a quarter-million translated into grams
250K in one lumpy sum represented like 375 sky-blue grams of hydromorphone hydrochloride or like 37,500 10-mg. soluble tablets of the shit, available from a certain rapacious but discreet Chinatown opiate-dealer who'd only deal synthetic narcs in 100-gram weights
Context
Money seen through the addict's one conversion table: a stolen quarter-million doesn't read as wealth, security, or a life — it reads instantly as grams, as tablets, as a "street-distribution matrix far far away," the whole fantasy organized around never having to be without the Substance again. The mental spreadsheet runs at the speed of "high-speed mentation" the moment Fackelmann realizes what he's holding, because for the addict there's only ever the one thing the number is for, and the empire is just a scheme to guarantee the supply.