📸

SNOWING IN BALI

with group of friends, people calling, 'Rafael, Rafael.' And if anyone says, 'Oh, who's that guy?' Barbara tells them, 'Oh, he's the big drug dealer on the island. I work for him. I picked up the wrong bag once.' Oh fuck, she talked to everybody. Crazy. Everybody was avoiding her because she talks too much.

Other horses were also talking too much, bragging in nightclubs or the surf about carrying drugs for the island's mafiosi. Some of the small-time dealers, who bought from Rafael in hundreds of grams to cut and sell, were also foolishly indiscreet about their source.

People often came up to him in clubs or restaurants, telling him, 'Be careful, man, you're hot,' but in the next breath asking to buy some coke. Rafael ignored these remarks; they pissed him off. Until the night at Deja Vu bar when the warning came from Chino's man.

Suddenly someone comes to me in the middle of the rock 'n' roll and says, 'Rafael, be careful, man, some people are looking for you, some Australian police.' 'Really?' 'Yeah, Chino's heard something.' Then I think, 'Oh-oh, serious.'

With police on Chino's payroll, ignoring this tip-off would be foolishly suicidal. He jumped on his bike and sped home, telling his maid to swamp the wooden floors with water. Upstairs in his bedroom, Rafael got down on hands and knees, using a torch to pick out little rocks of coke wedged in the cracks between the floorboards where he sometimes packed. 'Between the wood, I find some small rocks, enough to put me inside for a long time.' He took all plastic and other evidence to the beach and burnt it, took bags of cash to storage, then went all the way to Uluwatu

📸