Marching Powder

by Rusty Young

  Pointing at Jorge and Jose Luis, Manuelo asked, ‘And Colonel Lanza, would you please tell the court what is your relation to these two defendants?’

  Lanza fidgeted for a few moments before mumbling an answer that no one heard.

  ‘Could you repeat your answer, colonel?’ Manuelo said, emphasising the word ‘colonel’.

  ‘I …’ Lanza looked around nervously and tried to stall for time. ‘I … I don’t understand what you’re asking.’

  ‘It’s not difficult. I’ll repeat the question,’ said Manuelo sarcastically, driving home his point. He had him now. ‘What is your relation to the defendants Jose Luis and Jorge Velasco?’

  ‘Why are you asking me this? I am a colonel in the Bolivian drug investigation unit.’

  ‘Answer the question please, witness!’ bellowed Manuelo. Colonel Lanza looked like he was finally about to answer, but the fiscal jumped in and saved him.

  ‘Objection. The witness is not obliged to respond.’

  ‘Why not?’ snapped Manuelo, turning angrily to address the fiscal. His face finally showed the anger that had been building up against the prosecutor during the trial. The colonel was a witness for the defence, which meant the fiscal was supposed to be cross-examining him, not protecting him.

  ‘By law, the witness is not obliged to answer that question,’ the fiscal repeated, and quoted a statute. Manuelo argued strongly, but the fiscal shouted him down and showed him the statute. Even then, Manuelo continued to argue.

  ‘The fiscal is correct,’ interrupted one of the judges. ‘The witness may decline to respond, if he so chooses.’ Manuelo argued with the judge, but the other judges called for order and asked that the case continue. Manuelo glared at the prosecutor and slapped the table to show his frustration. But there was nothing more he could do.

  As soon as Manuelo gave in, I felt a wave of anger surge over me. I was ready to yell out, ‘But he’s the brother-in-law!’ I didn’t care if there was a law preventing it. I wouldn’t have cared if I got in trouble; once everyone knew that Colonel Lanza was a relative of the Velascos, they would know the truth. But Manuelo sensed what I was about to do and grabbed my knee.

  ‘No! Thomas, don’t do it!’ he hissed. ‘There’s no point.’

  I calmed myself down. He was probably right. Although they had different surnames, the judges must have known the colonel was related to the Velascos. Why else would he have wanted to avoid answering the question? I decided not to make things worse for myself, as I had in my first case. The judge at my first trial had never returned my Queen of England ring.

  I later looked up the statute. It was a law designed to protect the identity of family members of witnesses who testified in drug cases. Whoever drafted it hadn’t considered that the family members might be the ones on trial.

  50

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  With Colonel Lanza against me, I knew that the only chance I would have of getting off would be to bribe the judges. I started looking around for some money immediately. The first person I asked was Rusty. At first he completely refused to help. He didn’t say so directly, but I think he suspected that I was lying about being set up by the police and the Velascos. I didn’t blame him for that – he knew I was a cocaine trafficker and that I sold stuff to tourists, so it must have seemed unlikely that I was innocent. I also knew he didn’t have much money, but I tried my hardest to persuade him to borrow some.

  ‘Look, Rusty. In a way I am guilty. I admit that I’ve dealt drugs in here many times. But this time I didn’t.’ He looked at me and nodded, but I could tell that he still doubted me. ‘I swear to you on my life. If I had done it, I would accept the punishment.’

  I even showed him the police facts sheet in order to prove that I was telling the truth. It stated that the police had found me outside the Velascos’ room, but there was no mention of me possessing any cocaine or money.

  ‘So you see, man, they didn’t even get me with any drugs or money. I’m innocent. The charge just says I was intending to traffic. But there is no evidence.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Rusty, as though I had just proven his point. ‘There’s no way they can convict you on that. But if you try to bribe the judges, then they’ll think it’s because you really are guilty.’

  ‘Hey, man. You don’t know this country. That’s not how things work in Bolivia. The judges don’t care if I’m guilty or not. If they convict a foreigner, it looks good for them.’

  To end the argument, Rusty said that he would do his best to help me, but he still made excuses not to. He didn’t believe me about being set up – until he got arrested himself and was told to leave the country. He almost ruined everything by being so stupid. I had to fix things with the governor to get him a new permission slip. Once I’d bribed the governor, Rusty was allowed back into San Pedro, but only on official visiting days and he could no longer stay the night. He was out of trouble, but I wasn’t; there was now a misdemeanour report in the administration office that mentioned my name. I was worried that if the judges found out about it, it would affect my trial.

  The whole universe seemed to turn against me that week. It now looked like I would be convicted for the two hundred grams; Rusty got me in trouble with the governor; and then news came that Samir had died in Chonchocoro. Julián told me that Samir had killed himself, but I knew he would never have done that. I would have believed that he’d been shot in a fight with the police or trying to escape, but I knew that Samir would never take his own life. It took a while to find out what had really happened.

  Samir had been kept in the isolation block at Chonchocoro the whole time, so that he couldn’t communicate with the outside world. He kept trying to blackmail the police he had stolen cars for, but they stopped responding to his threats once he was powerless. Samir somehow managed to have a pen and paper smuggled into his cell. He wrote a letter that named names, dates and places. The letter never made it out because the police got to him first.

  Before they killed him, the police tortured him for several hours, just as they had done in La Grulla. When they were satisfied that he hadn’t sent out any other letters, they strangled him and hung the body from a rafter inside his cell. The cleaner found him when he was doing his rounds. There were at least three witnesses in the isolation block who heard everything that happened. At first, they were too afraid to say anything, but they made a pact to speak out together. A group of them contacted the media and told the truth about what had happened. Samir’s death was reported in the paper, but it was only one of three suspicious deaths in Chonchocoro in a thirty-hour period. I didn’t cry. I just felt numb.

  After Samir was murdered, Rusty started to really worry about getting me out of San Pedro. He told me not to do any more tours, sell any more coke or take any more risks that might get me in trouble. He also agreed to help me look for money and began asking some of his friends for loans.

  There were three judges sitting on my case. I sent a message to only two of them – enough to be found innocent in a split decision – asking how much they required. They sent back a message saying eight thousand US dollars, four thousand each. The figure wasn’t negotiable, they said. It was a lot of money considering how weak the fiscal’s case was and that the judges must have suspected I was innocent. But I already knew that neither of these factors counted towards Bolivian justice. If you had money and knew people, you were innocent. If you didn’t, you were guilty. It was that simple.

  Because of my trial, I had decided to stop taking cocaine. Roberto wanted to quit also. Before he was sentenced, he had believed there was some hope that his lawyers might get him off on a legal technicality. Now that had his sentence, he finally accepted that he was going to be in San Pedro for a while. We made a brotherhood pact: no more cocaine. We would quit together. If either of us was ever tempted to take some, he had to go to the other to ask for help and to find the strength to resist.

  Before quitting completely, Roberto and I needed to have one final part
y, though. We bought five grams between us and stayed up all night doing lines and discussing the precise details of our pact. We both agreed it was unrealistic to think that anyone could suddenly stop forever, just like that. So, we changed the rules slightly: if one of us was tempted to take something, we could, but we had to tell the other first. We couldn’t stop the other from taking it; the aim was to give each other support and be completely honest with each other. No matter what, we had to be honest, like brothers. Rusty was no longer staying in San Pedro, and right then, I needed a brother in prison. I felt very alone knowing that Abregon and Samir were both dead and that Ricardo wasn’t coming back.

  By the time the bell rang for lista the following morning, everything was settled. We stood and embraced like brothers, before walking down the stairs to the courtyard.

  ‘I love you, my brother,’ I said to Roberto, holding him close to me and squeezing his shoulder. It was an important moment for me because I knew we really had to stick together if we were going to quit.

  ‘Me, too,’ he said, hugging me back stiffly, slightly embarrassed by my sudden display of feeling.

  Following the lista, we went back up to my room. We still hadn’t finished the entire five grams. I couldn’t have eaten breakfast anyway, so we kept sniffing until the whole bag was finished at around eleven o’clock. Immediately following the last lines, I kicked Roberto out of my room, drank two litres of water, smoked a joint and went downstairs to have a cold shower. When I came back, I cleaned my room, put on some nice clothes, smoked another joint, and then went to see the prison doctor. There was no point in lying to him, so I just came out with it.

  ‘Doctor, I need you to help me. I want to stop taking cocaine.’ He looked at me coolly, not at all surprised by what I had said.

  ‘For how long have you been consuming?’

  I counted back the time in my head. It had been almost four-and-a-half years since that first occasion on la Noche de San Juan – which was a long time, when I thought about it. I had never thought of myself as being an addict, but I realised that in all that time, I had never been without cocaine for more than two weeks, not even in La Grulla. The doctor informed me that there was no medicine that could cure me. I had to stop by myself and that would only happen if I really wanted to. However, he did offer to put me on a saline solution drip that was designed to flush the drug out of my blood system.

  The doctor came to my room each day and put me on the drip for an hour or so. With the drip and keeping myself busy, I managed to stay away from coke. But Roberto didn’t. He broke the pact. He made it through the first three nights OK, but on the fourth morning I saw him down in the courtyard and he waved to me to signal that we would talk later. But he didn’t come to my room afterwards and when I saw him again that evening, he pretended he hadn’t seen me and snuck off to his room. I knew that he’d had something to sniff. He must have been too afraid to say anything or too ashamed of his weakness. I wasn’t angry, but I was waiting for him to come and tell me.

  Rusty was having trouble getting the money together. I continued to ring everyone I knew. I begged the inmates in San Pedro. I contacted all my old negocios friends in Europe, promising them a shipment. But none of them gave me a cent. I might have been able to set up a big deal, but that would have taken months to organise and the case was already coming to a close.

  After the second-last court date, I sent another message to the judges saying that I couldn’t get them all the money on time. They agreed to accept four thousand dollars between them. I tried all my contacts again, but the situation was hopeless. In fact, I had probably made it worse; now that the judges were expecting a bribe, they would be even angrier when I couldn’t give them anything.

  As the date for the judges’ decision drew closer, we still had no money to pay them. I tried to stay positive by thinking about the many people who had helped me since being in prison. As the final court date approached, however, I became desperate. As a last resort, we sent an email to every tourist whose details I had, begging them to send any money they could spare, no matter how small the amount. I promised to pay it all back when I got out. Most of the tourists responded. Many couldn’t afford to lend me anything, but some could.

  All in all, with the money from Rusty’s friends and the tourists, we got together just over two thousand dollars. I didn’t want to send anything less to the judges than the full amount because I knew they wouldn’t accept it, but Rusty insisted.

  ‘Look, Thomas. We’ll offer them half now and half when they let you off.’

  ‘No, man. You can’t do that in Bolivia. They won’t trust that I’ll pay.’

  ‘Well, why should we trust them?’

  ‘That’s just the way things work. They won’t accept half. You have to show them trust.’ Rusty had been in Bolivia for only four months, but he kept arguing because he thought he knew better than me. He started giving me another one of his lectures.

  ‘Thomas, listen. You bribed the colonel, he took the money, then betrayed you. You bribed him again at the airport, he took the money, then betrayed you again. You paid the lawyers, they took your money and then betrayed you. You paid the first judge, he took your money and then betrayed you. Can’t you see a pattern emerging?’

  ‘No. I’ve been here longer than you. I’m telling you, you just can’t do it that way.’

  ‘Why not? It’s a business arrangement. And normally in business you pay an up-front deposit and then the rest on delivery. Bribery should be no different.’

  Eventually I agreed to try his suggestion. I wanted to send the money to the judges with one of the inmates’ wives, but Rusty was worried that it mightn’t arrive. He said he would take it himself. However, the last time he had tried to bribe anyone, he had been arrested. As a compromise, he accompanied the inmate’s wife and together they handed over the money in two separate envelopes. At first, the judges didn’t want to accept it. They had already agreed to halve the original amount and now required the whole lot in a single payment. Rusty insisted, promising them that they would receive the rest before the day of the judgment, even though we didn’t have it. The judges postponed the hearing date to give us more time. When we didn’t get them the money, they postponed it again.

  Three days before the final court date was fixed, one of my contacts in the prison received a phone call to say that the judges couldn’t postpone the trial any longer. We still hadn’t paid the outstanding amount. I kept trying everywhere and hoping that something would work out, but all my options were exhausted. The judges sent word that they had no choice but to proceed to judgment. I was done for. Rusty wanted to keep trying, but I knew there was no use. We had both tried every person we knew.

  The night before the verdict, Roberto came around to keep me company. I tried to be friendly at first, because I knew that he wanted to help take my mind off my trial, but I was still angry with him for breaking our pact. Roberto had never come to see me to admit that he’d broken it. He had avoided me and I’d avoided him back. I didn’t want to be friends with someone I couldn’t trust. We were supposed to have been brothers.

  ‘Do you want one?’ he said, reaching for a CD case and holding up the phone card that he would use to cut up the lines of coke. I wasn’t angry with him for wanting to take some that night. We both knew he had already broken our pact. Doing coke in front of me was his way of admitting it. At first I just shook my head and didn’t say anything. Right then, sniffing cocaine was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. It had brought me nothing but trouble and the sight of the white lines revolted me. Why would anyone want to deliberately snort something so horrible up their nose?

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, unfolding the small packet he had brought along and tapping the paper so that some of it fell onto the CD case. I refused him again, but Roberto kept insisting, and I had to say something.

  ‘I don’t mind if you do coke, Roberto. But you didn’t have to lie to me,’ I said, raising my voice. ‘That was the
pact. How can I trust you now?’

  Roberto apologised. He said he had been confused and that he hadn’t told me because I wouldn’t have understood, which made me even angrier.

  ‘You don’t need it, Roberto,’ I told him. ‘You think you do, but you don’t.’

  I hardly slept at all after the argument with Roberto. Rusty rang my mobile phone about ten times. I didn’t want to answer. He phoned up other inmates to send me a message: don’t go to court. I should pretend to be sick so that we could delay in order to try to get more money. I had already considered that option. I could have cut myself and gone to hospital, but I knew that would only have put things off by a week, or two at the most. Delay or no delay, I would still have to face the judges’ verdict.

  I stayed awake until dawn, thinking about what would happen if they found me guilty. It had been almost five years since I arrived at San Pedro. My mind raced over all the things that had happened to me during that time. There had been many good times and I tried to concentrate on thinking only about them, but my mind kept returning to the suffering. I thought about Samir and Abregon, and the little girl being raped, and about the gang rapist’s brains spilling out onto the concrete. I remembered all the sleeping pills I had taken when Yasheeda left me. I couldn’t live through another five or ten years like that. And even if I could, what future would I have if I got out of prison ten years older? Then I thought of what my friend Sylvia, from the Anglican Church, used to tell me, and I started praying to God to save me.