was no way to keep up with all the things she sent me. Everything seemed to interest her, and it made me interested as well. Sometimes her interests uncovered things that were secretive and personal. She sent me a handwritten note she had found: “I need help with Carl,” and in her handwriting asked, “What does this mean?”
carl
My friend Carl Hathorne was a drug dealer. “I don’t care,” Anna said when I told her, and then laughed. “It’s always the popular ones you have to watch out for.” Carl wasn’t like a superstore, big-box pharmacy dealer, though. You couldn’t buy whatever you wanted; he had a limited inventory. He sold whatever drugs he could easily get his hands on, which meant that he sold his younger brother’s Ritalin, and he sold his older sister’s Prozac, and his mother’s Prozac too. He would sneak into their rooms and swipe a few pills and then sell them around school. It was an easy way for him to make money, and he started going to the junior high school and buying drugs off kids, mostly Ritalin, and then selling them to upperclassmen. He would buy the drugs for no more than a dollar a pill and sell them for anywhere between two and five dollars. He didn’t sell drugs to anyone younger than a sophomore, but he had no qualms about paying nothing to the younger kids. I once mentioned that he was ripping off kids who didn’t know the value of what they were selling, and he lectured me. “Value is relative,” he said. “A quarter is a lot of money to some people, a quarter of a million is not to some other people.” Carl is the only person I knew who talked about things like “supply chain,” and “distribution models,” and concepts like “lifetime value of a customer.” I have no idea where he got this stuff—maybe he was born with it.
He made good money, but he never got greedy. He knew he had to be careful. There were too many ways to get caught. He could get caught by his family for stealing their drugs, he could get caught by the teachers or principal for selling the drugs, and he could get caught with more supply than demand, but that was hardly likely. There were too many kids who wanted drugs, even in our small school. I had asked him once if it was true that the Goths used drugs. “They’ve never bought anything from me,” he said, but you couldn’t take Carl at his word about that stuff. He was like a doctor protecting his patients’ confidentiality. Everyone seemed to know (or suspect) that if you needed something, you went to Carl, yet no one seemed to know who ever actually went.
He had one prime attribute going for him: Everyone liked him. Carl was the most popular person in our sophomore class; he might have been the most popular person in the whole school. He treated everyone with respect and appeared to genuinely like people. And all the teachers liked him, all his customers liked him, all his suppliers liked him. “It’s a service industry,” he said. “It’s just good business. Where would I be without my suppliers and where would I be without my customers?” He’s the only person I knew who talked about a moral code. “The Ten Commandments are okay,” he told me, “but Dale Carnegie’s better.”
Carl could usually be seen wearing a worn-out blue blazer, every pocket stuffed with scraps of paper. They were reminders of who owed him how much and when it was owed, or whom he had to meet to collect from or transact with. Everything was written in a cryptic code he had invented, some obscure shorthand that he could decipher in a second, but that no one else would understand. Each pocket even meant something; it was a whole system. “I’m on top of it,” Carl said. He certainly was. He carried The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the Financial Times, and The Economist around in his backpack. He kept notebooks, detailed logs of all of his transactions. He would transfer the notes on the scraps of paper into his notebooks, which were filled
carl
My friend Carl Hathorne was a drug dealer. “I don’t care,” Anna said when I told her, and then laughed. “It’s always the popular ones you have to watch out for.” Carl wasn’t like a superstore, big-box pharmacy dealer, though. You couldn’t buy whatever you wanted; he had a limited inventory. He sold whatever drugs he could easily get his hands on, which meant that he sold his younger brother’s Ritalin, and he sold his older sister’s Prozac, and his mother’s Prozac too. He would sneak into their rooms and swipe a few pills and then sell them around school. It was an easy way for him to make money, and he started going to the junior high school and buying drugs off kids, mostly Ritalin, and then selling them to upperclassmen. He would buy the drugs for no more than a dollar a pill and sell them for anywhere between two and five dollars. He didn’t sell drugs to anyone younger than a sophomore, but he had no qualms about paying nothing to the younger kids. I once mentioned that he was ripping off kids who didn’t know the value of what they were selling, and he lectured me. “Value is relative,” he said. “A quarter is a lot of money to some people, a quarter of a million is not to some other people.” Carl is the only person I knew who talked about things like “supply chain,” and “distribution models,” and concepts like “lifetime value of a customer.” I have no idea where he got this stuff—maybe he was born with it.
He made good money, but he never got greedy. He knew he had to be careful. There were too many ways to get caught. He could get caught by his family for stealing their drugs, he could get caught by the teachers or principal for selling the drugs, and he could get caught with more supply than demand, but that was hardly likely. There were too many kids who wanted drugs, even in our small school. I had asked him once if it was true that the Goths used drugs. “They’ve never bought anything from me,” he said, but you couldn’t take Carl at his word about that stuff. He was like a doctor protecting his patients’ confidentiality. Everyone seemed to know (or suspect) that if you needed something, you went to Carl, yet no one seemed to know who ever actually went.
He had one prime attribute going for him: Everyone liked him. Carl was the most popular person in our sophomore class; he might have been the most popular person in the whole school. He treated everyone with respect and appeared to genuinely like people. And all the teachers liked him, all his customers liked him, all his suppliers liked him. “It’s a service industry,” he said. “It’s just good business. Where would I be without my suppliers and where would I be without my customers?” He’s the only person I knew who talked about a moral code. “The Ten Commandments are okay,” he told me, “but Dale Carnegie’s better.”
Carl could usually be seen wearing a worn-out blue blazer, every pocket stuffed with scraps of paper. They were reminders of who owed him how much and when it was owed, or whom he had to meet to collect from or transact with. Everything was written in a cryptic code he had invented, some obscure shorthand that he could decipher in a second, but that no one else would understand. Each pocket even meant something; it was a whole system. “I’m on top of it,” Carl said. He certainly was. He carried The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the Financial Times, and The Economist around in his backpack. He kept notebooks, detailed logs of all of his transactions. He would transfer the notes on the scraps of paper into his notebooks, which were filled
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