Chapter 147

Zeng Xianglin returned to his seat and used a pen to mark them. He was, of course, very familiar with the numbers he often called. Soon, he had marked all the calls he had made. After calculating, the phone bill he had to cover was thirty-two yuan and fifty cents.

He took out his wallet, counted out that much money, placed it on the stack of call records, and sat there with a straight face.

Zeng Xianglin's move left Peng Kehong in a difficult position. Wei Bingyi said, "Alright then, I will go report this to the leaders."

Peng Kehong's face turned pale. He never expected the matter to blow up this big. In the end, he was just a young man in his early twenties. Although he had some small cleverness, he couldn't consider problems comprehensively.

But now the situation was out of his control, and he could only watch helplessly as Wei Bingyi got up and went out.

Not to mention Peng Kehong sitting on pins and needles, about ten minutes later, everyone in the township government arrived at the Party and Government Office, which was instantly packed.

The expressions of township leaders like Chen Hongfu and Dong Jianshu were not very good. Seeing this scene, cold sweat broke out on Peng Kehong's forehead.

Wei Bingyi asked Chen Hongfu to sit down. After looking around, Chen Hongfu said, "Just now, Comrade Bingyi told me that Peng Kehong proposed an opinion, which is that many people in the Party and Government Office are making private calls. He even went to the Post and Telecommunications Bureau to print out the call records to investigate. After hearing this, I think this is a good opinion, so let's investigate. What are everyone's opinions?"

What opinions could everyone have? At this point, wouldn't anyone who voiced an opinion seem guilty? Thus, everyone agreed to the investigation, but at least a dozen angry glares were cast at Peng Kehong, many of them from leaders like deputy township heads and deputy secretaries.

Damn Peng Kehong, are you full and have nothing better to do? Investigating phone bills? Did you have to pay this money?

Chen Hongfu said, "Since everyone agrees, I will be the first to self-investigate."

Chen Hongfu walked over, picked up the stack of call records, and flipped through them. He had his own phone, so of course, he wouldn't make calls from the Party and Government Office phone. After flipping through, he didn't find any, so he handed the records to Dong Jianshu.

However, Chen Hongfu still said to Peng Kehong, "Peng Kehong, go to the Post and Telecommunications Bureau later and print out the call records for my office as well. I will also investigate how many private calls I made."

Peng Kehong hurriedly apologized with a smile, "There's no need to investigate your phone; the bill isn't much, just a little over one hundred."

Chen Hongfu said with a straight face, "How can that be? Everyone is equal. I told you to go print it, so go print it!"

Peng Kehong didn't dare say anything more and could only nod.

Dong Jianshu marked over fifty yuan in phone bills and took out the money according to the figure.

Next, Hu Chengli, Jin Taihe, Yang Xinrong, Li Maofa... one by one, they marked the private calls they had made. The bills varied, with Jin Taihe having the most at over one hundred yuan.

Su Xinghui marked the phone numbers he had called, which came to only twenty-three yuan and eighty cents. He also took out that much money and placed it on the desk.

Peng Kehong shouted, "Impossible, it's impossible for him to have only this much money. There must be more he didn't mark. I saw him make several calls one night a few days ago."

Once everyone heard this, they all knew who Peng Kehong was targeting with this stunt today.

Chen Hongfu said, "That doesn't matter. After everyone has finished marking, we can see which phone numbers haven't been marked and investigate those."

Soon, everyone had finished marking. Even Huang Sao had marked a few phone numbers. There were still quite a few phone numbers left unmarked.

Wei Bingyi began to verify: "The phone number for the County Government Office, the County Committee Office, County Head Zhang's office, Secretary Ji's office, the Agriculture Bureau, the Forestry Bureau..."

Wei Bingyi had worked in the Party and Government Office for many years and knew the phone numbers of all the county leaders and various county agencies like the back of his hand. The phone numbers for each department also had similar prefixes, so he marked them very quickly, finishing in over ten minutes. Once this was done, there weren't many phone numbers left.

Wei Bingyi counted, and there were seven call records that no one had claimed. This number was very small, which was because, under everyone's watchful eyes, no one dared to mark fewer calls than they had actually made; otherwise, it would be very embarrassing if exposed.

These seven call records were all the same phone number—a phone number in the county seat. The total phone bill wasn't much, less than ten yuan, so even if Su Xinghui had made them, it wouldn't be a big deal.

As soon as Wei Bingyi reported this phone number, Yang Xinrong slapped his thigh and said, "I made this call. It's the number of a classmate's home; I misremembered it."

Well, now all the call records had owners, and everyone had paid their money. Wei Bingyi counted the money, which came to over nine hundred yuan. The leaders' payments made up the bulk of it; after all, they had wider social networks, and it was understandable for them to make more calls.

Looking at the angry glares from the leaders, Peng Kehong's face was ashen. He knew that, at least in Meng Hu Ling Township, he would never have a chance to get ahead.

He didn't understand: he had originally targeted Su Xinghui today, so how did things evolve to this point?

Chen Hongfu didn't forget to add one more sentence: "Peng Kehong, remember to print out the call records for my phone this afternoon."

Peng Kehong didn't say a word. Wei Bingyi said, "Secretary Chen, Township Head Dong, how should we resolve the issue of making private calls in the future?"

Chen Hongfu also had a headache. In fact, in a government agency, it was an unspoken rule that staff made private calls, and this couldn't be criticized too harshly. In this era, making calls was very inconvenient, and the bills were expensive, so making calls at work was considered a kind of benefit. Every unit was like this.

The problem was that this was just an unspoken rule, and the reason it was called an unspoken rule was that it couldn't be made public. Now that Peng Kehong had made it public, the township government couldn't play dumb and had to introduce a measure to solve this problem.

After thinking for a while, Chen Hongfu said to Peng Kehong, "Peng Kehong, you pointed out this problem, so why don't you come up with an idea on how to solve it."