The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare

by Farrell, Jeff

  Carlos stepped out in the yard, hearing the boxing was at a stalemate and wasn’t ending any time soon. He stepped into the ‘ring’ and stood between the two of us. I was relieved. He grabbed our arms and held up our gloves in the air. ‘Heyyyy, heyyyyyy,’ shouted the inmates, jumping up and down. We’d given them a good fight to watch. The luceros stepped in and unlaced our gloves, and I shook hands with the Veno.

  ‘Great fight,’ said Billy, walking over to me.

  ‘Paul, campeón, campeón,’ (‘champion’) said Silvio, clapping me on the back.

  I walked over towards a chair in the yard. My legs were getting weaker. I just made it before they gave in and I slumped into the chair. I was covered in sweat. My heart was still thumping. I was breathing heavily, fast like I’d had my head in a bucket of water and was coming up for air. I’m getting too old for this, I was thinking.

  But after that moment I held my head high. I wasn’t just the four-eyed guy always scribbling in a diary: I was the gringo who could hold his ground.

  * * *

  The lockdown went on for the best part of three months. Every day was just the same routine. Número. Canteen for breakfast. Hanging around the wing all day. Canteen for more slop in the afternoon. Headcount in the evening. Visits three times a week. It was hard in the beginning, not getting to the roof or to Spanish classes.

  After a while, though, I started getting used to it. I became withdrawn. I spent my days in my head, writing my diaries and now banging out a novel about a man whose marriage had broken down. He then moved out from the family home away from his two kids and in with his elderly parents, then started driving a taxi, his head in a bad place. It was loosely based on my own life. I enjoyed going into myself, but I might have been going too far. I was starting to talk to myself. Some of the prisoners were noticing it. ‘Paul, you OK?’ Silvio or Billy would say, seeing me babbling to myself. ‘Yeah, grand.’ I think it was just my way of escaping from this world I was in. A world I spent every minute wanting to get out of. I just sat on my bucket by the door in the yard, writing all day. When prisoners came up looking for a cigarillo or plata, my answer was always the same: ‘Fuck off.’

  I was starting to take a bag of coke a night now. I’d been taking it ever since the jefe gave me a free sample at Christmas. That was a clever move bosses made to get you hooked. Not that I was addicted to it – but it was mixed with what we thought was a horse tranquilliser and it helped me sleep. It also kept the demons away. Numbed the senses. At this stage it was probably the only thing keeping me from going insane.

  Chapter 15

  GAS ATTACK

  LOS TEQUES WAS FALLING DEEPER AND DEEPER INTO THE HANDS OF THE cell-block bosses. The lockdown did little. Gunfire still crackled into the night. Executions were rife. Bloody corpses were regularly flung out of wings. The jefes were literally running riot, armed to the teeth as ever: Uzis, revolvers, grenades, the whole lot. The cops and the National Guard were outgunned and outnumbered. They knew it. The whole jail was one big powder keg. Even the passageway cell-block outcasts were still robbing and stabbing to beat the band. A masacre was looming. Something had to be done. The prison chiefs knew it.

  I woke up in the morning to the shouts of the luceros. ‘Levántate, Levántate.’ (‘Get up, get up.’) Men stood up from the sea of bodies in the cell. I sat up, got on my knees and rolled up my colchoneta. Afterwards, we all gathered out in the yard waiting for the número. Some were still sleeping while sitting on paint tins, dozing. A lucero walked around slapping them with a knife on the head. If you missed your number it pissed off the guards. They might retaliate with a wing search. That would piss off the jefe, who might call you for a ‘light’ and a session with a baseball bat.

  I sat there fighting sleep, listening for the familiar words: for the garita to shout ‘verdes’ (National Guard troops) or ‘aguas’ (cops) before scurrying off to sit down on a bucket with the rest of us for the headcount. But they never came.

  Mobile phones started ringing. Bosses spoke rapidly. A torrent of Spanish bounced around the yard. ‘Troops,’ said Roberto, next to me. ‘The army is coming.’

  ‘This sounds like heavy shit,’ said Eddy. ‘I’ve never seen them not come in and do the headcount like clockwork in the morning. Something’s going on.’ He listened in to the bosses on the phones to lags in other wings. ‘There’s a shit storm coming. One of them says there are three or four army trucks parked at the prison gate. They weren’t there last night.’

  I braced myself. I didn’t know what was coming.

  The heavy drone of machine-gun fire exploded. Muffled shots from inside the jail, like the sound of a drill boring into the ground at a distance. My stomach tightened. ‘Jesus, what’s going on out there?’ I asked.

  ‘I think it’s the army,’ said Silvio, ‘moving in on the wing. I don’t like this.’

  I stood up from the paint tin I was sitting on. Nobody knew what to do; we were standing around looking at each other. Heads ducked in case bullets whizzed down from above into the yard. I walked into the hallway by the cells. I heard the thud of boots in the passageway outside and felt butterflies in my stomach.

  ‘There’s going to be gas next, this is what they do,’ said Eddy, ‘they’re going to storm us.’ He was a tough guy, but even he looked edgy. This was bad. ‘Get something to cover your eyes with.’ I heard him, but the words didn’t sink in. I didn’t know what to do – I just followed the others and ran into the cells. Billy slipped a baseball cap on and ran over and put on the runners he’d left in a corner, dumping his flip-flops. It was the fastest I ever saw him move. I had on jeans, a T-shirt and runners.

  ‘What do we need shoes and that on for?’ I said to him.

  ‘We might end up being taken to the roof.’

  Shots rang out, a poot-poot sound. A grey cylinder the shape and size of a Coke can landed in the hallway. Smoke billowed out like dry ice pumping into a nightclub. I ran into the toilet at the back of the cell with Billy and Silvio. It was poky and looked like it would give better cover. I stood there looking out into the cell. I watched a lucero run over, pick up the gas canister and put it into a black plastic bin bag. Another landed at the other end of the hallway. One inmate ran over and doused it with a bucket of water. It did nothing. Moron, I thought, it was a gas canister not a flame thrower.

  Dozens of canisters were fired into the wing from all directions, shooting in through bars from outside in the passageway. A haze of smoke gathered like a thick fog rising.

  I stood there not knowing what to do. ‘Down, down,’ shouted Eddy. ‘Get down.’ I got onto my knees on the floor in the toilet. The smoke rose. A blanket of smog formed at the ceiling then slowly descended on us. I was in a panic and confused. Everyone was on their knees now in the cell, coughing and spluttering. Nina, the wing dog, was running around wagging her tail and barking. She thought it was a game and we were all playing doggy with her. She started yelping when the fumes got her.

  A gas canister suddenly pounded into the toilet and dropped beside me, smoke billowing into my face. I felt my chest tighten. I was sucking for oxygen but not getting any. I grabbed a T-shirt lying on the ground and covered my mouth. But it was useless. My chest heaved, my eyes bulged. I crawled to the toilet and stuck my head in the bowl. I didn’t know if I wanted to get sick or throw water on my face. My eyes were burning. I put my head deeper into the bowl. My breathing was getting slower and heavier. I lifted my head up and looked into the wing. I was dazed and felt I was losing consciousness. Through clouds of smoke I could make out bodies all over the ground, twisting, men rubbing at their eyes, coughing and grabbing their throats. I put my head back into the bowl. I was sure I was a goner, my last sight the bottom of a toilet.

  I heard something pounding at the wing door, then shouts. I lifted my head and looked over. Through the smoke I saw one of the bosses had opened the door. He wasn’t armed. They weren’t tooled up for a fight. ‘Vamos, vamos,’ (‘Let’s go, let’s go’) shouted th
e jefe. All I could think of was escaping from the smoke. I got to my feet, stumbled a bit, got my balance and ran for the door. Troops and cops were in the passageway. Gas masks on their faces. Eyes looked out through thick plastic helmets. Upper bodies bulky with bulletproof vests. Oxygen tanks on their backs like characters out of Ghostbusters, but with machine guns in hand.

  I ran forward, following the other lags. The smoke started to thin out as we approached the driveway at the entrance to the cell blocks. I followed the others up the stairs to the roof. National Guard troops shouted orders. I followed the others and stripped off my clothes, throwing them into a bundle. Men were still rubbing at their eyes, which were roaring red and weeping like scabby tomatoes. I felt my chest loosening up and my breathing clear. I ran over to where I saw other inmates from the Maxima wing spread out on the ground, naked, legs apart. Guards on the roof pushed us forward, shouting. I ran over to the others and lay down, putting my forehead to the ground and my hands on the back of my head.

  A soldier walked up and down between the lines of naked prisoners, prodding them with the barrel of his rifle. Some of the lags shouted ‘mama huevo’. The troops replied by slamming gun barrels into their backs, crashing down on their bodies. Gunfire crackled over our heads. I put my face back into the concrete. I felt cold metal around my rear end; a soldier was poking me now with the barrel of his gun, probably looking to see if I had a condom filled with cash up my ass, like many inmates did.

  Hours passed. The panic was gone, but I was getting tired and pissed off. The sun was blazing in the sky, too. I felt my head burning. It was obvious a search was going on in the cell blocks, but this was going on longer than usual.

  After a while the troops let us get on our feet to get our clothes. There was a massive bundle by the wall. Some 1,200 naked bodies of all shapes and sizes ran for the pile, goolies dangling and bellies wobbling. I rummaged through, found my jeans and T-shirt, got dressed quickly and slipped on my runners. I was running back to my spot on the ground when I saw Billy coming towards me.

  ‘You made it?’

  ‘Yeah, but this is some kip,’ he said.

  ‘Shithole.’

  He ran for his clothes and then I saw him lie down near me.

  Back on the ground I could see Maleta naked going down to the bundle of clothes. Now I knew why they called him Cuatro Culos (Four Asses). I’d never seen anything like it. His body was everywhere. He had four ass cheeks: two where they were supposed to be and two lumps of flab gathered together on his lower back that looked like another ass. He looked like a stuffed turkey. Some of the lads were giggling looking at him. No matter how bad things were you could still see the funny side, and the laugh helped lighten my mood a bit.

  Hours and hours passed. We lay there with our foreheads pressed into the ground. Billy wasn’t far behind me and we started talking, turning our faces towards each other. ‘Cunts, what’s this about? Up here for ages with no food or water. When’s it going to end? Where’s the humanitarian rights?’

  ‘I know. We must write to Nelson Mandela when we get out.’ He laughed.

  I waved my hand at the troops to take a leak. I was bursting. A guard waved me over to where some of the lags were pissing against a wall; others were down on their hunkers dumping into plastic bags in front of 1,200 men.

  Time ticked away. Blue skies gave way to dusk. We must have been there for eight hours. No food, no water. My tongue was stuck to the bottom of my mouth from the dryness. My belly ached with hunger. We had had no breakfast, nothing.

  The troops suddenly started shouting. ‘Vayanse.’ (‘Go, go.’) We were finally getting up. I got to my feet and descended into the prison, down into the wing.

  Maxima had been given a good search. Lids had been lifted off buckets, stuff moved around – but the wing wasn’t wrecked like the last time. This had been a more precise search, probably done with metal detectors scanning the walls for guns. Fidel called a ‘light’ and we all had to go into the yard while they checked their weapons stockpile in the cells. They came out later with only a couple of guns and knives, not the usual big arsenal. I reckoned they’d suffered heavy losses – wiped out of just about everything: knives, cash, drugs, the whole lot.

  ‘Another special causa now,’ said Billy, sighing, ‘I bet you.’

  I put my hand up to my head. It was aching, burnt from eight hours under the tropical sun. My fingers nearly sizzled when I touched the spot where my hair was thin. The Venos were mostly dark and weren’t hit badly by the sun. Eddy, though, who was pale, was in a bad way. The backs of his legs were roaring red. The next day it was worse. They went all yellow and bubbly, like a cheese and tomato pizza hot out of the oven. They later started cracking with pus weeping out of them. He was walking around like Frankenstein’s monster, slowly moving one foot in front of the other so his legs wouldn’t crack altogether, his face grimacing. Eddy never complained, though; he was a hardy chap.

  Not only had the bosses been wiped out of most of their guns, I suspected their cash had been lifted too. I was sure they were broke. I saw this as an opportunity to get my hands on a bed. There were about 35 bunks and singles, which were coveted by the jefe, his henchmen and favourite inmates, such as Vampy, who tooled them with DIY guns and knives. It wasn’t about being able to fork out cash for a bed, it was about waiting for someone to leave or die. But I saw an empty bunk in Cell 1. I was sure the boss would jump at a chance to get some cash. I got on Billy’s case to get him to sell the bed space.

  ‘Billy, it’s the perfect time to push him on it.’

  ‘OK, let’s go.’

  Fidel was sitting in his usual place: lying on his bed watching TV. Carlos was on the floor doing push-ups. Billy started speaking. I could only make out cama, bed. ‘He says he’ll have a talk about it, let’s go outside.’ I knew they wouldn’t want to give a gringo mama huevo a bed, but they needed cash. The jefe stood up and the three of us walked into the yard and sat down. Billy spoke to Fidel again. ‘He says you can have a bed, but you’ll have to pay – and a lot.’

  ‘How much?’ I watched Fidel shrug and smile, thinking it’d be some ridiculous sum I could never pay.

  ‘One million bolos, he says,’ said Billy. About 200 euro. I knew I had it.

  ‘One million, OK.’ I lifted up a small pouch hanging from a necklace on my chest – a Hungarian inmate we called Peter Pan had made it from a shoelace threaded through a jeans pocket. I had kept my cash from selling the coke in the past, and my home brew. I started pulling notes out of the necklace, all neatly folded.

  Fidel’s eyes widened. No prisoner would normally have that kind of cash.

  I handed him the notes and he started counting, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘There you go,’ I said, handing him the last few bills.

  ‘He says OK, let’s go,’ said Billy. Billy was happy to stick with the floor. Organising things wasn’t one of his strong skills.

  We walked back into Cell 1 and Fidel walked me over to the empty bunk, pointing at the top one. ‘Es tuya,’ (‘It’s yours’) he said.

  I climbed up and dropped onto the mattress. It was a different world. I had a view down to Fidel’s telly. I now didn’t have to sit in the yard all day. Life was looking up a bit in Los Teques. For now. I heard the other Veno lags say, ‘Gringo: chico, luca, chico, luca,’ a colloquial phrase they used meaning ‘rich kid’, thinking I’d had a stroke of good luck with the boss to wangle a bed – even if I was paying big bucks for it. I could probably get a goose-feather mattress at home for the same cash – not a smelly bunk bed.

  * * *

  The pizza topping on Eddy’s legs looked like ninth-degree burns. He should have been hospitalised. But no one in the clínica thought so, and they just gave him some useless cream. A few days later he was temporarily let go from his job in the kitchen. He was on the shift that cooked for the prison staff; a cop saw the pus weeping from his legs in shorts and pulled up the kitchen boss about it. They didn’t want him cooking their food. I
couldn’t see why – it wasn’t like they would dip their bread into his legs.

  * * *

  I was glad of the bed. I needed it. My back ached in the mornings and for most of the rest of the day from months sleeping all night on a thin cushion on the ground. My bones were sticking into me all night, worse as time went on, and I was getting thinner. How much weight I was losing I had no idea. My jeans told me I was slimmer, though. They were a 34-in. waist and fitted me comfortably before I got locked up in Venezuela. Now I used a piece of plastic cord as a belt to keep them up. The bland diet of porridge, rice and beans was taking its toll on my body.

  For weeks I’d seen a group of inmates beavering away with hammers, chisels, drills and welders in the back of Cell 3. They were building a toilet. Soon after the gas attack it was done. I walked in. I looked around, impressed with the set-up: a mirror, a proper wash basin, two urinals, a toilet pot and a tiled floor. All in the honour of the familia visits, of course. It was the first time I’d seen a mirror since Macuto. I’d been shaving with the power of touch for months. I walked over to the mirror, curious about what I looked like. ‘Jesus,’ I shouted out loud. I started working my fingers around my face, nudging it. My skin was tight on my face. The jowls I’d had hanging around my chin were gone. Not that I’d been fat, but I’d a bit of weight, a Ned Kelly from the few pints and bit of a rounded, fuller face. ‘Fucking hell,’ I said out loud again. I was shocked. I’d had my head shaved a few days before and had a couple of days’ stubble on my face. I thought I looked like my da – and he was 77. About nine months in prison had put decades on me. I was horrified. I didn’t know the man who looked back at me.