Snowing in Bali by Kathryn Bonella

dealers, musicians, politicians and journalists all came to sports nights there; stories were written about the refined water M3 used to wash luxury cars, but never the fact that M3 was a giant money laundry. Its owner, nicknamed Chino from his Chinese heritage, was Bali’s biggest drug boss, and regarded as the island’s Chinese mafioso.
    In Sunset Road, this guy had a fucking big place for tuning cars, you know pimping cars, Porsches, Mercedes, to make them more fast and furious. Chino was a champion of tuning cars, Indonesia champion five time, they take Porsche and pimp you know . . . neon lights, big wheels.
    â€“ Andre
    That place was only to wash money, make clean; his ecstasy factory was in Java.
    â€“ Rafael
    Chino and Rafael had clicked as soon as they met and quickly forged a business relationship, with Chino insisting Rafael sell exclusively to him. Their preferred place to talk was at sea. The two would meet at Chino’s beachfront jet-ski rental spot in Nusa Dua, jump onto powerful jet-skis and tear way out, then spin to an abrupt stop, inches apart. They’d cut the motors, leaving only the sounds of water slapping against the hulls.
    In the distance they could see the curved stretch of Nusa Dua beach, with its many hotels and crowds of tourists. Out here, the water gave them privacy, creating the ideal boardroom – quiet with no bugs or risk of anything but fish overhearing. Using the sand and surf as his office had earned Rafael his nickname ‘Beach Boy’ among the island’s drug dealers.
    This day, exhilarated after their wild dash out, they were ready to talk tactics, and figure out the best way of using Chino’s Porsche to traffic a few kilos of blow to Australia. His car had just won a tuning competition in Jakarta and was being sent to a motor show in Sydney. This was a slam-dunk for a creative drug trafficker – a waste not to use it. Rafael’s creative brain lit up with ideas. Undulating on their jet-skis, they agreed the best strategy was to fill the Porsche’s spoiler with coke and cover it in resin, ensuring it would emit no smell.
    It worked without a hitch. Chino flew to Sydney with his team and a spare spoiler and simply switched them, selling the 3 kilos of coke to one of his many connections and earning a quick $450,000.
    Known as the world’s multi-billion-dollar glamour drug, coke’s array of euphemisms included snow, blow, Charlie, white dust and nose candy. Given the many borders it had to cross to get to Sydney, prices often skyrocketed to $250,000 a kilo. And using the police method for working out the value of a bust to trumpet it to the press, Chino’s 3 kilos in Sydney would be worth well over a million dollars in ‘street value’ – assuming each gram sold for about $350 and the 3 kilos would be cut and mixed into 6 kilos.
    Chino was au fait with Sydney, given it was a drug bosses’ mecca on his doorstep, and often spent months at a time there, slinging cash to an Australian consulate official to give him visas in his rotating false passports. He set up an ecstasy factory in Sydney’s beachside suburb of Maroubra so he could feed the voracious Australian market without crossing international borders. An Australian car wash café chain gave him the inspiration for his Bali car wash.
    Chino’s life in drugs started in Bali in the early 1990s when he was invited by a friend to join a rock band. He was in his early twenties and moved from Java to Bali, making $15 a night playing keyboards to tourists in pubs and private clubs. He played alongside guitarist Manto and bassist Putu Indrawan, once both stars in the Bali band, Harley Angel, critiqued by the Jakarta Post as ‘arguably the best rock band Bali has ever produced’. The guys covered songs by bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Chino’s favourite was Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’