Snowing in Bali

by Kathryn Bonella

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LEMON JUICE KING

  Rafael’s lifestyle sparked jealousy from others, even his so-called friends. Out of the blue one day, he got a call from Lemon Juice boss Marco with a business proposal. Marco explained he was in Amsterdam with the perfect horse, a 140-kilo Jiu-Jitsu prizefighter. The guy was flying to Tokyo to compete in the high-profile Pride Fighting Championships. There, Brazilian fighters were like gods and breezed unchecked through airports.

  They love Brazilian fighters in Japan. At the airport, they put out the red carpet, they don’t check anything.

  – Rafael

  Marco had decided to pack the fighter with 20,000 ecstasy pills, and despite the fighter wanting to buy them in Amsterdam, Marco knew Chino’s were the best, and also that Bali customs was easier to penetrate than Dutch, and closer to Japan. As Chino wouldn’t deal directly with Marco, he asked Rafael to arrange it, for a commission.

  As soon as they flew into Bali, they met with Rafael at Marco’s place in Bali Village. Rafael was a little dubious already, as Marco had a reputation for being unreliable and paying late.

  ‘Do you have ecstasy?’ the fighter asked.

  ‘Yeah, but cash upfront.’

  He didn’t have it. He wanted to pay after the run, assuring Rafael it would work. ‘It’s easy, they don’t check me at all because I’m a fighter,’ he said, macho-posturing slightly.

  Rafael sensed the veiled threat, but chose to ignore it. ‘Thanks, but no deal,’ he said, standing up to leave. ‘If they catch you, or if you die, who is going to pay Chino?’

  Marco quickly interjected, desperate not to lose the deal. ‘Rafael, come on, please, man, I guarantee your money.’ He knew Rafael could be a soft touch, as by now he’d invested in many of his dope runs. ‘I’ll pay you $1 profit per pill – the easiest $20,000 in your life. Please, I guarantee, I guarantee.’

  And then I was stupid. I say okay.

  – Rafael

  Rafael rang Chino, and told him the new play. ‘No problem,’ Chino said, ‘you have credit with me anyway.’ Awash with cash, Rafael had untypically left a kilo of coke on standby with Chino, and was waiting to be paid in two jet-skis. Chino asked who was organising this run.

  ‘Marco.’

  ‘The Lemon Juice guy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Chino was well aware of the famous dope dealer’s reckless reputation. ‘This guy is a bullshit man, I don’t have a good feeling.’

  Rafael told him he’d made up his mind. ‘I’m gonna help the guy, he’s my friend.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll give you the pills, but if they fuck it up, I’ll take the cash out of your kilo here.’ Chino couldn’t lose, but Rafael could.

  A couple of days later, one of Chino’s soldiers met with Rafael on the busy beach esplanade in Legian. Surrounded by tourists, sunbaking and strolling, they did the exchange, quick and slick. Their bikes were side-by-side, engines still running, as Chino’s man passed Rafael the benign-looking bag of 20,000 ecstasy pills. Rafael quickly slipped it into the storage space under his seat and tore off to Marco’s room at Bali Village, just around the corner.

  They didn’t have long. The fighter was leaving that night and wanted to pack it himself. But his method was slapdash and dangerous. Rafael and Marco watched him haphazardly stuff the plastic bags of pills into his Lycra bike shorts, then pull a pair of shorts over the top. ‘I don’t think it’s good, do you?’ the fighter asked.

  Rafael jumped up, patting down the fighter’s naturally big thighs, now resembling gigantic balloons. ‘You’re right. You’re going to go straight to jail.’

  Drug dealer Andre soon arrived. He wasn’t part of this deal, but offered to help. The fighter asked his opinion. ‘Are you crazy, man? You think this is a kid’s game?’ Andre knelt down, pulling down the fighter’s pants, and quickly started repacking his legs. But the beefy prizefighter was now losing his nerve.

  I start to tape the plastic bags of ecstasy on his leg and the guy starts to shake and sweat. Totally scared. Totally. Marco says to him, ‘Look, motherfucker, in the ring you look like a lion, now you look like a kid about to pee your pants, you are shaking like a chicken.’

  – Andre

  Marco’s taunts only exacerbated the fighter’s nerves. Now he didn’t want to go. Trying to get him to man up, Andre blasted him. ‘Brother, you need to listen to me. You called us for this job. We didn’t come here with 20,000 ecstasy pills for you to get scared. Now we have the Chinese mafia behind us and you don’t want to go. Come on. You go.’

  Rafael and Andre had already had a horse busted in Australia using Lycra bike shorts. They’d sent an English guy with coke in his pants to deliver to Rafael’s famous surfer buyer in Sydney, who was continually asking for more stuff. The horse chose to fly to Brisbane then drive down to Sydney, to avoid the Harbour City’s ostensibly more secure airport. But in Brisbane, sniffer dogs took him down.

  On the plane, when he goes to piss, he smells the coke and thinks, ‘Oh my god, they’re going to find it.’

  Why didn’t he flush it then?

  He feels he will get a problem with us.

  – Rafael

  Andre had organised the English horse’s run in Bali, down to taping his legs and sending him off. As planned, when the horse landed in Brisbane he phoned Andre, who was waiting in the Bali Subak Hotel room, where they’d packed. Andre trained his horses to use his self-created ‘step one, step two’ method. After getting through customs, they were trained to call and say, ‘Step one okay’ and after getting the cash, ‘Step two okay.’ This time, he didn’t say it. Warning lights lit up. Andre asked, ‘Step one okay?’

  ‘No.’ It was a red alert; a drug boss’s nightmare. Police would have been listening. Andre flew into crisis mode, slamming down the phone. Moving fast, he hurled everything onto a sheet on the floor, wrapped it up and ran out of there, with no time to spare. Police officers swooped into the room moments later. Andre’s tried and trusted two-step method had saved him – just. But his horse went down.

  A British man has been jailed for eight years for trying to smuggle more than $1 million worth of cocaine into Australia. The UK-born travel agent was caught with almost 3 kilos of cocaine stuffed between two pairs of bike pants he was wearing on a flight from Bali . . . The Brisbane Supreme Court has heard Mark Allan Stables was working in Bali when he agreed to smuggle the drugs for a group of Brazilians in a bid to get out of debt . . . Australian Federal Police are yet to find the Brazilian group which Stables claims was behind the smuggling attempt.

  – AAP, 1 October 2001

  I remember this Mark got busted because it’s a lot of money lost when somebody busts . . . was bad for business.

  Did you lose contact after he was busted?

  Lose contact totally. But two or three years afterwards, he knocked on my door. I remember it was Christmas time, I had Christmas in my house, and he came. When I see him, I think, ‘Fuck, maybe he’s come here together with Interpol to catch me,’ because he was out of jail early. I say, ‘Where is Interpol, they come with you, or are they coming later?’ But he says, ‘No way. I need money.’

  This guy is very skinny, my age, but he looked in so bad shape, like he’s dying of cancer or something. The white skin, black eyes, we call him ‘Ja Morreu’, means already dead, like we say, ‘Oh, where is the dead guy?’ I remember I say, ‘What’s your hardest time in jail in Australia?’ ‘Fighting.’ He says one time he was talking on the phone and one black guy broke his tooth and his nose.

  – Rafael

  He was asking for cash, but instead Rafael gave him a job, enlisting him to sell 50,000 ecstasy pills from Chino, and take a commission. Rafael rented a room for him to stay in to babysit the pills and make deliveries whenever he called. For Rafael, it was not only cash but insurance too.

  I think now if he wants to fuck me he has a problem too. But he didn’t, he did a good job, then he disappeared. I never heard from him again.

  – Rafael<
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  Back in Marco’s room, Andre, Rafael and Marco knew a horse could get busted despite perfect packing, or being a revered prizefighter. Trafficking was always a risk, but it was minimised if you were a pro and used your skill. These three had vast experience and today they knew the frightened prizefighter was a dead cert to go to jail. A blind man could see his nerves. So, in a last-minute switch of plan, they decided to put the pills in a paraglider sail, so he could check that in, instead of wearing them. Andre had a spare in his room and ran to get it while Rafael raced off to buy carbon paper to wrap up the pills and make them invisible in an X-ray. It was frantic.

  I was thinking, how’s Andre going to pack this shit, and he just put carbon around, rolling it up, put in the bag. Fuck, it was very unprofessional packing, big hurry.

  – Rafael

  Within minutes of his flight closing, they got the fighter, more cool now, to Denpasar Airport. Despite his freak-out, he was a success.

  But Rafael had been a patsy. A week later, everyone simply vanished; Marco didn’t answer his phone and the prizefighter was gone, immediately after calling Rafael from Tokyo raving it was a success. Two months later, Rafael still hadn’t been paid. He was fuming. Anna also stirred his anger by chiding him for being a fool to trust anyone in the first place.

  It was big shit. My wife says, ‘You’re stupid to give credit to these motherfuckers, they gonna fuck you.’

  Tota told me this story afterwards: Marco says to him in Amsterdam, ‘Oh, I have one guy in Bali, he thinks he is something but he is a piece of shit. Let’s make some money on him, easy, because he is too nice. He trusts whatever I say to him.’

  Tota says, ‘Who is the guy?’

  ‘Rafael.’

  Tota says, ‘Why do you want to fuck him? The guy is nice.’ And then Tota asks him, ‘How do you want to fuck him?’

  He says, ‘I have a guy who wants to buy 20,000 ecstasy pills and Rafael knows the guy in Bali with the best ones. Let’s buy the ecstasy with Rafael, we take on credit, and we don’t need to pay. He’s already rich, he doesn’t need money, motherfucker.’ And then they come here.

  Marco was jealous of my success. He became second with his Lemon Juice, doesn’t make as much money as coke. He was jealous of all the girls, all my lifestyle, house, car, clothes, like VIP everywhere. I feel he was very unsatisfied. And then he tried to fuck me.

  – Rafael

  After learning he’d been played, Rafael knew he had to avenge himself, as much for his pride as to demonstrate he was nobody’s fool. Marco had flown back to Amsterdam to set up another Lemon Juice run, straight after the Tokyo run, but Rafael heard he was now back in Bali, hiding out at their friend Fernando’s house. Rafael called, asking, ‘Where’s Marco?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fernando replied, in duet with Marco bellowing, ‘Tell the motherfucker I’m not here.’

  Rafael abruptly cut the call, grabbed a knife and flew out the door.

  I was like, ‘Fuck, I’m gonna kill him.’

  He drove straight to Fernando’s house. Another dealer, Paulo, answered the door. He was friendly, but saw the knife in Rafael’s back pocket. ‘What’s that, Rafael?’

  ‘You know what it is, my friend, it’s a fucking knife and it’s for putting in the neck of Marco. I know he’s here. You’re a motherfucker too, for hiding him,’ Rafael said, striding through the house.

  ‘Rafael, calm down,’ Paulo urged.

  ‘No, tell me where he is.’

  Sick of pussyfooting around, Rafael grabbed Paulo around the neck, holding the knife to his throat. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s in Padang, he’s gone to Padang.’

  Rafael sped off to Padang Padang, a top surf spot that he knew intim­ately. From the bridge crossing high above the cove, he spotted Marco on the sand below. Rafael sprang down the steps that spiralled inside a canopy of trees and rock, giving him cover for a fast and stealthy entrance to the beach.

  A bunch of Marco’s horses sat on the sand, facing the water. Marco was a few metres further up the sand, with his head down in his rubber boat. Rafael crept behind them, then sprang at Marco, shouting, ‘Hey motherfucker, what do you think you’re doing?’ Marco shot bolt upright.

  He looks like he’s seen a ghost when he sees me. And then he tried to be arrogant. ‘Why did you come here? If you’re gonna punch me, punch me.’ I was so angry, I use all my power, I went straight to him, pow! My hand hurt for two days. Marco flies across to the other side of the boat. And then I take the knife to his neck . . . I say, ‘Now you gonna die, motherfucker.’

  – Rafael

  Rafael was kneeling on Marco’s chest as the horses, now all on their feet, were circling threateningly. Rafael thought fast. He turned to look up at the high bridge, packed with locals leaning on the railings, and waved. Predictably, they all waved back. ‘You think I come here alone?’ Rafael shouted at Marco’s men, pointing to the bridge. ‘Those are Chino’s guys and if you touch me, they’re gonna kill you.’ They all knew of Chino and immediately backed off. Rafael stood up and planted his foot on Marco’s neck. ‘You guys want to try to touch me, come and touch me.’

  Croakily, Marco pleaded, ‘Rafael, please.’ Rafael slipped his knife back in his pocket as curious onlookers started coming in for a closer look. Fernando and another mutual friend came out of the surf. Looking down at Marco sprawled on the sand, Fernando said, ‘I told you, man, don’t do that with Rafael, he’s gonna fuck you. Now see what you do.’

  Rafael ignored the chitchat, and crushing his foot harder into Marco’s neck, shouted, ‘I want my money now, motherfucker.’ He snatched a camera off the edge of Marco’s boat and slung it around his neck. ‘Now, I’m gonna take everything you’ve got. What else? Give me your watch.’ He ripped the Rolex off his wrist, saw it was a fake and stuffed it in his pocket anyway.

  ‘I have money, please don’t kill me, please.’

  Rafael looked down at the Judas. ‘I will kill you, fool, but first I want my money. Now stand up, motherfucker, let’s go.’ Marco’s men moved aside, clearing a path for the crazed drug boss to pass with his captive.

  I get, like, evil.

  As they walked, a reckless stranger flew over and snapped a photo. Rafael went beserk, yanking the knife out of his back pocket and pointing it at him, screaming, ‘You come here, mother­fucker, give me the fucking camera now.’ He handed it over instantly.

  One of Marco’s horses tried to calm him down. ‘Rafael, come on, don’t do this.’

  Rafael spun around with his knife held ready to attack. ‘You want to fight me too, motherfucker, come on then, try your luck,’ he shouted. He swept around with the knife, slicing the air, daring anyone to make a move, then grabbed Marco, and snapped, ‘Marco, come with me, come.’

  He came like a chicken.

  The atmosphere in the car was tense. ‘How’re you going to pay me, motherfucker?’ Rafael spat tersely. ‘I want my $20,000 plus the cost of the pills.’

  Marco was obsequious, eager to comply with anything. ‘I have $3000 cash now; I’ll give it to you. Let’s go to my room.’

  At Bali Village, Marco gave Rafael $3000 cash, two surfboards and another camera. Rafael did his own sweep, taking anything else of any value, including a paraglider, which he knew Marco needed for Lemon Juice runs, and his passport. ‘I don’t want this shit, I want my money. I give you two weeks. If you don’t pay, first I’m gonna burn your passport just to fuck you. Second, I’m gonna torture you. The rest is secret. You gonna have to wait to see what I do.’ Rafael was calmer now, and trying to scare him into submission.

  It worked. Marco organised most of the cash within two weeks.

  Everybody on the island talked about this. Nobody ever expected me to do that. I was the nicest guy in the world and then I went crazy. But nobody fuck with me after that. Because Marco was the top, famous guy here, and then I made him like a chicken in front of all his guys on the beach. I don’t know why nobody had done that before because he was bad, he
did bullshit with everybody, small things like he takes money and promises, ‘Tomorrow I bring your Lemon Juice,’ and then, ‘Oh, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ But I was the one who give big shit to him.

  Afterwards, we become friends again. He say, ‘Oh, I never think you’re gonna punch me like that.’ I say, ‘I never think you were gonna fuck me like that. You’re lucky I didn’t stick the knife in you; I was ready. I was thinking to clean my name, the best way to kill you and then everybody’s afraid, nobody going to try to bullshit me anymore. Because you know how people talk, everybody will say, “Oh, Rafael killed Marco, don’t play with him, because he can kill you.” ’. . . Like I say to Marco, ‘You’re going to be my marketing to be a bad boy.’ He says, ‘I’m sorry. I was too high on coke, and I see you full of money, cars, motorbike, I get big eyes at that time.’

  – Rafael

  Marco had been riling a lot of people, paying horses late, not delivering Lemon Juice on time and being generally arrogant.

  He was too much of a motherfucker to pay – tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. And then the horse or other people get crazy, want to punch him, but if you punch him, you won’t get the money. That’s what he wants. Lose your temper, punch him, ah fuck, you’re not going to get anything. It was hard to work with him.

  – Andre

  Being Bali’s Lemon Juice boss had given Marco the kudos and power that had eluded him as the underdog growing up. He’d been the poor kid, ingratiating himself into the rich crew by using his big personality, and quick wit. His gregarious, sunny personality had been his ticket to the playboy lifestyle since he was a teenager in Brazil.

  He was a clown, very funny, always full of jokes, but very arrogant. He really liked to be noticed, very egocentric guy and always liked to be the centre of attention. He was always pretending he was the number one boss in Bali, but he was just dealing marijuana. When you deal marijuana you are nothing compared to people who deal cocaine or ecstasy or heroin, unless you’re dealing tonnes of marijuana.