Snowing in Bali

by Kathryn Bonella

  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.

  – Denpost, 20 March 2005

  Even the Governor of Bali, Made Pastika – Bali’s former Police Chief – got press when Chino’s operations manager, Bejo, said in a statement that he’d seen his car taken out of M3 after the Jakarta police confiscation request appeared.

  Meanwhile, Chino’s wife had hired an expensive team of lawyers in Bali who argued that she, not Chino, owned the assets, although they were unable to prove it with documentation.

  As Rafael confirms, ‘Chino had so many connections everywhere in the police.’ Unsurprisingly, he had got wind of the police operation in time to flee and evade arrest. His real name was now useless to him, with Interpol issuing a Red Notice – its version of an international arrest warrant – so he established his headquarters in a nearby country, continuing to make millions from ecstasy production under a new false name.

  *

  When Rafael heard about Chino’s crash, he instantly worried about becoming entangled. ‘I say, “Shit, now I’m fucked, they are going to come to me too.” Maybe they put cameras there [at M3] and see me there all the time.’

  Rafael didn’t get arrested, but was still perilously walking the high wire in Bali. Months after the first raid, two cops were back on his doorstep, trying to push their way into his house. ‘Police, police,’ they jostled trying to get in.

  ‘Hey,’ Rafael shouted, ‘I don’t care if you’re police, this is a private house. You cannot come in like this. What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have information you are a drug dealer, we follow you for three years.’

  Rafael laughed, ‘Man, you cannot come inside my house, please get out of my property, you don’t have any warrant.’

  ‘They straight away go out, and then I know they’re pussies. If they’re tough cops, they say, “Shut up, motherfucker” and throw something in my garden to fuck me.’ Rafael agreed to talk to them outside his gate, after his neighbour Wayan arrived as a witness. They wanted names, but they didn’t have a hope: ‘I say forget me, you talk with the wrong guy.’

  Around the same time, Rafael chanced an encounter with the chief narcotics cop, Pak Wayan, at Carrefour super­market, still pushing to ‘help’. ‘Pak Rafael, remember me?’ the cop asked.

  ‘Pak Wayan, you still working for the police?’

  ‘Yes, if you need anything, you call’, he said, then handed Rafael a business card.

  ‘Shut up, man,’ Rafael snapped, sure he would never be calling him. Paying off one cop didn’t stop another from busting you, as Chino’s situation proved.

  *

  With the cops sniffing around and the island so hot, combined with the risk of his horses getting the death penalty, Rafael started doing all his business in Europe and his wife’s native Sweden.

  I was not selling in Bali anymore because I was afraid of somebody getting the death penalty. I was saying, ‘I don’t want to have this on my bill. Somebody dead.’

  With his years of expertise in the game, people were often investing in his runs, which he organised by making calls from public phones in Bali. Hells Angel Tota was using Rafael to organise and sell his coke.

  Tota calls me golden boy because everything I touch becomes gold. He was very keen, ‘Let’s do it in Stockholm, you have a wife there, easy.’

  Did you do many deals in Stockholm?

  Many.

  Did you usually fly there?

  Fly. First I send the horse from Brazil. They arrive, call me in Bali, say, ‘I’m ready.’ I say, ‘Okay, tomorrow I come,’ because Bali to Stockholm has flights every day. And I meet the horse there in the hotel in Stockholm with the windsurf board. I take the booms to my apartment, open, wait, sell, get the money, pay the horse, kick him back, fly to Bali full of cashhhh.

  Rafael’s wife also regularly flew in to help him carry the cash home.

  Your wife was working with you?

  All the time. She was more like a brain – calculations, numbers – and I was in the action, in the field. But I start to involve her a little bit too much. I’m not born to be a drug dealer, because I was too nice and she was always in my face, pushing me: ‘No, this pri
ce is too low. Are you crazy?’ and pushing me to make bigger bigger bigger. She push me a lot too . . . to take the money and do something else. She says, ‘Let’s bring 100 kilo, let’s bring 200 kilo, and retire in good style.’

  Did you ever do that?

  We try, but the biggest amount was 20 kilos in one go.

  And did she go on trips to take drugs or money?

  She loved to pick up money.

  By doing business remotely, Rafael was getting ripped off by some of his merry-go-round of partners and combined with horses busting, his finances started fluctuating wildly – soaring then crashing to zero. His lucky star seemed to be waning. The day Hells Angel Tota phoned with a project, wanting him to fly to Stockholm in two days time to pick up 2 kilos of coke, he was broke. But this was a dead cert.

  ‘Come on, Tota, how?’ Rafael asked, uncertain. Tota told him that a Brazilian Federal cop, his friend, was escorting a Hells Angel on an extradition flight from Rio to Stockholm: ‘Nobody checks him.’

  ‘No, no way, man, I don’t want to see any cop, are you crazy?’

  Tota persisted, ‘You’re fucking stupid, man; this guy is my brother, he’s a cop but he’s a bandito too. Fuck, don’t be a puss, man. Take the plane.’

  Tota wanted Rafael to meet the cop at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport in the frenetic international arrivals hall. ‘No way, man, there are cameras. I don’t want to meet any cop in the airport.’

  ‘Shut up, man, it’s fine. He already knows you.’

  ‘What? How?’

  Tota told him the cop had once come to Bali and met Rafael when Tota dropped off a bag of coke. Rafael was incredulous. ‘Fuck, man, you bring a federal police officer to Bali to meet me?’

  Tota sweetened the deal by offering Rafael half the cash. Against his screaming instincts, Rafael agreed.

  I was totally bankrupt in that time, crazy for money.

  Tota even had to send him c800 via Western Union to buy the plane ticket.