Free Snowing in Bali by Kathryn Bonella Page B

passing traffic. He’d told Jando to scare the guy to death, not actually kill him, but to let him think tonight they were going to dump his corpse into one of the surrounding rice paddies.
    Out the window Rafael taunted, ‘You can’t call your mamma now, you’re going to die out here, my friend.’ The Peruvian, now on his knees with his hands clasped in prayer, begged, ‘Please don’t kill me.’
    Jando kicked him hard in the chest. ‘You pussy, stand up and fight.’ Sprawled on the ground, Borrador sobbed, ‘I don’t want to fight.’ Jando whacked him several times in the back of the head. ‘Why do you want to fuck our business, mother­fucker?’ he blasted, hauling him up by a clump of hair.
    â€˜I didn’t do nothing, it was my friend.’
    â€˜Bullshit,’ Rafael interjected.
    â€˜I need money, quick, that’s why we sold like that. Sorry,’ he sobbed.
    To scare him more, Jando whipped a knife out of his pocket and held its blade against his throat. ‘Motherfucker, we aren’t going to kill you tonight, but leave Bali now. And if you ever come back and sell this shit for less than $25,000, I will slit your throat.’
    In the car, Rafael was starting to get antsy, worried a passing car might stop. ‘Jando, let’s go quick, let’s go.’ Jando bent down menacingly close to Borrador’s face, warning him not to breathe a word of this tête à tête to Nanang or else, slashing his finger across his throat for emphasis.
    â€˜I won’t say nothing, sorry, sorry,’ Borrador whimpered.
    In the next few days Rafael heard from the other Peruvians that Borrador had gone back home to the communal house several dealers shared near Kerobokan, whining that Rafael was going to kill him. No one sympathised. They were grateful Rafael had dealt with him, angry too that he’d been undercutting their businesses.
    Borrador flew out to Peru the next day and didn’t return for six months, when his problems would become insurmountable with the disappearance of his English girlfriend Kate Osborne, in a case that would make global headlines.
    Drug dealer justice wasn’t always a heated beating – it could be cold and calculated. Paranoid Poca, in the habit of ripping Rafael off and probably others, had organised a horse to run from Peru to Bali with 2 kilos of cocaine. Without a hitch, the horse flew past the post. But when Poca collected and opened the bag, it was a stinging blow.
    â€˜Ah fuck, I have some really bad news,’ he sighed to Alberto and another dealer who’d been hired to work on this delivery, babysitting the coke and finding a buyer. They were sitting at a restaurant, waiting for instructions, but instead got the news flash – the job was off, there was no coke. Poca had been sent perfectly packed . . . bags of sand.
    I asked him, ‘What the fuck did you do wrong, man?’ For sure, he fucked up somehow. Maybe he didn’t pay last time, so this was someone in Peru saying, ‘Fuck you’. He still had to pay $10,000 for the horse and for hotels and flight.
    Did you see a funny side?
    Yeah, for sure. We were laughing and joking like, ‘Which beach is it from?’ and, ‘Okay, so how much can we sell Peruvian sand for in Bali, maybe $100 a kilo?’
    Was Poca laughing too?
    No, he wasn’t laughing, for sure he wasn’t.
    â€“ Alberto

CHAPTER FIVE
    M3, THE SUNSET CAR WASH
    Many people in Peru dream about getting a job like that – to come to Bali, get $10,000.
    â€“ Rafael
    Bali’s M3 Car Wash Café in Sunset Road was set in a unique building, prominent on the four-lane highway that stretched along the spine of Kuta, Legian and Seminyak. It was a concrete shed the size of a soccer pitch. Its unusual aesthetics stood out even among the oddly eclectic architecture in Bali, with round holes cut into a metal façade. Drug