The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (9 page)

* * *

That night we had a few more bodies in the inn. I heard the door to the yard open and then voices. It was unusual for anyone to visit at this hour in the late evening. In stepped three fellas. One was a Mexican, the other was Venezuelan and the last was a guy from Costa Rica who spoke good English. ‘Hi,’ he said to me. He was chubby with a receding hairline, a jolly guy who I put down as about 40.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked, and we chatted. He said he had been driving around with his car laden with coke after a pick-up along the coast when the cops swooped in.

‘They were everywhere and came in shooting; someone must have tipped them off I had the drugs,’ he said. His plans to board a flight to Holland later that night with some of the booty in his case had been thwarted.

Mario looked at myself and Costa Rica speaking English and had a brainstorm, seizing on the fact that there was another English speaker in the wing. Nearly two weeks had passed and he was still trying to squeeze me for cash, since not a cent had landed in his account. He spoke to Costa Rica, who interpreted for me.

‘The boss says you are to call your family, he still hasn’t got any money from you to Western Union. He says I make the call and give you the phone and I listen.’

‘OK,’ I shrugged, knowing there was nothing else I could do.

Mario handed Costa Rica his mobile phone. I watched him dial my parents’ number, which was written on a piece of paper. ‘Hallo, I am phoning from jail in Venezuela,’ he said to whoever answered. I hoped it wasn’t my mother, worried a gang of
asesinos
standing in a firing line were about to turn me into a watering can. ‘I have Paul here and he is to talk to you,’ said Costa Rica. Mario, Nasal Voice and all the newcomers leaned forward to listen in on the drama. Of course, none of them understood. Costa Rica handed me the phone.

‘Hallo.’ It was Mick, my nephew.

‘Mick, it’s Paul.’

‘Alreet, Uncle Pauly, but what’s going on?’

‘Everything’s OK, but just listen and write this down. These guys in jail are trying to get money out of me,’ I said. Now, Costa Rica started reading off the bank account numbers from Mario’s scrap of paper. I called them out.

‘OK, Pauly, I have that.’

‘Hold on a second, Mick.’

Costa Rica started talking to Mario, who started nodding what looked like approval. ‘He says all OK.’

‘Mick?’ I spoke back into the phone.

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t bother sending it anyway.’ I spoke in fast English, which I could see even Costa Rica didn’t get. Anyway, he’d cottoned on quickly that the boss was trying to extort money from me. And I doubted he’d tell the boss my last flurry of words.

‘What’ll I do with the details?’ said Mick.

‘Throw them in the bin.’

‘But will you be all right?’

‘I’m a survivor. You know I am.’ I could see I had to be in here.

* * *

The fat guard who’d poked his finger in my rear end stood at the cell door saying something to me about ‘
mañana
’.

‘Tomorrow, my friend,’ said Costa Rica, ‘it looks like you go. To the big prison.’ With Costa Rica interpreting, I got a bit of lowdown from Fulvio about Los Teques. That’s where they said I was going. ‘There are many Europeans speaking English, Fulvio says. But it is very violent, a very strict and violent place.’ Oh no, I thought. Fulvio took another sip of Coke and continued, Costa Rica interpreting his words. ‘There is one special wing for the gringos. You can stay in this wing and get a job and be treated OK . . . and a woman director there is trying new things, mixing the Venezuelans with the gringos.’

I looked over at Nasal Voice. One of the guards was speaking to him and looking at me. Nasal Voice interpreted: ‘He say tomorrow, go, to big prison. I tell you I no like big prison. Bad place. Bad people.’ Mario looked up from racing his ice-cream truck and gave me a disapproving look. After three weeks he hadn’t received a dime from me through Western Union. He must have known by now I’d played him with the calls. His face then softened into a smile. He spoke and started pointing at me. I guessed it was something like ‘you have me’, knowing it was game over with me in his bid to win the lottery.

The next morning it was confirmed. The fat guard walked into the poky cell where I was sitting on the stone floor chatting with Fulvio. ‘Gringo, go, go.’ I knew what he meant, so stood up and gathered my few bits and pieces. I shook hands with Fulvio. I wondered if I would see him again.

I pulled on my Irish rugby shirt with the logo of three small shamrocks on the breast. Maybe the ‘luck o’ the Irish’ would work today? I picked up my sole possessions: a toiletry bag with a toothbrush and ‘talc’ powder. The guard handcuffed me and escorted me outside. I didn’t know what to expect of the prison that awaited me. I presumed it’d be much like what I’d seen here. I’d be wrong.

A ‘bus’ was waiting in the yard: an army truck with rugged tyres and ‘
Militar
’ written on the side. I stepped on. There were two guards cradling machine guns sat at the back.

‘
Hola,
’ said a girl, smiling, sitting handcuffed in one of the seats. I picked out that her name was Maria. She had a nice figure but a worn face, rough around the eyes with wrinkles like the grooves of a 7-inch record. Each one marking the hardships of her life, I imagined. There were also two male prisoners in separate seats. All spoke among themselves and with Maria. I sat there breathing in salt-tinged air, looking through the window as the truck roared through dusty side streets before heading out on the main coastal road.

After about two or three hours and a slow climb upwards for a few kilometres, the bus stopped on a ridge. Maria stood up from her seat, then bent over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and to the others too. She’d bonded with us all on our journey into the next stage of our lives imprisoned in Venezuela. I watched her being escorted off the bus, walking with a sense of surrender – a woman who had given up whatever fight she’d had. I wondered how many guards would rape her, pounding into her, foreheads gleaming with sweat. Another groove notched up around Maria’s eyes. More like an LP now than a 7-inch single.

SOLDIERS STOOD IN WATCHTOWERS NEXT TO HEAVY MACHINE GUNS PROPPED up on tripods. A high wall stretched around the grey building topped with coils of barbed wire. A barrio of crudely built houses to the right. Tin roofs pinned down with bricks and old tyres.

This was the view from the military bus. It rumbled along a narrow road where piles of rubbish had gathered along the edge and plastic bags flapped on bushes. I was looking out the front, then swivelling my head around to catch glimpses through the dirty window at the back. Barbed wire. Soldiers. It had to be the jail, but I wasn’t sure.

The bus braked to a halt. A line of traffic was held up behind. Horns beeped like a brass band warming up. The driver didn’t care and took his time doing a three-point turn. Steel gates opened up at the entrance to the building and we took a sharp right into a narrow driveway. When we stopped I could see the prison a bit better. What struck me first was that it didn’t look that big. It was a wide, squat building with two floors. The ‘ya-ya-ya-hoohhh’ wails echoed out. The prison cry I was now familiar with. I felt like McMurphy in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. But this place didn’t look like any hospital behind bars. I didn’t see myself doing time here in comfort, the only catch being I’d spend my days with loonies.

I looked up and saw barred windows stretched across a floor above. Arms and hands dangled out. Hundreds of faces were pressed up to the bars, eyes peering down at us. Whistling started, then piped up. The new fish had arrived. We were probably a welcome source of relief from their boredom.

A group of soldiers stood ahead in the driveway. National Guard troops. A guard barked orders. I followed Tubby and the other prisoner. We stepped down off the bus. The guard uncuffed us and we were shoved into an office in a little concrete hut with a dirty-green tin roof. The officer read names from a list. ‘Pa-uwww-l Keany,’ he pronounced my name.

‘
Sí,
’ I said, and he ticked a document on a clipboard in his hand.

The other two inmates were ordered one by one down into a narrow alleyway behind the office. I stood in the office, clutching my plastic bag. I had butterflies in my stomach. But I was more worried about the guard finding coke in the talc bottle than the prison.

It was my turn. I copied the others and stripped off, scattering my clothes into a loose pile next to me. I no longer cared about being naked in front of guards. The guard then ordered me down the alley. It was strewn with rubbish and stank of piss. Bend over. Legs apart. He gave me a good look over. No finger in the rear end, or worse. I then felt a shove and stood up. The guard gave me a quick nod back to my clothes. I put on my trousers. He then reached into my pocket, took a bundle of scrunched-up notes and put them in his own. Bastard.

A cop rattled keys. A barred gate opened. A cop escorted us through a dark passageway into the jail. Prisoners were walking around dressed in shorts and vests. Blank stares. Eyes glazed. All like zombies. Now I was really feeling like McMurphy. Where was Nurse Ratched?

In an office to the right there were about ten men – well turned out in pleated trousers and smart shirts. All seated at desks. Prison admin staff, I thought. I later found out they were inmates, but high up the prisoner pecking order, and mostly gay.

The three of us stood there – me, Tubby and the other, who said he was ‘
colombiano
’. A foreigner, like me, but he was closer to home. Another eight or nine inmates stood near the wall, some hunched down on the floor. It looked like they were being processed as well. One of them was a young guy on his hunkers, singing non-stop and whistling. It was like a bird call. He was blind, or at least visually impaired, his eyes half closed, eyelashes flickering. Everyone was cracking up laughing at him – the office workers, the whole lot. They acted like they knew him – he was probably a repeat offender. I couldn’t make out if he was mad or just didn’t care about going to jail.

The other inmates filed out after being processed. Fingerprinted and photographed. Now it was our turn. I stepped forward with the other two. One of the admin boys yapped away in Spanish. I shrugged. Tubby and the Colombian were probably giggling to themselves at the gringo – facing up to eight years in jail in a country where he didn’t speak the lingo. They’d be right to. I picked out that the wing we’d be jailed in was ‘Maxima’. Tubby’s face dropped. Jesus, why? ‘Maxima’ must be some sort of maximum-security wing for hardened criminals and Pablo Escobar-style drug lords. Good God, what horrors lay ahead?

We stayed in the office for hours and hours, waiting – for what I didn’t know. Later, a worker gave us a packet of plain crackers and a
cafecito
– a small plastic cup of sweet black coffee. I thought this place mightn’t be so bad after all. I was wrong.

After a while a European inmate walked into the office. His name was Peter, a German in his 40s. ‘Hi,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘I was told to come down and be your interpreter.’ He had a couple of days’ stubble, wore glasses and had a balding head of grey hair, like a horseshoe shape marked onto the top of his head.

‘None of these fucks speak English,’ I said.

‘I know, I’ve been told to help.’ The admin guy started talking to Peter. ‘What colour are your eyes?’ said Peter.

‘Blue,’ I said.

Peter translated, ‘
Azul.
’ And then the usual questions I was used to: ‘What’s your name?’ It was more like getting signed up for a dating site than enrolling for eight years in jail. ‘What about your weight, what is it?’ A lot less than it was three weeks ago, but I decided not to say that.

‘Thirteen stone,’ I said.

‘Height?’ said Peter. He seemed to be enjoying the diversion in his day.

There was nothing to measure or weigh me, it was all a joke.

‘How old are you?’

‘Forty-five,’ I said. And so on. I was then fingerprinted and photographed. Then the guy firing off questions spoke to Peter. It looked like he was telling him to push off.

When we stepped into the passageway, one of the prison guards, who were all dressed in navy-blue uniforms, spoke to him. He nodded at my dark-blue slacks. They hadn’t been quite pressed and clean since the day I’d walked into Simón Bolívar airport more than three weeks ago. Now they were scruffy with dust marks and crumpled. ‘Hey, man, he says you have to give up your trousers later. They’re too like what the cops wear,’ said Peter.

‘What?’ I said. I thought he was joking.

‘You can’t wear dark clothes,’ he said. ‘They’re afraid one of us might escape dressed in them at night.’ Great, I thought, I’m only in the door and the guards have lifted my cash and my trousers. ‘I’ll see you around,’ he then said, and left. He looked sad to go. And although I was dying to know more about the jail, I wasn’t in the mood for chit chat.

Myself and the two other new fish were led back into the dark passageway outside. More lost, tortured souls wandered around: inmates with vacant eyes, probably off their heads on drugs. We stopped and waited for a tall barred gate to open. A guard stood up, a truncheon hanging from his belt. Keys rattled in the lock. A passageway lay ahead. I could smell dampness. We walked through. There were three doors close together at the end of the corridor. Eyeballs peered out of spyholes and followed me, like you see in paintings in haunted-house movies. On the right at the end of the passageway, the guard banged out against the door with his baton. Three hollow knocks. An eyeball peeped out at us through a spyhole; then another at the bottom of the door. I heard a bolt sliding back. The door opened, and we stepped into a wing.

The guard left. The door shut behind us.

No turning back.

It looked like I was in some kind of recreation area in a narrow hall about 20 ft long. A high, bare concrete ceiling. A battered fridge in one corner. Guys sat around on wooden benches and stools watching a blaring telly. Daylight streamed in from a door at the other end of the hall. There were laughs and jokes at us, the new arrivals. One inmate ran up, grabbed the plastic bag from my hand and ran off. I didn’t take the bait and chase him, even though I was conscious I had a talc bottle full of coke that I could deal out for a few quid. Anyway, my cool-headedness might be a life-saver in here. Minutes later the thug came and gave it back to me, looking half sorry.