WHEELER DEALER: Chapter 9

Roger was hardly back at OSP when he learned that one evening every week a small group of inmates would gather at the Catholic chaplain’s office to listen to Alan Watts tapes and smoke weed.

For those who may have missed it, Alan Watts was a with-it  philosopher back in the 60s and 70s, usually credited with introducing Zen Buddhism and going with the flow to a western audience. Incidentally, he also died of acute alcoholism at a fairly early age, so maybe he didn’t have it all figured out after all. But back in the day he was certainly what’s happening.

And the Catholic chaplain, who Roger soon discovered was not just allowing the inmates to smoke weed in his office but smuggling it into the prison for them as well, was Father Gary McInnes. The hippie priest, as he liked to think of himself, he wore a tie-dye shirt under his vestments.

Once Roger realized what was up, of course he got in on the action. McInnes would leave his unlocked car in the Safeway parking lot. Sandra would place a one-pound package of weed, along with a payment of $300, behind the back seat, then McInnes would bring it in under his robes.

They did this every two weeks for about three months and each time it went like clockwork. For his part, Roger couldn’t have been more pleased because on each $300 investment, after breaking the pound down into one-fifth ounces which he sold for $50 each, he made about $4000.

One morning, though, as Father McInnes was entering the prison on his way to work, he was stopped and searched by the guards. Although he was due to make a delivery that day, luckily he’d left it in the car.

But something was obviously up, and upon further checking it was  determined that another inmate, Tracy Gann, who’d also been doing business with Father McInnes, had been caught coming out of the chow hall with several baggies of weed and had given up the good Father.

Of course Father McInnes was more than willing to forgive Tracy Gann for ratting him out. “I understand why he felt he had to do it,” Roger remembers him saying. “But don’t you guys be angry.”

Roger, however, was not so mellow. “This is costing me a pound of weed,” he said. “I’m going to cut his throat.” And whether or not that was something of an exaggeration, it had the desired effect.

Because over the lunch hour, Father McInnes went out to his car, and in what must be considered an incredible act of bravery, walked the weed into the prison and delivered it to Roger.

The next day Father McInnes was gone. After he departed from the Oregon State prison system, I’ve learned, he separated from the organized Catholic church and conducted his own ministry in Portland’s Old Town for the poor and destitute. He died in 2017, and I’m sure that if I’d been able to talk with him, he’d have been more than happy to talk about this long ago adventure in the drug trade.

In any case, this hardly put a dent in Roger’s smuggling business. Now that they were married, Sandra could still come down to visit four times a month, bringing not just dope but reports on the latest underworld news back in Portland – like this doozy which actually made the front page of the July 10, 1979, Oregonian. 

Holdup attempt fails at zoo;

Cash clerk flusters bandit

A man who tried to hold up the Washington Park Zoo

Monday ended up making a monkey of himself.

Yes, Roger’s new junkie brother-in-law and erstwhile business partner Jimmy Spaise had tried, with a spectacular lack of success, to hold up the Portland zoo. Sticking a gun in the face of 56-year-old Kathy Tesdal as she was about to open the door to the zoo’s cash room one morning, he said “Go ahead. Open it,” Kathy told the reporter. “I said no.”

Spaise then grabbed the keys from her and, stoned as he was,  tried to open it himself. When he couldn’t make it work he handed the keys back to her and poked her a couple of times with the gun.

This time Kathy did as she was told. But when the door opened  she managed to trip the alarm, which seemed to fluster the robber even more.

“He hesitated for a moment. I slammed the door in his face and locked him out” she said. “Then I started yelling like mad.”

At which point Spaise turned and ran, tripping and falling at least twice before he got to his car. Then he backed into another parked car, ran over several control islands, and finally drove over an eight-foot embankment – which is where the police found him when they arrived minutes later.

More news from Sandra: The notorious Steve Kessler has completed his thirteen-year sentence at Marion and is headed to Oregon.

Then a few weeks later, Kessler’s in Portland – and according to Sandra, he wants to get in the dope business with them. Roger, who’s known Kessler for years, has his doubts. The guy is not a dealer, never has been. He’s an armed robber, through and through.

On the other hand, as Sandra points out, their old supplier in Phoenix has been a little shaky lately and Steve says he can hook them up with someone who has a direct line to the source in Mexico. His name is Freddie Arrelanes, and although Arrelanes is doing time in Leavenworth he’s still running a cartel from behind bars.

So Roger says okay. But just to make sure, he says, he and Steve should have a head-to-head meeting. With someone like Kessler, you really don’t want any misunderstandings.

By now, it should be noted, Roger, who was given a five-years sentence and at this point has done barely a year of it, is about to be released from prison. Because of severe overcrowding, the prison system is actually releasing – furloughing, as they call it – non-violent inmates well before their sentences are up.

And since Roger is about to be furloughed he’s been transferred to the prison’s forest camp on the coast – which, if you have to be in prison in the first place, is probably the sweetest possible assignment you could hope for. Old Civilian Conservation Corp cabins with wood stoves, no fences, surrounded by miles of forest.

In the hills outside the camp, Roger and his fellow inmates even have their own marijuana grow. And with only a cursory bed check at night by a guard who peers through the window, sneaking off to meet wives and girlfriends in the woods at night is no  problem. In fact, every Tuesday after midnight, Sandra brings a blanket and a picnic lunch and they get together for what they call Big Favor Night.

So next Big Favor Night Sandy brings Kessler out with her and Kessler gives a rundown on the Arrelanes connection. It’ll mean no more scrambling around, looking for product. This is the big time now.

“I don’t know, Steve,” says Roger. He’s aware that on his way out to Oregon from Illinois Kessler knocked off a bank. He’s not about to give it up. “Bank robberies and drugs just don’t mix. That’ll bring in the FBI, and then the DEA. We don’t need the heat.”

“I hear you,” says Kessler. But he really doesn’t. Or more likely he’s just shining Roger on. And so plans are made to send Sandra down to Los Angeles to meet with Arrelanes’s sister.

Their first purchase is for just four ounces at $2000 an ounce. A couple of months later when Roger gets out of the forest camp, Kessler and Sandra are already trying to peddle it up in Portland. Without much success, though, it should be added, because neither of them, especially Steve, has any real experience in the drug business. Kessler is supposed to sell half the dope and Roger and Sandra the other half.

In fact, as Roger realizes shortly after he arrives in Portland, most of Steve’s customers are the bank robber types he’s already surrounded himself with – and not just the usual local players but some serious bad guys from back east he’d met up with in Marion.

And the problem is that almost all of these armed robber types  are heroin junkies besides – and that’s where Kessler is getting most of the customers for his share of the heroin.

But when they get behind in their drug payments, which they inevitably do, Kessler has to help them rob more banks – providing them with guns, dent-pullers for stealing getaway cars, and of course his help planning each job. As the newspaper stories attest, there’s a full-blown bank robbery epidemic in the Portland area at this time.

Roger tries to tell Kessler that this just not a workable business model. “Steve,” he says, “we’re earning our money twice.” They’re doubling their risk by committing two crimes for the same amount of money.

But don’t touch that dial because gets even nuttier. Now that Roger’s back he’s running the Wheeler Dealer, their new auto-trader publication. To Sandra and Steve it may be just another business front, like the thrift shop they’ve got up and running at 67^th and Sandy. But Roger’s got the journalism bug.

Not that he’s actually planning to give up the drug business for journalism, you understand. Not right away, anyhow. But when you stop and think about it, is there any good reason why you can’t do them both at the same time?