WHEELER DEALER: Chapter 11
The heat’s on. And it’s not just the DEA surveillance cameras across Sandy at the Shire Inn tavern. There’s a surveillance van always parked a couple of doors down the street. Plus the usual assortment of government informants wandering in and out of the Wheeler Dealer office, hoping to snag someone in a sale that can be used later in court. Or get high. Or whatever.
Like Danny Snedeger – who, if you remember, is the weaselly little guy who probably turned Roger in when he was on the run down in Arizona. Snedeker drops by in the company of Roger’s boyhood friends from Amato’s, Gary and Ron Sargeant. They’ve obviously been drinking, which is probably how they got up the nerve to come by in the first place.
At this point in their careers, the three of them have been reduced to robbing liquor stores to support their heroin habits, and they’re hoping Roger will front them just a touch or two to hold them till they’re flush again.
As politely as possible Roger tells them that’s just not going to happen. The Sargeants are about $3000 behind on their bill, so at least not until they pay down on what they already owe. And of course Roger doesn’t trust Snedeker far as he can throw him.
“Are you telling me,” Snedeker says rather loudly, “that our word isn’t good enough for you?”
“Now come on,” says Roger, “They just need to pay some money on their bill.”
“Are you doubting my veracity?” says Snedeker, almost shouting now.
“Well . . .” says Roger. And he’s about to tell him what he actually thinks of him when Snedeker explodes with something original like, “Why you dirty rotten motherfucking cocksucker!’
At which point a guy named John Malone, a big dude up from California, who was sitting there across the desk from Roger, talking with him when the Sargeants and Snedeker barged in, speaks up. Very casual-like, actually.
“Hey, guy, can you just cool it a bit?
Upon which Snedeker whips out his pistol and smacks Malone up side the head.
Now this is something that could get very bad very fast. Because Malone, as already noted, is a very healthy boy, and given the chance will turn Snedeker into a puddle, right there on the floor.
Which means that if Snedeker is going to make it out of this alive he’s probably going to have to shoot and kill Malone – which is the sort of attention that Roger definitely doesn’t need right now.
So Roger turns to Malone. “Let me handle this,” he says. And then to the Sargeants. “You’d better get that boy outa here.” And the Sargeants hustle Snedeker down the stairs and drive away.
\About an hour later, Malone shows back up with a sawed-off shotgun and wants to know where he can find Snedeker.
Well, Malone doesn’t find him. Not that day, and presumably not any other. But one night a little over a month later, Snedeker is in fact found shot to death – lying in the front seat of his Buick Rivera, parked in front of the apartment house where he’s staying with his girfriend on SE 162nd, the motor still running, the driver’s door open, and a burning cigarette on the ground outside.
He'd been shot so many times the first reports on the TV news said whoever shot him had a shotgun. After they’d had a chance to actually examine the scene the cause of death was determined to be multiple shots from a .44.
The first reports also described the assailant as a black man wearing a yellow Afro wig. This was later changed to a medium-sized white man wearing a knee-length coat and a dark stocking cap. They obviously didn’t have much to go on.
But the day after the murder, you better believe, the sheriff’s office hauled Roger in for questioning. Knowing his history with Snedeker, he was probably their top suspect.
Fortunately for Roger, though, he had an airtight alibi. He’d been at work that night at the Wheeler Dealer. And he knew they knew it, too, because of the surveillance cameras across Sandy Boulevard at the Shire Inn. They had to have a photographic record of when he went into the office that evening and when he left.
Well, yeah, they said. But you could have gone out a window on the other side of the building where they didn’t have surveillance cameras.
Needless to say that didn’t get them very far, and with apparently nothing more to go on they never caught the culprit. A few years ago the Multnomah County Sheriffs Office cold case unit gave it another go, and they didn’t have any luck with that either.
About a month later Dennis Reed, a well-known black booster, or shop-lifter, drops by the Wheeler Dealer office trying to score. He’s just out of the Clackamas County jail so he doesn’t have any money, but Christmas is coming, he says. Anything I can pick up for you folks?
He looks a little drug sick, so Roger takes pity on him and gives him, he estimates, about .1 of a gram, along of course with a detailed shopping list. Roger and Steve want those ultrasuede jackets that were so popular then, plus a few Pendleton shirts. Sandra requests some Pendleton blankets plus some gifts for the girls in the office.
What they won’t realize until some months later, when the Reed transaction turns up on a massive conspiracy indictment against them, is that they’ve been had by one of the oldest tricks in the book. But it’s small potatoes compared to what the DEA has in store for them next.
Shortly after Christmas, the heroin kingpin Freddie Arrelanes, who’s locked up in Leavenworth but has been arranging through his sister in LA to supply them for several months now, informs Kessler that he’s got a deal he might be interested in.
A fellow inmate and trusted friend, who’s about to be released from prison, is going back to Kansas City, and when he gets out he wants to get into the heroin business. His name is Joel Levine and is Kessler interested in doing business with him?
Of course Kessler is. After several months of struggling to sell his share of the product to anyone besides his bank robber compadres, here’s his chance to make it on his own in the drug world. As Arrelanes assures him, Levine has big plans for himself back in Kansas City and will eventually want to be dealing in kilos, which pleases Kessler as well.
These discussions, by the way, are all going on over the prison phone system, which might have given someone pause if only because prison phone conversations are routinely monitored. So either Arrelanes was uncommonly careless – which is unlikely given his history of working at a high level in an extremely paranoid industry – or he was working with the DEA from the very beginning.
Maybe even in exchange for a change in living accomodations from grim corridors of Leavenworth to the low security, country club Englewood prison in Colorado – which, the record shows, is exactly what occurred about the time these conversations were taking place. This is, after all, a very nasty business, whichever side you’re on. And often as not, you’re on both.
But even if Arrelanes isn’t in on the set-up, Levine – who also got a transfer to Englewood at this time – certainly is. Back in Kansas City he gets in touch with Kessler and arranges to buy three ounces. Just to get acquainted, you understand. A $9,000 deal.
Then just before Levine is scheduled to fly out to Portland, Kessler gets a call from him saying there’s too much heat on him back in KC. Okay if he sends out his girlfriend? Why sure, says Kessler.
Roger and Kessler are waiting in one of their lay-downs in east Portland when the phone rings. Stephen is supposed to meet her a restaurant in Gresham. Levine has sent a photo so he’ll be able to recognize her.
“Want me to go with you?” says Roger. “Nah, I can handle this,” Stephen says. “Must be a pretty good looking broad,” Roger says in a kidding way.
And just like that Stephen is out the door on his way to meet Levine’s girlfriend, who of course Levine has neglected to tell him happens to be a DEA agent.
Couldn’t have gone any smoother, now could it?
Great writing.
Thanks very much.