Free Cocaine Confidential by Wensley Clarkson

demand big bribes to release them from custody. ‘If they don’t pay up they often end up dead in a ditch some place. The cops call them vermin and no one ever dares challenge their authority.’
    Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find myself facing a mixed-race man grinning maniacally down at me with a mouthful of gold-capped teeth.
    â€˜I am Carlos.’
    Before I had a chance to react, the same man disappeared out of the door of the bar. I looked across at Johnny. ‘Don’t worry. He’s probably seen an undercover cop in here. We’ll go outside in a minute and they’ll pop up somewhere along the road.’
    Just then I caught the eye of a sinister-looking, pockmarked middle-aged man staring directly at me and wondered if he was the undercover cop. We quickly finished our beers and walked out of the bar. Johnny told me to stroll at a slow pace so the man we suspected was a ‘cop’ didn’t work out our connection with Carlos.
    â€˜The cops here in Rio make a paltry salary but most of them treble it through blackmail and bribery,’ explained Johnny.
    As we strolled slowly up the sidewalk alongside the noisy highway, I spotted Carlos and another man I presumed to be Jose about thirty yards ahead of us. ‘Just keep following them at a distance. They’ll come to us when they’re ready.’
    Five minutes later we followed them down a side streetand into a much smaller, rougher bar. It was obviously somewhere that Carlos and Jose felt safer in.
    Johnny bought four beers and we sat down. Jose was much smaller and stockier than his friend and he let Carlos do most of the talking. ‘So, you doin’ a book about coke?’ He grinned as Johnny translated for me. ‘You know one day cocaine will be bigger business than sugar here in Brazil.’ He laughed and I tried to smile to put him at ease.
    I asked Johnny to ask Carlos about his life as a coke dealer in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. ‘It pays well but I wake up every morning wondering if this will be the day my luck runs out. Here in Rio, all the coke is shipped in through the
favelas
. The traffickers up there run their own coke shops where people like us have to go to get our supplies.’ Carlos pauses and looks in the direction of one of the vast, sprawling
favelas
overlooking Rio in the distance. ‘It’s fuckin’ dangerous up there, man.’
    â€˜Is it worth the risk?’ I asked Carlos as Jose looked on nodding thoughtfully.
    â€˜What choice do we have? We both originally come from up there. There are no jobs waiting for us when we leave school. The only work is on the streets. We both started as lookouts for drug dealers when we were twelve years old.’
    The previous day I’d been up into one of the
favelas
on a fact-finding mission and discovered these hillside slums were like self-contained, lawless societies where few people from the rest of Rio ever dared to tread. I’d seen the young lookouts with my own eyes. I’d visited a couple of coke baronswho were barely out of their teens and I’d seen the young kids, who followed them around in the hope of any scrap of work. I’d been told you could hire a hitman in the
favelas
for $500. Only a few weeks earlier a drug dealer was gunned down by an assassin, well known to be a resident of that same
favela
. ‘But no one will ever tell the police who he was,’ one local told me.
    Back in this dark bar, just off Ipanema Beach, Carlos talked in matter-of-fact tones about how he and Jose always worked as a pair because they felt it was safer that way.
    â€˜We watch each other’s backs. It’s important and we know the rules of the game inside out. Never show any weakness or fear and you stand more chance of survival. It’s as simple as that,’ said Carlos.
    Then he flashed a small gun tucked into his trouser belt as he explained: ‘We’re