After lunch on the day he returned from Quantico, his Nextel cell phone chirped. It was Bill Knightly, a state trooper Carlos knew from an old DEA task force. Salt-and-pepper crewcut, medium build. A good guy.

"Carlos, you know anything about Internet pharmacies?"

"Yeah, a little..."

Knightly briefed him: 119 packages seized at Airborne Express at the airport. Generic Valium and Viagra. In a month's time, the same shipping company, Abbas Enterprises in Chester, had sent 4,100 similar packages.

Here's the fun part, Knightly said: Two different men had delivered the Abbas packages, each signing "Leroy Jones."

Leroy Jones No. 1 was a hulking, bald African American.

Leroy Jones No. 2 was a flabby Indian fellow with a comb-over.

Carlos laughed.

Knightly continued: The latest shipment arrived without a manifest, giving Airborne the legal right to open the packages. The depot supervisor found scores of generic Valium and Viagra inside.

Knightly and local police planned to confront the shipper. Was DEA interested? Did Carlos want to go along?

Not really, Carlos thought. The case sounded complicated, probably insignificant.

On the other hand, Carlos valued the cop-to-cop network he had built over 30 years. He liked being a fed locals could work with. As a Philadelphia cop, he had hated it whenever the feds whizzed on stuff he brought them. When Carlos moved to DEA, he'd vowed never to be so rude, so turf-conscious.

"Dude," he told the trooper, "I'm in."

ROXBOROUGH

Akhil scanned an e-mail from his father and saved it.

Helping his father's business hadn't been part of his plan. Akhil had come to Philadelphia to earn an MBA and a master's in health-care finance. Classes kept him busy enough; his life in a dim Henry Avenue apartment - mattress on the floor, food stacked haphazardly in the kitchen - was a testament to that.

But as an only son, even at 25, Akhil had a duty to do whatever his father wished. Helping his dad ship Indian-made knockoff pills from inside the United States took only an hour or two a day.

Besides, when Akhil was young, Brij had given him whatever he desired - the latest computers, cell phones, stereo, CDs - things available to only 2 percent of Indians his age.

In return, Brij, a successful doctor, had demanded academic excellence in high school. "Get top marks and I will buy you a car," he used to say. "Get good marks and I will buy you a bicycle. Get low marks and I will buy you a taxi, and you will drive it for the rest of your life."