The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 14

Fencing a stolen object is more important than the theft.

DVD players, watches, phones, family heirlooms, odd bits of gold and silver — a pawnbroker will handle it, at a poor rate. In Florida, a judge ruled that pawnshops need not return stolen goods without having a chance to be heard in civil suit. Crime rose, so did the number of pawnshops.

“Is there a link between poverty, crime and pawnshops?” asked a journalist from Miami, sent to cover the story as part of a series on declining America.

“Ma’am,” replied the local sheriff, “do you shit when you eat?”

In the UK, such a remark would have been a sackable offence. Speaking your mind in public, let alone speaking with reference to bodily functions, is not a thing done by the Ruling Classes. In the US, such brisk imagery is reassuring; almost as reassuring as seeing a sheriff with an AK-47 driving through your neighbourhood. Assuming, of course, that your neighbourhood is middle class and white.

“Do you shit when you eat?” chuckled an NYU professor who I bribed with chow mein and a night of Elgar in exchange for his knowledge of criminology. “Is shit made of complex biocarbons? Is nature a wonder, is the human body understood? Is society? Are people? Are gross over-simplifications of entrenched socio-economic problems exactly what’s wrong with this polarised country? Hell yes!” He cackled gleefully at this revelation, and scooped up another load of noodles. “You know why the experts don’t have an easy answer? Because a fucking expert’s the guy who knows how complicated the fucking questions are.”

Later — when he’d sobered up — I asked him the things I really wanted to know. Organised crime. Interpol. Law and digital footprints; everything a budding criminology student might want to ask. And why not tell me? He knew my face; no criminal would have dared been so bold.

How do you sell stolen diamonds?

“You hand it off to the courier,” explained an ex-Croatian safebreaker-turned-lawman, his expertise hired out to police forces, universities and, so he whispered as we sat by the Adriatic Sea, “some of the spies, but never the Russians or the Jews, never, I swear on my mother’s life”.

I had bought his knowledge for €5,000 and a bottle of champagne, and now he threw the drink back as the sun set at our backs and the humid sky filled with diffused pink. “I wouldn’t want to be the courier. He never knows what he’s walking into — the cops aren’t the problem, it’s the guys on the other end of the deal, I mean, they could be anyone, anyone; but it’s the courier who takes that risk, thank God, you hear stories. Show me a nice guy, and put a ten-carat diamond in front of him and I’ll show you a monster, like that.” A snap of his fingers, a gulp of champagne, sunlight through the glass. “You know what the difference is between a professional thief and an amateur one?”

No. I did not.

“A pro knows when to walk away. The deal’s too good; the safe’s too tough; the pigs too loud. Fine. Cut your losses. It’s only fucking money, you know what I mean?”

And if the deal goes through?

“You get paid. Maybe 5 to 10 per cent if you’re lucky. Best I ever got: 20 per cent of the diamond’s value, and that was unique, a one-off, never happens. But the guy who’s got it now, the fence, he’s gotta shift the product. So he sends it to India, or Africa, maybe. Mozambique; maybe Zimbabwe? They have this thing down there, this Kimberley process, it’s supposed to protect people who mine diamonds and that shit, but what it does is it produces paperwork. So you cut the diamonds, once, twice, maybe ten, twenty times, depending on what you’re going for. And you get a nice new certificate while you’re out there saying that this stone is authenticated shiny and clean, and you ship it off to America or China or Brazil, and you sell it on, worth less than it was before but you know, that’s the cost of doing business.”

So it’s a business run on trust?

“Sure, sure. Gotta trust the courier, who’s gotta trust the buyer, who’s gotta trust the guys he’s selling to. Everything’s about trust, and why wouldn’t it be? If you break trust, you end up in prison or dead or both, so you trust to survive and everyone’s okay.”

I smiled and poured him another glass of champagne.

Trust: belief that someone is reliable, honest, truthful, good.

Such beliefs are formed by time, and no one in the world remembered me long enough to trust me. So I did everything myself, and I did it alone.