Chapter 622: [Extra] Boundary Marker: Ants Moving House

Pittsburgh mornings always had a lingering smell of coal smoke.

Joe Miller sat in an unmarked black Chevrolet, the coffee in his hand long since gone cold.

He stared at the shop across the street, the one with the "Mutual Aid Alliance Chartered Pharmacy" sign. A laptop rested on his knees, its screen filled with dense spreadsheets.

This was the result of his data tracking.

The pickup truck that had overturned on Interstate 79, the scattered boxes of NovoRapid insulin—every single package had a unique tracking code.

Joe Miller had spent two days following the clues, and they had led him to the source.

The source was right here.

Pittsburgh’s 11th District, a typical neighborhood—a mix of blue-collar workers and retirees.

The data on his screen showed a strange anomaly.

In the past month, this pharmacy’s insulin sales had skyrocketed by five hundred percent.

The list of buyers was displayed on the right side of the screen:

Martha Kowal, 78, lives alone. Amount purchased last week: 12 vials.

Robert Johnson, 82, nursing home resident. Amount purchased last week: 15 vials.

Susan Miller, 75, receiving welfare. Amount purchased last week: 10 vials.

Joe Miller was a veteran detective. He knew exactly what these numbers meant.

A typical diabetic, even a severe case, would only use a few vials a month.

At this purchasing frequency, these seniors should have died at home long ago from hypoglycemic shock or a drug overdose.

But they were still alive. And very busy.

At nine a.m., the pharmacy doors opened right on time.

The line already stretched to the street corner.

It was a peculiar line.

It was composed entirely of senior citizens.

They wore heavy, old coats and slightly frayed wool hats, each one tightly clutching a deep red Mutual Aid Card.

They didn’t look like they were there to buy medicine. They looked like they were lining up for free eggs.

Joe Miller rolled down his window and lit a cigarette.

He saw a young man in a hoodie standing in the shadows on the corner.

He was a kid in his early twenties, but he was driving a brand-new Dodge Challenger.

He kept his head down, staring at his phone, but he’d occasionally glance up at the line of seniors.

That was the "snakehead’s" subordinate—the so-called "receiver."

The line began to crawl forward.

The first one to come out was the old lady, Martha.

She carried a white plastic bag containing the insulin she had just bought.

She looked left and right, then clutched the bag and shuffled toward the Dodge Challenger on the corner.

Joe Miller narrowed his eyes.

The transaction began.

Martha walked up to the car window, which lowered just a crack.

She stuffed the plastic bag inside.

A few seconds later, a hand reached out and handed her a few green bills.

Martha took the money, expertly wet her finger with a bit of saliva to count it, then carefully tucked it into an inner pocket.

The tense look on her face relaxed, replaced by a smile of satisfaction.

Then came the second senior.

The third.

The entire process was smooth, natural, and perfectly coordinated.

The scene was as mundane as farmers selling their homegrown potatoes to a wholesaler at the market.

Watching this, Joe Miller felt a surge of absurdity.

It was like ants moving their home.

These old people were the ants.

They were using the privilege Leo Wallace had granted them, using that Red Card, to empty out Pittsburgh’s pharmacies bit by bit. Then, they funneled the life-saving medicine to greedy middlemen.

Joe Miller pushed his car door open and threw his cigarette butt to the ground, grinding it out with his foot.

He straightened his trench coat and strode over.

The young man in the Dodge was on high alert.

He saw a burly, cold-faced man heading straight for him and immediately rolled up the window and started the engine.

The engine roared to life, and the car shot forward, disappearing down the end of the street.

Joe Miller didn’t give chase.

He couldn’t catch that car. That was a job for the police.

His targets were these ants.

He stopped the old woman, Martha, as she was about to leave.

"Hold on, ma’am."

Joe Miller pulled out a red metal ID and flashed it in front of the old woman.

"Mutual Aid Alliance, Compliance Department. We need to talk."

The old woman, Martha, froze.

Her face turned deathly pale as she stared at the badge on the ID.

She instinctively clutched the pocket that held the few dozen US Dollars she had just received.

"I... I didn’t do anything wrong."

The old woman’s voice trembled, and she instinctively shrank back.

"I was just... just helping a neighbor buy some medicine."

"Stop lying, Mrs. Kowal."

Joe Miller’s voice was cold.

"I saw you. You gave the medicine to the person in that car, and he gave you money."

"According to Article Twelve of the Mutual Aid Alliance Membership Agreement, reselling subsidized medicine is a serious violation. We can revoke your membership, seize your illegal earnings, and even prosecute you for fraud."

Hearing the word "prosecute," the old woman’s composure completely crumbled.

"No! Don’t arrest me!"

Martha suddenly grabbed Joe Miller’s sleeve.

"Officer, please, don’t arrest me. I can’t go to jail, I have a cat to feed..."

Tears streamed down her face, tracing paths through her wrinkled cheeks.

"Why are you doing this?"

Joe Miller looked at the old woman, who could barely even stand steady, and the anger in his heart suddenly gave way to a weary exhaustion.

"The Mutual Aid Card gives you the right to buy medicine for thirty-five US Dollars. It’s meant to keep you alive, not for you to go into business."

"I know! I know it’s a kindness from Mayor Wallace!"

Martha said through her tears.

"But Officer, you don’t know how hard things are right now."

The old woman let go of his sleeve, pulled the crumpled bills from her pocket, and spread them in her palm.

Fifty US Dollars in total.

"That bottle of medicine... with the Red Card, I only pay thirty-five dollars for it."

"That young man, he buys our medicine for fifty dollars."

"I make fifteen dollars just by flipping it."

Martha stared at the money in her hand, her eyes filled with helplessness.

"Fifteen dollars is enough for me to buy bread and milk for three days."

"Last month, the price of natural gas went up. My pension isn’t enough to cover the heating bill. If I don’t make this little bit of money, I’ll have to freeze in that cold apartment."

"My diabetes won’t kill me, I have my medicine. But I have to eat! I have to stay warm!"

"Officer, I’m not greedy."

"I’m just... trying to survive."

Joe Miller fell silent.

He looked at the bills in the old woman’s hand.

For a fifteen-dollar profit margin, these seniors, in their seventies and eighties, were lining up for two hours in the cold wind, risking the loss of their benefits and even jail time, just to act as accomplices for smugglers.

This was the reality.

Leo Wallace had used executive power to force drug prices down, giving the people of Pittsburgh a healthcare privilege.

But he couldn’t solve inflation.

He couldn’t solve rising food prices or doubling energy bills.

Even in a booming Pittsburgh, life for those at the bottom of society was still a struggle.

And for these seniors at the very bottom, that thirty-five-dollar bottle of insulin wasn’t just life-saving medicine.

It was the only liquid asset they had.

On the black market, that same bottle was worth three hundred US Dollars.

It was a massive opportunity for arbitrage.

Even if they only got fifteen dollars of that, to them, it was a fortune.

Poverty had turned them into ants.

Into the lowest-level couriers in a vast smuggling network.

"Are the others doing this too?" Joe Miller asked.

Martha wiped her tears and nodded.

"Everyone does it. The old-timers at the community center, anyone with extra credit on their card, they all come line up."

"The young man comes to pick up the goods every Tuesday and Friday."

"We... we don’t have a choice."

Joe Miller looked at the long line still waiting outside the pharmacy.

Those seniors, who looked like honest, law-abiding citizens who had never broken a rule in their lives.

In his eyes now, they were all just links in a smuggling chain.

They were using the Red Card that represented their dignity to trade for a few dollars of survival money.

What a bitter irony.

Leo had given them dignity, but they were forced to sell that dignity for bread.

"Go on."

Joe Miller put away his ID.

"I’m not arresting you this time."

Martha froze for a second, as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

"But, Mrs. Kowal."

Joe Miller’s voice was still hard.

"Tell your old friends."

"Don’t come back here."

"Next time, it won’t be me. It’ll be the police."

"The fifty dollars that kid gives you won’t buy back your Red Card. Once it’s suspended, you’ll regret it when you really need it to save your life."

The old woman nodded frantically, clutched her money, and fled as if escaping.

Joe Miller stood by the roadside and lit his second cigarette.

He took out his phone and dialed Ethan Hawke’s number.

The call connected after two rings.

"Miller here."

"Did you figure it out?" Ethan’s voice came through. "Which gang is it? Did you catch anyone?"

"Figured it out."

Joe Miller exhaled a smoke ring.

"It’s not a gang."

"It’s everyone."

"What do you mean?" Ethan didn’t understand.

"I mean our enemy isn’t a few gangsters or a couple of greedy pharmacists."

Joe Miller looked at the seniors still in line.

"It’s poverty."

"Ethan, we forced the drug prices down, but in doing so, we created a massive profit margin."

"As long as the price difference between inside and outside the city exists, as long as medicine in Pittsburgh is ten times cheaper than elsewhere."

"This kind of smuggling will never stop."

"We can catch the snakehead in the sports car, but we can’t arrest the thousands of seniors who just want to make fifteen dollars to buy bread."

"How do you want me to arrest them? Cuff all these seventy- and eighty-year-old women? Shove them in a squad car? Let the media have a field day?"

"The Mayor would be utterly humiliated."

Ethan was silent on the other end of the line for a long time.

"This is the price," Ethan said in a low voice. "Every policy has its loopholes."

"This isn’t just a loophole."

Joe Miller threw his cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it fiercely with the toe of his shoe.

"It’s a festering wound."

"If we don’t plug this hole, our mutual aid fund will be emptied out by these ants."

"We’re using taxpayer money to subsidize drug prices, and all that medicine is just flowing onto the black market, turning into profit for snakeheads and bread money for the elderly."

"Healthcare assistance has turned into a poverty relief fund."

"This is unsustainable."

"I get it," Ethan said. "Come on back for now. We need to rethink our risk control strategy."

"This isn’t about risk control."

Joe Miller stared at the empty street corner where the Dodge Challenger had disappeared.

"We have a more fundamental problem to solve."

"If they can’t even afford to eat, it doesn’t matter how cheap we make their medicine. They’ll just sell it for cash."

He hung up the phone.

Joe Miller climbed back into his car.

The car’s heater slowly brought some feeling back to his frozen hands and feet.

He started the engine and drove away from the neighborhood.

In his rearview mirror, the long line was still crawling forward slowly.

Like a colony of ants carrying food.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Leo Wallace was sitting in his office, staring at a report showing a constantly growing budget deficit.

He had given the people a privilege.

But he had forgotten that in the face of starvation, privilege is just another form of currency.

He wasn’t just fighting the insurance companies.

He was also fighting poverty, that ancient and stubborn enemy.

This battle was going to be much harder than he had imagined.