American Medicine God: Starting by Inheriting a Pharmaceutical Company and Selling Medicine

The first snow of 1981, winter in New Jersey came a little later than usual. The No. 2 bus, parked on Route 8, carried away the last fallen yellow leaf.

New Jersey DEA (Department of Narcotics and Drug Enforcement) field office, third floor.

The heating pipes emitted a "whooshing" sound, like an old ox panting.

Hank Schrader sat at his desk piled high with documents, twirling a cheap ballpoint pen he'd pilfered from a motel.

He stared at the corkboard on the wall for three whole hours.

The board was covered with photos: several Irish gang members riddled with bullets, screenshots from security cameras at the entrances of several nightclubs, and a blurry, distant photo of a funeral.

In the very center of the photo is a young man wearing a black trench coat, looking down at the tomb.

Victor Corleone.

"This is a dead end, Hank."

Gomez, Gomez's partner, placed a steaming cup of coffee on the table and casually pulled a cigarette from his pack. "The Irish are finished, that's good. We should write the closing report."

"You think so too?" Hank didn't look at him; his gaze remained fixed on Victor's face.

"Here's the forensic report." Gomez patted a stack of documents on the table. "The 'purple liquid' seized on the street was made of codeine phosphate and promethazine. A standard cough syrup formula. While it's a prescription drug in pharmacies, it's not considered a true Schedule I controlled substance. Even if we catch the petty thugs selling it, the judge will at most sentence them to community service."

"wrong."

He picked up an evidence bag from the table. Inside was half a bottle of viscous purple liquid.

"Look at this, Gomez." Hank held the bottle up to the light; the purple liquid, illuminated by the incandescent bulb, had an eerily clear quality. "Have you ever seen anything this clean?"

"What do you mean?"

"Street workshops, I mean those scum who refine drugs in a bathtub with cold water and lighter fluid, they can't make this stuff."

"Street-bought stuff often contains solvent residue, unreacted precursors, and even rat droppings. But this bottle of stuff..."

"99.8% purity. No impurities. No odor. Even the pigment ratio is precise to the milligram level."

"What does this mean?" Gomez frowned.

"This means it couldn't have been done by some drug addict in their basement." Hank slammed the evidence bag down on the table. "This was made in a lab with industrial-grade centrifuges, chromatographs, and constant-temperature reactors. This isn't street crime; this is an industrial product."

Gomez fell silent. He glanced at Victor Corleone's portrait on the wall.

"You mean Corleone Pharmaceuticals?"

"That factory was on the verge of bankruptcy; they couldn't even pay their electricity bills. But in the last two months, they suddenly paid off all their bank loans and bought back their ancestral estate." Hank sneered. "Do you think it's because their cough syrup suddenly tasted better?"

“But he has a legitimate pharmaceutical license, Hank,” Gomez reminded him. “He’s a big taxpayer. The president of that Smith Bank even treated the bureau chief to dinner last week, specifically to praise this ‘young entrepreneur.’”

"A young entrepreneur?" Hank exhaled a puff of smoke from his nostrils. "I think it's Pablo Escobar in a suit."

He grabbed the leather jacket from the back of the chair and strode toward the door.

"where did you go?"

"Go take a look at this entrepreneur's production line."

……

New Jersey toll roads.

Under a gray sky, an inconspicuous Chevrolet sedan was parked behind a bush by the roadside.

Hank held binoculars in his hand and chewed tasteless gum in his mouth.

In the footage, the gates of the Corleone pharmaceutical factory are closed. Every half hour, an unmarked van drives out of the factory and heads south along the highway—the direction leading to Philadelphia and Baltimore.

"This is the fourth one," Hank muttered to himself.

How could a pharmaceutical factory that produces cold medicine have such a large shipment volume?

Hank started the car as the fifth truck drove out of the gate.

Police lights flashed.

The truck slowly pulled up to the side of the road. The driver was a middle-aged white man who looked honest and unassuming, wearing blue overalls.

"Turn off the engine. Keep your hands on the steering wheel." Hank had one hand on the Glock pistol at his waist and the other tapping on the car window.

The driver was very cooperative, showing no sign of panic.

"Officer, was I speeding?"

"Routine check." Hankel opened the car door. "What are you transporting?"

"Chemical raw materials. Mainly propylene glycol and food coloring." The driver pointed to the back, "Delivered to a candy factory in Philadelphia."

Hank climbed onto the cargo box.

The room was filled with blue plastic buckets. He randomly unscrewed one, and inside was indeed a clear, slightly sweet, viscous liquid—propylene glycol. A legal food additive, and also the base for cough syrup.

There is no codeine. There are no contraband items.

"Where's the waybill?" Hank jumped out of the car and asked, still unwilling to give up.

The driver handed me a folder.

Hank flipped through the thick stack of documents. Transport permits, dangerous goods disposal forms, tax invoices, even the driver's medical examination report... Every sheet of paper was stamped with a bright red seal, and every signature was written in a flamboyant, elegant style.

perfect.

so perfect.

If you've ever apprehended drug dealers on the street, you know their fake IDs are usually quite crude. But this document looks like it just came off a printer. Every legal clause is cited perfectly, and it even includes a reference to the 104th Amendment to the Interstate Trade Act in the notes section.

This doesn't look like the driver's vehicle documents; it looks more like a "get-out-of-jail-free card" specially prepared to deal with inspections.

"This is simply a work of art." Hank tossed the folder back into the driver's seat, his eyes turning cold.

"May I go now, officer?" the driver asked politely.

"Get lost."

As the truck disappeared from sight, Hank kicked the roadside guardrail hard.

That lawyer named Saul Goodman. It must be him.

These people have turned the law into their bulletproof vest.

……

It was already 5 p.m. when I got back to the station.

Hank barged straight into the chief's office.

"I need a search warrant." He slammed a stack of photographs onto the chief's wooden desk. "Corleone Pharmaceuticals. Now. Immediately."

The bureau chief is wiping his golf clubs.

"reason?"

"Reason? This is the fucking reason!" Hank pointed at the bottle of purple liquid. "Industrial-grade purity! The excessive shipping frequency! And that shipping document that's as perfect as counterfeit money! They definitely laced it with drugs and sold it to our kids!"

"Evidence, Hank. I need direct evidence." The chief put down his golf club and sighed. "Did you catch them making a deal? Did you find drugs in their car? Do you have any witnesses?"

"Give me a search warrant, and I'll give you the evidence! Just let me into that factory and check the residue in their reactors..."

"No way," the chief interrupted him. "The Corleone family is now a favorite of City Hall. President Smith guarantees their cash flow is very healthy and they're a model of legitimate business. If I shut down a taxpayer company without solid evidence, my desk will be piled high with lawyer's letters the next day, and the mayor will call me out the day after."

"So we're just going to watch them turn New Jersey into a second Columbia?" Hank roared, veins bulging in his neck.

"Watch your tone, Detective." The chief's voice turned cold. "The Irish gang case is closed. We've met this year's KPIs. Don't go looking for trouble. Get out."

Hank stared intently at the bureau chief's well-maintained face.

A few seconds later, he grabbed the photo on the table, turned around, and slammed the door shut as he left.

Outside the office, colleagues all lowered their heads, pretending to be busy. In this system, people who are too persistent are usually not popular.

Hank returned to his seat, feeling as if a heavy stone was pressing on his chest.

He opened the drawer, took out a bottle of whiskey, and poured himself a glass.

The amber-colored liquid sloshed in the glass.

"Want to comply with regulations? Fine, I'll grant you compliance."

Hank downed his whiskey in one gulp, the pungent alcohol stimulating his senses. His gaze fell on an address book on the corner of his desk.

He turned to that page, his finger pausing on a name.

David Rossi.

FDA (Food and Drug Administration) - Northeastern Region Senior Investigator.

That was his old classmate from his training in Quantico. One was notoriously stubborn, the other a bureaucrat with a fastidious obsession with rules.

The DEA needs evidence to investigate drugs.

However, the FDA only needs one reason to inspect a pharmaceutical company: "suspect that the production process does not comply with cGMP regulations".

That is the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all pharmaceutical companies.

Hank picked up the phone and dialed the number.

The receiver emitted a "beep-beep" sound.

"Feed? David? It's me, Hank."

"Don't hang up, man. I have a big case here, not drugs, really. It's about data fabrication."

"Yes, a pharmaceutical company. I think there's something wrong with their production records. Would you like to come to New Jersey for a coffee sometime?"

"I want to give you a sales performance bonus. A huge sales performance bonus."