100 Fool's Gold

 

I had a feeling Liu Yinyan had something to tell me because he was acting very much unlike himself. Normally, Lin Yinyan would never waste time on talking but today, he had been chatting with me for so long. He laughed and laughed until he cried. I believed the main point was coming soon. I kept my silence but that seemed to stimulate Liu Yinyan even further. “Do you know? A normal person might not even earn a hundred million for 3 lifetimes, but I, I have several billions! Do you know how much that is? I don’t, for me it’s just a string of numbers in my bank account. I’ll be honest with you.” Liu Yinyan swung the cane around and in that moment, I saw the passion from his youth. “When I earned my first billion, I made an appointment several months beforehand to withdraw them in cash. I was so serious when I went to take the money but no one knew how ecstatic I was when I saw the money pile up at my home.” Liu Yinyan’s expression filled with feverish passion. “I was a country bumpkin who had nothing and slowly reached the state that I am in today. When I arrived at Dong Xing City, I only had 20 RMB, but from there, I earned a hundred, thousand, ten thousand, million and now billions! Money is a good thing!” Liu Yinyan sat back down on the couch. “It can buy you anything you want, everything you can ever imagine.”

I frowned and then spotted the tears in his eyes. I could guess the thing which was coming. I uttered softly, “But not the peace of your mind?”

After hearing that, it was as if Liu Yinyan lost the power core that kept him running and collapsed to the ground. His eyes were muddled and finally, I saw the business legend for the old man that he was. His hand slowly wiped away the tears. “I thought there would never be a third party who knew about this after 35 years. I assumed if I didn’t bring it up, it would eventually be forgotten. But I guess the secret is finally out after 35 years. Officer Wu, you have to help me save my daughter.” He almost knelt before me.

Liu Yinyan had selectively blocked that incident out of his mind, but when you tried harder to forget something, the more often it would appear in your mind. It would be there as a constant reminder. After I left that morning, Liu Yinyan had spent the whole day thinking and ultimately decided to open this Pandora’s box. And I finally knew what Liu Yinyan had done during that month at the gold trading store.

35 years ago, the desperate Liu Yinyan came to the gold trading shop. He stayed there for a month, because he needed 1 month to convince the boss of his plan. Finally the boss agreed to his demands. This incident became the deepest secret in Lin Yinyan and the boss’ heart, it was forever sealed.

2 months after Liu Yinyan left, a robber robbed this gold trading store. The shop’s location was not that isolated but it was not at the city centre either. The date the robber picked was perfect as well. That day the shop was doing routine inventory so most of the staff was not around. It was approaching dusk. The warm rays showered into the shop and the golden accessories shimmered like a dream. After he got down, the robber looked right and left before he walked in. There was only the boss and a single staff manning the store. The robber’s head was trapped inside a bad quality silk stocking, but it did the job of distorting his features. He took out a cheap pistol from his pocket and shouted in a thick country accent, “This is a robbery! Get down! Get down!” Both the boss and the staff were shocked. The robber dropped the gunny sack to the ground and ordered. “Move, get all the gold into this bag or I’ll shoot your heads off! Quick, I’m not joking! Move!” The boss and the staff shared a look and they slowly moved the gold and accessories into the gunny sack. The staff was extra cautious and silently pressed the button under the counter. The counter was connected to the police station and it wouldn’t make any sound while it did that, but strangely enough, it wasn’t working that day. Then she remembered, the system was switched off because they were opening all the cases for examination and inventory that day. The robber had chosen a perfect timing like he knew this was going to happen.

Since the police were not coming, the staff surrendered to her fate and obediently followed the robber’s instruction. With a sack of gold, the robber jumped into the car and drove away. It was an old van with no license plate. The boss stood before the staff and asked with concern, “Are you alright?” The staff was touched that her boss cared about her that much. She answered, “I’m fine, but boss, we’ve lost so much gold. You’ll lose a lot of money.”

The boss shook his head and sighed, “That’s fine, as long as we are safe. Plus at least we have insurance, we won’t be losing much.” The boss’ merchandise was insured and based on the contract, the insurance company would need to pay 80 percent compensation. With the testimony of the staff, the insurance coverage soon arrived. Based on primary estimation, about 1 billion worth of gold had been lost and so the boss was compensated 80 million. The people from the insurance company did launch an investigation because everything happened too coincidentally. The guard was not there, the security system was down, the cameras were in repair, it was like the boss had discussed the plan with the robber. But it didn’t take long for the robber to be found, or more precisely, for the body of the robber to be found.

The robber was a construction site worker, he didn’t know the gold shop boss, they had no interaction before. The recording of the robber going to the supermarket to purchase the silk stocking was on tape. The other construction site workers also confirmed that the man had gotten to the black market to purchase a cheap pistol. The robber had a daughter but she was diagnosed with uremia when she was just 10. The robber needed money for treatment so in his desperation, chose to rob a gold store. The timing matched, the motive matched and the witness as well as evidence matched. Before the robber committed suicide, his daughter unfortunately passed away at home.

The conclusion given by the police was, the construction site worker got a cheap pistol from the black market and the silk stocking from the supermarket to get money for his daughter due to her illness. He chose to rob the store about 3000 metres away from his farm. The timing was totally random, it just happened to be when the security at the gold shop was the weakest. After he got the sack of gold, the robber rode away in his van. He tried to unload the gold on the black market for 3 whole days but before he could find a buyer, his daughter had already died. Unable to take that disappointment, he chose to jump into the ocean to kill himself. 2 months later, the robber’s body was washed ashore but the sack of gold was nowhere to be found, they believed it had sunk into the bottom of the ocean.

10 years ago, the boss of the gold shop died in his sleep at age 67. So only Liu Yinyan knew what really happened back then and now I was the second person. I heard a story that would stay with me for a lifetime.

1 month after the robbery, 50 million was wired into Liu Yinyan’s account. Liu Yinyan used that fund to invest in the interweb company and that started his meteoric rise to success. The money was wired by the gold shop boss to Liu Yinyan. So technically speaking, the robbery was planned by Liu Yinyan. When Liu Yinyan was young, he had worked all kinds of odd jobs, including a brick-layer at the construction site. When he was there, Liu Yinyan got to know many people. When he was 30 plus, Liu Yinyan already left the construction site through his education but many of his friends still worked there. One of them was a man called Ren Tian and he had a daughter with uremia. That day, Liu Yinyan ‘accidentally’ bumped into Ren Tian who was coming out from the hospital.

That day, Liu Yinyan invited Ren Tian to dinner. They both drank quite a bit outside an old eatery. Ren Tian told Liu Yinyan that his daughter was doomed. There was only so much he could earn from brick-laying but his daughter would require thousands per day at the hospital. He was asked to take his daughter home, to wait for death to come claim her. Yes, such was the life of the poor.

Liu Yinyan said ‘drunkenly’, “Brother Ren, even though I have no family and daughter, I empathize with you. If my daughter is in the same situation as yours, I’d rob the bank to get the money for her treatment!”

“Rob the bank?” Ren Tian laughed, “Little brother, you’ve had too much to drink. It’s not that easy to rob a bank, you think I haven’t considered that before?!”

As Liu Yinyan tossed back another bottle of beer, he said, “Brother Ren, that’s where you need to think creatively. Since you know it’s too hard to rob a bank, then rob something else. Speaking of which, there is a gold trading shop nearby, isn’t there? I’m sure the security there can’t be that tough! I’d buy a mask, a pistol and charge in, what’s so hard about that? In fact, I’ll let you in on a secret. I know that the gold shop would check its inventory by the end of every month. There would be little staff and basically no security.”

“You've had too much to drink.” Ren Tai said hurriedly.

“What else can you do? Let your daughter die?” Liu Yinyan scoffed with derision, “If I can’t even save my own daughter, I’d jump into the ocean to kill myself.”

“You've had too much to drink.” Ren Tai said patiently.

“Says who?” Liu Yinyan collapsed on the table. “I can remain sober even after 1000 bottles of beer. Bring me more! More! I can still drink!”

That night, Ren Tian helped Liu Yinyan check into a cheap motel. The moment Ren Tian left, Liu Yinyan woke up immediately. He moved to the window and saw Ren Tian leave with determined steps. That night, Liu Yinyan wasn’t drunk but Ren Tian got drunk. The second day, Ren Tian scouted out the gold store. By the end of the month, Ren Tian robbed the shop. The gold that he robbed was actually fake, it was fool’s good, iron ingots with gold insulation on the surface. The whole gunny sack would probably be worth several hundred RMB. But this was all Ren Tian’s fault, he was the one who purchased the gun, he was the one who robbed the store. No one ordered him to do anything. Liu Yinyan was rambling drunkenly. Could you really blame everything on a drunkard’s words?

Ren Tian stood beside the sea with the bag of fool’s gold. His daughter still died. And he no longer had any reason to live. He carried that bag of fool’s gold and jumped into the ocean.

Until death, Ren Tian had no idea that the ‘chance’ encounter he had with Liu Yinyan in front of the hospital wasn’t coincidental at all.