📸 Photo

SNOWING IN BALI

The jail was literally around the corner from the luxurious house Alberto had previously shared with the fat Diaz brothers, Mario and Poca, and dealer Jerome. It was a dizzying dichotomy between his old life of decadence and this life of primitive concrete cages and decomposing cats, but they were insanely close, separated only by whitewashed concrete walls. Knowing his beautiful life was so tantalisingly close was hard and depressing, but he placated himself by ruminating on the fact that he'd actually been lucky.

I was playing with fire for years and years and years and I burned the tip of my finger. A lot of people they just played once and they burned their whole body. I got busted with a very small amount, and I just did a bit of time – a fucking lot of time for me – but still, compared to what I was playing...

If you didn't pay the $30,000, how long do you think you would have got?

Probably, eight to ten years.

Is that what the lawyer told you?

Yeah.

– Alberto

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The sudden blitz by narcotics police was shaking everything up. No one was safe; everyone was a target, from the big dealers like Rafael to the rich expats enjoying a quiet spliff at home in the evenings, to local dealers, users and tourists on holidays. Narcotics teams were working frenetically to set up stings, working with their captives to do the notorious 'changing