Snowing in Bali (3 page)

*

Two months after the first rendezvous, the Australian surfer phoned saying he was again ready to deal. Rafael was keen to deliver all the way to Sydney's northern beaches this time, so he'd make more than $120,000 a kilo, the highest price anywhere on the planet. This was the reward for penetrating Australia's rigorous borders – and made it the number one global target for all drug traffickers.

A gram of cocaine in Australia costs between $200 to $500. In the United States, a gram sells for as little as $100.

–
Sydney Morning Herald,
15 September 2010

A ‘generational shift' has pushed demand for cocaine to unprecedented levels, giving Australia the dubious honour of being the world's most lucrative market for the illicit drug.

–
Daily Telegraph,
2009

The day of the Sydney run started early. By 7 am Rafael and his Peruvian partner, Jerome, were sitting on the floor of his bungalow packing 5 kilos of cocaine, first into plastic bags, then stitching it into the lining of the surfboard bag. It was exacting work. The faintest trace of blow on the bag could excite sniffer dogs; a mere sprinkling of dust brushing from their fingertips to the bag could spell disaster. Rafael had also heard that the potent ether smell could leach through plastic after 24 hours, so it was a race to pack and fly the same day. Tonight the flight was at 11 pm. Only after the bag was tightly sealed was the horse allowed anywhere near it.

He was a 23-year-old Hawaiian guy, ostensibly the perfect horse – well travelled with an American passport and a strong physique that gave him a surfer look, ensuring carrying surfboards wouldn't look incongruous and create suspicion. A day earlier, Jerome had taken him shopping in Kuta to buy his clothes: Quiksilver T-shirt, jeans and skate shoes. Outfitting a horse was usual practice. They needed to look the part and it also ensured there was no trace of drugs on their clothes, given most horses were also users. When the packing was done, Rafael drove to the guy's hotel, picked him up and took him to Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport to ensure his precious cargo safely hit the skies.

This was the Hawaiian's first big run. As he and Rafael walked from the car park he started feeling spooked. ‘I don't think I can do it,' he said, looking at the doors ahead. ‘There's an X-ray machine.' Rafael tried to placate him, ‘No problem, my friend, this bag is X-ray-proof. It's easy.' But he was now walking very slowly. Suddenly, he dropped the bag. ‘I can't do it, I'm sorry, I can't go.' They were 5 metres from the doors. Rafael took a deep breath. His mind was racing. He was confident the bag would sail through customs, but the Hawaiian's blatant fear was a classic red flag; he was sweating, almost crying, with fear in his eyes. Rafael stayed calm. He was on the brink of having hundreds of thousands of dollars within his grasp – it was just a six-hour flight away. He'd already invested $50,000. He was exhausted, but the adrenalin was surging. He had a bright idea: ‘No problem, I'll bring the bag for you.' Snatching it off the ground, he walked briskly towards the doors, relieved to glimpse the horse trailing him.

I put the bag on the X-ray, I even went to look at the screen. I say, ‘Come, my friend, look, no problem,' – and he came, looking at the screen and says, ‘Wow, man.' . . . ‘I told you, man, this is X-ray-proof. They are not going to catch you. Fuck, just go for it. Just go out of the airport and call me, but don't be like this again when you arrive in Sydney.'

As a parting gesture, Rafael ruffled the horse's excessively gelled hair, trying to make him look more waxhead and less off the set of
Grease.

‘Man, why did you do that with your hair?' Rafael gently mocked.

‘I wanted to look good,' the horse said sheepishly.

‘Come on, man, you look like John Travolta with this hair. You've got to look like a surfer.'

He went very happy, very easy. I say, ‘See you in Sydney, my friend.'

Driving home, Rafael's heart was pumping. He felt happy, excited, sure he was about to win big. He'd fluked a crazy-low price for the coke when two naïve Peruvians flew into Bali with 5 kilos stashed in their bags, aware Bali had a strong market but with no local contacts or any idea of local prices. Someone had put them in touch with Rafael and he'd snapped up the lot for a bargain $50,000. Now he was about to say abracadabra and magically turn it into more than half a million bucks. Not bad for a fledgling career.

These guys have the best shit I've seen in my life. Even my friend from Peru says, ‘Fuck, this is the best in the world. Nobody – Bolivia, Colombia – they don't have this kind of shiny shit.' It's from North Peru, not easy to find, very shiny. The best. Pure, pure. We call it ‘asa de mosca' or wing of the fly. We have 5 kilos of this shit. And then we make the goal.

‘Woo hoo, I made it, so easy man, no sniffer dogs, nothing,' the Hawaiian sang out as Rafael walked into his room at the Novotel Hotel in Sydney's Darling Harbour. The horse was buzzing from relief as much as cabin fever. He hadn't dared to leave the hotel room or the bag since arriving the day before.

As planned, he'd phoned Rafael in Bali as soon as he got through customs, and Rafael had taken the first available seat to Sydney to meet him. ‘I want to do it again, man, I want to do it again,' he kept repeating. The fear in his eyes had turned to exultant glee. Safely through, it now seemed to him that trafficking drugs was the easiest way in the world to earn $10,000.

But for Rafael, it wasn't yet time to celebrate. He'd been given explicit, secret-agent-style delivery instructions; take a taxi from Darling Harbour to Palm Beach – about a 55-minute drive; come alone; stop at the phone booth at the front of a café on the corner; lose the taxi; call from the booth. Arrive at sunset – the surfer will be waiting. Rafael played it to the letter with only a few minor hiccups, like a protracted argument with the taxi driver against strapping the half-million-dollar surfboard bag onto the car roof, the Spanish inquisition for the entire trip, and at the end a battle to get rid of the driver, who was hanging around for a return fare. Finally, Rafael stepped into the phone box and dialled.

On the first ring, the buyer answered, wasting no time with pleasantries. ‘I'm here already,' were his first words.

Rafael looked out into the darkening night. ‘Where?' Car headlights blinked twice across the street. ‘Fuck,' Rafael muttered, hanging up. This guy was good.

They drove to a nearby house, where the deal was quickly done. The guy tested the coke, then took Rafael to a bedroom for the cash. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the money. It was a beautiful payday. A white sheet spread on top of the bed was covered in bunches of $10,000, the brand spanking new Australian notes giving the room an acrid smell. There were more than 60 bunches, a lot more than if it had been in the agreed US currency. Rafael didn't argue, although he had specifically asked for US dollars because the Aussie dollar was low and there'd be too much cash to carry.

‘You want to count it?' the surfer asked.

‘Later, thanks.' Rafael didn't even look; he knew where the guy's house was now if he'd cheated him. He just wanted to leave. So he casually stretched across the bed and grabbed a corner of the sheet, then one by one took the other corners, tying them up together in a parachute-style bag. The buyer stood uneasily watching. It was a hell of a lot of cash and seeing this young guy blithely wrapping it up in a sheet rattled him. If Rafael got into trouble in Sydney and someone discovered his sheet-load of cash, it could expose the surfer too. He advised Rafael to take half tonight, and half tomorrow.

I say, ‘No no, I can bring it all tonight, no worries.' ‘But you can't go like this!' he says to me. ‘No worries, just call me a cab. I wanna go now, the horse is waiting for me. I have to go. Ciao.'

As soon as he got back to the Novotel, Rafael raced straight up to see the horse, who was wide awake and waiting for him. Rafael handed him a Big Mac he'd bought en route, and together they sat counting the crisp notes until sunrise. The Peruvian, Jerome, arrived the next day, counted his share and flew home with the happy horse.

With a huge bundle of cash, the new playboy boss was primed to blow a few bunches in Sydney. He met up with a friend from Rio, who was living at Bondi Beach, and together they spent the next few weeks like rock stars, partying in five-star hotel rooms at night and surfing, sailing and hang-gliding by day. They took a car trip up the coast to Surfers Paradise, leaving in their wake happy hotel staff, thanks to Rafael's new habit of slinging $100 tips.

It wasn't all play, though; Rafael spent days, with the help of his friend from Rio and a new random girlfriend, changing the cash to US dollars and using their bank accounts to transfer chunks of it to Bali. It was time-consuming. Some days, Rafael went into three or four banks, with $30,000 each time, to change it into US notes.

*

Standing in the bank queue one afternoon, an icy shiver ran down his spine. He sensed being watched. He discreetly looked around. For the first time, he noticed all the tiny CCTV cameras. Eyes were on him everywhere. But he quickly shook off the feeling; Lady Luck was on his side, for now.

When I come back to Bali, I become a monster, because I get really rich. Fuck, everyone who comes with coke to Bali, they come to me. There were fucking so many people, man, sometimes I have to make a line. Wait, you know next week, I will sell yours, now I'm busy. Was crazy time, so much coke everywhere . . . everywhere I go, ‘Help me, Rafael, help me, I have 2 kilos.' I become the man who can fix, sell, you know.

– Rafael

CHAPTER THREE

SNIFF, DRINK, LIVE

You sniff, you drink, you live.

– Andre, drug dealer

The drug business in Bali was frenetic. Alberto, a friend of Rafael's, was acting as an agent, selling kilos of the cocaine and pills that were swamping the island. He wore disguises – wigs, hats, sunglasses – imagining himself as 007 as he sped along Bali's potholed roads in his rented Daihatsu Feroza. He'd drive into underground car parks, and leap from one car to another to confuse possible police tails. On a job, he'd work with the world's biggest traffickers in Bali's top hotels. Camouflaged among tourists, he would book two or three rooms simultaneously, one to hide the drugs in, another to switch the drugs for cash.

There was a time I could say, if you snorted coke here in Bali, there was a 50 per cent chance it would have come through my hands.

Really?

Yeah, we had that much here, and we had the best quality. A lot of people made millions through my hands.

– Alberto

Another dealer, Andre, flew into Bali on false passports, sometimes gluing back his ears to look more like a photo that didn't much resemble him anyway. He darted around Bali on his motorbike wearing disguises – a Muslim hat or an Indian turban – checking into hotels to collect FedExed drug packages. He was one of South America's most wanted drug bosses.

A friend of theirs, Fabio, was fabulously rich, with a beautiful villa close to the beach. His wealth came from trafficking cocaine to Bali and then selling it in bulk to an Australian buyer or to one of the several multi-millionaire Indonesian drug bosses who worked largely with immunity in Bali, with police on their payrolls. He'd been doing it for a while; in fact, the stuff Frank De Castro Dias had been busted with embedded in his surfboards was meant for him. Fabio also ran a hip beachfront bar and restaurant, a couple of doors down from another bar owned by an Indonesian drug boss.

You would be surprised how many businesses in Bali are built on drug money.

– Chino, Indonesian drug boss

Each afternoon Fabio bopped around his trendy restaurant, chatting up babes or selling tiny plastic bags of blow that he kept under the sarong he wore around his waist. It was the only thing he wore, as he flaunted a bare chest and muscled torso. He was notorious for his filthy bare feet, but it didn't seem to diminish his pick-up prowess. Fluent in several languages, he was rarely behind the bar, usually mingling with sexy foreign girls around the tables instead. He was highly energised, fuelled by the copious quantity of cocaine he sniffed. He kept staff on their toes, often turning around during a tableside chat to shout, ‘Hey you, quick quick,' showing off that he was the boss.

Sweeping in with a surge of charisma and a bunch of friends at what he dubbed devil's hour, 5 pm, was his good friend Rafael, usually wearing board shorts, no shoes and no shirt, nicely exhibiting his six-pack torso too. Together they'd sniff a few lines, and then Rafael would help him sell a bit of coke in Fabio's pre-packed plastic baggies. He'd walk around with them in his pockets or hidden in his thick curly ponytail – for which Marco had nicknamed him ‘Hair'. Rafael would ask Fabio, ‘Can you see it?' and Fabio would fix Rafael's hair to better hide the bags.

That time it was a fucking game, we were not afraid, we didn't care.

Because no one had gone down yet?

Exactly. But we didn't sell to anybody we didn't know. If somebody just comes and says, ‘Oh, I want some coke.' I say, ‘Fuck you, man! What are you talking about? Get away or you're gonna get punched.' We just sell one by one to friends; we say, ‘If you want to buy, you have to come there at sunset time; don't try to call us at 10 pm, the pharmacy is closed.'

– Rafael

Further down the beach was their club.

The hotel was our drug club. We sell everything there, we take over the place. Sometimes I organised to meet people there . . . ‘I want to have 100 grams', ‘Okay, meet me in the club, pm.' And then I meet there, give the coke, take the money, bye-bye. Not big deals, just small deals. Marco was dealing Lemon Juice like candy. No fear.

– Rafael

Sprawled on the sand in front of the club were rows of Balinese
jakung
fishing boats, as well as Lemon Juice boss Marco's inflatable rubber Zodiac. He zoomed around Bali in it to avoid the choked and potholed roads. Most days he took the guys out to the best surf spots, with their five or six surfboards stacked and tied on the front. Marco, a hang-gliding professional but not a great surfer, often stayed in the boat snapping photos of the guys riding barrels. After a couple of hours, they'd pull up anchor and tear back to the club. There, Marco loved playing host, selling his Lemon Juice, standing at the barbecue with a beer in one hand, tongs in the other, cooking fish and lobsters caught that morning, while puffing on a Lemon Juice joint. All around, Balinese and westerners were smoking Lemon Juice, but it didn't stop Marco singing out, ‘Come, come to eat,' to random girls walking past on the beach.

It was full of beautiful people at the club. Beautiful girls – Russians, Australians, Swedish, always some Brazilian girls – come with small bikinis, lay down, their big ass up. Everyone topless, beautiful.

– Rafael

Marco's phone rang incessantly, with surfers, expats, or tourists with connections, wanting to buy Lemon Juice. Often he'd brusquely answer, ‘I'm fucking busy today, I'm in a business meeting, call tomorrow,' snapping shut the phone to a round of laughs as he sat back down, smoking dope and drinking his beer.

He loved the attention and the power kick of being the island's number-one dope boss. If anyone wanted a quality smoke, he was the man, even trademarking the name Lemon Juice, and printing hundreds of T-shirts with ‘Lemon Juice 100% bagus' (good) written on them in bold fluorescent lettering. Everyone from surfers and expats to rich and poor locals wore them.

I work Lemon Juice for more than 12 years. Nobody knows because the people are so stupid. I just call my friend and say, ‘Let's have a drink of Lemon Juice,' but really, ‘Let's smoke some pot, ganja.' That's the way, nobody knows. And then it gets famous the name Lemon Juice, everybody talks about Lemon Juice, and then I open one small Lemon Juice company.

– Marco

He organised people to sell for him, as Rafael had originally done, as well as selling it himself to friends.

With Lemon Juice he was very famous.

– Rafael

Although most bosses kept a bit of distance from their horses, Marco liked keeping them around, reminding everyone he was the boss. It had been Marco who'd started the trend of using the word ‘horses' instead of mules, initially as a typical Marco joke, using it solely for his best runners – his ‘pure bloods'. But it had soon become generic for all runners and widely used by the Bali drug crews, because it was more cryptic, therefore safer.

Marco lived at the small rustic resort, Bali Village, in Legian, in fairly basic rooms nestled in overgrown gardens near the beach. The place was always bristling with his horses, and the resort was dubbed Marco's stable.

He also invited horses to the club, repeatedly using them for a gag, telling the horse to ‘talk'. Obligingly, they would neigh on cue for their boss. Marco found it more hilarious every single time.

He was so crazy. Sometimes at the club I say, ‘Who is this?' and he says, ‘This is my new horse. Look how good he is, Cavalo relincha – like, “Talk horse, make some song” ' – and the guy does: ‘Neigh neigh neigh'. Marco says, ‘See, my horse is very good.' I was thinking, ‘Fuck, what are you doing, man? Why do you do this to yourselves? ' Marco loved to fuck with the horse, put them in position; he says horse, they are shit. But he was so crazy, so funny. He made a joke with everything. Whenever I came to Bali Village, I see so many people around. It was his stable, full of horses, sometimes he sent two guys together the same flight with Lemon Juice.

– Rafael

At this time, in the late 1990s, the island was the perfect place to start being a drug dealer, or work in other criminal lines that cashed in on cashed-up Bali. Tourism was booming and the underworld was growing as fast as the number of infinity pools. Bali was far from its sanguine, peaceful postcard image. It had turned into a hedonistic haven for drugs and debauchery, becoming a lucrative business island for pimps, hookers, drug dealers, gangs and corrupt cops, police, prosecutors and judges – who were all running rampant.

There are a lot of fucking bad people, otherwise their jail wouldn't be full of Balinese. If they are all so good, there wouldn't be one Balinese in jail and there are plenty. They even have a little Hindu temple in Kerobokan.

– Alberto

Most tourists flying in for a week of sun-drenched poolside drinking, cheap massages and shopping were oblivious to the subculture of crime. But it existed all around them. The men in black standing at the front doors of exclusive restaurants, clubs and bars were mostly gangsters from the island's most violent gang, Laskar Bali – its members usually identifiable by a distinctive three-ringed symbol tattooed between their thumb and first finger. There were at least five big gangs, but Laskar had most of the security contracts in Kuta, Legian and Seminyak, the prime tourist areas.

These security deals were worth big bucks, as they gave the gangs control of the drug trade. The contracts were the cause of the violent turf war that was fought constantly right across the tourist mecca, almost in a parallel universe, usually not apparent to tourists unless they got caught in the crossfire. When fights broke out in popular clubs like Bounty or Sky Garden, information was kept sketchy, with local journalists under dire threats of harm if they dared to name Laskar – all to keep the false
Eat Pray Love
–esque image intact.

Why don't you put Laskar's name in the paper?

Mostly our journalists are scared to write that group's name. That group don't like it if we write their name in our paper.

Journalists are scared?

Yeah. Scared.

Can't the police protect you?

How long can police secure you . . . have you any guarantee that police can secure us forever . . . no. We say mobs or community organisation, but we don't say Laskar Bali.

But in Bali, everybody knows, right?

Everybody knows. But the big problem will come to you when you mention Laskar Bali.

What is likely to happen?

I'm not sure they won't kill me.

You think it's possible?

Possible. They can beat you on the street, run up to you, intimidate you. So, one of our ways to protect ourselves is not to write that group's name.

– Editor, one of Bali's major newspapers

One night just after midnight, a group of Laskars turned up at a popular bar, the Red Room, in Legian, carrying Samurai swords, and stabbed a chef to death. It was a revenge hit. Laskar wanted to avenge one of its own, after a member was badly hurt a week earlier by security guards at Sky Garden Club in Legian – where Laskar had lost the security contract to a rival gang, Hercules.

The Red Room attack was strategically organised; with about ten of Laskar's Seminyak members called to a secret meeting, and told to bring their Samurai swords. These men were all physically strong, a prerequisite to being accepted into the gang and given ID. If anyone got a call for a job, unless they had a good excuse they had better turn up. The gangsters convened in Seminyak, close to the Red Room, charging themselves with Arak, while two went ahead to recce the bar. As soon as they gave the word that the coast was clear – no police – the men roared down Legian street on motorbikes, their faces covered by black bandanas, and their swords tucked into their black leather jackets, ready to attack. Unfortunately, this night they got the wrong man, stabbing to death the chef, whom they mistakenly took for a Hercules gangster in the dim light.

What was the problem in the Red Room?

Hercules hit my friend, in Sky Garden – not kill, but broke his head. We meet in Seminyak first, and go, fast, very fast, must be five minutes, no more; after that we run.

But Laskar killed the chef?

Yeah, wrong guy.

– Laskar gangster, Made.

Tens of thugs carrying swords attacked the bar early in the morning last Wednesday. These thugs came on motorbikes and by car and went amok, attacking everything with their swords and killed Bagus Alit Edy Sastrawan (28) from Penarungan, Mengwi area. He died instantly due to a severe sickle cut. The cut stretched from his upper left lip to the inner part of his neck, and it was found that this also cut the blood vein on his neck.

‘It all happened at around 00.30. The bar was about to close. Suddenly, a group of thugs came up and attacked everything around them,' an officer from Denpasar Metropolitan Police explained.

–
Denpost,
15 July 2010

It was only when a high-profile person was involved that the frequent club violence got wide exposure, like former AFL North Melbourne coach Dean Laidley. His holiday hit headlines when security guards at Kuta's Bounty Discotheque, where Laskar held the contract, attacked him and his family. It was vicious – the former coach was glassed in the head with a beer bottle and his son suffered a broken jaw. Three security guards were arrested.

‘What the police are telling us so far is that things like this happen all the time,' Laidley told SEN [sports entertainment network] radio.

–
The Age,
11 October 2011

It happens a lot over here that tourists get beaten up by security, and other tourists as well.

– Bali International Medical Centre spokeswoman Tasya Aulia,
Herald Sun,
10 October 2011

Crime also pervaded the hotels, with hookers allowed to work in most of them – including five-star resorts – by slinging the security guards 50,000 rupiah (about $5).

Nyoman, a Laskar gangster, was one of the tourist precinct's seven official pimps. He regularly parked his battered blue Toyota four-wheel drive in a beach car park directly in front of the popular $300–$1600 a night Padma Hotel. Most nights the rented Toyota was full of girls in skimpy outfits, touching up their lipstick and mascara, dabbing perfume between their legs, as they took turns taking jobs.