Snowing in Bali (21 page)

His fate was now in the hands of the courts, and that decision would be a year away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

FATES

As the dark cloud of death hung over Marco, he managed to stay upbeat and jocular in jail, regaling inmates with stories of his magician-like escape, but hoping Carlino could create some magic too, by finding a good lawyer and a loophole to get out. For the moment, Carlino was lying low; things were too hot and dangerous, though he would soon put in place a plan to try to save his friend's life.

In Bali, the charismatic Lemon Juice boss's bust had caused a freeze – momentarily. It shook the dealers, as they all knew him well and many of them had also invested in the run.

Unwittingly, Rafael had gambled on Marco's fatal run too, cast blindly into it by his broker. Rafael had started using a corrupt Brazilian cop, a childhood friend of Andre's, to put his cash into projects. The cop often flew to Bali with blow confiscated in busts in Brazil. This time he'd met up with Marco in Rio, learnt of his run, and backed the horse. Aware that Rafael refused to work with Marco after the Japan ecstasy con, he'd kept it quiet.

My guy didn't tell me it was Marco because I'd be like, ‘No, I don't want to work with this motherfucker.' And after the shit got busted in Jakarta, he says, ‘Sorry, we lose the money.' I say, ‘What . . . why?' He says, ‘I give it to Curumim; we were in the project together with him.' I say, ‘What, are you fucking crazy, man? Why did you give money to this bastard? He doesn't know what he's doing, he's always high. That's why he got caught, cos he was high on the flight.'

This was a bad project. Too many people were involved. There were 20 people who put some money in, and many people knew the shit was coming because Curumim talked too much on the phone to everybody, totally unprofessional bullshit; no planning, use coke and make everything crazy. He fucked up. I believe he was high. Badly behaved. They suspect and then he runs.

– Rafael

Rafael had also just had 2 kilos arrive, but put it on ice; it was too hot for snow in Bali.

It was like this; hot and cold, hot and cold, but actually when Marco got caught I had 2 kilos just arrive. We celebrated the goal, then suddenly Marco's on TV. ‘Oh shit, oh my god, fuck, the police are going to be all over us.' My friend says let's sell quickly. I say, ‘No, I'm going to keep this shit, hide it, wait for a couple of weeks and then we will move it. Now we're not moving anything, forget it.' But we were so careful to sell the shit because nobody wanted to do anything. Everybody was saying, ‘Oh it's hot now, so hot.'

– Rafael

Rafael was trafficking increasingly more from Brazil to Barcelona and Amsterdam, where he had buyers, and Sweden, his wife's homeland. In Bali, it was now a game of stealthy tactics. He was surviving on his instincts, moving carefully, freezing when it felt too hot, waiting, then starting again when the coast was clear, but always discreetly. Sometimes he'd spot shadowy tails behind his bike, or undercover cops lurking outside his house, and would go to ground.

I go quiet, I don't go out; wake up at 6 am, surf, go home, eat, surf again, sleep early, wake up early, for a couple of months.

– Rafael

Around the time of Marco's arrest, Rafael had seen more of his friends also busted in Bali. One guy, Ruggiero, a Brazilian surfer, was selling for him and Andre, when Rafael got an urgent call from Chino, ‘Tell your friend Rock he's going to get busted.'

‘What? Why?'

‘Just tell him – fast.'

Nicknamed Rock 'n' Roll, Ruggiero was selling small packets of coke, retailing Rafael's wholesale stuff at top prices to rich expats and keeping a boutique stash in a cheap hotel room. He was small-time, a middleman, but his drug sales subsidised his endless surfing and playboy lifestyle. With few people now risking selling small stuff, the dark-haired fast-talking Latino had picked up the ball. He had many customers, including some of Alberto's, and was busy selling, surfing, snorting, as well as trying to get into a legitimate business of renting and selling luxury villas.

It was a well known fact these guys were falling like dominoes, so when the other guy [Alberto] got busted, that's when Ruggiero picked up the ball. There is only one fool at the time brave enough to do this, so it was lucrative, but it was hotter than hell. He was making money hand over fist, but he was lining himself up to go down.

– Gabriel, American surfer

Despite being hot, Rock 'n' Roll was blasé, flapping huge wads of cash about. Out one night, he showed Rafael $10,000 cash. ‘I say, man, you crazy. Stop, Ruggiero, calm down. Keep your money in the safety deposit; why you show it to everybody, you crazy?' He rode around drunk, loud, with blow or hash in his pockets, often snorting coke off counter-tops at places like Ku De Ta, so blatant that his friends were all telling him to be careful.

One of Ruggiero's customers, American big-wave surfer Gabriel, had seen his previous dealers, including Alberto, busted. He'd been coming to Bali every surf season for years, buying coke from Rafael, then Alberto, and now Ruggiero. He was no good boy himself, using drugs and notoriously riding his big motorbike around the island topless, in his pink hibiscus-flowered Quiksilver board shorts, slurping on a Bintang beer. He also usually flew from LAX to Bali with a tiny bag of dope in his underpants, always slinging $200 to an official at Denpasar customs to avoid a search.

We would just tuck it into our underwear and cross our fingers. But we had a guy there . . . I'd go to the office and pay the guy a couple of hundred bucks and we'd walk out without them searching any of our shit. Money is the trick.

– Gabriel

Although he took his own risks, Gabriel felt his friend and dealer Ruggiero was way over the top, perilously acting as if he were Bali's Scarface.

I was a bit scared to be around him, because I knew he had a big fat bag in his pocket, and I could be in trouble just being around him. I went to his place one time and he was there weighing up shit; he had like a kilo of coke, and was weighing it all up in grams, hundreds of packets, and I was like, ‘God!' I just turned around and left. Just seemed crazy, he was just doing it right there – you know, not even hiding or anything – he just threw a towel over it . . . fucking crazy hot.

So I kept him at arm's length. He was so loose, driving around in the middle of the night with 50 packets of blow.

Fifty packets?

He had packets galore. He was the guy at the time supplying everybody; he was the only one who had it, and he wanted to have it all ready, so he could be out on the streets, selling if someone needed one – here you go, like a 7-Eleven.

And you saw him pulling it out of his pocket?

Yeah. I'd tell him, ‘You're out of your mind,' shaking him by the arm. 'You're going to get busted.' But he was just bringing attention to himself, all drunk and loud, doing snorts right at the fucking dinner table.

Did you see that?

Yeah, he didn't hide it, he'd do it every time I went out for dinner with him. He had a Scarface kind of attitude. I'd seen everybody go down; I'd seen three guys before him who were supplying in town and they got busted and people were telling him he would get busted, but he didn't seem to listen or care.

– Gabriel

After Chino's phone call, Rafael raced around to Ruggiero's house to pass on the warning.

‘Ruggiero, be careful, man. Chino says they're looking for you.' But he spurned the tip.

‘Fuck off, I'm a street boy, you're a family guy. I know what I'm doing, man; you're just paranoid.' Rafael left with a sense of foreboding. Chino didn't issue gratu­itous warnings. Chino had also alerted Andre, who zipped around to warn him.

I take my bike and go to Ruggiero's house with my girlfriend. When I arrive, he's sitting Ruggiero-style, legs spread, scratching his balls, and I say, ‘I come here just to tell you Chino says you must be careful.' And Ruggiero says, ‘I don't care if police come to me – I'll kick their ass if they step in my house.'

– Andre

The next day, after watching a blazing sunset at a Seminyak beach bar, Ruggiero rode off on his motorbike. It would be the last ocean sunset he'd see for a long time. Two bikes with four men suddenly blocked his way and within seconds cops were leaping from the bikes and out of a car, surrounding him, screaming, ‘Police, police'. They pushed him up against the car, pinned his hands behind his back, then searched him and found a plastic container of hash in his pocket. Ruggiero was in shock watching the police laughing and hugging each other. They held the hashish, taunting, ‘You see? What is this? You're going to jail.'

I fell down from heaven to hell in a blink of an eye.

The police already knew where he kept his stash, and drove him to the hotel, where they allegedly found 146 grams of hashish, 43 grams of cocaine, and one green ecstasy pill, though in court Ruggiero disputed this, claiming the amounts were a lot smaller.

The next morning at 9.30, Argentinian hashish dealer Frederico was sitting in Yopa café in Legian with his Israeli girlfriend Hanna, doing a delivery. As Hanna ordered a tea and a coffee, Frederico walked towards the bathroom. He sensed something wasn't right. Suddenly, four men sprang up, surrounding him. It was a sting, a bust, an unbelievable nightmare. Frederico went ballistic, shoving a cop to the ground and hurling the dope over the wall. In the next second, he was flat on the ground.

Hanna watched in shock. Outside on Double Six Road there was a sudden traffic jam as motorbikes abruptly stopped, gridlocking; a crowd quickly gathered to watch the morning action – a big guy was being held on the ground by three men, as another was scaling the wall to retrieve the package, which contained 301 grams of hashish. Like spiders, these cops had created a web and caught their prey. And the dealers suspected who'd helped them to spin it.

Word spread fast when guys got busted. Andre got a call asking him to help his salesman Ruggiero, but he was dismissive. He'd already tried to help, but his efforts had been blithely fobbed off at the crucial point in time as puerile babble. Now it was too late and his altruism had expired too.

I got a call, ‘Oh Ruggiero, Ruggiero, Ruggiero's been arrested, you need to help him.' I say, ‘I knew this two days ago. I advised him and now I don't want to see this bullshit guy. I don't want to send money, I don't want to help. He had his chance. This case is too stupid for me, sorry, please don't call again.' If somebody says, ‘Run away because tomorrow you're going to get busted,' you need to listen; we don't play. The guy was just really, really arrogant.

– Andre

Rafael also refused to help when it became apparent to him that Ruggiero had set Frederico up to try to save himself. He denied it, but the dealers were all sure and the police divulged it to the press.

Ruggiero revealed his network, which also involved Frederico Vieyra Garcia, 24, from Argentina.

–
Jakarta Post,
16 July 2003

This is why I have a little bit of a problem with Ruggiero. When they catch him, he gives up the Argentinian guy. Ruggiero was supposed to be released, but in the end he got fucked up too, both go to jail. Lucky for him Frederico was a pussy. In Brazil, he would be dead.

I should have helped him much more, but I didn't because he did this. I don't think it's fair. For our group this was a little bit sad, we don't give too much support to him after that. I was good friends with Ruggiero, but when he did this, my feelings changed totally . . . I was pissed off with him, but was sad too.

– Rafael

Now Ruggiero, Alberto and Frederico were all in Kerobokan Prison together and, like most prisoners, they were quickly trying to cut a deal. Frederico did so, paying for a five-year sentence to be quietly cut to two, the figure simply changed in court paperwork sent to the jail.

Ruggiero wasn't so lucky. News of his snitching had spread, with the crew sure that, not only did he set up Frederico, but had tried with others, including a rich expat girl who was a regular customer. Out of the blue, he'd gone to her house with some coke and although she didn't have cash handy he, unusually, gave it to her on credit. After he left, the girl sensed a sting and flushed it. Thirty minutes later, police were banging on her door.

The girl he tried to set up, she's a princess, she's from a royal family somewhere in Europe, really important, and well connected with a lot of rich and powerful people in Bali too, and everyone got pissed off. And they all went okay, fuck this guy, he is going to have to pay for what he just tried to do. He did exactly what we grew up understanding was the worst thing you can ever do . . .

Everybody was pissed off that he tried to set people up, nobody wanted to help him, everybody was like, ‘Fuck him, he can burn in hell.' And a lot of people did what they could to fuck his case.

Does he know that?

Yeah, he does know that. That's why he got such a long sentence for such a small amount. If he got busted, held himself like I did, he'd get three, four years, guaranteed. But there were a lot of people telling prosecutors and judges, don't help this guy.

The prosecutors would listen?

Yeah, if you have people coming and say, ‘If you help this guy we're going to Corruption Watch,' it's a very delicate situation. So his case just went down.

– Alberto

Ruggiero's lawyer had been promising to get him six months, for 300 million rupiah ($43,000), but on the eve of his court case, after he'd already paid, the lawyer delivered bad news.

He came to see me right before I got my sentence and he says, ‘Listen, there's a problem.' I said, ‘You promised me six months.' He says, ‘They don't want the money anymore and they're even considering asking for a life sentence.' I said, ‘What? Sorry, can you repeat that?' He said, ‘Life.' I felt the earth shake.

– Ruggiero

Ruggiero got 11 years – drastic compared to others like Englishman Steve Turner serving three years for 8000 ecstasy tablets, and Alberto's and Frederico's two-year sentences.