Original subtitles

Drug smugglers. I thought, I'm capable of this kind of thing.

I had no idea how dangerous it was.

You can't run.

You're stuck.

These men wanted to blow out these brains.

They're smeared handprints in blood.

The worst thing was watching a man die.

Bam.

Like a deer in headlights.

living with a girl I loved, and I was playing with the girl I loved, and I was

working with the girl I loved.

It seemed like a dream come true.

But on the inside, I felt like a failure.

You reach the age of 39, and you're still struggling.

We're only making a few hundred dollars a week.

Coming off stage, you're just David.

You're not anything special.

This pressure just builds up.

Things were getting tough financially. At some point, I had to pawn my sax.

That saxophone was my baby, basically, the one that my mom had bought for me,

first professional sax.

It was a very, very important piece of my soul.

To pawn it was a sign that we were truly, deeply in trouble.

After a while, I started noticing this guy, Melvin. He was always hanging

around, wearing a very fancy watch and gold and silk shirt, gorgeously dressed,

always looked like he had money.

One night, there was some cocaine placed under our case and wrapped up in a

tissue.

I thought, oh, this is where the money comes from.

As time went on, he would let little things drop.

I was curious.

He wasn't just a dealer. He would smuggle drugs for a living.

I would ask him, how do they do it?

Was it like they show you on TV?

Sometimes they follow it. Sometimes they wrap it to their body.

Or they put it in the lining of the suitcase.

He said he never had any problems.

He did.

Well, this is crazy, but I was intrigued.

I went round and round in my head about it.

I'm desperate. I need the money.

Look at that guy over there. He's doing way better than you.

I thought when push comes to shove, when the rubber hits the road, that I'm

capable of this kind of thing.

I could see myself doing it.

And I screwed up the guts to go over it.

Well, then, you know what we've been talking about?

Let's do it.

The plan was I would fly to Venezuela.

Free flight, free hotel room, vacation in the tropical climate.

I was going to pick up cocaine and then fly to Amsterdam.

They paid me $5 ,000 for three kilos.

What could possibly go wrong?

I had been planning this upcoming tour in Europe.

It was a chance to really take our life, like the bull by the horn, and start

anew and start afresh.

The day I was supposed to leave, Julie thought I was going to Europe to make

some arrangements for the tour, and that's exactly what I wanted her to

The truth was, that day, I was going to fly to Venezuela.

Julie had no idea what I was doing.

And that's the way I wanted it.

Bye, honey. I'm off to Europe.

Yeah, see you in 10 days.

When David left, it wasn't the fearful goodbye, like...

I know. I'll miss you. I won't see you for a week. It was like, yeah, go.

You know, I'll be there in a week and business as usual.

Deception is part of the business.

Correct. It's not like most airports I'm used to.

People all yelling at you. Can you take your bags to the taxi?

I was clutching my bag and my guitar. Don't touch my bag. Stay away from me.

So I stepped outside and the heat was unbelievable.

The airport is about three hours away from Caracas.

I didn't know this. I thought the airport was right next to the town.

We traveled on a two -lane blacktop.

After a couple of hours, I was still looking for the big town, and we're out

the middle of nowhere in the darkness.

The cab driver doesn't speak English, and I knew no Spanish.

I started thinking, what in the world is going on here?

I thought I was being kidnapped.

Suddenly, I was in the lights of Caracas.

Everything's all right.

I can breathe. I can breathe easily again.

We got to the hotel eventually.

I realized, oh, hell, I've left my hat in the cab. I turn around, I run.

I hardly ever looked in a mirror without that hat on my head. So when I left it

in the cab, I felt like I left behind a part of me.

That was the beginning of the stripping away process of leaving behind who I

was. I didn't know it at the time.

And if I had known it at the time, I would have just turned around and gotten

back on the plane and gone back home.

Melvin had said, There's a reservation at the hotel.

Don't worry.

There was no reservation.

Evans.

Evans. David Evans.

E -V -A -N -S. Evans.

Amigo. Amigo Melvin. Melvin.

I had to pay for the hotel myself.

Things were not going as planned. I was starting to get nervous.

The next day, the first thing I want to do is call Melvin.

What's supposed to happen?

I tried dialing straight out.

I tried dialing 9.

I tried dialing 0.

Nothing worked.

I had to use the payphone around the corner.

It's very loud, and it's very hot, and it's very dirty.

I'm a pale gringo. It's very hot, sun -baked country.

I felt very vulnerable.

When I finally got a hold of Melvin, he said, where have you been? I thought you

were lost.

He said, just sit tight for a few days. Someone will come to see you.

I just wanted to get it over with.

Melvin told me I was there on someone else's dime.

If I just left, if I didn't go through with this, he's out a lot of money.

He's going to come after me.

Four or five days, I had no word from anyone.

With nothing else to do, I was getting very anxious.

So I just had to calm myself down somehow.

Of course, the best way I know is a bottle of whiskey.

I just push down the doubts. I've never done this before. They've done it many

times before.

Maybe this is normal. Who am I to say?

Melvin's friend comes in with the ticket to Amsterdam.

He seemed to be very secretive and not very chatty. Not like Melvin at all. He

was all business.

I'll be in contact with you.

I was not reassured. I had to stay there just in case he came by.

This was another red flag.

I can't believe how stupid I was. When I look back now...

At all the red flags, at all the signals, all the things that should have

me run.

And I didn't.

The day that I

left for the airport was business as usual.

Took a cab, knowing that in 12 hours I would see David in Amsterdam.

He was going to check out some other clubs, make new connections.

I felt like all the stars were falling in place.

All the things were coming together.

The day I was supposed to leave, Melvin's friend should have come by my

10 o 'clock in the morning, and he hadn't.

I felt trapped. I have to go. I have to be on the road to the airport by 1 o

'clock.

He's not calling. He's not coming.

He says, I'm going up to the restaurant on the corner.

Meet me up there.

I had no idea what I was going into.

Now I'm scared.

I'm looking for policemen. I'm looking for anyone looking at me.

I'm sure I stand out like a sore thumb.

I cross the street.

He's there.

He pulls out his cell phone and pretends to be talking.

He says out of the corner of his mouth.

He's got the bag.

I'm looking around for cops.

I don't see any.

And there's another American.

He's looking very panicked, sweating and saying, you know, pick up the bag, pick

up the bag.

It's an enormous black bag.

The sun is beating down. It's brutally hot.

It's heavy. It's very heavy.

I look for the prearranged car.

Now I get in the cab, and he asks me, Where are you going?

I think, What do you mean, where am I going? You know where we're going.

That's when I realized this is just a random cab.

This is not part of the deal.

Scope!

I am pooping out.

Now I've got this bag.

I've got the drugs now.

Now I'm in possession.

Now I'm breaking the law.

Now it's real.

I got to the hotel, and I'm nervous. I'm sweating. My hands are clammy.

I think everyone's looking at

me.

I get up to my room.

And I start looking for the cocaine.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. What's this?

It's filled with boxes of hair color.

Blonde, red, brunette, all different colors.

And two boxes of hairspray.

I'm thinking, this is it?

Where is the coke in here?

What am I going to do?

I run down the stairs, but when I get to the lobby, I kind of walk nonchalantly.

I'm sure I look nervous.

I call Melvin on the phone.

He's not there.

I leave a message saying, there is no hope. This is not right. I don't know

we're going to do. I'm freaking out.

I go back to the hotel, start looking for the cocaine.

I looked at the aerosol cans, and I noticed around the top it looked like it

been taken apart and put back together.

I thought, oh, here we go, this is where it is.

And I know what they're doing.

But now I'm late, leaving for the airport.

You leave three hours to get to the airport.

I've got two and a half hours.

And the road to the airport in Caracas, it's a parking lot.

I'm like a flea in a frying pan. I'm just leaping all over the back seat. Are

going to make it? Are we going to make it?

I'm more worried about being late than I am about the cocaine in my bag.

My stomach is flipping over. My heart is going. My palms are clammy. I'm going

to be late.

When I finally get to the airport, I jump out of the cab, and there's

there. They take my bag straight away.

We made it in time.

I was suddenly calm.

Melvin told me people at the airport are paid off.

Everybody's paid off.

It's all safe.

And I go straight up to the counter, and I check the bags.

They're going through the little rubber flaps.

Relieved.

Now's the easy part, getting on the plane.

Everything was going fantastically.

You feel confident, you feel unstoppable, undefeatable.

I go up to the bar.

Man is about to pour it when I hear my name called over the intercom.

David Evans, please report to gate 24.

Melvin told me, even if they call your name, don't worry.

Everybody's paid off.

It's safe.

David Evans, to gate 24.

When they call my name, I think, oh, well, this is just for show.

Or this is, he told me this was going to happen.

Don't worry.

So I say, hold on, I'll be right back for that drink.

And they said,

okay, would you please come this way?

There were three or four of us. So I'm thinking, this is fine. This is just

another step of the process.

So we go downstairs. We go into this two -story building.

And it's outside near the tarmac.

There's the police force and the military.

Didn't surprise me. I was calm about it.

There's one officer standing there, and he looks at your ticket.

And he asks you something in Spanish.

Now, I don't speak Spanish.

I just smiled and nodded.

This very large, kind of dopey National Guard, he asked, which bags are mine?

Unlock them, please. Open them up.

They did tell me not to worry if they asked me to open my bags.

So I think everything's okay.

I mean, nothing good comes from worrying.

He sees the two boxes of aerosol.

He says, are those yours? I said, yes.

I think, oh, well, this is just for show.

Here.

I can't.

It's all right. It's safe now. I made it.

I'm just about to close up the bags when another National Guard comes

over with a red epaulette on his arm. Now

the

guy looks at the aerosol cans and says, flammable, these can't go on the plane.

I'm thinking maybe this is all part of the dance that we do.

He takes one of the cans and he puts it through the x -ray.

And then he calls another person over to look at it.

And the

very large dopey guy

starts... backing up and pretending he's not there, but I'm thinking, at this

point, something's not going right.

The guard coming back with a screwdriver.

I'm starting to think, what's going on here?

Now I'm scared.

My throat is dry.

My hands are getting clammy. My stomach's starting...

Dude, the back slips on itself.

I'm caught.

I think at that point I was still kind of lying to myself.

They go through every single one of the cans.

There's cocaine in each one.

And when they find more and more white powder, I pull out my guitar and

start to play.

When you're playing, everything else disappears.

Let's not think about it.

I'm trying to push the world away.

I start thinking that everything really is okay, that everything is still taken

care of.

I'm still hoping that that's going to happen.

But that hope is starting to disappear very quickly.

I think I'm going to jail.

When David wasn't there, I figured basically that he was just running late.

Waited two to three hours.

Where is he?

You know, what's going on?

Eventually, I just had enough.

I found a hotel.

Got into the room about 10 o 'clock at night.

Just feeling dead and empty and confused.

Just worried in general, like, man, where could he be?

You know, what's going on? Where is he?

You go in there, they're all yelling, rattling on the bars and shouting at

And they're all looking at you.

They're measuring you up and down.

They're trying to figure out what you're made of, what they can do to you, what

they can get from you.

It made me feel ashamed, humiliated.

I'm scared.

I don't know what's going on.

They take me into the headquarters.

They cuff me to the railing.

They ask me if I've made a phone call to anyone. I said, no, I haven't called

anyone yet. And they said, here's a phone. Be quick.

So I called Julie.

Hello? He just said, hi, I'm being detained in Caracas.

In Venezuela, and I was like, what?

I was going to tell you I was going to make, I'm trying to make some money. I

did this thing with Melvin.

I'm caught and I'm scared.

I don't know what's going to happen.

David?

I just felt like all the blood had...

gone from my head and my stomach, and I just felt like literally white as a

ghost.

The next morning, the guards took me into a small room,

stripped me down, and they took everything from me.

They took the chain from around my neck.

They took everything.

But they left my socks on.

And then they took me down to the very end, to the last cell.

That's where the most senior prisoner and the one who runs the prison is.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

I was ready for anything.

Millions of things running through my mind, what's going to happen?

And the guard hands over my watch and my chain and my harmonica.

And he says, I like this. This is enough. This pays your rent.

So the boss says, you sleep out in the hall.

As the new American being brought in, they know that you've got money somehow.

And they were right.

I arrived at my friend's apartment in Geneva, and all of a sudden my cell

started ringing.

I was grabbing for it, you know, like, hello?

David? All of a sudden, there's just like this rise of red -rushed chaos.

Where is David? Where is he?

We know who you are, little blondie. Who the hell are you?

Who's David?

And then they passed the phone to somebody else who was screaming like he

being tortured.

You have...

I just started to realize who was screaming.

Melvin? I imagined him duct taped to the chair, guns to his head, gun down his

mouth, blow out his brain.

And then I was like, Melvin, these guys, who, what, oh, oh,

oh, oh my God, okay, okay.

That's why David is in Caracas and in Venezuela.

Now I'm really mad.

Who the hell are you?

How stupid can you be? Like, you are the worst people in the whole entire world.

You're the ones who got him in all this trouble. You're the ones that gave him

this idea. So, fine, you know what? Stop. Just leave me alone.

Don't call me again. Leave me alone and come and find me if that's what you need

to do.

That was it, you know, that was the last I heard from any of them.

Well, I was in the Makuto detention center for about 12 days before they

took me up to the big prison. I was a little worried because we had seen it on

the news, this bad place where we're going.

them what is this place and they said this is los teques this is where you're

going

Now, Los Teques is in the hills above Caracas. It's about a two -hour drive.

I knew I was going into something bad.

I feel like a deer in headlights.

That freezes up.

You know, you really should run, but you can't run. You're stuck.

Just watching those lights come, bam.

I thought I had an idea of what I was going into, and that it was a bad place,

but it was even worse than I expected.

Lost Tech is where they put people who have been chased out of all the other

prisons. These are people who can't go anywhere else.

They are the crazy ones.

They're the violent ones.

They're the disturbed ones.

But it was even worse, because there were drugs everywhere.

If you wanted marijuana, they had marijuana.

Cope. They had coke.

If you wanted crack, they got crack.

I knew they had guns. I didn't know they had Uzis.

Drug users had Uzis.

And they were all at war with each other.

You look at somebody wrong, you could get stabbed, you could get shot, you

get killed.

I don't know if Las Tecas is the worst prison in Venezuela, but there can't be

much worse.

The big, dark corner of hell.

American Embassy called me and they explained to me what happened and where

David was now.

I would send him a little bit of cash. I would send him, you know, $50 to $100

when I could.

The first money that the embassy brought to me, the first thing I did was get a

guitar for $50 American.

That guitar saved my life.

The big boss of the pavilion, he saw me with the guitar and he said, you, come

here.

And I went into his bell.

He said, play.

So I pull out my guitar and start to play.

I became the big boss's musician.

And from then on, everybody knew that I was under the protection of him.

But I had become a different person.

I had become one of them.

They gave me a large 45.

and I had to stand guard duty.

On the walls everywhere were smeared handprints in blood.

There was a streak of blood on the floor there where they had dragged a body

out.

The worst thing I saw was watching a man dying.

They shot a man at point -blank range.

And then stabbed him five times to make sure they finished the job.

I was just barely holding myself together, trying to keep from breaking

crying.

But then I have to push it away because I'm going to go either crazy or have a

complete breakdown.

I would rather die than to go through and see the things I saw.

Where I was sleeping on the floor was right next to the old refrigerator.

I was glad I was there. I could put my glasses underneath the refrigerator, and

no one would step on them in the middle of the night.

But best of all was the motor inside the refrigerator.

I could put my head up against the refrigerator and close my eyes, and this

white noise would just envelop everything.

And it sounded like when you're in a jet airplane and you put your head up

against the window and you hear this.

I would imagine that I was on

a plane going somewhere, going anywhere, going away from where I was.

You know what you've done is bad, is terrible, and the price you're going to

have to pay is enormous.

I would get called for the first few months.

Hello?

David? I got many calls from him where we couldn't hear each other on the phone

at all.

Julie!

Julie! He couldn't hear me. We couldn't talk.

Can you hear me? Julie!

Julie!

Are you there?

I was alone.

I was sentenced to eight years watching at beatings, stabbings, murder.

Eight years until I was going to where Julie was.

The embassy would come and tell me, okay, it looks like you're going to get

in February.

Now, it looks like maybe March.

Okay, maybe April.

Maybe May.

Maybe June.

When I thought I was at the end of my rope, I would imagine that I was going

where Julie was.

When the embassy finally told me that they had a release date for me, in three

weeks, you're going out, I cried.

I was handed over to the U .S. Marshals on December 5th, 2007, my birthday.

And I was taken in handcuffs to the airport.

I spent nine months in the American federal prison system before I was

out.

I am very nervous about seeing him.

What if all this anger came out in me?

How awful that would be for him in our first meeting together when I know that

he was waiting so many months to be able to see a really friendly face again.

Well, I don't know what's going to happen between me and Julie, but I have

good feeling.

Hey.

How you doing, huh?

My glasses are fogging up.

I'm doing... Hi.

How you doing?

Great. How are you?

Better.

I know, but I'm a little... No! Come on, who cares?

I'll see you. I'll see you, baby.

Oh, man, it's really great to see your face. It's good to be alive.

How are you doing here? I'm doing pretty good. Yeah?

Plus, there's all kinds of things I want to tell you anyway.

Yeah. You look fantastic.

Oh, thanks. You look wonderful.

Thank you. I'm starting to realize I was hoping against hope.

I think I realized at that point.

So, what do we start with? I maybe have to go back to Europe pretty soon.

What? But I don't know.

I don't know what the plans are exactly, and I have to figure things out. I have

a feeling maybe it's best if we are not 100%, like if we're not

basically involved.

in each other romantically you know you have to meet mike who i've been playing

with yeah is he back over here stateside um he is no he lives in france so what

are we going to play tonight uh guitar what do you want to play sex don't you

get tired of your old jokes because you know it's something i didn't i didn't

actually miss them now he can do what he hoped for he can

start whatever direction he wants, and he's free. He really is going to be

I

don't know what

will happen with Julie and I, but I do know that she's my best friend, and I

think we'll always be good friends no matter what happens.

But time will tell.

Don't you worry about me when I'm gone.

Don't you worry because I'm going home.

Don't you dare be sad.

Think of all the good times we used to have.

Don't you worry about me.