and put it up to my nose.

It did smell faintly like onions. I touched the corner of my eye with my finger and immediately felt a sense of discomfort, my eye was watering.

I returned to the bathroom and said quietly, “He really was faking it. I found onion juice on the chair. This old man is cunning. Does he not have any love for his grandson? Why would he need onions to cry? What a fishy case.”

Skinny smiled coldly before saying, “Perhaps he knows that his grandson is going to be okay. If that’s the case, there’s no need to cry, which is why he needed the help of onions.”

Fatty shook his head. “I think we need to shift our focus to the driver who was killed and the accident that took the old man’s son’s life. We need more information.”

“Isn’t this case suspicious? Didn’t the old man say that the driver was a hard worker? Wait... if this is all a show that he’s putting on for us, how much of his words can we actually believe?” I questioned, my mind whirring.

Skinny said in a soft voice, “Find whatever you can about the accident, Fatty. Investigate the old man, Chalk. With this identification card, I’ll visit the dark web for prison-related news. We will discuss our findings tomorrow.”

Fatty and I nodded.

Twenty minutes passed before Skinny exited the bathroom. He yawned loudly, “Such a satisfying meal. We’ll all be rich in three days’ time.”

I followed behind and added, “Easy money, isn’t it?”

“Seems unreal. Should we hide the money in case he tries to renege on the deal?” Fatty laughed, making a fist with his left hand and covering it with his right.

I understood that he wanted us to keep the briefcase away to prevent any eavesdropping.

“Alright. Hide it in the storeroom then, Fatty. Use something to cover it so it won’t be easy to find. We must be careful with it,” I said and made a throat-slitting gesture, hoping that he would understand that I meant for him to destroy the device.

Fatty nodded and brought the briefcase to the furthest storeroom.

He came back out a long time later.

“All settled?” I asked softly.

Fatty smiled. “Removed it without a sound. There’s a battery as well as a one-way communicating device that uses a sim card to transmit the signal, which I have already cut off. He won’t suspect a thing since it’s normal not to have any reception in places such as storerooms.”

“This old man is really sly. Fake crying and listening device?” I commented in awe.

“All this hard work in exchange for an intact corpse? It doesn’t make sense. Could it be that he’s trying to rescue his grandson and he’s just using us as his scapegoats?” Fatty suggested.