📸

TOO HOT

Then people see my car; ‘Oh, he’s here.’ Many friends say, ‘I saw your car last night in Ku De Ta; I was there; how come we don’t see you, man?’
. . . ‘Ah, because I met two girls, I went to their house to smoke some ganja’ . . . always bullshit. But that shit works, it was very helpful to me.

If friends or regular customers rang asking for drugs, he’d tell them he’d bring them that night, but to be quiet: ‘Be careful, don’t tell anyone . . . I’m hot.’ Other nights he’d ride one of his ostentatious bikes, because it could outrun anyone if he had to. ‘Nobody can catch me. I am a very good driver too, nobody can follow me, impossible.’ If there was no off-street parking where he could stash his bike under a piece of fabric, he didn’t go. Or he’d park his car a kilometre from the party and walk from there.

As the months passed, the paranoia subsided, but he often sensed lurking shadows and kept playing strictly by the rules. Fabio one day came to him, shaken. The day before he’d been standing on Legian beach in front of his restaurant, watching the waves, when undercover police snatched him off the beach, piling him into a car – essentially kidnapping him. They drove him past Rafael’s house with a gun to his knee, demanding information. He kept repeating, ‘Rafael’s a family man, a surfer.’ After a few hours of interrogation, they let him go, but Fabio was freaked out, now anxiously talking about selling up and ditching paradise.

Rafael wasn’t sure whether to believe Fabio’s story – he didn’t want to believe it.

There was more bad news when a horse carrying for Rafael and Poca was busted after arriving in Bali with 2 kilos of coke. Poca dealt with it, quickly and quietly paying $30,000 to police

📸