Of Pisco and Peru: Iquitos Pt. 11
“Uh... um, I’m pretty new at this.”
“It’s just a vaporizer. I got some fresh balloons as well.” He carefully reaches over the mess and pulls up a large balloon with a stick figure stamp with a weird scowl.
“Uhhh... I’m not sure how that works.”
A smile. There’s something familiar about him, right up to the face. I always have trouble with faces.
He puffs away on his joint like it’s the finest Cuban cigar. “Suit yourself. Magdalena tells me you’re looking for an Ayahuasca trip.”
“Is it safe? I’ve heard people have died.”
He looks at the joint twirling between his cadaver-like fingers. I can’t place him. He’s like a Colonel Kurtz-type who got lost in the Amazon and was forced to survive off LSD-laced weed.
“Aye. One guy died in a motorcycle accident after a ceremony. Another, tobacco poisoning...”
I tilt my head.
“... another guy choked on his own vomit...”
Wait a minute. Wasn’t the light on in the other room? Did I turn it off?
“... another guy named Stevens, poor bastard. He did a private Ayahuasca ceremony in his room. Around nine PM, this dude named Gomez left the group ceremony and went to Stevens’ room where he attacked him...”
Can’t be.
“According to witnesses, Gomez appeared “possessed”. It all came to a head in the kitchen. With Stevens fearing for his life...”
It’s ‘Troy.’
“He stabbed Gomez with a kitchen knife. Killed him dead right there on the floor.”
I take a gulp and fake a smile. “I’m guessing they ate out that night?”
He leans back in his chair and chuckles. “Don’t worry, they’ve been doing this for thousands of years. Getting in touch with their spiritual selves. All that crap.”
Searching through the tabletop leaf litter, he uncovers an ornate jewelry box the size of Leor’s son’s lunchbox. “Mind if I finish my breakfast? It’s the most important meal of the day, you know.”
I shrug. “Sure.” What a metamorphosis. From chrysalis into a malformed dung beetle.
“Anything to cut this nutmeg bender I’ve been on for the last three weeks.” Marcello opens the box, revealing... another box. “You know, between the smallpox and the violence, nine out of ten natives died during the conquest.”
With a mouthful of decayed teeth, he grins and opens it, revealing a smaller box, this one with a lock. “Over two-hundred-billion-dollars were sent back to Europe from the Americas. So, what’s a poor country like Peru to do? Excuse me.”
He pulls out a small key hidden in a turtle shell by my arm. “Most of the cocaine comes from regions where a farmhand earns less than ten dollars a day.”
Marcello fidgets until he finally unlocks the box.
“Cazzo!” After a bit of tugging, he takes out yet another box, the size of a cigarette pack. This one has a combo lock.
There’s clanging from the room next door. Is that furniture moving?
Raising his voice to get my attention. “It takes three to five days to backpack the coca paste to the traffickers. One hundred miles or more. High altitudes. Very dangerous.”
Marcello taps the mouth of a mannequin’s head on the table, and it opens. He grabs a small vial and a folded piece of paper.
“Armed gangs. Crooked policia. Even rival backpackers will steal their load. But for the poor farmhands, the gamble’s worth it. It’s like a lottery, really.”
He spreads some of the vial’s worth of cocaine on a small mirror, then snatches a pair of reading glasses off the mannequin’s head and works the numbers on the combination box.
“They might earn $150 to $400 per trip, depending on the load. The 11 pounds of coca paste are worth about $3,500 in Peru — and 16 times as much wholesale in Los Estados Unidos. As powdered cocaine, sold by the gram in New York City, it can fetch up to $250,000.”
It opens and he whips out a small leather pouch. Unzipping it, out comes a... black permanent marker. I tilt my head in disbelief.
“Most farmhands haven’t finished school. They don’t know they’re the vital first link in the drug-trafficking chain, all the way up to us hopelessly addicted assholes up North.”
He twists the permanent marker, revealing a hidden compartment with a small, glass snuff pipe.
“But living down here, I cut out the middle man.”
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