Snowing in Bali (26 page)

Were you shocked?

For sure.

– Andre

He was also ordered to pay $300 for repairs to the cut bars of the containers.

Andre was slammed into the maximum-security prison in Santa Catarina, a jail from which no one had ever escaped. Most inmates in Section 4, where Andre was now living, were serving multiple life sentences. ‘For sure they put me in the worst place.'

The Greek was also there. Before long, both the playboys used their wheeler-dealer instincts to cut deals to make life a bit easier. The Greek paid for a job in the kitchen, and Andre paid $3000 to work in the library. So, instead of being locked up in his cell for the standard 22 hours a day, Andre was free to walk around the jail from 6 am to 8 pm, wheeling a supermarket trolley full of books.

The jail is really, really huge, 2000 people inside. It's like a city. At 6 am they open my door, and I take my supermarket cart, full of books, and go everywhere. I go walking the whole day, smoke marijuana, talking to the people, sometimes partying . . . because there are six different sections . . . ‘Today there's a party in this section, someone's birthday.' ‘Okay.' I go there with my cart. At 8 pm I'm tired, walking around all day, I want to go back to my cell for sleeping.

– Andre

Despite making the best of a bad situation, Andre had no intentions of pushing a shopping cart around for one second longer than necessary. He had a cunning plan up his sleeve.

He hoped soon to be back in Bali.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

AGAINST THE ODDS

All my friends start getting caught in Bali, in Brazil, in Australia and then I was, ‘Shit, man, they're gonna come to me – I have to be more careful.'

– Rafael

In Bali, Rafael had watched his friends falling across the globe. He knew his tactic of abruptly freezing and going quiet – and a lucky star – had so far kept him free.

He was still sporadically tailed, still hot, with cops twice kicking toilet doors in while he was using the bathroom at clubs. But most of the time he was playing the devoted family man, despite being a busy drug boss. Early one morning, he got an alert call from his Balinese neighbour, telling him cops had a lens pointed at his house. He raced upstairs with his binoculars, shut the curtains and peeped out. Up the road was a scrum of men, clearly cops, with their clichéd moustaches, long hair, tattoos, sitting on motorbikes, smoking, talking, waiting, and watching through old binoculars.

‘I see straight away the fools there.'

There was a bang on the door downstairs. It was a surf photographer friend: ‘Hey, Rafael, let's go for a surf.'

Rafael called him upstairs and passed him the binoculars. ‘Man, you've come at a bad time, I'm gonna be busted soon. Look in the bushes, the cops are out there; they're so stupid, they're easy to see.'

The photographer turned to Rafael: ‘Why don't you run?'

‘Run where? Anyway, I don't need to run . . . I don't have anything here, so fuck them, let them come . . . let's go, the fools can wait.'

With their surfboards tucked under their arms, the two walked down the palm-lined driveway into the street, past the conspicuous undercover cops. Within a couple of minutes they were paddling out, where Rafael planned to stay for a while to spite the cops and delay the inevitable.

I know as soon as I come out, they are going to come. I didn't have any drugs in the house but I was a little bit worried because in my position I don't want any contact with police.

Almost two hours later, Rafael came out of the water and sensed the cops snapping to attention. He walked across the sand with his friend to the little beachfront café, sat down and ordered breakfast. They could wait a bit longer.

Two Balinese police came and sat next to them, blatantly listening, but with no hope of comprehending. ‘Look, this motherfucker thinks I don't know he's a cop,' Rafael said in Portuguese. ‘He's gonna try to fuck me soon.'

His friend was feeling the heat. ‘Rafael, you sure you don't have anything at home?'

‘Yeah, I'm sure.'

About twenty minutes later it was time to go. Rafael strode the 93 metres from the beach to his wooden gate, feeling eyes all over him. They were on their marks, set, poised for a signal to ambush. The second he put his hand on the gate, the sleepy street erupted. ‘Police, police,' they screamed as they sprang out of bushes and charged. Three motorbikes roared in fast from one direction, three did a short sprint from another. It was hardly shock and awe.

‘I know, I already know,' Rafael snapped. ‘What do you want?'

They wanted to come inside. ‘Nobody's coming inside my house without a witness and you need a warrant.' One of the cops handed him a piece of paper with writing in Indonesian. ‘Fuck, I don't understand this, hang on,' Rafael said and called his Balinese neighbour. ‘Wayan, please come quick.'

Wayan tore over and read the warrant, looking grim. ‘Ah Rafael, Marco Archer has given you up.'

‘What?'

‘He says you're the man who takes care of all the coke coming from South America to Asia.' It was almost two years since Marco's bust. Rafael grabbed the warrant, staring at the foreign words.

And then, I see the name ‘Marco Archer Moreira'. I don't know why he did that to me. He gave me up. He was jealous of my success. Sad.

Rafael had no choice but to let them into his sanctuary, despite his fears of them planting something. A dozen cops poured in through the gate, quickly spreading out across the garden, foraging among the plants, hunting. Finding nothing, they all moved inside the house.

Anna was out, but the kids were home and quickly grew angry with the intruders rifling through their things. ‘My kids give shit to the cops.'

‘You're so rude, you can't just come into people's houses and open their freezer,' Rafael's eldest daughter objected. One of the toddlers squealed, ‘Don't touch my things. Papa, stop them, stop them.'

Despite their protests, Rafael was trying to keep the cops in the children's rooms rather than his own, but they were soon making their way up the spiral staircase to his bedroom, where things turned nasty.

‘Where's your cocaine? We know you're a drug dealer.'

‘Hey, be careful, you can't just say shit like that, you have to prove it,' Rafael shot back. ‘What are you talking about? I'm a family man.'

The cop lifted his shirt, flashing an old .38 revolver. ‘I have a gun, so show us your drugs or I'll put a hole in your knee.'

Rafael knew they wouldn't pop a westerner. It was a scare tactic and it didn't work. ‘Sure, try your luck, shoot me. It will be the biggest mistake of your life, cos I'll sue you. And I'm not afraid of your guns. My father's a cop,' he lied. ‘I grew up with guns everywhere, and I know that old shit doesn't work.'

‘Oh, it works and I'll use it if you don't talk,' the cop spat.

‘You guys are so stupid,' Rafael retorted. ‘I'm a family man. You're in the wrong place. The big mafia guy who really has the coke is laughing at you. You guys are a joke.'

‘Come on, Rafael, don't say that,' his neighbour interjected, worried his goading might backfire.

Rafael ignored him. ‘I don't have anything to be afraid of. I'm clean, I don't use drugs. Take my blood,' he said, sticking his arm out. ‘I have kids to take care of. You can't bring guns into someone's house with kids. That's wrong.'

The cops were now fuming, and searching with more vigour. Two of them went into his en-suite. Rafael tensed. Inside his electric toothbrush was a gram of coke. The faintest trace would take him down. But the two quickly focused on Anna's vast array of expensive perfumes, creams and potions, enveloping the room in fragrant mist as they stood twisting off lids, spraying, sniffing and fingering the products. Rafael's boring toothbrush went untouched.

Other cops were searching Rafael and Anna's designer wardrobes, feeling inside the Prada shoes, the pockets of his Quiksilver board shorts and his Armani shirts.

The boss told Rafael to open the safe, but Rafael asked him to first clear the room. ‘Only you, me and my Balinese friend open the safety deposit. I don't want everybody to see what I have inside. This is my private stuff.' The boss agreed, then stared wide-eyed at glistening riches – Rafael's €25,000 Rolex, his 1-kilo gold necklace, more gold jewellery, and about €3000 cash – as well as photos, passports and documents, but nothing incriminating.

‘Sorry, my friend, you've come to the wrong guy,' Rafael said, closing his safe. ‘I told you, I'm a family guy. No offence, but you are so stupid . . . Marco sent you to the wrong guy. He named me to clear the real drug dealer. Now you try to fuck the good guy and the bad guy is laughing. Why do you even believe this guy?'

‘We know exactly what you do,' the cop retorted. ‘We've been watching you for the last two years.'

‘Right, so you see me wake up every day 5 am, surf, take the kids to school. You don't see me in the clubs every night, do you? Drug dealers, they are in the nightclubs,' he said, now on a roll with his spiel.

‘If you really follow me for the last two years, you see I sleep every day at 9 pm. I wake up 5 am, do yoga, do surfing, teach my kids how to surf. Fuck, you don't think about how you stayed here for one month and didn't see anything? I see you guys out there all the time, like you did this morning. You have to be more discreet. Look at my lens . . . they're much bigger than yours. I see you; I can see the hole in your tooth from here. You cannot work like that. If I'm a real drug dealer I can shoot you from here.'

The guy feel so embarrassed when I give this kind of comment to him.

They'd been searching for three hours and found nothing. In a desperate attempt to extract something from the morning's raid, the boss asked Rafael, ‘Can you give some money?'

‘What! Why?'

‘Because I have to do a course in Jakarta, I need money.'

‘No, I can't give you money. First I have kids to take care of, school fees, visas. Why would I give you money for nothing?'

‘Please, Pak [Mr] Rafael, just two million rupiah [$200] to help me with the ticket to Jakarta?'

I say, ‘No, sorry. Please can you go, take your friends from my house. I want to rest.' Pak Wayan [alias] – you know he's boss of the cops, Intel, long hair, looks like a gangster – I refused to give him money.

The cop changed tack, asking him to set someone up. ‘Can you help us by going to a club and trying to buy ecstasy to show us who is selling?'

‘Are you nuts?' Rafael retorted. Before leaving, the boss took phone numbers from Rafael's mobile. None were drug dealers, as this was his ‘clean' phone, but he took Rafael's number, and soon started using it.

He kept calling me every day. I was, ‘Fuck, don't call me anymore. Okay, let's make a deal: you can come here now, I'm going to give you 500,000 rupiah [$50] – not to help me, but for you to forget me, never call me again.' He comes like ‘Hah-hah-hah' [panting]. He sees my lifestyle, and I think he thinks, ‘I have to take some money from this motherfucker.' He tried everything he could.

Rafael was safe, for now, bailed out of the hot spot by his tactic of keeping a squeaky clean house, his quick inscrutable lies and glib tap-dancing. But he was furious at Marco.

I never believed police were going to come like this. I was very pissed off with Marco. I call and say, ‘Man, if you put me in jail you are going to die, because I'm going to kill you, motherfucker. Why did you talk about me?' ‘Oh I don't say anything, I don't say anything.' But his name was on the note.

So did he try to cut a deal?

I believe so. The cops show me the paper; they have the statement from Marco. I was thinking to fuck him. I was angry. I was boxing training and I taped his photo on the bag and punch so hard. Pow pow pow. I remember it gave me motivation.

*

Rafael soon got more bad news. Chino was red hot and running for his life. Bali police had never bothered him, but Jakarta police were hunting him down due to a domino effect of snitches from the bottom right to the top.

The unravelling of Chino's Bali-based drug empire started when Jakarta police busted a small-time dealer with 10 ecstasy pills. He snitched on his dealer, who was busted with 713 pills, who snitched on his dealer, a Taiwanese man named David, who was busted with 27,000 pills, who turned things inter­national when he snitched on his dealer, Collin, in Singapore. Police followed Collin's cash trail to a bank account in the name of Henry.

Henry, who was Chino's trusted assistant, confessed everything and told the police about the secrets of their ecstasy business in Jakarta, Bali, Holland, and Singapore.

–
Bali Post,
31 March 2005

Police traced $2 million to one of Chino's accounts. As the
Bali Post
reported: ‘Chino supplied ecstasy pills which were worth 19 billion rupiah within the period of ten months.' The story was headline news, splashed across the front pages of the island's newspapers: ‘Unbelievable and shocking!' ‘M3 Boss; Wealthy, cool, never had clear explanation about his business: The beggar who turned out to be a millionaire and a fugitive.'

Chino's years of immunity were shattered, as Jakarta cops crawled all over his assets. Twenty police with dogs raided his M3 sunset car wash café and pit stop for four hours. They found nothing incriminating, but confiscated documents, made a record of assets, then sealed off the building. The front doors were padlocked, a security guard stationed out the front, and 130 employees blocked from entering. The usual frenetic building with its designer holes in the façade was eerily quiet. Five days later, police searched again, from 10 am to 4 pm, but again found no drugs.

Jakarta police also searched Chino's house on the river in Legian, suspended use of his 20 jet-skis in Nusa Dua and sealed off the water sport business with yellow tape ‘since it is suspected as a part of money laundering system', the
Bali Post
reported. They also confiscated 26 cars, 7 motorbikes, 12 personal computers, 6 video games, 7 televisions, 4 go-karts, and some sound system equipment.

They had a warrant to do so, but – in a weird ‘only in Bali' twist – the Jakarta police were blindsided. Lawyers for Chino's wife stated that the Jakarta police had suspended the assets based on a search warrant from Denpasar District Court, but that it was ‘never issued by Denpasar District Court'.

Police suspended the assets based on a letter from Denpasar District Court number No. W.16.DDP.UM.01.10–665 dated 1 April 2005 regarding the search warrant. However, it was found that the letter was never issued by Denpasar District Court.

–
Denpost,
18 April 2005

They were forced to release Chino's assets. Not so curiously, things in Bali were still working in the drug boss's favour. At the same time, his friendships with influential people in Bali were making unwelcome and embarrassing headlines. Despite corruption in Bali being as intrinsic as rice paddies, people lost face when it was exposed and didn't like it. As one source told the
Bali Post,
‘This apparently is a nightmare for the M3 boss, who is a close friend of some high-ranking government officials.'

Another source added, ‘He was friends with some well-known government officials, high-ranked police officers, even doctors, but I cannot give their names.' The source was perplexed when he was told that Chino is now a fugitive and a target of the Indo­nesian Police Head­quarters and Greater Jakarta Area Metropolitan Police. ‘Why is it the Jakarta police that run after Chino? What is wrong with the Bali police? Do they pretend that they don't know?' the source joked.