The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (33 page)

We walked out onto the roof. Dance music pumped out of giant speakers the size of wardrobes. Multicoloured lights twirled in a collage of colours: purples, blues, reds, yellows, all spinning and streaming out to the night sky. A DJ was spinning discs at a turntable. Bodies grooved to reggaeton music, crude pop songs with jungle rhythms. A mass of limbs grooved. Hips swinging. Shoulders shaking.

The National Guard troops were up in the watchtower, machine guns at hand. They didn’t seem bothered that hundreds of the prisoners were partying away on the roof. A typical Saturday night in a Venezuelan jail. I suppose if any trouble broke out they could just open fire and pick off their targets like shooting at alien invaders in a video game. There was barbed wire coiled around 30-foot-high fences around the perimeter. Nobody was going anywhere anyway.

As well as a disco, the inmates had also turned the roof into a place to bed down for the night. A rope was hung across the entire width of the roof, about 100 ft across. The prisoners then tied other ropes off this main rope and cordoned off little areas with curtains. It looked like a giant open-air hospital ward. Here they put their colchonetas on the ground and spent the night sleeping there with their missus. On the right beside the football pitch there was even a four-man tent set up.

I stood there taking in the whole sight: murderers, bank robbers and kidnappers, all with guns, all coked up and boozing. In my gut I knew this was going to go sour. ‘I don’t like it one little bit, lads,’ I said. ‘This could get messy. All you need is a row breaking out and the boyos pull out their Uzis and start blasting.’ I didn’t actually see any guns on show, but I knew they were close by.

‘Come on, Pauly, it’ll be grand,’ said Billy. ‘We’ll just stay for a while.’ We sat down on the ground, our backs to the wall by the basketball court. We smoked a bit of weed, snorted a few lines. It loosened the tongue and we chatted for hours. The entertainment was good, though. The place was pumping. Inmates and their girlfriends were hopping around and doing twirls and twists like professional salsa dancers. Dancing was like breathing to the Venezuelans; it was just natural. I looked over at the DJ spinning discs on a turntable. He was dressed in a shiny tracksuit and had his hair in short dreadlocks, which were poking out of a baseball cap he wore back to front. ‘He’s one of the top DJs in Caracas,’ said Eddy. ‘I heard them talking about him during the week.’

‘He wouldn’t come cheap,’ I said. ‘I suppose we’re paying for him.’

‘No doubts about it. Right out of the causa.’

The other boys were all fired up about organising their own ‘room’ on the roof. ‘This is deadly,’ said Billy. ‘We could get a tent in and crash out here on the Saturdays. Get stoned and do a few lines and then a few feet of a walk back to the tent to sleep. Better than the floor of the yard.’

Dieter was up for it too. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘great. Let’s do it.’

A light rain started and swept across the roof. I enjoyed the dampness on my face. The rain was rare enough.

* * *

The next Saturday the disco was called off. The cell-block jefes probably couldn’t get a hold of any big-name DJs. They were probably on another leg of a tour of the country’s jails. The bosses put their thinking caps on and decided to have an indoor disco in the Special wing. It kicked off at 10 p.m. that Saturday. We went up to the roof, which had a bird’s-eye view down into the entrance to the wing. I couldn’t see in properly; it was dark and strobe lights were flickering. Billy was standing beside me, peering down.

‘I bet there’s going to be literally murder there tonight,’ I said.

‘I know. Looks dodgy,’ said Billy. ‘Wouldn’t touch it.’ The whole concept of a disco in a wing was mind-boggling. You knew there had to be trouble. A cocktail of booze, coke and guns – it was a ticking time bomb.

Billy, Dieter and a few others had set up a tent on the roof. Even though there was no Saturday Night Fever that evening, all the families and partners of the inmates still came in for the
pernocta
, the sleepover. It was about 11 at night and I left them to it and went down to the gym to sleep on the floor.

The next morning I was sitting at my laptop writing away, catching up on my diaries. I was writing about the disco and how I’d expected a gun battle to kick off but it hadn’t. There was word there might be trouble because of a row that had broken out in the Special-wing disco the night before. But nobody knew what it was about. Billy still hadn’t come back from his camping adventure up on the roof and was probably asleep in the tent, so I couldn’t ask him. There was never trouble during the visits, so if gunfire started it would only happen after the visitors went home at 4 p.m. That’s what I wrote in my diary. There were now about 1,500 inmates in the prison, and another 500 or so visitors, we guessed, who came in every Saturday night. The jail was heaving.

Suddenly a volley of shots burst out. The sounds came from the roof. Another round went off. The gunfire was coming from the Special wing, which was above our wing. There was a stampede in the Maxima yard below the gym mezzanine. Women and children screamed, racing for the cover of the cells. The building rumbled. Everybody was fleeing. Thousands of feet on the move. I bolted behind a weights machine. More gunfire. I put my laptop down on the floor and kept my head low. Eddy was next to me with his arm around a girl who was in visiting him. She was crying and shaking.

From where I was crouched I could hear inmates jumping from the roof down onto the yard area of the Special wing, on the floor above Maxima. Then I heard shooting from higher up. I was sure it was coming from the roof. Billy, was he still there?

More gunfire erupted. A body sailed through the air up above. I watched it fall like it was in slow motion. The top of his head was pointed towards me. He didn’t make a sound or have his hands out to protect himself. He looked already dead. His body landed with a dull thud on the ground by the door into our cells, a good 20-ft drop from above. Blood splattered out onto the wall where the top of the inmate’s head crashed. Women visitors screamed in the wing.

‘Paul, we gotta get out of here,’ shouted Eddy over the gunfire. ‘Into the cells.’

‘I know.’ Another burst of shots was fired from above. I covered my head with my hands. Bullets slammed through the roof of the gym. Jesus. After a minute I looked up. Little holes had been formed in the flimsy corrugated-iron roof. Eddy was right: we had to get out of here. I was sure we weren’t being targeted. They were stray bullets but still deadly.

The yard was empty now. A lucero appeared at the door into the cells and waved us over. ‘
Ven, ven.
’ (‘Come, come.’)

‘Eddy, you go. Take the chica inside. I’ll take my chances here.’

‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘Come with us.’ The girl had her head down resting on his arm, making gentle sobs.

‘
Ven, ven,
’ the lucero shouted again.

‘I’m going, Paul. I have to get her inside.’

‘Go, I’ll be all right.’

Eddy dashed down the steps with the girl, almost dragging her on the run through the yard like she was a rag doll in his arms. There was about 20 ft to cover to the cell-block door. No way was I running that. The gunfire was blazing again from the Special wing above. Bullets sounded like they were coming from all directions. Stray shots pinged around the yard. The lucero was still calling at me. I waved him off. I’d probably be in trouble for going against their orders. I didn’t care. I wasn’t running through a hail of bullets.

I crouched down on the ground and started typing on my laptop. What was I doing? My senses were alive with fear. I wanted to capture the gunfire and the panic in words. A war correspondent on the front line: ‘Paul Keany reports from the battlefield’. The bullets were now raining down on the corrugated-iron roof. It sounded like a clatter of hailstones. Jesus. No. A few pierced through, turning it into a colander, but most missed. I was sure the shelter was still safer than attempting the run.

An hour later the gunfire was still blazing down from the Special wing. What was it about? Nobody started trouble on a visit day. Honour thy familia: that was the rule. It didn’t make sense. And Billy – was he caught up in the gunfire? Had he been killed? What would I tell Father Pat? What would I tell his parents?

I had done more than enough writing and closed my laptop. I had to get out of here. I knew it. Usually the gunfire went on for a few minutes – never a couple of hours. Soon the shooting slowed into a few sporadic volleys. I still wasn’t running the 20 ft to the wing. There was an area below the gym mezzanine where the prisoners sat behind the curtains during visits. It had solid walls and a concrete roof. I’d be safer there. I hid my laptop under a towel on the ground and set off.

I ran down the stairs. My eyes darted up to the roof. No gun barrels. I put my head down and ran. At the bottom of the steps I made a run behind the curtains.

There were about 20 lags in there who had been trapped since the gunfire started. One of them jumped back when he saw me. They thought I was a shooter. William, a South African, looked at me. ‘Jesus,’ he shouted, his eyes wide with fright. ‘What are you trying to do, scare us to death? And where were you?’ The colour had drained from his face. The Venos were all on their feet, pacing back and forth. One held a cross that hung from his neck and was whispering a prayer to himself.

‘Up in the gym,’ I said.

‘I’m staying in here,’ he said. ‘The run into the cells is too far. It’s too dangerous without cover.’

‘I know, I’m doing the same. But the shooting, it seems to have stopped.’

‘They’ll be at it again,’ he said. ‘Wait for the storm.’ Willy had been locked up for four years. He’d been through a few gun battles.

I was bursting to empty my bowels. I’d been holding it for hours. I ran into the toilet in an inner room beside us. I sat on the pot. Minutes later more gunfire crackled again from up above. I heard bullets ping around the yard. There was a stampede into the toilet. A solid mass of bodies. One of them knocked me over and I fell off the pot. ‘Jaysus,’ I shouted, ‘what are you at?’ They were running for cover behind me, in a narrow area in between the toilet back wall and a further wall behind. The bullets flying around the yard could easily ricochet through the curtains and then it would be game over.

I got up off the ground, cleaned myself and pulled up my trousers.

‘Paul, get in here, now,’ said William. I ran around and stood with them, my hands holding onto the rough concrete of the wall. We were all squashed in. The fear was palpable. About 20 men were breathing heavily. Jittery. Hearts pounding. I was crouched down in a dark, damp toilet, the smell of the leavings of men in my nostrils. It wasn’t a situation I’d ever expected to find myself in in my life.

Another hour passed and the volleys of fire died down. Myself and William and the Venos got out of the toilet and went back to standing beside the buckets behind the curtain. ‘I think we should try to get out of here now,’ said William. ‘It’s our best chance. There have been no shots for a good half an hour.’

‘
Es seguro,
’ (‘It’s safe’) shouted a lucero at the yard door. ‘
Correte!
’ (‘Run!’)

William pulled back the curtain slightly and peeked out. ‘Leg it,’ he said. He bolted off towards the cells and I ran behind him almost like his shadow. My eyes darted up to the roof. No sign of gun barrels peeping over. Another few feet. I skipped over the body on the ground. The guy was covered in a sheet with red blotches. Bare legs, all twisted, sticking out of blue shorts. I almost jumped through the wing door. I put my head forward like a sprinter running across a finish line.

Inside, my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the cells. A woman in her 20s was sitting on the side of a bed rocking a baby back and forth in her arms. A trail of mascara streaked from her eyes. ‘When can we get out, when can we get out?’ the families were saying to the bosses. That was all I could hear. There was no sign of the cops. They were always the first to go missing when gunfire broke out. I saw Eddy sitting on the side of a bed with his arms around his girlfriend. She was bawling, her head snuggled into his shoulder. She was a fragile, petite girl, educated, with great English – one of the better girls Eddy met through a dating website.

‘You made it, mate,’ said Eddy. ‘I was worried. I had to go, couldn’t stay there.’

‘I know, don’t worry. I made my choice to stay.’

‘This is terrible.’ There was a moment of silence as he seemed to gather his thoughts. ‘It was mad. I was waiting to get out of the gym and boom-boom-boom.’

‘What about the lads up on the roof?’ I said. ‘I wonder if they’re all right.’

‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Ask the bosses. They’re all on the phones.’

‘No. I’m not talking to them.’ Even though the Maxima jefes weren’t involved in the shooting, to me most were the same class of vermin that had started the trouble. I looked at them pacing around, ears to their phones, chatting to bosses in other wings. They all had guns out in front of the visitors, like peacocks showing their plumes. One was walking around with a gun in each hand like he was Rambo; another I noticed had two grenades, each hanging by a thin string from the breast of his jacket. I thought we were more in danger from one falling off than any warring inmates in other wings.

Another hour passed. There was loud banging on the door. ‘
Abre, abre,
’ (‘Open, open’) shouted a voice from outside. Jesus, who’s that? Everybody jumped. The lookout man slid back the bolt. What’s he doing? I looked around, ready to run. A cop stood at the door, a pistol in his hand. Phew. They knew Maxima wasn’t behind any of the shoot-outs, because we were the workers’ wing. Most of the lags in Maxima had jobs in the jail, either in the kitchens or doing maintenance work such as hauling out rubbish, mopping floors and so on. In the other wings, most of them sat about doing nothing all day. The devil makes work for idle hands and all that. In the eyes of the prison officials, we in Maxima were the peaceful wing. The bosses in Maxima shot back if fired upon, but they didn’t go picking a gun battle. So I knew the cops weren’t looking to mete out any vengeance on us, thank God.