WHEN THE FAST LANE LEADS TO JAIL

EVERY MORNING before she left his North Dallas house on Nedra Way, Russell Webster’s mother picked out some slacks, a shirt and a jacket for her boy to wear in court. She knew that by the time her broad-shouldered, straight-toothed son slipped out of his prison-white jump-suit and into a honey-colored sport coat, starched white shirt and dark-blue tie, he’d be the best-looking man in Judge Jerry Buchmeyer’s federal courtroom.

And looking good couldn’t hurt “Snow White,” the 40-year-old well-to-do white boy charged with “conspiring to operate an interstate cocaine ring” and “ongoing criminal enterprise.” Investigators had watched his every move for more than a year before his arrest along with 33 others last August 6. Now they’d be testifying against him for at least a month.

Russell’s pearl-studded mother has the slightly sunken cheeks of aging affluence. She hates what she and Russell’s father have heard day after day of sitting so still and straight in the hard, square pews of the federal courtroom. From their front-row seats near the defense table, they say it’s been a terrible, emotional experience. “We have to sit and listen while they tell big, fat stories about us,” Webster says.

But the “big, fat stories” and the courtroom scene aren’t new to this family. The Websters’ youngest son was killed by Houston police in 1977. Several officers planted a gun on Randy’s body and tried to convince federal prosecutors that they had fired in self-defense.

Now the Websters find themselves listening to another trial, this time, perhaps, with more horror than disbelief. This time, the other side’s story is a little more credible, and the “clear-plastic zip-locked Baggies full of white, powdery substance” (the title the defense insisted on giving the bags of cocaine displayed during the first days of the trial), the tube jug (cocaine vial) emblazoned with the letters “J.R.W.” in diamonds and the thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry Webster is said to have taken as payment for cocaine debts are hard to dismiss. Still, Mrs. Webster says, “We’re prejudiced, naturally.” And hoping for the best.

Her main concern is that Russell is “plain outnumbered.” “They [the U.S. government] have 156 people working for them; we’ve got an organization of three,” she said, speaking of Russell, his private investigator and his Houston attorney. “If the prosecutors have a problem, all they have to do is pick up the phone.”

But it seems the prosecutors have had few problems. Early in January, the sign was posted on the door of the cream-colored courtroom on the 15th floor of the federal building: “The United States of America vs. James Russell Webster, Jr., et al.” By that time, the U.S. attorney’s office had sealed and numbered hundreds of pieces of evidence and called (and sometimes plea-bargained with) more than 50 witnesses to prove that Webster and three other defendants were guilty as charged.

Once it began, the days of the trial followed each other like moves in a long, important chess match or perhaps a backgammon game like the ones Webster used to play with friends. Then the stakes were high -hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. But the stakes in this trial amount to years. If convicted, Webster is looking at 10 to life in prison.

Such a game of chance is difficult to play calmly, but Webster is a master of cool and he seems to actually enjoy the show. He chews a little gum now and then or maybe pops a Life Saver, but he manages to maintain a pleasantly cocky air of confidence throughout the trial. During the opening testimony of a former girl-friend, Leigh Burke, he even smiles. And Leigh smiles back. She’s hardly the glamorous woman Webster could have afforded during his wheeling-and-dealing days. She’s short, a little stocky and has some dark-colored roots to her freshly permed hair. Between nervous giggles she describes how she met Webster in April 1979. Their first date melted into their second, and she lived with him for 14 months. She loved him, she says. One of the elderly ladies who passes her days trial-watching whispers that she thinks they still have feelings for one another. “And I can usually tell,” the woman says. “I’ve seen every kind of trial but a loony’s.”

After the lunch break during her first day of testimony, Ms. Burke smiles less. Her story has moved on to sadder days, when Russell’s “business” had grown to the point that he was putting big bowls of cocaine out in the living room for “public-relations” parties. Leigh’s weight had dropped from her normal 110 to about 83 because of her frequent cocaine use. “When I looked in the mirror at myself,” she says, “my eyes looked so strange. Things were blurred. It [cocaine] made me think a lot – made me more aware of what was going on.”

And what was going on was that Russell was receiving at least a pound of cocaine from Florida through the mail every week. Two federal agents were trailing him full time. They knew when he went to Handy Dan and when he went to visit his buddies.

“It seemed like I was always looking out windows,” Burke said. “Russell told me ’Don’t worry about it. If anything ever happens, you’ll be taken care of.’ “

And one night, when he thought she’d been telling too much about his “business,” Russell nearly “took care of” Leigh Burke once and for all. Burke trembled as she described a 12-hour beating Russell unleashed upon her. Another time, she said, this man whom she described as “extremely outgoing but cruel sometimes” threatened her with a broken bottle, asking her on which side of her face she wanted the scar.

“And how do you feel now?” a prosecutor asked her.

“Scared. Afraid that it might happen again. Afraid he’ll get out of jail and come get me,” she said.

It is likely that Webster, if convicted, will get out of jail. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Smith admits he thinks Webster has a good chance of beating the continuing criminal enterprise charges.

Smith says the case should be a deterrent to other cocaine users, especially casual users. For the first time, he says, these folks are seeing some of their peers go to jail.

Better than that, though, is the fact that this case has led government agents to the big dogs, the real businessmen who head the cocaine rings that sprawl out of Florida. They’re far too smart to touch the stuff themselves; they’re the ones, Smith says, he’d like to see in big trouble.

Webster’s future might not be so bleak.He says that the day he was arrested, heand a friend had been planning a trip toOklahoma to talk with a shirt manufacturer about beginning their own golf-shirtbusiness. He says he wanted out of cocaine. And sitting at the defense table, jotting notes on a legal pad, looking for allthe world like a Harvard grad on WallStreet, he doesn’t appear as though hedoubts things will work out. After all,Mom and Dad are right there. And they’vejust put up everything they own – including their family’s house in Shreveport – as$500,000 surety. After six months in jail,Russell is out on bond, sleeping in his ownbed again. And Mr. and Mrs. Webster willstay with their son for the duration. Notbecause they have to, Mrs. Webster says,but because they want to, “for moral support.”