Chapter 670 - 557: Dissatisfied with Life

Chapter 670: Chapter 557: Dissatisfied with Life

Yang Guofa’s workplace was in the Queens District, near the zoo and the science museum.

Specifically, it was a street-front shop that was undergoing renovation.

The group gathered together to wait.

Just then, sirens blared from the north end of the street. A gray sedan came first, practically drifting as it turned onto their street, followed closely by an SUV with flashing police lights.

Meanwhile, from the south end of the street, another police car quickly turned in.

They were being pincered.

The gray sedan drove right onto the opposite sidewalk, trying to turn into a small alley.

But it hadn’t gone far before it began reversing frantically, another police car in hot pursuit out of the same alley.

CRUNCH.

The police car behind didn’t hesitate to ram it.

"An American-style stop," Yang Zeran exclaimed.

Lin Wei subtly moved to stand in front of Shen Xin.

’We’ve got the American-style stop,’ Shen Xin instinctively thought. ’Is an American-style quick draw next?’

Before he could say it aloud, someone in the gray sedan kicked open the door and took off running, firing wildly behind him as he fled.

"gun!"

"look out!"

Amid the shouts of alarm, the police who had exited their cars decisively returned fire.

In an instant, gunfire erupted.

Shen Xin instinctively reached for his waist, only to find nothing there. Lin Wei then yanked him into a corner.

"Damn, that’s intense," Chang Zhigang exclaimed.

A colleague from the consulate crouched down and said, "You bet. It’s like an American action movie every day."

The suspect was wearing West Coast-style baggy pants and had to use one hand to hold them up while running. After just a few steps, he tripped over them.

One officer rushed forward, raised his gun, and emptied his magazine.

Another officer flanking from the other side did the same, showing no restraint whatsoever. He also emptied his magazine, shouting as the suspect went down. Who knew if he was still alive?

The group crouched down, watching the scene unfold while dodging stray bullets.

"Say what you will, but they’re experienced. They don’t hesitate when it’s time to shoot," commented a deputy detachment leader from Kang Province.

This sparked a discussion among the group.

"Of course. In a chaotic situation like this, an inexperienced officer would have been ’honorably discharged’ long ago."

"It’s not like back home. If you opened fire like this on the street, the higher-ups would go crazy."

"If you ever did something like this, kid, I’d go crazy too!"

"You can’t say that. Twenty years ago, wasn’t it pretty much the same for you?"

Chang Zhigang nodded in deep agreement, rubbing his arm.

As a veteran detective, he’d seen it all.

"Honestly, it’s better back home," the man from the consulate muttered.

Shen Xin nodded in deep agreement.

Having been in a shootout before, he knew it was better for there to be fewer guns in the world.

They emptied two magazines, reloaded, saw the suspect was still moving, and fired off another two. Only when backup arrived did the officers on scene peek out and approach with their guns drawn.

Only then did the group stand up, watching from a distance.

Yang Zeran made a dark joke, saying, "If you put him on a scale now, he’d weigh an extra couple pounds from all the bullets."

Zheng Chengbao came out of the shop, glanced at the chaos across the street, and said nothing.

The group asked him about the situation.

"Not bad. We’re off to a good start," Zheng Chengbao said, ever the optimist.

He then suggested leaving someone behind to keep an eye on Yang Guofa.

First, they were afraid he’d run again, which would be a hassle to track down. Second, with all this chaos, they were worried something might happen to him by accident.

"I get the feeling he’s not very satisfied with his current life. We need to do a bit more digging."

Zheng Chengbao meant they should investigate his situation more deeply.

And from what Shen Xin could see, ’not very satisfied’ was a massive understatement.

That afternoon, just before 6:00 PM, Yang Guofa got off work and drove away in his beat-up two-door Corolla.

He didn’t go home. He went to deliver food.

Dinner was a sandwich he’d brought from home, eaten while waiting for an order.

In March, the low temperature in New York still hovered around freezing. He was huddled in his car, so the sandwich was surely cold too, but he made do with a bite.

He hadn’t even finished when an order came in. He frantically started the car and rushed to the restaurant.

Starting at around 6:00 PM, he worked nonstop until well past 10:00 PM.

The team tailed him for four hours. Yang Zeran did a quick mental calculation and said, "Not bad. Gas is cheap here, right? He’s probably making over twenty bucks an hour."

"Let’s say a hundred for four hours. Damn, his food delivery gig alone pays double my daily salary."

"And that’s not even counting his official income from the construction site."

Yang Guofa’s boss was in renovations. He was a carpenter, and over here, carpenters were paid based on skill level. His hourly wage was around 45.

For a 10-hour day, that’s 450.

Shen Xin teased, "You should come over too. Earn USD by day, spend RMB by night. In less than three years, you could be living in a huge villa."

That killed the conversation.

But for Yang Guofa, who was earning five or six hundred a day, life was clearly not so glamorous.

It was almost 11:00 PM when he finally returned home.

It was a dilapidated single-family house. The moment his car stopped, the front door was thrown open.

A Black man stormed out.

Shen Xin had seen the file; it had to be Jolinda’s eldest son.

Behind him, Jolinda appeared, so fat it looked like she had a swimming tube wrapped around her waist. She started screaming curses at her son.

She spoke so fast it was like she was rapping, her curses finding a rhythm.

The two of them were arguing fiercely.

Yang Guofa, who had just gotten out of his car, must have said something to mediate, because it was like pouring gasoline on a fire. His eldest stepson charged straight at him.

He grabbed him by the collar.

The guy looked to be about six-foot-three and was built. The force of it lifted Yang Guofa’s feet off the ground and slammed him against the car.

Jolinda didn’t try to stop him; she just kept cursing.

Yang Guofa was terrified and didn’t dare talk back.

The eldest son pinned him, freed one hand, and patted him down. He pulled out his wallet, threw Yang Guofa to the ground, and quickly emptied it of all the cash.

Yang Guofa specifically requested to be paid daily.

Only when she saw her son taking Yang Guofa’s money did Jolinda curse and rush over to stop him, grabbing a baseball bat from the lawn to beat her son with.

The son casually tossed the wallet back to Yang Guofa, hopped on a motorcycle parked by the road, and sped off with a ROAR.

Furious, Jolinda stood in the middle of the road, screaming obscenities after him.

Over here, Yang Guofa had just scrambled to his feet when Jolinda charged at him, pointing at his nose and unleashing a torrent of abuse, probably blaming him for not keeping the money safe from their son.

During this, another Black kid with cornrows, who looked about seventeen or eighteen, pushed the door open and came out.

It must have been Jolinda’s second son.

He had a backpack on, didn’t even glance at his mother or stepfather, and just ran off.

It was 11:00 PM.

Jolinda didn’t care. Still muttering curses, she went inside.

"Damn, that’s just brutal." Yang Zeran frowned as he watched Yang Guofa clutch his back and bend down to pick up his wallet. "If I ever treated my dad like that, he would’ve broken my legs."

Shen Xin nodded in deep agreement.

When he was a kid, just a look from his old man was enough to send a chill down his spine.

"The thing is, they aren’t even his sons."

Shen Xin watched as Yang Guofa went inside.

Soon, the sounds of arguing erupted from the house again.

A short while later, Yang Guofa came out holding a little boy.

It must have been the son Jolinda had with him.

Perhaps because Yang Guofa was out working all day, the boy wasn’t very close to him. He was wailing in his arms.

Yang Guofa had to soothe him for a good while before the crying finally stopped.

Yang Guofa just held him, sitting on the steps in a daze.

He sat there for over half an hour, still as a wooden carving, lost in thought.

It was almost midnight. At five in the morning, he would have to drive off to the construction site for work.

Seeing this, even Shen Xin felt a pang of sorrow.

And after a deeper investigation, they found it was even worse than that.

Jolinda didn’t work.

The eldest son was a delinquent who treated the local NYPD precinct like his second home. Yang Guofa had bailed him out more times than he could count on one hand.

The second son was only 17 and still in high school, but he also had a criminal record.

The third son was just 13 this year. Compared to his two older brothers, he was relatively well-behaved, only getting into fights at school.

They heard he was pretty good at basketball and tall for his age. Yang Guofa had even bragged to his coworkers that this son might make it to the NBA one day.

The house belonged to Jolinda, inherited from her family. It was over forty years old, even older than Jolinda herself.

So even with a decent income, Yang Guofa was living hand-to-mouth. He had no savings in his bank account and was barely getting by on credit cards.

A hard life was one thing.

But his emotional life was a disaster too.

The local police had been called to their house for domestic violence several times.

But it wasn’t Yang Guofa abusing Jolinda. It was the other way around.

One of the police reports stated that at two in the morning, Jolinda had kicked Yang Guofa out of the house wearing nothing but his underwear, not even shoes.

And that wasn’t all.

Jolinda had been married twice before and had two ex-husbands.

The eldest son’s father was in and out of prison. He had also extorted and beaten Yang Guofa.

The second ex-husband wasn’t much better.

It was said he was still fooling around with Jolinda, that they hadn’t completely broken it off.

Jolinda lived off Yang Guofa, yet she was still flirting with strange men on the side.

The surveillance team assigned to her had seen it with their own eyes.

She’d left her youngest son outside the car while she... did things with a Black man inside.

In other words, Yang Guofa was being cheated on.

The team spent over a week meticulously investigating Yang Guofa’s current life.

After reading through the files, even Yang Zeran couldn’t help but wonder aloud, "Why doesn’t he just divorce her?"

They got married in 2015 and had a child. Yang Guofa now had legal status; he had a green card.

Shen Xin said, "You think this is China? Getting a divorce in the United States isn’t as simple as just losing a layer of skin."

If Yang Guofa divorced her now, Jolinda was unemployed and had their young fourth son to care for. That meant not only would Yang Guofa be kicked out of the house, but he’d also have to pay alimony every month.

At the same time, besides the eldest son who was an adult, he, as the stepfather, would have to support Jolinda’s other two sons and pay child support for them.

But the problem was, would her delinquent eldest son let him off so easily?

Yang Guofa would end up living miserably in some basement studio, working like a nuclear-powered beast of burden, and all the money he earned would go to Jolinda.

Then Jolinda would be living off Yang Guofa’s support payments, with no need to work.

And then she could properly and openly find other men.

Zheng Chengbao had clearly also looked into the situation in the United States. Amused by Shen Xin’s words, he nodded and said, "For Yang Guofa, divorce is definitely not the best option."

"He seems trapped right now. He’s deeply dissatisfied with his life but powerless to change it."

"They say a bad life is better than a good death, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this case these past few days. I’m actually starting to think we might even have a chance of persuading him to return to China."