Chapter 3 - The Accomplice Appears

Fatty Sun had never seen so much cash in his life. The stacks and stacks of paper bills formed a little mountain of their own and covered the entire table. Staring at them was hypnotizing.

“Br-brother Dong, this…this has got to be at least one or two million bucks, right?”

Chen Dadong had no idea either. He gulped down a mouthful of cheap Erguotou and was emboldened by the alcohol as he spoke with a swagger, “Look at that useless face of yours! It’s just a little bit of money and you’re so mesmerized already?” Even though he made himself sound nonchalant about it, he was also insanely excited. With this ability to say something that he didn’t mean, it was such a pity that he didn’t try becoming an actor.

Fatty Sun took Chen Dadong’s reaction at face value and thought that Chen Dadong had really been involved in some major cases, so he immediately felt great admiration for Chen Dadong and even humbly asked his superior to tell him about his glorious past so that he could learn a thing or two.

But this was also the first time Chen Dadong was seeing so much money. He didn’t have any experiences to share, so he just continued pretending as he said, “A true hero never talks about his display of bravery in the past. There’s no point in talking about them now!”

Fatty Sun didn’t want to give up, so he offered Chen Dadong a toast and asked him to share his experiences again.

Chen Dadong realized he couldn’t shake Fatty Sun off, so he started to think up something to brag about. “Actually, whether a criminal is a great one or not doesn’t depend on how big the crime is. It depends on whether he’s able to escape being punished by the law after doing the deed!”

Fatty Sun had a look of enlightenment on his face upon hearing these words. He instantly fell to his knees to beg his senior in crime to show him the way to becoming a great criminal.

Chen Dadong pondered for a while and finally decided to impart his knowledge. “If you want to escape being punished by the law, choosing a target is very important.”

That part was real. Before having accomplices, Chen Dadong used to work alone in the produce market. He targeted the purses of old ladies who walked slowly. That way, even if the old ladies realized he had stolen their money, he just had to run for it. The old ladies couldn’t catch up with him anyway. Even if a kind passerby managed to catch him and drag him to the police station, the little money inside the old lady’s purse would be too little for the police to care about. That was how he managed to be let off the hook time and again.

But Fatty Sun didn’t know any of this history, so he earnestly asked Chen Dadong to teach him the secret to choosing the right target.

Chen Dadong was a little embarrassed to talk about how he went for easy targets, so he picked out what he felt was the most important point and summarized it, “You must see money like it’s merely dung. Do not look down on small time crime. Do not choose only the fat and ignore the skinny, do not only love the rich and despise the poor. That is the way I have always been.” After saying that, he quickly turned on the TV to turn Fatty Sun’s attention away from himself. He was afraid that if Fatty Sun asked any more questions, he might give himself away.

He turned the TV on just in time to catch the news and the newscaster had just gotten to reporting this piece of news.

“An armed robbery in a bank along Fuzhou Road happened this morning after 9am. The bank has reported a loss of around $2 million in cash.”

Chen Dadong blinked in shock, then snorted and laughed. “Gosh, I can’t believe someone actually dared to rob a bank with a gun. He must be tired of living.”

Fatty Sun was a little more sympathetic and sighed. “I suppose he must have been forced into this by his circumstances. He probably did it because he had no other choice.”

Chen Dadong decided to use this case as a bad example and quickly made use of this topic to show off his wisdom, “It’s already bad enough that he attempted armed robbery. Now, he’s made the news, so the police are definitely going to treat this as an important case to solve. I don’t think that robber’s going to get away this time. Can you see the importance of choosing the right target now?”

Fatty Sun agreed wholeheartedly. “If he had robbed the bank of a lot of money, then it wouldn’t have been so bad. But $2 million? That’s not much more than what we got this time.”

Chen Dadong said complacently, “It might be the same amount of money, but the most important part here is that he actually went ahead to rob a bank and ended up becoming a wanted criminal. Look at us! We took that money without anybody even noticing us! The risk was very low and even if we get caught and thrown in jail, the judge will give us a much lighter sentence compared to a bank robber.”

Fatty Sun immediately nodded vigorously and started cheering and clapping.

They heard the newscaster continue to report on this case, “The robber was armed with a gun and after he had forced the teller to hand over the money, he locked everyone up inside the office and ran out of the bank. The whole process took about ten minutes. The robber used a scarf to cover his face, so the surveillance cameras in the bank were unable to capture an image of the robber. But according to eyewitnesses, a car accident happened outside the entrance to the bank after the robbery and both the driver and the victim were quarreling outside the bank. However, by the time the police received a call from the bank and arrived on scene, both the driver and the victim had disappeared. The police suspect that the robber accidentally knocked someone down while trying to escape in his car, but was afraid that the victim would reveal his identity, so he kidnapped the victim as well. We will now hear more from the head of the North City Police Criminal Investigation Team, Inspector Ji.”

The news then cut to a tall and skinny young man who was probably the Inspector Ji that the newscaster was talking about. Judging from how busy the police officers behind Inspector Ji were, this clip must have been recorded earlier that day at the scene of the crime.

Chen Dadong felt a sense of schadenfreude when he watched the news and made a sarcastic comment as he took another mouthful of his drink, “Look at how many police are on this case! They’re definitely bent on cracking this case. And what was that the newscaster said earlier? The robber knocked someone down while trying to escape? So he’s robbed a bank AND knocked someone down? That’s a crime on top of another crime. What a terrible criminal!”

Fatty Sun added, “That’s not all. He even kidnapped the victim as well, so he’s guilty of kidnapping too!”

As the two men gleefully exchanged comments on the case, Fatty Sun suddenly realized something. He pointed to the TV and said, “Wait, Brother Dong! Look! Don’t you think the bank behind the police officers look like the same one we were at this morning?”

Chen Dadong brushed it off. “You’re thinking too much. All banks look alike.”

The next thing that appeared on the TV screen was footage from a camera outside the entrance of the bank. An SUV drove towards the bank and the caption said that this car belonged to the robber.

Fatty Sun pointed at the SUV on the screen and exclaimed, “Isn’t this the SUV that we targeted this morning?!”

“Nah, that can’t be. All SUVs look the same too!”

Fatty Sun tried to convince Chen Dadong otherwise, “Brother Dong, think about it. We weren’t able to go through with our plan to bust the SUV’s tires this morning because the driver reversed and knocked into Ergou. That corresponds exactly to what the news just reported! By the way, where’s Ergou? Where did Liu Ergou go?”

Chen Dadong finally realized this as well. “You’re right. Where did Liu Ergou go?”

Fatty Sun gasped. “Could he really have been kidnapped by that driver?”

Chen Dadong shuddered. He shared the same sentiments as Fatty Sun but refused to admit that Fatty Sun was right after all. “That’s ridiculous. How could he be that unlucky?”

Immediately after he said that, they heard Inspector Ji speak in a righteous and stern voice, “Even though the robber had purposely covered his face, after the police checked all the footage from the bank’s surveillance cameras carefully, we have finally uncovered some clues. After the robber knocked down a man on the road, a middle aged man was seen running off in a hurry with a bag. We have confirmed with the teller that the bag that this middle aged man was holding is exactly the same bag that the robber used when he robbed the bank, so we can conclude that the middle aged man is one of the robber’s accomplices. We will release images from the surveillance footage so that we can track this man down. I hope that any member of the public who recognizes this man will contact the police as soon as possible.”

The screen then switched to a clip from the surveillance camera footage. It showed a middle aged man running away hurriedly with the bag of money. Fatty Sun immediately cried out, “Shit! Brother Dong, you’re on TV!”