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Hank Haligram never touched
a hallucinogen in his entire life.
Not even when his college roommates
were taking LSD.
Under the influence, his roommates
all had the same hallucination:
They saw am image of God
looking like and sounding like
Eleanor Roosevelt.
In 1988, Hank obtained
a Master's Degree in Computer Science
from Villanova University.
As an undergraduate, he had lived
in a dormitory with Social Science students.
As a graduate student, he lived
with Linda Castellano.
They had grown up together
in Howard Beach.
In 1988, Linda obtained a Master's Degree
in Chemistry, graduating Magna Cum Laude.
***
Thirty years later, Hank had more than
two hundred people working for him
but he never saw any of them,
face to face.
All of them were responsible
for Hank's favorite hallucinogen
being the "bottom line" as a result
of his "finger toy."
The toy was housed in a black box,
alongside an autographed picture
of Willie Mays.
It was no bigger than a credit card
and contained the digits,
one through nine.
It was a punch card and sometimes
the man who lived with Agony
would "punch" a sequence
of thirty digits to complete a code.
Each code represented a person,
place, chemical compound
and quantity.
The codes were untraceable
by any police force
or federal investigators.
The codes were sniffed by a cat
who loved potato chips.
Each code was a drug transaction
somewhere in the United States
or Canada resulting in "fat stacks"
or the "stack market."
It could be said that Hank lived
alone with Agony in a house where
the master built walls brick-by-brick.
Each brick was a stack of crisp
twenty dollar bills.
The currency was untraceable
by any police force
or federal investigators.
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