Snowing in Bali (23 page)

I always say, ‘The only condition I make is you put it in your pussy, not in your pocket. If you get searched and arrested, I get a problem.'

– Ruggiero

Rafael also saw Chino's twin brother Toto inside. ‘All his teeth were black. He was addicted to heroin, I think, and looks like a junkie.' After his first visit, Rafael didn't go again. It was depressing and too chillingly close to the bone.

I had to go home and lie down, it sucked all my energy. That's why I refused to go there again. I sent people to take food, money, phone credit, but I didn't want any connection anymore, I didn't need to go there.

– Rafael

*

While Gabriel and the guys were dealing with corrupt guards and cops in Bali, Rafael was about to fly to Brazil to buy 10 kilos of confiscated blow from his cop broker Claudio, who worked for the São Paulo Polícia. When Rafael arrived, Claudio told him the bust had been delayed; he'd have to wait a week. Rafael wasn't keen. So, Claudio suggested they go to talk to his boss, who was already sitting on 100 kilos that he could sell right away.

Rafael was incredulous. Dealing with cops was dicing with the devil and the idea of walking into their lair was insane.

‘Are you crazy, man?' Rafael retorted. ‘The guy's gonna give me the cocaine, take all my money, then give me a bracelet.'

But Claudio assured him it was safe. ‘No, the guy's cool, he's a surfer too. I've talked about you, about your surf camp.'

‘No man, no way,' Rafael snapped.

‘Okay, man, but unless you make a deal with him you'll have to sit and wait for a week.'

Denying his screaming instincts, Rafael acquiesced. ‘Okay, let's go . . . let's go to meet this motherfucker. But is he going to give it to me today?' Rafael asked.

‘Yes, he has storage of 100 kilos.'

Then I see myself go inside the police building in São Paulo, six floors, lots of rooms. I take the elevator, walk, look, everybody looks at me too, all the police, you know. They're full of gold, they're so bad taste to dress. Ah fuck, like farm people, like they are not good dressers, they have boots, hats. Then he brings me to the office of the boss to negotiate. The big boss is the fucking drug dealer. I was thinking this must be a dream when I sit at the table of one of the biggest delegados [police chiefs] in São Paulo to buy coke.

– Rafael

After a quick introduction, they got down to business. ‘How much?' Rafael asked.

‘€7000 each kilo.' He'd been promised €5000 by Claudio.

‘Come on, man, you say €5000, why now €7000?' he hustled.

‘Because this is good stuff,' the police chief argued.

‘Well, I brought €50,000 to buy 10 kilos. That's my offer,' Rafael countered.

The cop played hardball. ‘Whoa, cannot. It's €7000,' he said.

Rafael quickly created a convincing white lie. ‘You're gonna fuck my packing because my cargo fits 10 kilos and I don't have money to buy 10 at €7000,' he argued. ‘So please, man, €5000 a kilo is a lot of money, you don't have any costs, man. You just go out and kick some door to get this shit. Come on, you guys, don't be greedy.'

And then it works, my words work. The guy says, ‘Okay, €5000.' And then he says, ‘Where are you gonna pack this shit?' I say, ‘Man, I talk about the miracle but I don't tell the address of the angel.' ‘Okay, well the coke is here in the police car, and I can deliver it for you, otherwise you might get busted on the way.'

So we go in the fucking black and white camburão [police car]. My friend and another cop, not the boss, they sit in the front, I sit in the back seat with the window open, the big bag of 10 kilos by my side, and then they say, ‘Let's smoke a joint.' I say, ‘Yes, let's smoke a joint.' There was a little bit of traffic, so I say, ‘Let's light the joint and put on the siren, let's go fast.' ‘Okay.' . . . Everybody pulled their cars to the side of the road, and we just pass through. So funny, you know. I was like . . . the world is crazy.

– Rafael

Rafael's crew of packers was waiting to put it into windsurfer booms. He was sending the coke to Amsterdam in two lots. Often now he was using FedEx and DHL. The success rate was slightly less than horses, but with fewer hassles. He could easily send one board with two sets of booms – a smaller one for strong wind, bigger for lighter – which was normal for windsurfers to carry, and meant he was able to traffic more coke without it looking odd.

This time he put 1.5 kilos in each of the four tubes and sent the 6 kilos via FedEx to his friend Fabio, aka Psychopath – a top horse, who'd already done about five runs to Bali. But there was a hiccup. Despite computer tracking showing its arrival in Amsterdam, the courier didn't deliver to Psychopath on the due day. He phoned Rafael, who was still in Brazil waiting for news of the safe delivery before flying in to pick up the cash; ‘Fuck, man, the stuff hasn't come.'

Instantly, Rafael's radar went off. It was a red alert. Too suspicious. ‘Abort, abort, run run,' he warned.

‘Okay, yeah,' Psychopath agreed. But then he disappeared. For 10 days, Rafael couldn't reach him, until he got the bad news. Psychopath had ignored his warning, gone into FedEx, given his name, confirmed the package was his, then snap – he was wearing a bracelet. He got two years. Rafael lost a chunk of cash

My friend got busted with this. Fabio Psychopath; he's a young guy, cool, crazy psycho. He loved drugs. He didn't give a shit. That's why he got caught.

– Rafael

The other 4 kilos were carried by a horse and successfully reached the buyer in Amsterdam, covering the loss.

*

Although Rafael was now selling a lot of coke in Europe and Sweden, Marco's death sentence hadn't stopped him dealing in Bali. When he arrived back, he had a new project with Fox – the young French guy who'd first worked for Andre – 5 kilos arriving from Peru, transiting in Malaysia, then going on to Bali and Sydney.

But the project was hexed. Rafael and Fox flew from Bali to Malaysia to meet the horse at the airport, with their flights booked to coincide. But the flight from Bali had been delayed by two hours, and when they finally arrived their horse was missing. This guy was not bright, more a mule, who spoke no English. Strangely, he hadn't called Rafael's batphone – a cheap phone he bought for every job, using it exclusively for that job, then tossing it. The horse had simply vanished. Rafael didn't know if it was a bust, a theft, or stupidity.

Fuck, I think, where is the guy? Where did the guy go? We don't have a clue. First I think he got caught, because when I came into the airport he didn't call, and I say, ‘Fuck, we lose 5 kilo of coke, ah we lose everything.'

– Rafael

By uncanny luck, they found their lost horse. Jumping into a taxi, exasperated and mystified, Rafael heard the driver uttering magic words. ‘I picked up a guy with the same bag as you a few hours ago.'

‘What, the same bag as this?' Rafael asked, pointing to his windsurf board bag.

‘Yeah.'

‘Where did you take him?'

‘To a hotel,' the driver said.

‘Oh, take us there quick.'

Then I come to the hotel, knock on his door, he says, ‘Who's this?' I say, ‘It's me,' and the horse opens the door. He was in a G-string . . . I look at the guy's underwear, you know the string one, normal men don't wear this. I say, ‘Man, put something on, why you wearing this shit?' He goes down on his knee, crying, ‘Whoa, thank you god, thank you god.' South American people are very religious. I say, ‘What you doing?' He was afraid; he cannot speak, cannot call, lost my number, already hours in the hotel, he doesn't know what to do. He was so stupid this guy, he tries to call his family, but he can't dial, because he can't work out the code.

– Rafael

Relieved, Rafael went to another room to organise the booms, putting one set containing 2.5 kilos in the spare bag to courier to his surfer buyer in Sydney. In the other bag, he put 2.5 kilos for the G-stringed horse to finish his run to Bali. Transiting in Malaysia was a tactic to deflect suspicion and more easily slip the booms past Australian and Bali customs. The horse breezed into Bali, but the Sydney deal bombed.

Rafael's longtime Australian buyer went off the grid, unres­ponsive to all calls and messages. It was an expensive mystery. So Rafael sent Sparrow, who was back in Bali, to unravel it. Sparrow was an unlikely detective, with things always going awry around him.

He's always got black eyes, broken arms, because he's always involved in shit. He likes to argue, to fight, but he doesn't know how to fight and always gets punched. People beat him because he's skinny.

– Rafael

But Sparrow was available after flying in for a surfing holiday, staying in the small room under Rafael's water tower, sharing with Fox. Rafael offered him $1000 to fly to Sydney to chase up the buyer and spindly legged Sparrow, who'd never been to Australia, gladly took the job. Before leaving, Sparrow and Fox sat huddled together on the internet tracking the Fed­Exed windsurfer booms to see if they'd arrived in Newcastle. They had.

Sparrow flew out of Bali and straight into trouble. A routine bag swab at Sydney Airport detected traces of cocaine on his suitcase. With his UK passport showing a travel route – Rio-Bali-Sydney – combined with his swarthy looks and edgy, nervy demeanour, Sparrow fitted the trafficker profile. Suddenly, officers were surrounding him, creating a spectacle. People were staring. Sparrow wasn't happy. He knew he had nothing on him.

Rafael had rolled up a poster of Ganesh (the elephant-headed Hindu God revered for ‘removing obstacles'), unzipped Sparrow's suitcase and put it inside, saying, ‘This is for good luck.' Then he'd zipped it back up. Sparrow felt sure some coke must have leached out of Rafael's pores and left a faint trace on the zipper. Now, old Ganesh was creating obstacles; customs officers were pulling out his socks, underwear, stuffing their hands in his jeans pockets, rifling through everything. Sparrow was piqued but stayed calm. He was already thinking about how he was going to sue for damage to his ‘image'.

I look like a criminal, cos police were making like a party with me; two or three policemen were playing with me. It was not good for my image. They check all the stitches in my bag, they check my shoes, all my pants, all my coats, all my shirts, and the bag they put a lot of times in the X-ray. They're not satisfied, they put it through again, not satisfied, they put it through again. Finally, not satisfied, they took me to hospital for a stomach X-ray.

– Sparrow

Sparrow was furious, but it was either a stomach X-ray or being held for 48 hours waiting to defecate. Customs officers were sure they'd nabbed a drug trafficker. They had, but it was his day off.

Sparrow was released after four hours, indignant and pissed off, but free to fulfil his mission. He took a train to Newcastle, checked into a cheap hotel and phoned Rafael, updating him. Instantly suspicious, Rafael advised him to check his bags for a tracking chip. Paranoid at the best of times, Sparrow chaotic­ally rifled through his clothes, before flinging them onto the floor, then held the suitcase up to the light, twisting and turning it in every direction. Finally he gave up, still unconvinced his suitcase was free of spy devices.

The next day he confronted the surfer, who explained that trusting his sharply honed instincts, he'd been sure the blow was hot, and rejected the package when FedEx tried to deliver it. Using Rafael's system, the surfer's name was written incorrectly, so he could deny ownership if he felt it necessary. Forty-five minutes later he'd seen a suspicious car lurking around the corner. Something was off. He felt convinced the cops were ready to snap on a bracelet the split-second after he accepted the package. So he hadn't. For extra caution, he'd also cut all contact with Rafael in case calls were being traced. Sparrow understood, but his mission was incomplete until the surfer phoned Rafael. He did that night. Rafael was disappointed. It was a big loss, but better than a bust.

Now, Sparrow couldn't wait to leave Sydney. It was cold and unfriendly, not like he'd imagined. But his quick turn­around sparked suspicion again at the airport. He was questioned and his bags taken off for a search. In his conspiratorial mind, he was sure they were removing the tracking chip. He lost it, yelling that he didn't like the country, and was leaving fast because he was treated like a criminal, humiliated, and it was cold.

I say a lot of things . . . I don't know why they don't put me in prison, because I didn't respect him. I began to shout loud at him, ‘Friend, I wanna go, I don't have any drugs, you're crazy people in Australia. I want to go to Bali. I don't want to stay here anymore, where is my bag? Why do you do this with me? Three days ago they did the same thing, took me to hospital, they did something to my bag.' They try to make me calm; he says, ‘No, we did nothing to it, here's your bag, go.' I think maybe they took out the chip from the bag when they took it for searching and give back.

– Sparrow

When he returned to Bali, he told everyone he planned to demand the British consulate sue Australian customs for hurting his image. It was typical Sparrow. Making it more farcical was the fact that just a couple of months later he was actually doing a drug run. Incredibly, it was only a few months after the triple whammy of Rodrigo's bust, Juri's life sentence and Marco's death penalty. And Sparrow knew Marco well. He'd even helped him to exercise his legs after his glider crash by walking all day with him on crutches around the beaches in Nusa Dua.

Everybody said this to me, ‘How can you do this with Marco sentenced to death now?' But in my head, I think I'm just going on the same plane as Narco, but I'm not carrying it. I was afraid for my friend. He was a little bit afraid, because he was friends with Marco too. We were crazy.