WHEELER DEALER: Chapter 8

It’s hard even for Roger to pretend this is fun and games any more, although Lord knows he’s trying. Spending the first couple months out of OSP hanging out at the Alpen-Hansel, a dark and sordid enclave at 2520 East Burnside that most proper Portlanders probably never knew even existed in their fair city.  Fine Bavarian cuisine, my eye.

Hardcore criminals and hustlers on the take. Cushioned booths for addicts on the nod. Check your handgun with the bartenders when you come in because it makes people less nervous if they can see you’re not packing.

It’s the smart thing to do anyway, in case the cops drop by and want to have a word with you. Especially if you’re an ex-con in possession. Like Roger for example. Always thinking ahead.

After a couple months of celebrating, though, it’s back to work with Jimmy Spaise and Jimmy’s sister Sandra, a hard-edged call girl who’s just moved down from Alaska. Since Jimmy’s still under OSP supervision and living in a half-way house, and Sandra really doesn’t know much  about the dope business, it’s up to Roger to get things rolling.

A connection in Tucson hooks them up with a supplier in Nogales, just across the border in Mexico, so Roger drives down to make the pick-up. He gets Sandra and Carla, the wife of one of their  runners, Jay Martine, to fly down and pretend to be tourists.

In Nogales, he wanders into a gift shop where the two women just happen to be and very casually drops the drug into one of their shopping bags. They body stash the drugs, as they say, take the bus back across the border and then a plane to Portland.

And before very long, because in the heroin business you basically double your money with each transaction, Roger, Jimmy and Sandra are splitting roughly $80 thousand a month. Which in current dollars (since there’s been more that 500 percent  inflation since then) would be over $400 thousand a month or about $5 million a year.

But they never really get a chance to see how that pencils out because just a few months later, after one such trip to Nogales, narcotics cops from the Multnomah County Sheriffs Office kick in the door of Roger’s apartment and arrest him and Sandra for possession.

What Roger won’t know for sure until the trial is that Jay Martine, whose wife Carla just got back from another shopping excursion to Nogales, has tipped off the cops. A few months ago  Martine was the driver of the getaway car in a robbery that resulted in the shooting death of an elderly pharmacist. In other words, the cops can charge him with murder any time they want.

But the trial isn’t coming up for several months, and as it turns out Roger’s got at least one more trick up his sleeve. Perhaps the fun and games aren’t over quite yet.

When the trial finally does begin, Roger’s lawyer, Larry Olstead (who has replaced the aging Howlett), subpoenas the county dope cops every day as potential witnesses, whether he’s going to call them or not.

At the time, narcotics cops dressed to look like the dopers or bikers. And since this particular crew also worked the night shift, there they were every day, sleeping on the benches outside the courtroom, waiting to be called to testify.

Then just a few days before the trial was set to wrap up, one of the older ladies on the jury came back from lunch and informed the judge that she’d heard the cops on elevator talking about how they’d planted the dope on Roger.

As it happens, it wasn’t the cops at all, just some of Roger’s scruffy friends pretending to be dope cops. But there’s no way she could have known. The judge declares a mistrial and sets a new trial date. Roger makes bail and is free to go.

But of course, as the judge, the narcotics cops and everyone else knows, Roger is going to skip town if he can. So the police place an obvious tail on him when he and Sandra drive away from the courthouse.

They head straight for the Flamingo Motel on 122^nd where Roger’s old friend Ron Sargeant and his wife Barbara are waiting. Ron and Barbara put on Roger’s and Sandra’s coats and drive off in their car. The cops follow them and Roger and Sandy walk out the back door.

With a complete new set of ID in hand, Roger hops on a plane to Las Vegas, then drives a rental to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where Kevin Spaise, Sandy and Jimmy’s younger brother, is planning to start a magazine for tourists called River Life. Roger – or make that Ronald Sargeant – quickly becomes the assistant editor.

To be perfectly honest, no one was making any money on the magazine. At least not enough to live on. Any real money was still coming from the dope business. Sandra and Jimmy were back running things in Portland, and of course Roger continued to manage the Mexican connection from Lake Havasu. Sometimes Sandra or Jimmy would do the pick-ups. Sometimes they used a little weasel named Danny Snedeker as their runner.

By this time, though, even Roger is having doubts. The constant paranoia of the dope business is starting to get to him. He actually likes working on the magazine and has even discussed with Kevin the idea of doing something like it, maybe an auto trader, back in Portland one day.

Exactly how that might come about, since he’s a fugitive from justice and living under an assumed name – well, he hasn’t gotten that far yet. But as far as Roger can see, it isn’t just a way out of the dope business but it looks like a potential gold mine besides. Certainly, though, as is clear from the following, he understands the basic operating principles of the journalism business.

“So what we would do is whoever was our biggest advertiser, that was what the feature story would be. That’s the way it works, for sure. And I had all the rate sheets and business cards and a sample layout and all that.” Once he even interviewed the local sheriff at a chili cook off and thought he was a pretty decent guy.

Then one day Sandra puts Danny Snedeker on a plane to Arizona to make a delivery and it all comes apart. The two them, Roger and Snedeker, are out riding dirt bikes one morning and Snedeker’s bike breaks down. So Roger takes off to get a part they need to fix it, and when he comes back there’s Snedeker in the back seat of a cop car.

Apparently, the cops had stopped to see if they could be of assistance, and when they ran a routine check on Snedeker they discovered there were a couple of outstanding warrants on him back in Portland. Whereupon Snedeker, little weasel that he was, offered to make a deal and gave up Roger.

In any case, Roger is flown back under guard to Portland and placed in Rocky Butte jail. Snedeker is flown back too, but separately, which is why everyone’s sure that he ratted Roger out.

Roger’s in Rocky Butte about two weeks before he agrees to take a five-year sentence on the possession and escape charges. But before he’s transported to OSP, the sentencing judge marries Roger and Sandra in his courtroom.

Now the fact is that Roger was not then, and had never been, in love with Sandra. He thought she was capable and he admired the way she was loyal to Jimmy, but he’d never even been attracted to her.

He did it, he says, on the advice of Jimmy Spaise, whose reasoning was that since they were going to be smuggling dope into OSP again anyway, if he and Sandra were married she would get four visiting room visits per month instead of just two. Laugh if you want, but it’s probably not the first time two people got married for business reasons.

The irony of it all, though, is that it probably wasn’t necessary in the first place. Because Roger wasn’t back in OSP long at all before he actually had the Catholic chaplain packing in dope for him – which is where the next exciting episode of Wheeler Dealer takes off next week.

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