Marching Powder

by Rusty Young

  ‘So, it was just a rumour, then?’ I asked. ‘They’re not really going to knock it down?’

  ‘Of course they’re going to knock it down. Are you stupid? You really don’t understand economics, do you?’

  Ricardo had to explain yet again. I got the feeling that he was doing all of this on purpose just to make me look like an idiot and himself look smarter, but I let him get away with it because I was captivated by what he was saying. Besides, he was really quite entertaining when he got in these moods and I liked watching him; he really did seem to think that he was giving an important speech at Harvard.

  According to Ricardo, it made sense to knock down San Pedro prison, since the inner-city real estate on which the jail was located was worth millions. After that, they would need to build another prison to house all the inmates, which would require the use of public funds. These public funds would obviously be controlled by corrupt politicians. So, of course it was in their interests to knock down the prison. One day they would actually do it, predicted Ricardo. The only problem was getting the funds from the Americans.

  Although fascinating, all these explanations left me more confused than when we began. Before, I had known nothing, but now, with the help of economics, I knew even less. To me, every single one of Ricardo’s arguments went around in circles. No sooner did I think I understood what he was saying than he would deliberately contradict it. Sometimes prices went up, sometimes they went down. Sometimes it was best to wait as long as possible, sometimes you should buy straight away. People behaved rationally according to graphs carved on wooden tables, but sometimes they were stupid and sold their televisions very cheaply. You could make money on property, but then the government might take everything away from you. Oh well, I never liked economics, anyway. I think that’s why I dropped out of school early and became a drug trafficker.

  ‘So, how do I know if it’s the right time to buy, then?’ I asked, trying to get back to the original topic, being when I was going to buy a room.

  ‘You don’t. No one does, really. You can make a guess, but it’s impossible to predict a market perfectly. And it’s irrelevant, anyway.’

  ‘Why is it irrelevant?’

  ‘Because you’ve got no choice. You have to buy a room right now or you’ll have nowhere to sleep,’ he laughed and pointed to the door, grabbing my arm and pushing me towards it as though he were evicting me. ‘It gets quite cold out there at night, you know.’

  I knew he was only joking, so I laughed too.

  ‘So, that means this whole conversation was also irrelevant?’

  ‘No. Not at all, my friend. You learned something. You’re intelligent and I enjoy talking with you,’ he complimented me, even though I had hardly said a word and was clearly not as intelligent as he was. Ricardo then put his joint out and concluded his university seminar.

  ‘So, you see, Thomas, San Pedro prison, apart from being a social microcosm, is also a microeconomy that operates under basic capitalist principles. In fact, it’s probably more efficient than the whole Bolivian national economy. And more democratic, too, but I’ll explain the prison election system to you another day. I’m tired now. You ask a lot of questions, inglés – you know that?’

  I was glad we stopped there, too; I needed a joint to help my brain recover from Ricardo’s economics lecture.

  The room I liked most was in Pinos on the second storey. It had a window overlooking the courtyard and it was only a minute’s walk from Ricardo’s apartment. The owner was an old Bolivian prisoner who was shortly due for release. He wanted twenty-five hundred dollars, but Ricardo managed to bargain him down to eighteen hundred dollars, and persuaded him to include his television, refrigerator as well as some furniture into the deal. With the contribution sent by Prisoners Abroad and some money a friend sent to the Embassy for me, I had enough, although on the sale-purchase agreement we wrote down twelve hundred dollars less than the actual price to reduce the transfer fee I had to pay.

  9

  PREPARING FOR TRIAL

  Having money and owning my own room in Pinos made me feel more settled, but it didn’t end my problems with the other inmates who were still convinced that I was American. Even for those who finally worked out that I wasn’t from the United States, I was still a foreigner, which meant I was a fair target anyway. In my fourth and fifth weeks, I was attacked five times, usually on the way to the bathroom. None of the attacks were as severe as the first two, but this was in Pinos, supposedly the quietest neighbourhood. I can’t imagine how I would have survived in the dangerous sections.

  Initially, I was afraid and did my best to avoid these conflicts by going out as little as possible. Whenever anyone said anything to me or spat on me, I kept my head down and kept walking. However, I had to go to the bathroom at some point each day and there was often someone waiting. They knew I had just purchased a room, so sometimes they asked me for money. If I refused, they would use that as an excuse to start a fight. At other times, there was no excuse required; they would insult me and spit on me for no reason. Usually, it was only one or two people who actually hit me. The trouble was that there was always a group of them watching and I was scared that they might join in. When I was attacked, I defended myself, but never really fought back, figuring that would only escalate things and I might be stabbed.

  I was hoping that this was just part of my initiation to the prison and that they would tire of it after a while, especially if I didn’t react. Unfortunately, things didn’t work that way and the attacks became more severe; the less I fought back, the bolder they became until it became too much. I couldn’t spend the rest of my time locked in my room hiding from the world. I had to fight back.

  At first, I never really had time to notice what my attackers looked like. I knew that most of them came from the more dangerous sections, but everything always happened so quickly and they all looked the same to me. However, none of them were very big. Although I had lost a lot of weight while in the FELCN cells, I was still a lot bigger and stronger than most of the other inmates in San Pedro. There was one prisoner I had seen with a scar across his face who was a giant. He must have been almost seven foot tall, but luckily he wasn’t involved. Apart from him, I could have fought most of the other inmates if it was one on one, which is what I decided to do: take the fight to them.

  I took note of who was the leader. It was the same guy with the mean eyes from the first time I had been attacked in the bathroom. One day I went looking for him in the inside sections. When I saw him coming, I hid around the corner and then attacked him without warning, just like they had done to me. I had to do it quickly so that no one else had time to come to his aid, and I had to do it properly so that he wouldn’t come back for more. The first punch broke his nose and knocked him to the ground. He wasn’t getting up, but I didn’t stop there. I had to put him out of action completely, so I kicked him again and again until one of his gang arrived and tried to pull me off. I went for that one, too, knocking his head against the wall and kneeing him in the groin before giving him the same kicking as the first one.

  ‘Who else? Come on!’ I punched the wall.

  Two more of the gang had arrived by that stage, but when they saw their friends on the ground and my fierce expression, neither of them wanted to risk it.

  I had done the job properly, but for the next few weeks I had to be constantly on the lookout in case they were out for payback. I carried a thick metal bar with me everywhere I went, banging it against the walls every now and then, and I never smiled. People had heard what I’d done and I wanted them to know I was still on edge, and could snap at any moment. To be honest, it was all an act. I was even more afraid than before, although I never showed it. Luckily, it worked and they left me alone. I had finally earned some respect in prison.

  After buying a room, my next priority was to sort out my legal situation. The lawyers who had visited me at the FELCN interrogation cells had all been confident that they could get me out, provided I ha
d money. I now had that money, as much as they could ask for. I had had my emergency credit card sent over from Europe and, for a small fee, one of Ricardo’s trusted friends on the outside would pick it up and get cash advances from the teller machines down on the Prado whenever I called her. I never liked going into debt so I hadn’t used it before, but this was definitely an emergency.

  Once she knew that I could pay her fees, Constanza Sanchez, one of the lawyers I had met after I was arrested, came to visit me several times a week to discuss my case. I paid her three thousand dollars up front. I knew it was a lot of money but I didn’t want to argue, as that might have induced her to work less hard on my case. Besides, at that stage I didn’t really care how much it cost me – I just wanted to get out of there.

  Over the following weeks, Constanza visited me a few more times and we went over every detail of what had happened at the airport again and again. She then introduced me to another lawyer, who was apparently the best of the best Mil Ocho lawyers in town. I then had to explain the whole thing to him, even though Constanza had taken notes. Then she brought in another lawyer, who was also needed for my legal ‘team’, as she kept calling it. Initially, I was against the idea of having three lawyers and wanted to know why I needed a third if I already had ‘the best of the best’, but Constanza convinced me. Apart from adding extra knowledge and experience to my defence, the more lawyers I had, the better the impression I would make in court when I appeared before the judge, she said.

  Although the colonel had cleverly let me pass through customs at the airport, making my charge ‘international trafficking’ rather than ‘possession’, my lawyers told me that my case was strong because I hadn’t signed a confession. Between them, they believed that they could create ‘reasonable doubt’ as to whether the drugs actually belonged to me. This would force the judge to find me inocente. The major problem we faced was the delays in the court system, which in some cases meant waits of up to four years before a trial even started. In the meantime, there was no presumption of innocence in Bolivia and no right to apply for bail in drug cases. Luckily, there were ways of fast-tracking the whole procedure by making applications to the court and using my lawyers’ contacts. But it would all cost money.

  After six weeks in San Pedro, I received even better news – my case mightn’t even get to the trial stage. My team of lawyers knew a man who was a friend of the judge that had been assigned to my case, and he was going to see if the judge was prepared to come to an ‘out-of-court settlement’.

  In a short space of time, everything in my life had turned around completely. Although I obviously wasn’t happy about having to wait it out in prison, things could have been a lot worse.

  10

  LA NOCHE DE SAN JUAN

  I wanted to celebrate the good news immediately. ‘Let’s get a bottle of something. My shout,’ I suggested to Ricardo.

  ‘But we’re already going to Carlos’s party.’

  ‘But I don’t know him.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You’re invited.’

  After what had happened with the standover gang, I was becoming more accepted in the prison and Ricardo had started introducing me to other inmates. Occasionally, they invited me around to their rooms. The rest of the prison was also celebrating that night because it was the twenty-first of June – the longest night of the year and around the same time as la Noche de San Juan – a significant date in the Bolivian calendar. I wasn’t sure if it was the longest night, but it certainly felt like the coldest, and it took several rums to get warm.

  A group of about seven of us, including Ricardo, Carlos, Carlos’s wife and some of her girlfriends, were sitting around a table in Carlos’s room. Not all the women who came into San Pedro were wives, sisters and girlfriends. Sometimes women accompanied their friends to parties. The girl sitting next to me was beautiful. After a few more rums, I felt confident enough to try out my Spanish, which was improving rapidly by that stage. I couldn’t understand every word she said, but if I concentrated, I could follow the general conversation well enough.

  Then someone pulled out a small plastic bag of cocaine and handed it around with a key to sniff puntitos, which was done by scooping a small amount onto the tip of the key, putting it just below your nose and inhaling. Everyone took two small puntitos, one in each nostril.

  When the bag came around to me, I said that I was quite happy just drinking. However, they insisted that I try some.

  ‘Come on, Thomas. You’ve got your first room in San Pedro. You’re one of us now. Join the party. For Pinos.’ Everyone raised their glasses and toasted the section.

  I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so, instead of arguing, I dipped the key into the bag and pretended to scoop some coke onto its tip, then held the bag in front of my face as I sniffed so that they wouldn’t notice that I was pretending. Everyone cheered, except the girl sitting next to me.

  ‘You didn’t have any,’ she cried, pointing at me. ‘There was nothing there.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. I saw you. Cheat!’ She was half-joking, but it was also embarrassing because she was showing me up in front of my new friends in the section.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘OK. Do it again, then!’ she challenged, grabbing the bag and holding the key under my nose, loaded up with a huge puntito.

  ‘But I just did,’ I protested, looking to Ricardo for support. Ricardo shrugged his shoulders casually, as if to say, ‘I don’t care. It’s up to you,’ but at the same time, ‘Why not? You’re not going to die or anything.’

  ‘Come on. You need to take your medicine or you’ll catch a cold.’ The beautiful girl waved the key around in the air and made an aeroplane noise. With all her confidence and joking around, she had everyone laughing and watching to see what I would do. There was no getting out of it. I was trapped.

  ‘OK, then.’ I let her put the key right up to my nostril and when she nodded, I sucked in hard through my nose.

  ‘And another one for this side,’ she said, administering more medicine to my left nostril. ‘And one more for good luck,’ she made me take a third dose that was even bigger than the first two. ‘That’s it. There’s a good little boy,’ she kissed me on the cheek and the others laughed before returning to their conversations.

  I had been trafficking drugs for years, but that was the first time in my life I had ever tried cocaine.

  The girl was smiling at me. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t that hard now, was it?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘How do you feel? Do you like it?’

  Yes, I liked it. I liked the feeling it gave me and I liked the way she was looking at me, but at the time I also thought that what she had done was wrong. No one should put pressure on anyone else to take drugs, I thought, especially if it was their first time. What if they became addicted or something went wrong? But now I don’t blame that girl for pushing me to try some, because later I was to do the same thing myself many times with tourists who visited the prison. Maybe what they say about drug-takers is true – that they try to get everyone around them hooked, so they don’t feel so bad about it themselves. I’m sure that neither of us had any evil intentions. Maybe it just comes down to this: when you’re happy, you want everyone else around you to be happy too.

  In any case, I certainly can’t say that it was the girl’s fault the next time I tried cocaine, or the time after that. It wasn’t like someone was pointing a gun at my head. I made the choice. I liked cocaine the first time I tried it. I liked it the second time. I’ve liked it ever since. At times it’s been my saviour. At times it’s almost been the death of me. But even when I started doing it too much, I didn’t blame anyone for it, not that beautiful girl, not even the drug itself. I sometimes ask myself whether my life would have been better without cocaine. Really, I can’t say. It certainly would have been different. But I can tell you this: it certainly wasn’t what I thought it would be and it certainly isn’t like th
ey say it is.

  I was expecting the effect to be instantaneous, but nothing happened for a few minutes; when it did kick in, it was nowhere near as strong as I expected. The first thing I noticed was that my front teeth went numb, followed gradually by other parts of my mouth. Next, I realised that I was wide awake, but the effect still wasn’t that strong. I felt more confident, but it wasn’t at all like being drunk because I was still in control of everything and it didn’t affect my coordination. The world didn’t look any different; it didn’t go blurry and I didn’t see things that weren’t there. It didn’t even change the way that I thought. It was just a good feeling. In fact, I felt better than good – I felt very good. No, I felt fantastic. For several minutes I couldn’t think of anything except how amazingly happy I was feeling. It was like I was flying in my emotions. I can’t describe it any other way. I felt that I was somehow more alive than I’d ever been before.

  For several minutes I couldn’t get beyond that feeling. I had never experienced anything like it. I looked around the room at everyone else, wondering how they could act as if everything was so normal, when it so clearly wasn’t.

  The girl next to me caught my eye again. She smiled at me and raised her eyebrows, and I smiled back. Then we launched into a long conversation. I had no trouble speaking to her because my thoughts were coming to me more quickly. In fact, my Spanish seemed to have improved and I began talking non-stop. If I didn’t know the word for something, it didn’t bother me; I could get around it or have a guess based on the word in English. Sometimes I’d get it wrong, but that didn’t matter, she could understand me and I could understand her too. I could now do what I wanted and say what I wanted. I was communicating! But most of all, I was just plain happy. I felt connected to the people in the room. Everyone was talking, but even without saying anything, it’s like we were all on the same level.