Snowing in Bali by Kathryn Bonella
That night he slept in his beach house, waking early for a sunrise surf. It was a stunning spring morning as he stood in his driveway, putting his kiteboard in the back of his car. Then he glimpsed two men lurking outside his front gates. His pulse raced. They were cops, for sure. He turned and walked briskly around the side of his house towards the beach.
As he strode around the pool, the sun was rising across the ocean – the blue hour, creating exquisite morning light. He barely noticed, focused on escape. It was too late. The garden exploded into action. Men sprang out of bushes, jumped over fences, coming at him screaming, ‘Stop, stop, don’t move.’ They surrounded him, pointing AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, screaming, ‘On the ground, don’t move or we’ll shoot.’
Andre’s heart was pounding hard. This was the moment he’d long feared. He fell to his knees and stuck his hands in the air. From all directions men were pointing guns at him, screaming, ‘On the ground, get down on the ground.’ Andre fell down flat on his stomach, turning his head to the side. Rifle muzzles came in close. They were still shouting, ‘Hands behind your head.’ Andre clasped his hands at the nape of his neck. A boot smashed down on them, thrusting the side of his face deeper into the grass. ‘Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,’ a cop shouted.
As he lay with his face scrunched into the grass, frantic thoughts rushed through his brain: call a lawyer . . . no drugs in house . . . bribe the cops. Before he even realised it, he was shouting out, ‘I’ve got money. My money is in my safety box. You don’t need to use violence.’ If he were an innocent businessman, not expecting cops, he’d think these guys were thieves. So he acted the part. ‘My money in the safety box – I’ll just open the safety box, and then you can go.’
He then first heard the voice of a man who would become his nemesis. ‘We’re not thieves, Andre, we’re Federal Police.’ The cop bent down and flashed his badge in front of Andre’s flattened face. ‘I’m the Narcotics Police Chief and I’ve been watching you for three years. Sua casa cai, Andre, your house falls.’ The chief ordered the cop to remove his boot from Andre’s neck. Another took his hands and cuffed them at his lower back. ‘Get up,’ the police chief ordered, grabbing his shirt and yanking him up.
When he stood, Andre saw at least 15 cops surrounding him.
They are fucking scared. They don’t know what’s going to happen. For them, it’s more stressful than me because this is a fucking big operation. They see I’m a drug dealer, they don’t know if I’m going to shoot them, or maybe I have a security guard who shoots them. These guys prepared this for weeks, and 5 am that day they get a call and are given the mission. Before that nobody knows where they’re going, so the information doesn’t leak. They call everybody 4 am, 5 am . . . ‘Now we go to this house, you go to this house.’ So the guys come full of adrenalin and do this Hollywood scene.
– Andre
Andre had prepared for this day too. He’d played in his mind how to react to a bust since his last escape dash to Hawaii. He wasn’t going to cower, he’d play hardball – he was a reputable businessman. Their guns didn’t scare him. Brazil was full of guns; he had one in his restaurant and even traffic cops carried them. He knew cowering and acquiescing to their every demand would just make it worse. He had to play tough, act like the respectable entrepreneur he pretended to be.
The cops took Andre into his house, and he realised the Chief and his partner were the two men he had glimpsed at the gate. Chief Fernando Caieron was head of Operation Playboy, an investigation – one year so far – into the rich playboys trafficking drugs between Indonesia, Holland and Brazil. Andre was his first big catch.
Inside the house, more than a dozen cops were searching and Chief Caieron was asking Andre where he kept his money. Andre hoped this was a sign the cop was interested in cutting a deal, unaware at this point of the scale of the investigation.
‘Okay, let’s go to my bedroom.’ Andre led them through into his opulent stone and marble en-suite. They uncuffed him so he could reveal his hiding spot. He tweaked invisible locks on a marble bench and, like magic, it floated down the stone wall, revealing a safe behind it.
Andre put in the code, opened it and was brusquely told to stand back. Chief Caieron rifled though the safe, finding documents and his passport, but no cash or drugs.
Heading back to the living room, Andre had a quiet word to Chief Caieron, offering him €150,000 to leave now and take his men. The Narcotics boss had worked hard on this, he’d personally instigated Operation Playboy, and even if he’d wanted to take the cash, his hands were tied. ‘No, I cannot. A lot of people are involved in this operation and I need to put somebody in the media.’
Back in the living room, the men told Andre to sit down on his wooden Balinese daybed, covered in cushions, as they kept searching his house. Chief Caieron started using the Federal Police’s well-known tactic of mind games.
This cop, Fernando Caieron, is a specialist in this kind of mental pressure. He doesn’t give one slap to anyone, doesn’t punch anyone, just uses pressure on the mind.
– Andre
‘I’ll give you 30 years in jail, Andre. It’s a long, long time,’ he started. ‘But if you help us, you will maybe only get ten years. If you don’t help us, I’ll give you 20, 30 years in jail.’
Andre threw it straight back. ‘Hey, don’t talk bullshit – you don’t give me anything. You’re a policeman. If you want to be judge, you need to go and study at least another ten years. Don’t treat me like a kid, please.’
‘Tell us where your money is and we can help you,’ Chief Caieron pushed.
‘Ho, right! You want my money to help me? You come inside with guns and want to put me in jail, and you want my money to help me? Please don’t play me for a fool. If you want to help me, then tell me how much you want – maybe I can help you or not. But if you just want my money to use against me, don’t talk to me; lock me up, call my lawyer.’
‘Ah, you think you’re smart, Andre, but we got you. Now I can come to your house with girls, use your swimming pool, use your car.’
Andre looked at him with incredulity: he felt the tactic was so blatant, not worthy of the master manipulator. ‘You can try,’ he said.
‘I will try.’
Andre wasn’t going to break. ‘Okay, do your best, man, you can use my swimming pool, you can bring girls. This is just one of my houses around the world; you think I care about this house?’
‘We know you, Andre, we’ve been spying on you for three years.’
‘Well, then you know I don’t have drugs in my house; so why do you come here with this big operation?’
‘Not just your house, Andre. Right now police are in your restaurant, at your girlfriend’s house, at your storage.’
Police came to my four houses in my city, my two houses in the other city, many places, eight or nine places at one time in Brazil – 6 am.
– Andre
Andre continued trying to play the cop at his own mind games, as he thought himself a master of mind power, having used it for years on his horses. The more personal Chief Caieron got, the more ironic Andre became, sensing he was starting to rile the cop.
‘Now I’m going to Gisele’s house and will put your girlfriend in jail,’ Chief Caieron said.
‘Why do you talk to me like that? One thing . . . do your job, but don’t make it personal, because you have a family too and I can also make it personal.’
‘Oh, so now I can charge you with threatening me.’
‘No, I’m just advising you.’
The cops were still searching his house. In truth, this was Andre’s dream home, with a huge wow factor. It had graced the pages of Brazil’s glossy magazines. It was a large four-bedroom Balinese-style house with a high thatched ceiling, built on a slope in front of the beach. All the decorations, from silk cushions and chairs to the larger furniture had been tailor-made in Bali. Andre’s sideline business was importing Balinese furniture – which had also helped him with money-laund
This Balinese furniture was a good cover for my family, for the society in my city. Everybody look – the guy’s doing well, the guy’s working. Sometimes people say, ‘Wow, you work a lot; every month you need to travel.’
– Andre
In his back garden was his oceanfront swimming pool, which provided a spectacular view from the living room, with Balinese god statues trickling water into the pool. Beyond that was the beach, then the endless blue of the sea; the house was surrounded by mountains and jungle, huge bamboo plants and scrub. It was the sort of glamour home he’d pictured back when, as a teenager, he collected the pineapple tins on the beach.
Andre was growing angry as he watched the cops still rifling through everything, coming up with what he quickly disparaged as idiotic evidence. They pulled a pile of nearly 80 green striped plastic zip lock bags out of a cupboard and turned to each other, excitedly shouting, ‘Look, look this is proof, bags to pack the cocaine.’
Andre interjected. ‘Whoa yeah, can you please open my freezer for me?’
‘Why?’
‘Open my freezer, can you?’
‘Okay, you want to show us drugs inside the freezer?’
‘No, my fish, my beef, my food, all inside those bags. What, you think I keep bags I use to pack cocaine in my house?’
After about 30 minutes, he lost patience. If he couldn’t buy his way out, there was no point being civil to these cops, and the longer they stayed in his house, the more chance they had to plant something. He wanted to get out fast; there’d be no more chitchat. He started using a new tactic – screaming like a maniac, ‘Please, please, somebody help me, please help me.’
I get like crazy, freak out. Screaming, screaming for my neighbours.
– Andre
Turning to Chief Caieron and his men, he yelled, ‘What are you fucking doing in my house? Get out of my house. Where’s your warrant? I want to see the court paper. I haven’t seen any court papers yet. I want my lawyer. You busted me, now you take me to the police station. I need to see my lawyer.’
Unaware of the Federal Police raid, state military police turned up. They were responding to a call made 40 minutes earlier by a neighbour who’d heard the shouting and seen the dark figures jumping Andre’s fence. Two Federal agents walked out to talk to them. Chief Caieron now agreed, ‘Okay, Andre, let’s go.’
As Andre sat in an office at the police station, a door to the adjacent office swung open. Sitting there on a chair was one of his horses: a childhood friend, Luiz Renato Pinheiro. Andre instantly knew the guy had snitched. He raised his handcuffed hands and slashed his thumbs across his throat. Luiz looked scared, quickly clasping his hands together in a ‘please forgive me’ gesture. He was deluded. Andre was never the forgiving type.
This guy Luiz, he got arrested with 6000 ecstasy pills. I loaned him the money to buy them because two days before I went on a trip to Hawaii with Gisele, he came to my house and says, ‘Hey, Andre, I’m totally broke, please can you help?’ I say, ‘Man, I’m not working, I’m going with Gisele to Hawaii for a vacation. I don’t want to move drugs now, I’m being quiet.’ He says, ‘Oh brother, please can you loan me some money, call your contacts in Amsterdam?’ I say, ‘Okay, I will loan you €10,000, you go to Holland buy 10,000 pills, bring them yourself, sell them and just give me my money and 100 grams of weed so I’ll have something to smoke during the summer.’ ‘Oh Andre, that’s great, thank you, you are my brother.’
– Andre
Despite being careful with cash, Andre didn’t mind floating his childhood friend a relatively small sum, given he was flush with more than half a million euros in his bank and various other places. Luiz and Andre had grown up in the same neighbourhood, played football in the streets, surfed and gone to parties together. One day, years later, Luiz had approached Andre asking for a gig to pay his family’s bills, and ended up doing five runs. So, Andre was confident Luiz knew the ropes and could organise this himself. But it backfired spectacularly. Luiz smuggled the pills inside a paraglider sail safely through the airport. But after a tip-off that he was working for Andre, Chief Caieron was watching him. Luiz and his partner, Cristiane, were arrested with 6000 ecstasy pills in green-striped zip lock bags on the same morning as Andre. Luiz ‘spontaneously cooperated’, telling the cops the pills were Andre’s.
This horse snitched on me. He tells police everything: ‘I’ve known Andre for more than 20 years. He’s a big drug dealer in South Brazil. He’s the biggest one.’
– Andre
Later on, Andre would hear his childhood friend was shot 25 times in a typical snitch kill.
In Brazil, they kill snitches like that. Sometimes they cut the throat and pull the tongue through; this is called the ‘Italian tie’. They do that to teach everybody, ‘You want to snitch on somebody, take a look at this picture, now you sure you want to snitch?’ My cop friend told me that somebody shot this guy 25 times. I was in the jail but everybody thinks someone did that for me. I think so too.
– Andre
Andre twice had people phoning him in jail, offering to kill Luiz. But talking on an unsecured jail phone line, his reply had always been the same: ‘Do whatever you think is best.’ Andre didn’t have proof Luiz was dead, but if he was, felt he’d got his just deserts.
I say, ‘Fuck him. Dead? Oh, great.’ I lose my life; I lose my house because I had to sell to pay lawyers; I lose my love Gisele; I lose my family. The guy really, really destroyed my life. For what? Because he did bullshit. He did his own thing. Not me. And for this I don’t put my head on the pillow and say, ‘Oh, the poor guy is dead.’ Good luck to him in the sky, heaven, hell . . . I don’t know where God send this poor soul, because he is a poor soul. If you don’t have enough foundation, enough soul . . . If you’re not strong enough to go to the jail, to play with the cops, then don’t play with smuggling drugs, because probably you need to do that one day. Like this guy, ‘Oh, I go to Amsterdam to buy and sell,’ but not enough power, not strong enough when the cops say, ‘You . . . ’ ‘Okay, it’s me, it’s me.’ The guy talk talk talk. And what made it worse is he was like family.
– Andre
But Andre’s poolside ambush wasn’t precipitated only by Luiz’s ecstasy tablets.
There was another loose-lipped horse who’d given Chief Caieron evidence against him weeks earlier. Again, Andre’s unravelling was as a result of a favour. His corrupt cop friend Claudio had called asking if he had a spare horse to run with 8 kilos of confiscated coke to Amsterdam. Andre told him that Diego Amaral was available. As Diego flew out of São Paulo, he was busted. Diego cut a deal with Chief Caieron – whose fervent aim was to catch those who ‘lead the operation’.
It’s not easy to get those guys, but when you get them, the sensation is matching, is parallel to the difficulty.
– Chief Caieron
It was a great day for him when Diego turned rat on Andre, spilling names as well as explicit details of his runs for Andre. He told police of his previous run a few months earlier; he’d carried 3 kilos in windsurfer booms, delivered to his house by Andre, to Amsterdam – there Andre sold it, and together they counted the €66,000 in the hotel room. Using some of the cash, Andre bought 10,000 ecstasy pills and 2.2 kilos of skunk, which he wrapped together with €25,000 cash, in a kitesurfing kite, and then sent Diego back home with it. A week later he’d introduced Diego to another horse doing another run, offering him a chance to invest his trafficking fee.
But before Chief Caieron was able to use the information, he had to wait for Andre to return. The ambush was six weeks later. Chief Caieron charged Andre for Diego’s 8 kilos of coke, Luiz’s 6000 ecstasy pills and for money-laundering.
Andre was sent to jail to await trial – a shocking and meteoric plunge from his glamour life. The loss of his status and his liberty hurt him badly, especially since it was his lust for su
When you get in the jail, it’s like a bad dream, a nightmare. It takes weeks or months to go, ‘It’s true, I’m here.’ Because you get so paralysed, so shocked.
– Andre
With his sharp mind, Andre was never going to quietly submit to his fate. Late one Friday night, exactly 120 days after first being slammed into a cell, he quietly slipped out, thanks to a $50,000 payment his lawyer gave to the Minister of the Superior Court of Justice to get bail, bypassing the lower courts to avoid any chance of it being overturned.
This day, when I got out, everybody was fucking mad, the cops were pissed off and upset. My lawyer went to the jail about 10 pm, because he didn’t want anybody around to see me – no media, because he’s smart. If you go to the newspaper, you will draw the attention of other ministers. Just slip out.
But the director of the jail comes to me and says, ‘You are going free again because this country is a bullshit country. The Federal Police spent three years looking for you, three years to lock you up, now you pay this motherfucking lawyer, and you can go out – a big dealer like you back to the streets. I’m disgusted in my profession.’ The guy is angry. Not angry personally with me, he was polite to me.
– Andre
Chief Caieron had also got the news, and hurriedly went to the jail to check the paperwork, to see if he could find a loophole or mistake to prevent Andre’s release. Being late Friday night, it was too late to get the courts to do anything. Caieron was furious that his big fish had slipped away again and told him, ‘I’ll catch you again, because I know you’re a drug dealer, Andre.’
Andre felt they were arch-rivals, that Chief Caieron was jealous of his life. He taunted back, ‘Eh, calm down, man, I buy my freedom. You take your small gun and run after small thieves, people wearing sandals on the beach, pe de chinelo. I’m going back to my nice house, back with my girlfriend, and you still carry the small gun, running after pickpockets.’