A Little Trick Every Day

Chapter 10

A Little Trick Every Day

After tidying up his room a little, Lin Qi received visitors. His place was an old four-story building facing the street. The first and second floors housed a small bar, while the third and fourth floors were occupied by ordinary tenants.

Many hotels and taverns rented out short-term rooms on their second floors—for three to five days, or a week. Some even accepted temporary rentals for as little as one day, making them more like inns or hotels.

This arrangement had originally been discovered through drunks. Tavern owners would give them a bed, then charge them extra. Before long, most taverns had begun doing the same. No one complained about taking money from drunks.

Alcohol was a very peculiar thing. It could leave people so unconscious that they were tossed into "upscale" rooms for the night and charged extra. It could also make people simple and direct. That was why every bar and tavern needed a few rooms.

That also meant Lin Qi's current residence could not possibly be some remote, deserted suburb. People came and went here. Whether day or night, plenty of pedestrians passed by.

The police said they had found no witnesses, perhaps because the culprit was an experienced repeat offender. But there was no way there had been no witnesses. Whether it was the other tenants on the second floor, the bartender behind the counter downstairs, or the scattered few customers, it was impossible for them to know nothing.

But they would not talk. First, Lin Qi had no direct conflict of interest with them. Second, there was no need to draw the attention of the Federal Revenue Service because of a stranger who had nothing to do with them. Everyone chose silence.

Yet that was precisely what caused the police to misunderstand certain things, leaving room for them to maneuver afterward.

He had only just finished cleaning the messy room when someone came knocking. It was several newspaper boys.

The leather bags slung across their shoulders were stuffed full. Every one of them looked strained, their faces flushed. Part of it was from the heavy leather bags, and part of it was excitement.

Newspaper Boss had promised them that as long as they delivered the money and remembered some of the details in the room, they would receive an extra reward this month—no less than fifty dollars each.

That money was important to children their age. In two or three years, they would have to start living independently. Before then, they needed to save up enough to face society. Opportunities were hard to come by, even if it was only fifty dollars.

Before closing the door, Lin Qi glanced outside. The little bar where he lived stood right beside the main road. Outside the door was a corridor, and beyond its railing lay the street. From where he stood, he could see most of what was happening outside at a glance.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but his mind was already racing. Based on his many years of experience dealing with... such things, these children's arrival was highly suspicious.

The people who had traded with him these past few days had indeed all been newspaper boys, but Newspaper Boss would come too. He simply never entered the room, usually standing in the corridor outside.

They handed large amounts of small change to these children, so naturally they had to keep an eye on them to make sure they did not run off. It protected their own property while intimidating the children as well. But today, Newspaper Boss was nowhere to be seen in the corridor.

What did that mean? Any abnormal occurrence suggested a deeper problem. There were two possibilities for Newspaper Boss's absence. The first was that he did not want to have any direct connection with this place—or with Lin Qi.

The second was that he knew this place was dangerous. So even though he cared greatly about that small change, he had not shown up in person. Yet he had a way to make sure his money would be safe.

The conclusion required no thought. Otherwise, he would not have sent the newspaper boys here carrying so much small change to exchange for bills.

Combined with what Lin Qi had encountered before, he had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen.

Not only was he unafraid, he even felt a flicker of excitement, an urge to give it a try. "How much is here?" He took a small wooden box from one side, set it on the cart, and had the newspaper boys pour the money into it.

"Five thousand dollars in total, sir," the children said as they poured.

"Five thousand dollars?" Lin Qi chuckled, his gaze sweeping over the newspaper boys' leather bags. "That really is an unexpected figure. I thought it would be a little less."

The sum was too large—large enough to convict him outright. It further confirmed his suspicion. Someone was setting a trap, and he was caught inside it.

If people from the Revenue Service or the Bureau of Investigation burst in later, and he could not explain where the money had come from or why it was in his room, he might face serious charges.

Once they brought up a "deal," he would definitely be unable to escape their grasp. He could only do as they demanded, unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life in prison.

He nodded noncommittally. Once the wooden box had been filled with five thousand dollars' worth of coins, he pushed the cart into the inner room and called out, "I'm going to the bathroom. Wait for me a moment."

Five thousand dollars' worth of coins was extremely heavy. Five-cent coins were the lightest, weighing 3.7 grams each, while fifty-cent coins were the heaviest at 6.1 grams. Factoring in dimes and quarters, each coin averaged a little over four grams.

Five thousand dollars—one hundred... thirty pounds. Each newspaper boy had more than twenty pounds of coins in his bag. No wonder their faces were redder than usual. Just climbing to the second floor had left them noticeably exhausted.

After entering the inner room, Lin Qi did not hurry back out. He dragged the box full of money into the washroom and found a pair of sturdy trousers among the clothes he had just washed in the cart.

He tied off both pant legs, grabbed handful after handful of coins and stuffed them into the legs. Once the box had become lighter, he simply picked it up and poured the rest in.

After filling both pant legs with coins, he tied the waist shut with a belt, spread the legs apart until they formed a shape like a stick, and shoved them down through the drain of the crude toilet.

When these old buildings had been constructed, there had been none of the user-friendly curved pipe designs of later days.

Forget curved pipes—even horizontal pipes would have allowed waste from upper floors to back up below. So its drainage system consisted of one straight main pipe, with a downward-sloping pipe from each floor connecting directly into it. Where the main pipe joined the septic tank, there was a one-way flap.

The advantage of that design was that there would be no backflow. Residents on the lower floors did not have to live in fear of their toilets spraying filth back out. The downside was that the house sometimes smelled strange, though an exhaust fan would solve that problem.

He hung a soapbox from the belt buckle, one of those simply made wooden boxes. It would ensure the buckle floated on top of the sewage, so he would not have to jump into the septic tank and search bit by bit for it that night.

After a faint splash and the sound of the wooden flap springing back against the pipe, he let out a breath of relief.

Not long after, Lin Qi returned to the room clutching several stacks of bills. By now, the newspaper boys were growing impatient.

Their attention was completely fixed on the thick stacks of bills in Lin Qi's hands. He sat at the edge of the bed, casually picked up several newspapers, untied the rolls of bills bound with rubber bands, and handed them out to the different children. "Count them once first. Then I'll count them."

That was his rule, and people were willing to follow it. This method of both sides counting the money established an important channel of trust between Lin Qi and his trading partners.

The children counted slowly. When the first child finished counting the stack of ten-dollar bills in his hands, he stated the total and handed the money to Lin Qi.

Lin Qi counted it again in front of him, then placed it directly inside a newspaper, wrapped it up, took a rubber band from his pocket, and tied it before handing it back to the child. This was how he had always done things.

His original explanation had been that, in the newspaper boys' leather bags, anything related to newspapers was the least conspicuous. It kept them from attracting unwanted attention.

The newspaper boys accepted that explanation. From then on, whenever the amount exceeded fifty dollars, Lin Qi would wrap it in newspaper before handing it over. By now, it had become a habit they were used to.

Stack after stack of money was counted, wrapped in newspaper, and tied with rubber bands. After seeing the children out, Lin Qi immediately returned to the inner room and pulled handfuls of bills from several pockets on his body.

He had played a little trick, holding back quite a few of the bills that should have gone to the children.

It was actually a very simple trick. While counting money, he used his ring finger to lift some of the bills around his middle finger. The instant he finished counting, he curled his middle finger back and pressed down with his palm facing the floor, trapping that portion of the money in his hand.

At that moment, the child who had finished counting was focused entirely on the stack Lin Qi had placed on the newspaper. That allowed Lin Qi to casually put the hand holding back part of the money into his pocket—he needed to take out a rubber band.

Then, under the eyes of both the newspaper boy and Lin Qi, the money they had supposedly counted together would be wrapped in newspaper and tied with a rubber band. From the moment Lin Qi moved to the moment the money left sight, the whole process took less than two seconds.

The children were young, while Lin Qi was older. They did not dare challenge his authority or suggest counting the money again. Lin Qi smoothly took the money back.

If they had possessed the courage to resist, they would not still be mere newspaper boys.

It was probably two or three thousand dollars. He did not count it. Since they intended to frame him with such methods, they could not blame him for taking some compensation first.

Not long after he finished everything and hid the money away, the door to the room was suddenly kicked open...