Famous Harry’s Money

A novel by Scott Newton, copyright 2018

Chapter One

            Steve Kilter, 19, looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He was in his modest apartment in Gresham, Oregon. He had a new haircut, cut close on the sides with an inch and a half of brown hair left on top. Some strands of hair fell forward onto his forehead. He smiled. He had naturally straight, white teeth. He was often complimented on his smile. He didn’t spend a lot of time in self-reflection, but he did wonder who he was.

            Preparing to commit a crime will do that.

            He had been a decent high school football player and a good student. He’d dropped out of Oregon State University after a semester. His $4,000 in savings hadn’t lasted long.

            “Being poor doesn’t justify what I’m about to do,” he said. He was going to rob six marijuana stores located within a 13-block radius.

            Steve reviewed the plan as he walked to the bedroom. He took out the contents of a large paper bag. It held items he’d ordered from a theater production wholesaler. It contained a fake beard and a long, blond wig. He had cut his hair short to accommodate the wig.

            The beard went on first, and he went back to the bathroom mirror to look. It was short and dark, and he laughed looking at it. It didn’t look half bad. He had never tried growing a beard before. The blond wig gave him hair to his shoulders. He had grown his hair long a few times over the course of his life, but not as long as this. He added a Trail Blazers cap over the wig, the Portland Trail Blazers being the local NBA team.

            He took out the clothes he’d purchased at a Goodwill Store. He put on long underwear and slightly oversized jeans. He put on a t-shirt, a heavy jacket and an oversized Denver Broncos sweatshirt. He put on the extra clothes, the long underwear and thick jacket, so it looked as though he was bulkier than he really was. The tennis shoes he purchased left about a half an inch of space for his toes.

            If the police found a foot print, it wouldn’t be his shoe size. His feet weren’t as large as the shoes indicated. Still, they weren’t so big that one would notice, and he found he could run in them without difficulty.

            He put on black surgical gloves, and put an old .32 caliber revolver in his front jeans pocket. “OK,” he said.

            He picked up his ring of old Honda car keys and a screwdriver, and headed out the door. It was an overcast night in January, not cold out but cool. Not raining but threatening, a dark night as it turned out. He’d gone through the plan so many times he didn’t bother to review it. Play it out as it comes to you, he said to himself.

            He drove his Ford Ranger pickup to a run-down neighborhood about 20 blocks away where he’d seen an old Honda, maybe a 1988 model. He parked two blocks away and walked to it. He tried a couple of Honda keys. The third one worked; he unlocked the door. He stuck his screwdriver in the ignition, turned it, the car started and he drove off. The car had a quarter tank of fuel. “It will be enough,” he said.

            He parked in an empty lot on Division Street. It was the lot of a tax accountant, and was dark. The street light was out. The parking lot connected to an alley, which would let him drive out north of all the marijuana stores.

            He took a breath and stepped out of the car. He left the screwdriver in the ignition. He walked down 181^st and turned the corner. A lucky first move, a man stepped out of Marijuana 181 with a shoulder bag. “I’ll take that,” Steve said.

            “Come on, don’t do this,” the man said. He was slender, about 6-foot, and looked like he could run. He had a ponytail. Steve put out his hand. The man hesitated, but then took the bag off his shoulder and Steve took it. “Wait a half an hour before you call the police or I’ll be back.”

            “Come back and what?”

            Steve figured the less he said, the better, though he made sure the man saw the pistol in his front jeans pocket. He put the bag in his backpack as he walked down Powell.

            Coming out of Cannabis Central, right on time according to his plan, was a second man, with a half-sized briefcase. Steve stopped right in front of him. “Give me the case,” he said.

            He was a heavyset man with thinning hair. He hadn’t had time to be frightened. “You know, we’re not making that much money anyway,” he said, but he was holding out the briefcase.

            “Don’t call the police for half an hour or I’ll fire bomb your business,” Steve said. He felt the man should at least be a little afraid of him, but then he didn’t know if it made a difference. All he knew was that his heart was beating fast. He had a faint sweat. But, there hadn’t been any problems and he had just robbed two people. He put the undersized briefcase in his backpack.

            He paused for a moment, standing still. I’ve just robbed two people in a minute and a half and I didn’t even realize I was ready to start. He exhaled, then moved forward with purpose.

            He approached Mary Jane’s. There was a side door, held open by a brick, and Steve saw a beam of light shining out and heard music. He walked toward the door, his hand in his pocket on the .32. This open side door was not in the plan. He stepped through the door and was surprised to see a party going on inside the back room of the business. There must have been 15 people having drinks and talking. Steve flashed the gun and said, loudly, “Everybody all together, against the wall.” Steve was making it up as he went now, that was his first realization.

            He saw an old safe, at least 100 years old. There was also some construction going on in the back room, perhaps a wall being added on. There were construction materials and some tools in the corner.

            “Open the safe. I don’t want to hurt anyone. The thing is, if I shoot you in the knee that’s an injury that lasts for life,” he said, and there was a pause. He made a mistake by giving them something to think about instead of a command. “Open the safe now.” He said the line clearly, with emphasis.

            A man stepped forward. He was wearing slacks, a dress shirt and had short hair. Steve recognized the music, a song by Traffic, “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys.” Steve Winwood’s voice.

            “Everyone, take your clothes off. Right now.” The man in the dress shirt was concentrating on the safe while everyone else slowly undressed.

            Steve held up the gun and waved over the heads of the crowd. “Take all your clothes off now,” he shouted. People hurried to finish undressing. The safe opened and the man stepped back. Some people gasped. “You too, back to the wall, take your clothes off.”

            He saw why people had gasped. Steve bent down and looked. He shook his head. He stood up and said, “Backs to the wall, crowd up in the center.” The naked people squeezed together as if for a group photograph. Hands and arms were used to protect modesty. A woman had left her bra on. The well-dressed man was now down to a pair of black socks. It looked funny.

            Two women, with good bodies, stood naked, looking at him defiantly. At least that’s how Steve interpreted the look. He wasn’t sure.

            Inside the safe was a four-inch stack of cash, the reason for the gasp. On the next shelf, there were two sandwich-sized bags of white powder. Another small bag of a black, sticky substance, and a bag of what looked like 500 pills in a Ziploc brand quart baggie. He recognized the pills as 30 milligram Adderall; he had taken an Adderall once, when he was in college. He took the pile of money, unzipped his backpack, put it in, zipped it back up and looked at the safe.

            “You,” he pointed at a man, “grab the clothes and throw them outside, vamos.” He tried to think what else to do. It seemed he had the crowd controlled. He was sweating. He had not expected this party. A man picked up the pile of clothes and tossed them outside. Most of the people at the party were young. About half were women. A few had good bodies, but he didn’t find it sexy. Maybe he would later, but right now he was scared.

            He saw a hammer among the construction materials. Holding the gun, he walked over and picked up the hammer with the left hand. He shut the door of the safe; he had no interest in stealing the other drugs. He smashed the ceramic dial, thinking it would take some time to get the safe open again. Perhaps it would slow the police investigation.

            He told himself the less he said, the better, and backed out the door. There was a crowd standing, backs to the wall, naked except for jewelry and socks, watching him. He could not help but smile as he backed out the door. Well, they saw his teeth. He thought about carrying the clothes off, but decided to forget about it. He felt as though he was done for the night and headed for Division Street. He didn’t hear any police sirens. That was good.

            He had a few blocks to walk; he knew the way. He told himself not to think, just finish up. He told himself not to walk too fast, just a normal pace. If he saw a police car, keep walking, don’t act guilty, whatever that meant.

            The stack of cash in the safe might make his night worthwhile. He had seen some hundreds on the bottom. He told himself not to analyze the evening. Get back to the car, back to his apartment, and then he could review the evening. Count the money. Maybe no one at the first two businesses had called the police yet. He didn’t hear any sirens.

            There could have been people in the front part of Mary Jane’s, in the retail area. Someone could’ve walked right in on the robbery, or called the police. It was a mistake he hadn’t checked the front of the store, but academic at this point.

            He remembered when he was in college, a friend gave him a 30-milligram Adderall tablet to help him study. It was pink like the pills in the safe. It was speed, but Steve hadn’t studied much that night. Instead, he and his friend ended up drinking most of the night and he was still awake when he went to take the test. He was a good student and did ok on the test, but that was the last time he’d take an Adderall tablet to help him study. Jeez, he told himself, shut down the brain. Stop thinking and finish up.

            Steve Kilter turned onto Division. A few blocks now. He wasn’t going into Panama Red’s or Green, Bud. The idea of hitting six stores in one night had not been realistic. He knew that now, but the take from the safe might make it all worthwhile. Again, he told himself not to analyze. Just get to the car and go.

            He had viewed a scene in a movie where everyone was forced to undress, but he couldn’t think of the name of the movie. Maybe he had seen it a few times in different movies, or read it in an Elmore Leonard book. He knew it wasn’t an original idea, but didn’t know where it came from.

            The music in the room at Mary Jane’s had unnerved him, too, but he hadn’t said anything, instead he kept humming the song as he walked. It drove him mad to realize he was still analyzing. If he had had any rules, like the characters in the book, “Swag,” he surely had broken them. Why was he thinking of this stuff? Don’t think, that was the rule he was breaking at the moment.

            He was afraid of seeing a police car on Division Street. Don’t walk so fast, be cool. There was traffic, but no police. He couldn’t believe how fast his mind was working. He decided it was the result of his heart beating so fast. Man, he was still scared.

            He saw the last store, Weed. He planned to skip this one too, but he saw a door close, just caught the light out of the corner of his eye the moment it was gone. He relaxed a little, he was OK.

            A young man, pudgy with long, thick hair, backed out the door. He locked the door behind him, still not noticing Steve Kilter. Steve kept walking up to him. “Let me relieve you of that backpack.”

            The man turned, startled. He was the same height as Steve with blond hair. It looked good, like a movie star’s. A woman movie star. The man was about 30 years old and not otherwise good looking. Just great hair. “Oh no, really I can’t let you do this.”

            “Hand it over,” Steve said. He showed the handgun.

            “I’ve got to tell you a long story,” the man said, wagging a finger in Steve’s face for emphasis. “I really messed up, got in trouble up to my chin, and I solved it, saved my ass. It’s an amazing story. I have to have this money.” His hands moved the entire time, not in a threatening way but to emphasize his points.

            Steve took out his gun, held out his other hand. The man gave him the bag; it was a backpack about the size of the one he carried, a 30-pounder. The backpack could carry 30 pounds.

            “Take off your pants.” It seemed to be the theme of the night.

            The man did. He stood there holding his jeans. Although he was young, he already had flabby legs. “My name is Harry,” he said. “I owe the IRS so much money. This was to pay them off. It’s a crazy story and I know if I told you you wouldn’t rob me. It would take me years to put this kind of a deal together again. I worked a whole deal, there’s money that’s mine, to pay off the IRS, and the rest goes to the farmer.”

            Steve put the gun in his jeans pocket. He thought Harry sounded interesting and he really wouldn’t mind hearing the story, but his heart was racing and he needed to get out of there.

            When Steve reached out to take the jeans, he noticed something bulky in the front pocket. He found a roll of bills in a rubber band. He took the wad, put it in his pocket, rolled up the jeans. With his right arm, he threw the jeans onto the roof.

            Harry sat down in the dirt in his jacket and underwear and began to cry. “Goddammit,” Harry said. Then there was kind of a whine, a moan, as Harry was sobbing. Steve backed away. The less talking, the better, he thought, but he had to make an observation. “I’m wearing a blond wig. You have great, blond hair,” he said. “It’s funny.”

            Harry looked up. He was quiet and thought a minute, and then smiled. Steve was about 10 feet away. Harry laughed just a little. “Yeah, it is.”

            Steve walked the block to the tax preparer’s office. His heart was pounding and he hoped he didn’t have a heart attack. He told himself fit 19 year olds don’t have heart attacks. He put the two backpacks in the seat beside him, turned the screwdriver and drove the 30-year-old Honda down the alley. He liked this little car. “My first stolen car,” he said and laughed. He heard a police siren, but it was going in the opposite direction. His body was completely wet with sweat; he started shaking, but at the same time he knew he had got away. He’d robbed four stores, not six, but still it had been an amazing feat. He could not have imagined this kind of success.

            He headed for the neighborhood where he left his pickup truck. His hat was still on his head and the beard on his face. The gun was in his right pocket and the two backpacks were at his side. His pickup key was in the other pocket, the left. He had not made any errors that he could think of. Not so far, he reminded himself.

            In the same neighborhood as the stolen car was a hiking and bike trail called the Springwater Corridor. The side effect of building the trail was it attracted a large population of homeless people to the residential neighborhood. Steve parked across from the homeless camp, maybe 100 yards away, and left the screwdriver in the car’s ignition. It was dark and all he could see were a few orange glows from cigarettes at the homeless camp. He walked away from the camp in the dark, on the street. His pickup was another four blocks.

            On the way, he took off his cap and wig, and pulled off the beard. He looked around once he got to the pickup, and seeing no one, he got in and drove off. He pulled off at one point and took off his sweatshirt and gloves. When he pulled into his apartment, he took off the oversized shoes. He carried all his gear, and the two backpacks, into his apartment.

            Inside the apartment, he locked the front door and shut the curtains in his bedroom. He took off all his clothes and put on his own jeans, a t-shirt and a pull-over sports jacket. He put the wig, hat, over-sized jeans, sweatshirt, oversized shoes, everything, in a plastic garbage bag. He started to relax. In his mind, he could still hear the sirens.

            He opened his backpack. The stack he took from the safe was $6,000. There were a lot of 20s, but also a lot of hundreds. In the briefcase, $495. In the shoulder bag that looked like a purse, $1,100. The roll of money with the rubber band, $423. He laughed at the way he had made a group of people strip. Two of the women had had good bodies. It was sexy now. He kept thinking about the two women who had looked right at him. There was another woman in just a bra top. It was a black bra and she was slender and pretty with black hair.

            He opened the second backpack. Already he was thinking of the man as “little fatty,” although he wasn’t little. It was just Steve’s nickname for him because he was such a wimp. He was crying, but Steve had thought of something to say to him, like James Bond. Whenever James Bond outdoes someone, he is always quick with a joke.

            He took a packet out of the backpack and saw it was hundreds; estimating, thinking a minute, he guessed a $50,000 bundle of hundreds. There looked to be more than a hundred bills in the packet, more like 500. Five hundred $100 bills. There were nine more bundles.

            Steve realized now that in some way he had stepped into the middle of a deal. The man at Weed had sold marijuana on the black market. He had sold a lot of weed, and Steve had been there at exactly the right time to collect $500,000. Was that right?

            He didn’t want a beer, but his mouth was dry, his stomach aching with hunger and maybe nervousness. The sweat was there again, springing instantly onto his entire body. It was weird he was shaking now, though the hard part was over. Even if he wanted, there was no way to undo what had happened, not a way to make it up to any of them. He’d wanted only enough to move back to Corvallis, go back to college. Now it was almost as if he had stolen too much.

            The idea was ridiculous; one couldn’t steal too much. Yet the logic was immediately clear to him in his nervousness. He had done too well. The cops would put emphasis on a case involving so much money. Maybe someone else, someone scarier than the police, would be looking for him.

Chapter two

            He placed the money in the closet and took all the gear, the fake beard, the wig, the cap, the clothes, all the things he had put in the plastic bag and prepared to take it out of his apartment. He locked the door to his apartment and drove his pickup out onto the freeway, I-84, went 10 miles, turned around, and on the way back to Gresham pulled into a blacktopped pullout near the Columbia River. It was dark by the river, the lights of Portland distant.

            No one else was at the rest stop. He put a rock in the plastic bag with the gear, pressed the air out of the bag, and tossed it out as far as he could. He drove back to his apartment.

            The .32 caliber revolver was an old family gun, at least 100 years old, but no one paid much attention to it. Steve took it one day, knowing no one was likely to miss it. Since it hadn’t been used, there was no reason not to return it to its hiding place in a shoebox in his mother’s bedroom closet.

            He was amazed he still had nervous energy, and was maybe hungry. He could’ve stood a beer now, but he didn’t have any. He drank a glass of water. He took a shower and tried to rest, but it was hours before he could shut down his mind and relax. He had a clear plan for the next day, his day off, but still he couldn’t stop thinking, wondering if he’d left any clues.

            He slept without dreaming, falling asleep at 3 and waking about 6 a.m. He drank a cup of coffee and watched the local news. There wasn’t anything on about the robberies. He went to his bedroom and counted the money again, then placed it in a small, old suitcase. He went through the backpacks, the briefcase and the small, purse-like bag. He would need to throw this stuff away as well. He placed the bags in a large trash bag and carried them out to the trash container. It was garbage pickup day. Soon the backpacks and bags would be gone forever. The garbage truck came right on time, 7:15 am.

            He was finally relaxing a little, and he was hungry and went to a cafe to order breakfast. He sat at the counter and ordered eggs and toast. The news was on.

            A pretty anchor woman was on a local station. She could’ve been a Barbie doll she was so painted and perfect, and she announced three marijuana shops had been robbed in an area near 181^st   Avenue and Powell. The TV station had a camera at the scene and they showed the street with the three marijuana stores. The owner of Marijuana 181 said it was the legislature’s fault for making the businesses deal in cash. Barbie said it was the first marijuana-store robbery in history.

            A police spokesman said they didn’t want to say the amount stolen as it might encourage copy-cat crimes, but he said it wasn’t a large amount of money. He said the lone gunman had taken two deposits at closing time. In the third shop a man with a gun forced the owner to open a safe and took significantly more cash there. Video, he said, showed a white man about six foot, four inches and 240 pounds.

            Steve couldn’t stifle a laugh, though he was in a restaurant with several other people.

            “Yeah, that’s wild, huh?” said the waitress, who was also watching.

            Steve would have liked to play college football, but was undersized at five-11 and 180 pounds. With the size announced on the news, he probably would have received a football scholarship. The idea just struck him as funny.

            “Legalized marijuana, those assholes have it coming,” said another man, down the counter. Steve Kilter oddly did not become nervous watching the news. If anything, he was relieved at how much information they didn’t have.

            The next day, Steve was due at his service station job. He wasn’t there long when he saw the Oregonian had dedicated the front page and a lot of space to the story. The newspaper mentioned that the gunman had cleared about $7,500. It told about the 15 people holding a party at Mary Jane’s, who were told to strip. The police had confiscated the safe, which was still locked.

            They announced that the song playing at Mary Jane’s was Traffic’s “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys.” Even the song was sensational; every detail about the robbery was interesting, and they didn’t know half.

            The owners of Marijuana 181 and Cannabis Central said the gunman had threatened to burn their places down if they called the police. One said the armed man was a terrorist; Steve didn’t like the sound of that.

            One woman told the Oregonian a salesman at Cannabis Central was the son of a Chinese doctor. “He really knew his stuff,” she said. Steve laughed as the statement seemed disjointed. Then the reporter made it sound as if the robber was depriving people of medicine, although there were about 200 other marijuana stores in Portland.

            Steve worked all day on the service station drive, pumping gas, but he was worried the entire time. Making people strip and stand against a wall was sensational. Everyone in the United States was going to watch the evening news and hear about Oregon with its whacky marijuana laws, the people who had to strip, the song, sung by Steve Winwood, that was a slam against glam rockers.

            The next day there was another story in the Oregonian. In this one, a lawyer reported his client at Weed had been relieved of $600, and his pants had been taken and thrown on the roof. Police said they had additional questions about this part of the robbery. The story made the national news again. The TV news people liked to joke about the people who had to strip, and now Harry was among them. “That’s 16,” one newsman said.

             Yet another Oregonian story, the next day, said Mary Jane’s owner might also be in violation of state regulations by having a party on the premises. The safe had yet to be opened because it had a broken ceramic dial.

            The next day the Oregonian reported the owner of Weed was Harry Wellington, the son of the late Charles Wellington, who was well known in the Northwest and throughout the country as a bridge engineer whose company had a good reputation for bringing projects in on time and under cost. Harry had a police record, a driving while intoxicated charge, and was known to have operated two unsuccessful businesses before opening Weed. He had lost a sexual harassment lawsuit.

            The next day police told the Oregonian there were significant quantities of illegal drugs in the safe and a criminal investigation had been started implicating the owner of Mary Jane’s.

            This is turning out to be a story with a lot of angles, Steve thought. Still, he felt there wasn’t any evidence that would implicate him. He was going to give notice, work at his job two more weeks, move to Corvallis and begin taking classes. It would be nice to be out of the reach of the Oregonian. He wanted to stop thinking about the marijuana-store robberies.

Chapter three

            After crying for a few minutes the night of the robbery, Harry Wellington went back into the building. The robbery was about the worst thing that could’ve happened, he thought. The DUI arrest a year ago had shaken him; it was not pleasant to be arrested and go through the court system. He spent a night in jail. Some of the people in jail with him smelled.

            Then again, maybe it was the lawsuit with the woman that had shaken Harry the most. When the woman sued him, his friends found out. Harry had touched her breasts, a stupid move. He had offered her more pay if she would be his “friend with benefits,” but he hadn’t meant any harm. He wasn’t going to force her to do anything.

            Nonetheless, with the lawsuit he was both depressed and angry. There was the embarrassment, and then all that money paid out in the settlement, $250,000. That was real. He also felt bad because the woman was a good person. She was friendly, but certainly had not given him any encouragement she would have sex for money. He had been stupid.

            Still, the robbery was right up there on the list of things that would bum him out. And it occurred at exactly the time he thought he had turned things around.

            Losing the money was bad. He did indeed owe a farmer $200,000 and the IRS $200,000, and he owed several thousand dollars in other, smaller expenses.

            Trying to be a businessman had messed him up. He never felt so much a loser. Yet, that wasn’t the truth either. He had messed up at other times. He smoked a lot of pot at the end of his senior year in high school and was lucky to graduate. His two older brothers had grown up on job sites with his father. Charles had educated them in math, science and history, and they were good students. When they were building the bridge over the Nehalem River Valley, near the coast, the boys spent every morning fishing for steelhead, recognized worldwide as a good game fish. They’d had a great education and a great childhood, and Harry never got over the jealousy. Compared to his handsome, successful brothers, he always felt like a loser.

            He was overweight, and had grown up with his mother, who was not dynamic and also gained weight. Harry couldn’t fish, a noticeable deficit in Oregon, where fishing licenses outnumber registered voters. Being several years younger than his brothers, he had grown up in a different atmosphere. He was proud of his father but never felt close to him.

            As an adult, Harry kept paying out money with every business venture. There was a real possibility, with a few more mistakes, he could be bankrupt. He couldn’t imagine himself with a job, working for a minimum wage. Yet he knew he didn’t have any job skills.

            Harry didn’t have any pants at the business, at the Weed store, so he wrapped a towel around his waist and fixed a Scotch on ice. He took a few hits of weed, and an 0.5 milligram lorazepam tablet. He paced, sipped his drink, and cussed outloud. Finally, something started working. He was sitting at a table with a pencil and paper, doodling, and relaxed a little.

            He remembered when he started in the weed business, how optimistic he had been. He was going to work hard, learn every aspect of the business, and make back the money he lost on his first two businesses. Lots of businessmen have a failure or two before becoming successful. He had started Weed with a million dollars. He could wait out downturns in the market. He could buy cool stuff and make it a great store, a fun place to hang out with his friends. He would hire a good staff. He’d be respectful with the staff, professional. He was going to lose weight.

            The retail marijuana business, in its first years, suffered from an oversupply of marijuana. Customers simply continued dealing with friends in the underground, where they had purchased weed for years. There was no reason to go into a store and pay higher prices.

            When Harry’s business problems were at their worst, Harry had a lucky break in that he made friends with a man named Bobby Albari, who claimed to be a gangster. He was from New Jersey and told Harry he was connected, but Harry thought maybe he was naive to believe it.

            Bobby wanted Oregon marijuana to sell in New Jersey, where weed wasn’t legal and prices were high. Harry had been friends with the farmer John Cooper. He purchased weed from him in the legitimate way. It turned out John Cooper had socked away several hundred pounds of marijuana.

            Bobby Albari lived in a hotel in Oregon for about a month to meet people in the business. Bobby and Harry had dinner one night, and ended up doing cocaine. Another night they went to a strip club and Bobby bought both of them women. They got rip roaring drunk and had a good time.

            Harry was sure he could trust Bobby, and Bobby knew the money behind the Wellington name was for real. He wasn’t an undercover cop. So, Harry was the middleman in a three-way deal with John Cooper. Bobby Albari purchased 400 pounds for $1,250 a pound, or $500,000. The same $500,000 that was just taken from Harry outside the door of his business.

            Harry was proud of himself. He put together the deal of the year. This was how he envisioned himself. A wheeler-dealer, a guy who knows people, a man who’ll hook you up.

            During his time in Oregon, Bobby Albari purchased a new Mercedes van. One day, Harry took it to the John Cooper farm and filled it full of weed. He drove back to his business and handed the keys to Bobby, who was happy with the deal and gave Harry the money.

            They vowed a friendship. They would do more deals. Bobby Albari, small-time hood in New Jersey, packed the weed in air-tight plastic, to keep down the smell, and headed to the East Coast.

            Harry was taking the money home the night he was robbed. He had a small safe at his business, but a large safe at home where he would keep the money. In a matter of 24 hours, Steve Kilter turned his life upside down. Harry’s thoughts of big-time business deals had been smashed like a ceramic cup. He could not drink the loss off his mind, although he kept trying.   

            His thoughts were not leading anywhere in particular and he turned on the television and watched the movie “Animal House.” John Belushi made him laugh. He fixed another drink, made some popcorn, with butter, and forgot about the robbery.

            The drinks were going down easily and by the end of the movie he had had three. Drunk, watching John Belushi drive off in a Cadillac with a pretty blonde at the end of the movie, he turned off the TV, lay down on his couch and fell asleep thinking of a blonde prostitute he knew, who was always nice to him.

            Because his jeans were on the roof, he wasn’t able to go home. Plus, he’d been drinking. He would have a friend pick up some clothes in the morning. Maybe he would just drive home in his towel. He woke up drunk and hung over about 6 a.m.

            He would’ve liked to have his jeans to get home. He remembered the business next door had a ladder hidden behind a work shed. He wished he had thought of this last night, before he’d started drinking.

            The sun was just coming up. He could get the ladder, climb to the roof mostly in the dark, and get his jeans before there was much activity in the alley. Wearing a jacket and t-shirt, a towel and work boots – his regular attire except for the towel, he started up the ladder just as a police car pulled in. It was a 24-foot ladder and he realized he was a little scared just before getting to the top. Never mind there are working men who climb ladders every day.

            He stopped, standing near the top of the ladder. It was an old wood ladder and was shaking just a little. He could imagine telling this to some of his friends when they were stoned. This was the part that could’ve been funny. “I’m on a wobbly ladder and the police show up,” he said in a voice only he could hear.

            The two policemen got out of the car. “Everything OK?” said one.

            “My jeans are on the roof,” he said. “I’ll get them and be right down. It’s a little scary up here to tell the truth.” Harry’s opinion was that being scared kept him from thinking clearly.

            The two men looked at each other. “OK,” said the one who had already said hello.

            Harry climbed over a block-brick ledge, up onto the roof, put on his jeans, and headed back over the side. He climbed over the concrete blocks to get back on the ladder, the part that quite scared him. Then, he went slowly down the ladder at first. The wood ladder shook a little and made him nervous but he was soon down. He needed to think up a story, and quick, but his mind was blank. He was concentrating on not falling.

            The policeman who was talking was the one who had been driving. He was a good-looking young man with a short, trimmed beard. He was smiling. “How did your jeans end up on the roof?”

            Harry was lost for an answer. He was trying to think of a story of some kind. He needed to buy time but his brain wasn’t working.

            “Well, it’s a long story,” he said finally. He was on the ground now, folding the towel. He was deliberate and careful with the towel, like it was important to fold it neatly. He was trying to buy time. The other police officer was a little taller, maybe 6-foot. They both looked fit. Harry was kind of jealous. They were fit, good-looking guys, wearing uniforms. They seemed cool, except they were the police and he had been robbed after participating in an illegal act. He could plead the fifth, couldn’t he? Boy, now that would look suspicious.

            “We probably have time to hear the explanation. Just curious?” the talker said.

            “Just a prank my friend played last night, that’s all. I’m not mad about it or anything.”

            The two policemen looked at each other. “Is the friend who pulled the prank here now, in the store?”

            “Oh no, he went home.”

            “Lucky you had a ladder here?”

            “Yeah, I just thought about it this morning. I was hoping to get up there and back down before anyone saw me in a bath towel.”

            “Yeah, sure,” said the bearded one. So far, he was the only one talking. “We’re here investigating the robbery of some marijuana stores last night. I was just wondering if your store was one of them.”

            “I’ll be,” Harry said. “Who got robbed?”

            “The 181 store, Cannabis Central, Mary Jane’s, maybe others.”

            Harry stood still in the awkward silence. The clean-shaven policeman spoke for the first time. “I wondered if your pants being on the roof had anything to do with what went on last night?”

            “No, no, just a friend goofing around.” Harry knew it was the opposite.

            “Well,” said the bearded policeman, “did you get robbed?”

             “Uh, yes,” Harry said, immediately realizing he should have said no. “Yeah, a man took $600 off me.” He was following up on a story that already sounded odd and he didn’t know where this was going, but now the police would want all sorts of information.

            “The police were all over here last night, driving around, lots of lights and people looking all over,” the bearded policeman said. “All that activity, you didn’t notice? Did you stay here last night?”

            “I did. I don’t have a window in back. I was watching a movie.”

            “You didn’t think to call the police, tell ’em you had $600 stolen,” the clean-shaven one said. He looked at his fellow officer with the beard, then continued. “What’d this guy look like?”

            “Look, I’m glad to tell you all about it,” Harry said. “I haven’t had breakfast, and I was going to call my lawyer first.” Harry figured even if it seemed suspicious, he’d better stop talking. The more he talked, the stranger his story sounded and he was messing up.

            “I was just trying to get a description of the man who robbed you,” said the clean-shaven cop. “We’d like to try and catch him. Anything you say might help.”

            “Sure, sure,” Harry said. “I sure want to help.” I’m saying the word sure a lot, he thought.

            “Did he have a gun?”

            “You know, I’d like to get home and get cleaned up, and then I’d be glad to help whoever is investigating. Sure would.” There it was again.

            “Well, did he have a gun, though?” the policeman said.

            “Yeah, he did, actually.” Harry pictured the gun.

            “What did he look like? Was he short or tall? We like to ask people before they forget the details.”

            “Oh sure, that makes sense,” Harry said. He started toward the back door. “I’ll just go home, get cleaned up, and tell you all about it.” He put his hand on the door handle. The bearded officer laughed.

            “What was the gun?” the bearded one said. “Do you know guns? Was it a revolver, or did it have a clip, a semiautomatic. It wasn’t a rifle, was it?”

            “A handgun. No, I don’t know guns, not really.” He turned to the door.

            “Could we just get a description, while it’s fresh in your mind?”

            “You sure can,” Harry said. Why do I say that word, sure, all the time? “I’ll get cleaned up and give you a call.” Harry stepped into the door way.

            “Sir,” said the bearded cop, still smiling, “would you like a card? I’ll give you the name of someone to call after you’ve talked to your lawyer.” He stepped forward, wrote the name and telephone number of the lead investigator. He handed Harry the card.

            “Do you mind if we come in, look around?” The bearded one was only two steps from entering the building. As policemen, they had made people nervous before, but they were cracking up watching Harry.

            “I’ll just get cleaned up, have some breakfast, and give you a call while it’s fresh in my mind,” Harry said.

            “Just one more thing,” said the clean-shaven police officer. “Were your pants thrown on the roof before or after you were robbed? I’m unclear on that.”

            Harry Wellington stepped inside the building and pulled the door shut. His heart was racing.

Chapter four

            Before Steve Kilter committed the infamous Portland marijuana-store robberies, he was influenced by a charming but not-so-bright criminal named Roxy Smith.

            They worked together on the gas station apron all day, pumping gas. This was in Gresham after Steve Kilter dropped out of college. Roxy hadn’t benefitted much from a high school education, though he had a high-school diploma. He said he identified with Steve’s inability to afford college. “I been trying to get ahead myself,” Roxy said. Steve had been an honor student in high school, and he took Roxy’s lament with a grain of salt, but Roxy was funny in a limited way. He told Steve about his criminal activities and put the idea of easy money in his head. As different as they were, Steve and Roxy had one thing in common. They were both poor.

            Hearing Roxy’s schemes caused Steve to experiment with criminal ideas of his own. He could bounce an idea off Roxy and hear all sorts of crazy information. They did this as a way to pass the hours of the day, Steve with an idea and Roxy with commentary and little asides on the life of crime. Steve knew he’d never follow up on any of the ideas, but one day an idea struck him as interesting.

            When marijuana was legalized in Oregon, stores that sold weed for recreational use sprang up all over Portland. Previously marijuana had been legal only for medical use. Portland is a small city of under a million people with beautiful, tree-lined streets.

            The pot farms came first, and multiplied rapidly, after 2014. Medical marijuana was a misnomer. Anyone could get a prescription for weed by describing any kind of common symptom. The politicians in the state were ecstatic. They had found a new, easy source of revenue and when it became recreational, and not medical, they predicted the tax income would explode.

            A myth refused to die in the rain-soaked, western part of the state of Oregon. It was rumored the owner of the first marijuana store in Portland earned $500,000 in his first year of business. No one knew the source of the story, store number one, but it sounded right. Roxy couldn’t help talking about it as if it were fact.

            Lawmakers were planning to regulate the industry, but in the beginning, as is common with any bureaucracy, the rules were a puzzle. The industry was quasi-legal as federal law still says marijuana is illegal, thus the banking system wouldn’t extend credit. Everyone involved at every level used cash. Regardless, business reporters nationwide wrote of the wild expectations of Wall Street. The farms had started up early, and when the Oregon Legislature decided to drop the hoax that marijuana was medicine and make it like alcohol, controlled and taxed, the state was awash in weed.

            Steve didn’t care about getting high. He had tried it, but was one of those people who didn’t enjoy the feeling. He cared about going to college and how to afford it. He had moved away from home and for the first time in his life, after a semester at Oregon State University, had learned one of life’s hard lessons. The money he had saved from working summers and numerous after-school jobs was spent. Just like that. Textbooks, rent and tuition were expensive. He admitted to Roxy he had been homesick. Popular in high school, he felt isolated and friendless in college. It hurt his confidence a little.

            Alone one night, drinking a beer in a Portland bar called the Idle Hour, he wondered how all the cash from these brand-new marijuana businesses was being handled.

            He had started out at the Idle Hour with his friend, Pete. It was hard to find a good job in Portland in 2018, the economy not exactly humming along. His friend Pete was in a three-year plumbing internship, being paid to go to school. His future looked bright. Pete drank a beer and went home, leaving Steve alone. Steve had always been a bright guy, a good athlete; he didn’t like his situation. He couldn’t understand what had happened to all his friends. He was hoping when the weather turned nice, a better-paying job in construction would open up.

            Steve Kilter didn’t want to get involved in the marijuana business. As he pondered the business, he remembered large numbers of cars in the parking lots. He knew inside the buildings would be a group of people smoking pot. It turned out this was not true, but he was naive and didn’t know any different.

            At the end of the day, some business owner would be taking cash to be deposited in a bank’s night-deposit box, or else it was locked up somewhere on the premises, maybe in a safe. He wondered how people were handling the cash. At the time, people assumed the businesses were making money. It would not be until later the rumor began that the numerous farmers had flooded the market. The rumor of cheap pot became a reality, and the retail stores began to fail and struggle.

            Steve, because of school and sports, had never had time to get in trouble, but now he found himself considering with Roxy a range of illegal activities. In the end, none of them seemed appealing. Every elaborate scheme, in the end, turns into someone ripping someone else off.

            On the drive at the service station, Roxy told Steve about many scams. Robbing a bank meant the FBI would investigate. Breaking and entering seemed risky. Some people kept guns, and if one did find a lot of valuables, the next thing one had to do was fence the goods, and this would involve yet other people and more risk.

            Stealing cars was still possible, but also a lot of trouble. Steve knew that years ago many Hondas and Toyotas had the same key, and as the cars got older the key mechanisms got loose, and almost any old Honda key would start any old Honda. And, the old cars were reliable and still on the road.

            If one successfully stole an old car, he had to find an old Honda in a wrecking yard and take the serial number and apply for a new title. All that work and how much money would you make? A person could steal high-end cars, maybe car-jack them, but one would have to be connected to organized crime in order to sell high-priced automobiles. Steve saw a television show about it.

            A dishonest repair shop provides key fobs to open and start certain models of high-end cars. Then the robber disables the GPS so police can’t find the cars. The GPSs are located in different places in different models. Then the cars are shipped in storage containers to Sierra Leone for resale. Steve knew he could never manage all that.

            He was earning $13 an hour to pump gas, enough to pay his rent and buy food but without much left over. It’d be nice to earn enough money to be able to save some. He knew some older guys who gambled, played poker in big games, but that was for the thrill more than a good way to make a living. The people who were into robbery, like his friend Roxy Smith, spent the extra income they made on drugs. That made Roxy’s lifestyle risky, and not profitable.

            Steve was looking for the opposite of this. Roxy would tell him about breaking into people’s houses, the excitement of it. And that was what was making Steve think of crime as a way to make a living. He wasn’t considering it seriously. Just looking at it. Weighing the risks. Trying to think if there was one area of crime that paid, but with minimal risk.

            He was at a boring job and had to think about something. His friend Pete, after failing to convince Steve to join the plumbing internship, had dumped him at the Idle Hour and Steve felt low.

            Roxy, whose mother named him after the 1970s rock group, once found $700 cash in a man’s sock drawer during a B and E. It had been stupid luck, and Roxy couldn’t help bragging about it. Steve knew a person could break into a dozen houses and not find cash. He might find a big color TV he’d have to carry out of the house and be lucky if someone paid $100 for. One might find jewelry, which maybe was or was not valuable.

            Roxy said he knew a drug dealer who would trade drugs for diamonds, but what was the advantage of that. Steve wouldn’t know a diamond from a zirconium rock anyway.

            Steve knew there was a band in the 1970s named Roxy Music, and the front man Bryan Ferry was handsome and would get dressed up and always be accompanied by beautiful women, well made up and dressed up fine. Steve couldn’t name a Roxy Music song. He kept searching his memory banks for the missing Roxy Music hit. He assumed Roxy’s mother liked the glamour of it. Roxy was not bad looking; it was possible his mother had been good looking.

            Roxy was slender with a symmetrical face. He had even teeth and didn’t comb his hair, so he must have thought he was affecting some kind of a look. He wasn’t tall enough to be a heart throb, maybe he was five foot six, and he had a burn on his arm. He once passed out and dropped a hot crack pipe on his arm. He was 23 but looked 30, and his teeth were brown from smoking cigarettes. Even teeth, but brown. And a distinctive burn, quite an impressive scar now.

            It was interesting working with Roxy, though. He was always chasing women and trying to cop dope and he could turn either endeavor into an adventure. He told funny stories, parts of which were probably true. Roxy was always staking out a place to rob or trying to come up with a scam. Presently, there was a man he was following.

            If Roxy were to rob a house, he liked to break a window and enter the house through the basement. Even though crime with a gun carries a stiffer penalty, he carried a .38 caliber revolver, a once-popular police weapon. An older gun is easier to acquire, Roxy said. Roxy said when he got in a house, he’d find a suitcase, and he wouldn’t steal anything too large to fit in the suitcase. Then he’d walk out of the house, even walk down the street with the suitcase, not entirely an unusual thing. Steve was waiting, every day, for the police to come to the service station and question Roxy. He was that kind of guy.

            Steve took a sip of beer. He was by himself at the Idle Hour; Pete hadn’t much wanted to talk about old times. The only woman in the bar worked there. He was more alone here than he’d been in Corvallis. OK, he made a mistake. He should have stayed in Corvallis. Correct it and move on. He needed to get back to Corvallis and go to school even if it meant taking only one class at a time while he worked a job.

            Pete thought if Steve didn’t get into the plumbing internship, he was missing an opportunity. Pete couldn’t think of any solution to Steve’s problems that didn’t have to do with a plumbing internship. Pete was thinking about getting married to a woman who worked at a day care center.

            Becoming an accountant wasn’t some crazy idea to Steve. It was realistic. Get a degree, get a job, learn about a company through its books and make himself useful. Steve thought his thinking was more clear than Pete’s idea of getting married. Work in a day care center and you are bound to get pregnant, that’s what Steve thought. Becoming a plumber wasn’t a bad move.

            Just recently, Roxy told Steve he was following a man he saw at a strip club, Cindi’s. The man, Marcus, was maybe 40 years old, dressed nice, and always had a pocket full of cash. He stood out because he tipped the strippers $20s, not single dollar bills. The most popular woman at Cindi’s was an Asian woman with large breasts, Susan. Marcus tried to give her $300 to go to his apartment and have sex, but she said no.

            Jillie, who was not as pretty as Susan, did accept the offer, and she told Roxy about it. Marcus tipped Jillie $100 after the sex.

            Thus Marcus was on Roxy’s radar, and at work each day he would tell Steve if he’d made progress. Roxy was also trying to convince Jillie to have sex with him for free. Later, Roxy said, Marcus offered Susan $1,000 to go out with him, but still she said no.

            Steve thought of this as he sat at the bar drinking beer at the Idle Hour. Instead of a well-dressed matron, Cindi’s was owned by a rough 50-year-old man with a big gut, cigar breath and black hair combed back and quickly going grey.

            At Cindi’s, there were two stages of simple wood construction, a long bar, straight-back, black metal chairs, posters of women in bathing suits on the walls, $7 beer and fried food on the menu. It was only successful because the owner never took a night off, and turned the cash register off at 11 p.m. so he could skim off cash the IRS would never know about.

            Roxy confided to Jillie he would like to rob Marcus. Jillie was upset that Marcus slept with her for $300 and then offered $1,000 to Susan. She gave Roxy Marcus’s address and he promised to split whatever he found at Marcus’s with her. She regretted telling him the address the moment she told him, but then she thought Roxy was all talk and nothing would come of it. It wasn’t a big deal.

            Steve Kilter thought Roxy and Jillie probably talked too much. They were always drinking, so that might account for it. Still, if one had to pump gas, discussing oddball behavior helped pass the time. Roxy was sure if he had a big payday, Jillie would sleep with him. It was a kick, the way Roxy’s mind worked.

Chapter five

            Roxy waited in front of Marcus’s apartment; it was a weekday evening. The rain had cleared and it was a nice winter night, about 50 degrees out, not cold. It was about 9 p.m. when Marcus left to walk to Cindi’s.

            Roxy was sure Marcus would be gone at least a couple of hours. After Marcus was a few blocks away, Roxy moved his car two blocks over, then walked to 207, on the second floor of the Firs Apartments. There were tall Douglas fir trees on a large lot with 20 four-unit apartment complexes.

            Roxy, standing in front of 207, looked and didn’t see anyone. He wore a large, heavy shirt to cover his tool belt and pulled on a pair of gloves at the door. He took out an electric drill and drilled out the lock, stuck an old screwdriver in the hole and twisted. The door opened.

            He went to the bedroom first, turned on the light and opened the drawers of a beautiful wood desk. He found it went faster if he just dumped the contents of the drawers on the floor. He dumped out all nine drawers, but didn’t find any cash. He found a 1948 silver dollar and a $500 Swiss Army watch. He put the watch on and the coin in his pocket.

            The bedroom closet was well organized, some nice clothes and shoes in there. He went through the pockets of the sports jackets and shirts as quickly as he could. He opened shoe boxes, and looked inside shoes. There was a blanket and a shoe box on the top shelf of the closet. He opened the shoe box and found receipts for rent, electricity, some stubs showing deposits in an investment account at Charles Schwab. He didn’t find the source of all that cash Marcus carried, but Roxy knew it was there. He went through the dresser drawers.

            He went to the living room, opened a few drawers in a table that held a lamp. Nothing. He went to the kitchen and saw $60 under a little tourist-store Statue of Liberty. He assumed it was for the cleaning woman and took the money. There was some change and $30 in crumpled bills in a clean ashtray. He took it, but he knew there was more. Marcus carried lots of cash, maybe $300 or $400 when he went to Cindi’s. It encouraged the dancers to see him pull it out.

            Roxy was sure Marcus kept a cigar box full of cash somewhere for when he needed to replenish his roll. Roxy began looking through kitchen cabinets, using a chair to look in the upper ones. Now the kitchen was a mess, but he hadn’t found what he was looking for.

            He remembered a book, “Swag,” by Elmore Leonard. Two guys had rules to follow when robbing a place. They robbed grocery stores and liquor stores; armed robbery. The rules included such things as never deal with a junkie and never use your own car.

             If Roxy had a rule, a time limit, he’d already be over it. He had been in the house 15 minutes. He was wearing medical-grade Vinyl Synmax gloves and his hands were sweating. He went into the bathroom.

            He looked through stacks of towels. He looked in the medicine cabinet, and found about 20 hydrocodone tablets. He took two, drank from the faucet to wash them down, and put the bottle in his pocket with the silver dollar. He went back to the kitchen, opened a door to a deck that looked out over a large area of mowed grass and Douglas fir trees. He stepped outside and saw some smokers at the far end of the next building over, on a similar deck, and went back inside.

            He took a knife out of his tool belt, but didn’t cut the mattress open. That was stupid. The money wasn’t in the mattress, but it wasn’t under the mattress either. He looked under the bed and saw another shoe box, this one had a new pair of basketball shoes. Not his size.

            He stood for just a second at the kitchen table. He considered the nice, one-bedroom apartment. He’d searched all the logical spots. He was nervous and it was time to go. He went out on the back deck and saw the smokers had gone in. He climbed over the railing, held onto the lower rung and dropped down. The drop gave him a jolt but he was OK. He checked his tool belt and he had everything. His drill, cable cutter, screwdriver, knife and .38 caliber revolver. He walked across the grass, onto a sidewalk and back to his car, a 1987 Datsun 510. He took off his gloves. Driving home, he cursed loudly.

            Marcus had a good time at Cindi’s. He paid all the women for private dances, including Jillie, and he tipped her well.

            “Wow, the tip, that’s nice,” she said. “Thank you.”

            “I had a great time when you were over at my apartment. I wanted to show you my appreciation. Maybe you’ll want to come over again sometime.”

            Jillie smiled. The dance was over and she was putting her top back on. “Come back for another $300?” she said nicely, but she was nervous as she knew what she was going to say next.

            “Yeah,” Marcus said, hesitating. Jillie was nothing like Susan, but she had nice little boobs and she had been fun.

            “I heard you offered Susan $1,000.” Jillie said, “I’ll come over for $500.” Marcus smiled, listening to her negotiate. “OK,” he said, “and a tip if it’s good, just like last time.”

            “A $200 tip,” she said, giving him a big smile.

            “It was a good blowjob,” he said.

            “Yeah, I give blowjobs,” she said.

            Marcus figured he must have a weakness for women who talk dirty. In any case, he was aroused. “You win,” he said and smiled. Jillie liked that. At first, she had been upset he had offered Susan $1,000, but the way it worked out, it gave her negotiating room. She was proud of herself, thinking $700 for one visit, heck yeah.

            She went into the dressing room, where Susan was sitting in a chair, resting. There were curtains hung to divide the dressing room, giving it a messy look rather than an organized one. The leather was torn on the corners of the chair Susan sat on. Well, it was a cheap-ass place.

            “I used to hate this job,” Jillie said. “I’d work my ass off for a bunch of ones and watch guys just throwing money on the stage for you. And you told me about Marcus offering you a thousand dollars. I don’t hate you; you’re beautiful. But I negotiated and now Marcus is paying me $700 for a visit to his home, and you add that to my regular tips and all the sudden things are going OK.”

            “Good,” Susan said. “A girl has to make her own way in this business.”

             “I’m going to buy you a drink,” Jillie said.

            “Well, score,” said Susan, and they walked together to the bar. Susan, beautiful and curvy, had her arm around Jillie. The owner of the bar watched them, wondering when Susan and Jillie became friends.

            Marcus was a young lawyer if one considers 40 to be young. He has his own practice and was finally beginning to run down work. It was a nice evening, walking home. He had had fun with the girls and was a little drunk. When he got home and saw the mess at his apartment, he was immediately upset. He went to the kitchen, crawled under the kitchen table, and took down an envelope he had taped to the bottom of the table. He looked inside. All $3,000 of his cash was there.

            He called the police. He looked at the mess. He cursed loudly.

Chapter six

            After the second time sleeping with Marcus, Jillie was pretty happy. She was thinking she liked the strip club, tawdry as it was, hanging out and making money on tips, having a drink with the girls, earning $700 from Marcus when only a few months ago she would’ve slept with him for free. She was going to ask him if she could see him twice a month. Getting on a regular schedule would fix her budget.

            He should say yes. She’d given him an outstanding blowjob, and after a little nap she’d let him bang her for free. They rested on the bed for about five minutes. After that, his mood changed. Marcus told her about the break-in, and got kind of worked up. He was angry, but not at her. Jillie felt bad about it, but didn’t say a word.

            Then, a few days later, Roxy was at the strip club and he told Jillie all he’d made with the burglary was $30, it was a big waste of time, but he gave her $15 as he had promised her half. She tried not to think about it, and kind of didn’t want to take the $15. It was weird, not worth the money to have the guilt. It was too bad that his house was a mess. Otherwise, Marcus didn’t really get hurt too bad. Jillie knew there was money there somewhere, hundreds, maybe thousands, but she didn’t know where and she wanted to act like she didn’t even know Roxy.

            Marcus had a law-school friend who was a Multnomah County prosecutor, and he asked the prosecutor if he could get an investigation going. His friend said there weren’t enough losses, forget it, but Marcus kept after him. He said it was a personal thing to get robbed like that, plus the house was trashed. The prosecutor finally said he’d send a cop, an investigator, around as a favor. The police had already written a report.

            In another few days, Marcus was sitting with Jillie at the club and drinking quite heavily. It wasn’t like him. He was talking about how pissed off he was someone had come into his apartment, invaded his personal space, all that. He was so angry he said he wanted to sit in the dark, with a gun, and kill the guy when he came back. “Oh my,” Jillie said.

            Jillie decided to get drunk with Marcus, so between lap dances they had drinks. During the lap dances she kept touching him. It wasn’t allowed, but who would know and maybe she could improve his mood. In an hour, he’d spent $300 on lap dances and drinks despite the fact Jillie was trying to give it away for free.

            Jillie, in the privacy of a booth with a beaded curtain, told Marcus she thought she knew who had robbed him, thinking it would help her standing with him, but immediately she recognized her mistake. If she hadn’t been drinking, she would’ve kept her mouth shut, that’s what she thought next.

            “This is perfect,” Marcus said. “I have an interview with a cop tomorrow.”

            Jillie immediately sobered up and it felt as though there was a chunk of iron in her stomach. When Marcus asked who it was, she said there was a man who comes in sometimes who said he thought he’d rob Marcus ’cause he carried a lot of cash. She claimed she didn’t know his name but she gave a description.

            When Marcus described him later to the bartender, not the owner but another guy, he knew right away who Jillie was describing. “Roxy,” the bartender said, “that’s his real name.” Then the bartender said something odd. It was, “Jillie knows his name.”

            Marcus didn’t quite understand what the bartender meant, and he was drunk and let it go. The cop visited Marcus at his home the next day and learned that Marcus liked a dancer, Jillie, but he didn’t care. So an uptown lawyer likes rough trade; that was no problem. At least not his problem.

            There weren’t too many bad guys around named Roxy, so the cop knew right away where to look to interview Roxy. Leland the detective saw Roxy walking home from the service station at 6 p.m. that night. He’d waited for him. He joined him on the street. Roxy had a smoke and denied the break-in, but the cop said he had a witness.

            “One thing I’ve been wondering,” Leland said. “Did you case his house? How’d you know where Marcus lived?”

            “A dancer told me,” Roxy said. He was standing with one hand in his pocket, and the other holding a cigarette. On the wrist of his arm was a Swiss Army watch. Leland thought the guy couldn’t be any dumber.

            It was misty, a little wet, standing outside on the sidewalk. “Wait a minute, is that the witness? A stripper named Jillie?” said Roxy.

            Now Roxy caught on and was trying to think of a way to get out of trouble, but Leland would search his apartment and if Roxy didn’t let him, he’d get a warrant and do it anyway.

            At Roxy’s apartment, Leland found the hydrocodone bottle in the trash with Marcus’s name on it, and the silver dollar. Leland took the watch as well. There were four other cops with him doing the search, and one of them found a small amount of heroin, cocaine and marijuana. They were in separate plastic bags. This would eventually be the cause of most of Roxy’s problems. There were three grams of cocaine, enough to make a fuss about.

            The cop’s next visit was to Cindi’s the next day, where Leland found Jillie at 11 in the morning, bored out of her mind drinking a whisky sour. Leland was in street clothes, black slacks, white shirt, skinny black tie. His entire wardrobe was similar. He was not concerned with looking fashionable. He dressed how he thought a detective should look.

            Leland said, “Hey, thanks for the tip on Roxy. It turned out to be a good one. We’re going to charge him with burglary. We found drugs, too. Marcus is pretty pleased.”

            “Good,” Jillie said. She was trying not to act nervous, but that chunk of iron was back in her stomach. She finished her whisky in one swallow and took out a cigarette. “I never did like that Roxy guy hanging around here too much.”

            “Sure,” Leland said, “he’s been in all kinds of trouble.” He waited a minute. The pause was uncomfortable, but not for Leland. He knew it was giving Jillie time to think, to get nervous. Jillie couldn’t light the cigarette inside, and was about to ask Leland if they could go outside.

            “One thing I was thinking about,” Leland said, “How’d Roxy find out where Marcus lived?”

            “I don’t know,” Jillie said, but it was kind of a question the way she answered it. She hadn’t said it with any conviction. Leland gave her a smile. “We’ll, you know I’ll have to write in my report that Roxy said you told him the address. Marcus will read the report, you know?”

            “Yeah, sure,” said Jillie. She knew what she was going to say next, but she paused because it made her nervous. “Or we could go in the booth, and I could give you a private dance, for free you know. More than a dance, you know.”

            Jillie knew Marcus would be furious if he found out she’d given Roxy his address.

            “Thanks,” Leland said, “maybe another time.”

            Jillie knew the relationship with Marcus was probably over. She might be able to talk her way out of it. She didn’t know.

            “It won’t matter as far as the facts of the case are concerned,” Leland said. “Of course, that’s supposing he didn’t share any of the spoils with you.”

            “I’m serious about the bribe,” she said. “I’d blow you good, no condom.”

            “I know,” Leland said, “I’m flattered, but I won’t report it as an attempted bribe if you don’t bring it up again.”

            Jillie told the cop Roxy had stolen $30 out of an ashtray, and gave her $15. She was trying to come clean, to win Leland over; she knew he already knew. He’d known everything before he’d asked even a single question.

            Leland said, “Roxy found another $60 sitting on a counter, waiting for the cleaning lady. I guess he didn’t tell you about that. Boy, everybody involved in this case ended up getting a raw deal.” Jillie said some cuss words, then went outside to smoke her cigarette.

Chapter seven

            When Steve Kilter and Roxy Smith showed up at the service station at 6 a.m., there was an immediate line at the pumps. “Here we go,” Steve said. A half an hour later, a patrol car pulled up, and a uniformed officer handcuffed Roxy and drove away with him.

            Steve went in and told the lead cashier. “It’s not like we didn’t expect it to happen,” she said.

            Steve had to hustle the rest of the day, but he didn’t care. He had played high school football and run track. Running round on the concrete drive was no big deal. Keeping track of the customers was no big deal, either. He should be in college, not breathing gas fumes 12 hours a day at a service station making $13 an hour.

            It was then he had an epiphany. Seeing Roxy go off in a police car should’ve been a warning, but instead he was energized. He decided to stake out some marijuana shops. He didn’t have a plan in place, but if he could get $5,000, he’d go back to school, back to Corvallis where he belonged. With that much money, and a job, he could make another year. That evening, when he got off work, he bought a spiral notebook. He was going to develop a plan. He wasn’t going to make any mistakes. Most criminals were stupid, like Roxy, but he wasn’t.

            Steve sat at the kitchen table eating a warmed-up bowl of homemade ham and bean soup his mother had given him. He didn’t like the apartment. The linoleum floor was yellowed from use. The walls had been freshly painted, but it wasn’t a good paint job. It wasn’t even a particularly nice shade of white. He thought of his high school girlfriend.

            He’d spent time with her and her family all through his senior year. Her father liked him, a good football player and a good student. He said no matter what, find something you like in college and go for it. Just keep going till you meet your goals. Then you’ll get a good job and have a good life.

            Steve associated college with a nice-looking wife, like Ella, and a nice house. A job where you work hard, but don’t bust your knuckles turning a wrench or burn yourself welding pipe. Steve had always had good-looking girlfriends. He had it in his mind if he got a good job, he could have a good-looking wife. He planned to major in accounting. He heard accountants have a .04 percent rate of unemployment. If he could pass accounting, he could work himself up in a business.

            Although Ella’s father had encouraged him, Steve had been a good student throughout high school because he always believed in the good-job, good-wife theory of life.

            His mother and father were divorced. She worked as a bookkeeper at a car dealership. She owned a small house in the Portland suburb of Gresham, but also had three more children to raise. Steve was the oldest of four. His father was a bartender. A bartender at the Hilton Hotel, a nice place, but a bartender nonetheless. Now, at 50, he had a 30-year-old girlfriend, a waitress at the Hilton with big tits. Steve didn’t think that would have a happy ending, but then again his father had always reeled them in.

Chapter eight

            The police officer delivered Roxy to Leland’s office in East Multnomah County. Leland took off the handcuffs and offered Roxy a cup of coffee. He gave him a clean ashtray and left the room. Roxy lit a cigarette and took a sip of coffee. The police office was basic, several desks and file cabinets in the room, some computers, and a calendar, a map, some photographs on the wall.

            A tall, well-built black man entered the room, took a chair and looked at Roxy. He was wearing canvas pants, running shoes and a sweatshirt. Then a white man with long hair, jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt entered. He was slender and strong looking, wearing boots. He wasn’t as tall as the black man. He looked at Roxy as well.

            The white guy said to the black man, “He doesn’t look like much. Think we’re going to get a couple of drug busts today?” Leland, a detective and 20 years older, joined the police officers.

            “It’s straightforward,” Leland said to Roxy. “We’ve got you cold on the burglary. The prosecutor described several items that were in your possession. The search was legal, would definitely hold up. Then we found some heroin and the coke. The three grams of cocaine seals the deal. If the district attorney really pushed it, you’d get a year.”

            “No, not that much,” Roxy said. “A case couldn’t get no more small potatoes than this one.”

            “It’s true,” Leland said, “but you know what? It’s a slam dunk. The district attorney’s wife could prosecute this one. And lawyers, no matter how much they deny it, like to get wins in court. They keep track of wins and losses. That’s bad news for you.”

            “I think it’s so petty in the end, the district attorney won’t prosecute it,” Roxy said.

            “This guy’s a piece of work,” the black man said. “You’re trying to help him and he acts like a year in prison’s no big deal. And, the B and E would be a felony on his record.”

            “Maybe, maybe not,” Roxy said. He added, “How are you trying to help me?”

            “Give us a drug bust, and we let you off,” Leland said.

            Roxy said no and the three men left the room for about 15 minutes. Roxy tried to appear cool, but he was nervous. Roxy didn’t know what it meant, the way they walked off. He thought about just trying to walk out of the East Multnomah County police office, but there were a bunch of cops around and they’d put a warrant out for him, which meant they could pick him up any time they wanted. Finally, Leland came back into the room. “What about it?” he said.

            Roxy said it was still no.

            Leland went behind his desk, sat down, stretched his shoulders as if thinking of something to say. He was wearing the same clothes Roxy always saw him in, black pants, a white shirt. “We brought you in early so we could make two, three busts today. You know, you give us a name, we set up a buy, make a bust and the person you indicate gives us someone else. After we work our way up the chain, we do some paperwork and get home by 5 p.m. like regular people.

            “If you don’t cooperate, that’s cool, but your case will be prosecuted. You’ll get convicted, spend six months or a year in prison and be a felon.

            “Or, we give you $200 and you call your source. We observe the transaction. Once the dealer takes the money we arrest you both. I take you away in my car. The dealer goes away in another car and we negotiate another buy. You come out clean, no one knows you set them up, and it’s possible you’ll be home by noon.”

            “That works out not too bad for me,” Roxy admitted.

            “But you need to make a decision. We need to go to work on something else if you aren’t playing ball.”

            Roxy ran his hands through his hair. “Can I smoke another cigarette?”

            Leland nodded his head. “This is the last one. You aren’t supposed to smoke in here.”

            Roxy had been buying his drugs from a woman named Marsha. She treated him OK, but he didn’t know her well although he slept with her once. It wouldn’t be like he was turning in a long-time friend. Or some bad hombre who might figure it out and stab him later. He would still be able to buy drugs if Marsha wasn’t around. Leland’s co-workers returned.

            The man with long hair fitted him with a microphone, a digital recorder on the desk. Roxy called Marsha.

            “Marsha, this is Roxy, I’ve got $200. Can I come see you? H?”

            The apartment had the most worn-out carpet Marsha had ever seen. Lucy sat in one of their four plastic chairs drinking a cup of tea. She wanted coffee, but they didn’t have any coffee or any money for coffee. Lucy was saving her last cigarette.

            Marsha, 30, recognized Roxy’s voice on the phone. “Yeah,” she said. “There’s a red brick building next to the Kwik Mart on Hood Street. Wait in front of the building. It’s vacant. Is 10 OK?”

            “Perfect,” said Roxy. He looked at the three men looking at him. He remembered Marsha as she was the night he slept with her. She had medium length brown hair and a decent body. She had been wearing a very old dress, but it was clean and it showed her best feature, nice legs.

            “ Roxy will ride with Pete and me,” Leland said. “Wayne, immediately after the sale, you grab the girl.” Wayne was the black man. “Don Wilson and Max will show up in police cars, sirens flashing, in uniform. After the arrest, Roxy will come with me. You and Pete can start leaning on the girl. I’ll meet you all back here at the station.”

            Marsha pictured Roxy. He had been an energetic lover. She also remembered that he’d been nice, joked around with her to put her at ease. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had sex. All the guys who took H were unable to get an erection. She didn’t tell Lucy about having sex with Roxy.

            “Good timing,” she said to Lucy. “He said a $200 sale, and he’s got a job so I suppose I believe him. We can stock up on H and money.”

            “You know this guy?” Lucy said.

            “He’s small time. I’ve sold him ecstasy and coke, but lately he’s been buying heroin. Sounds like he’s getting a taste for it. Once, he did so much free-base cocaine he passed out taking a hit, and the hot pipe lay on his arm. Oh, you can’t believe. He came to and his skin looked like a piece of hot pizza, all bubbly.”

            Lucy laughed. “Gross.”

            “He still has a nasty scar, but it doesn’t look too bad.”

            “Do we have two hits of H left?” Lucy said.

            “You know we do.”

            They sat facing each other in plastic lawn chairs, about the only furniture they had. Marsha took a hit from a glass pipe, and then loaded the pipe for Lucy. Lucy lit her last cigarette, optimistic now there would be more. Marsha was again disappointed looking at the dirty carpet. She hadn’t been with a man in a long time, and she was a person who had liked sex. If she was to have sex, she’d have to shave her legs and underarms, but she didn’t have a razor. She hadn’t worn makeup for a while either, but she had some makeup. She had a feeling she had had before, but it was stronger this time. She was disappointed in how things were turning out in her life. She went to her dealer and he fronted her the heroin.

            Roxy leaned against the red brick of the vacant building. Almost immediately Marsha walked out of the Kwik Mart. She didn’t even stop walking, taking the money and handing him the packet of heroin. Pete was amazed at how quickly it happened, and he thought of himself as always ready. He ran up to Roxy, Leland right behind him, and said “Halt, there.”

            “Hey, what’s going on?” Roxy shouted. He wanted to sound innocent. Marsha was already to the space between the red brick building and the next building over, headed for the alley in back, but Wayne was on her quickly. Even as he grabbed her hands, it took a second for her to realize what was going on. Her first thought was that this man was quite strong.

            Two police cars immediately showed up. Pete roughly shoved Roxy into Leland’s unmarked car, an old Ford sedan, and they drove off. Leland dropped Roxy off at a dilapidated house in Gresham.

            Roxy had a one-room apartment with access to a shared bathroom. He stood outside for a moment, watching Leland drive off. He combed his hair with his fingers and lit a cigarette. The truth is he felt lucky to be out of the situation, to escape a burglary charge and a drug charge. He continued to have minor legal problems throughout his life, but so far had avoided prison time.

            He laughed, remembering a Portland saying: If you can’t do the probation, don’t do the crime.

            But he was actually sad. Roxy had been thinking about his mother, who died of breast cancer a few years ago. He had a picture of her from when she was young, and she was pretty. Later she gained a lot of weight. She was always looking for an angle. If a new employer said she had five days of sick leave, she made sure to take every one. If a doctor or landlord made a mistake, she instigated a lawsuit. She had been involved in four lawsuits, three with doctors, two still pending at the time of her death. She complained of being poor, and Roxy knew she always had a grievance.

            Roxy knew crime was his angle, not lawsuits. Instead of education or working hard, he was always looking for an easy way to find cash, to make someone pay for the fact he was poor. Like his mother. Roxy recognized he was in trouble. He knew the truth about himself. He was out of trouble this time, but the three grams of cocaine would be noted in his file forever. Every cop who ever looked him up would think of him as a drug addict.

            The burglaries were not an easy source of money, but time wasted studying a situation, and then guilt about what he was doing, even when he was successful. Roxy, five-foot-six but still with a trim body, still with his good looks, made a vow to do better. He was only 30. He inherited the same grievance his mother had. It put a chip on his shoulder but he understood it. The question was, could he change?

            Roxy felt bad for Marsha. Marsha was handcuffed and went with Pete and Wayne to the police station. Pete sat in back of the police car with Marsha, and Wayne rode in front. Pete was a strong, healthy man. He sat back and smiled; his gun showed under his jacket. He had nice teeth. “How are you doing?” he said. She smiled weakly. He was charming and Marsha knew he knew it. She was wearing clean jeans, at least, but her blouse was faded. Her hair was dirty and tied up in a bun.

            He said, “I’ll tell you, a situation like this, everyone kind of gets a raw deal, huh? I’ll tell you something else, though. I can get you out of it.”

Chapter nine

            Thomas Watkins, 77, was a lawyer who had worked for Charles Wellington, the bridge engineer. He thought Mr. Wellington would’ve been shocked at his son’s inability to stay out of trouble. Thomas Watkins had worked with the Wellingtons for more than 50 years. The two older boys were solid citizens. When Charles died, he left his wife quite a legacy. When she died, Thomas Watkins divided the assets for the family. He had many meetings with young Harry, always trying to guide him. He told him to find something he liked to do, stay out of trouble and live carefully, frugally, and he would have all the money he needed for the rest of his life. When he said find something to do, Thomas was thinking of fly fishing. What he would do.

            Now young Harry, at 30 not so young anymore, sat in Thomas’s office. Harry had opened a head shop, selling pipes and other paraphernalia before anyone had thought of legalizing marijuana. Thomas tried to talk him out of it, but Harry thought it was be a good idea and he liked the idea of himself as an entrepreneur. Instead, the business did poorly and he ended up settling a sexual harassment lawsuit for $250,000. Harry liked the idea of hiring attractive young women.

            Portland has a decent number of music and record stores, but Harry thought he could successfully run a record store and lost another $500,000 before admitting defeat. He hired a manager named Robert, who solved the problem of hiring only buxom women. Robert had probably done a decent job, but Harry was always spending money. The record store closed, and Harry was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.

            Harry had reduced an inheritance of $3.5 million down to about $1.3 million. Thomas, a healthy, active old man, was shocked someone could run through money so fast. He felt he was failing young Harry. To him, Harry was of course still quite young.

            He had tried to persuade Harry not to enter into either of the first two businesses. In fact, he hired business consultants to investigate both fields before Harry spent any money, but both times Harry said he could see things the business consultants missed.

            Eventually, Harry bought a piece of property, remodeled the old building and opened Weed. The marijuana business was where he belonged, he reasoned. He had been born at the right time.

            “Let me say that I cared very much for your father, and I have enjoyed working with your mother and brothers,” Thomas began. Bla, bla, bla, thought Harry.

            “I like you myself. You’re a good fellow, well meaning, but I have never done criminal defense work, and I know next to nothing about the retail marijuana business.”

            Harry nodded. He knew this was the truth.

            “I know a young lawyer who does defense work. He’s expensive, but I’ve heard good things about him. He’s smart, clever, and he may be able to help you. In the law, there are certain areas where people develop expertise. I’m not going to charge you for this visit; I consider we are friends. I’m willing to review any advice you receive. I just feel I’m not the best person to represent you.”

            Harry went on to tell Thomas Watkins about his every blunder with the police officers the day after the burglaries. Harry was sure he was telling a funny story. Thomas interrupted him; he didn’t need to hear this.

            “Let me tell you something before you go,” Thomas said. “A well-known car dealer in town was arrested for a DUI. The car dealer said he wanted to fight the charge in every way, and finally he ended up with Bill Robbins.

            “It turns out the car dealer went to the hospital, and it was requested they do a blood draw to check for alcohol or drugs. Mr. Robbins found out that Providence Hospital policy is that a phlebotomist does the blood draws.

            “However, at the hospital that night worked one of those old-time nurses, who learned her trade back in the days when nurses did everything, and she drew the blood without difficulty. However, she made one mistake.

            “It was busy that night and at shift change, another nurse took the sample to the lab. Now, most lawyers would never find out something like that, or even think to ask, but Bill realized the chain of custody had been broken and he got the car dealer off. It was fairly amazing, really, and not the kind of thing I would’ve thought of.

            “Bill Robbins didn’t earn his degree at a prestigious college. He worked hard and he has a great curiosity. He likes to figure out how things work. Perhaps he’s a good defense lawyer because it was the only way he could make good money quickly.

            “Now, I know Bill likes to get concert and sports tickets, and if you’re in a jam he can help with a thing like that. I know sometimes he gets people women, or limousines, maybe even more, for out-of-town visitors who need a local connection, and don’t want to get in trouble, and have the money to pay for it.

            “Like I said, he knows about things I don’t know about. Maybe does things I wouldn’t do. Proceed at your own risk, but there’s nothing more I can do for you.”

            Harry took the business card Mr. Watkins offered, but he was not optimistic. He pictured a bunch of lawyers bragging about how they beat the system and got a drunk driver off.