I dialed Diamond Martinez.
“Sí,” he answered.
“Am I interrupting?”
“I’m making tacos, drinking beer, listening to old Santana records. Of course you’re interrupting.”
“May I pick your brain about Swedish gangs?” I said.
“If it’s okay that I continue working on this taco filling.”
“The criminal who is causing my current case…”
“The kidnapper,” Diamond interrupted.
“He mentioned a Swedish gang. I’m curious how a Swedish gang could end up doing anything in Tahoe. Naturally, I thought I’d call you.”
“Because if I were pale instead of brown, and tall instead of not so tall, and talked with a funny accent, and had an unhealthy desire to eat lutfisk, you’d think I was Swedish, and that, combined with my perspicacity about all things criminal, would make me seem like an information source on Scandinavian crooks.”
“Is the lutfisk you mention like the lutefisk Norwegians eat?” I asked.
“Ja, korrekt,” Diamond said. “The same, smelly, gelatinous, lye-dissolved fish slime. The Scandinavians beat out even the Scots for worst foods ever invented.”
“Wait. My ancestors were Scots and they invented Scotch. How could you slam their tastes?”
“Haggis sausage.”
“Oh, that,” I said. “Well, what would you do with leftover eyeballs and ears and lips and other such animal parts that don’t look so good on a plate compared to a Porterhouse steak?”
“Throw it out,” Diamond said.
“Good point. Anyway, only because Mexican cuisine is the best do I forgive your attitude toward my great grandpa’s breakfast. So any clue how Swedish gang members could end up in our little mountain paradise?”
“In specific, no. In general, yes.” He paused.
I waited.
“Sorry, these cherry tomatoes are slippery,” he said over the phone. He made another grunt, which was followed by a loud metallic clink. “There, that’ll teach ’em to lie still. Does this outfit have a name?”
“Yeah, although I don’t know how to pronounce it. I’ll try. They’re called The Brödraskapet, with one of those umlaut things over the O.”
“I know about them,” Diamond said. Then, “Hold on, gotta open this bag of shredded cheddar.” In another moment, “I put the phone on speaker. I seem to recall that the Brödraskapet is a prison gang in a maximum security Swedish prison. Bad dudes, from what I hear.”
“Anything in particular I should know about them?”
“Just another group of loser guys trying to find direction and making bad choices. These guys set themselves apart by carrying karambit knives.”
I said, “Having gone private just a few years ago, I guess I’m already out of touch with the latest trends in nastiness. What’s a karambit knife?”
“A wicked weapon developed in Indonesia, illegal in most places, and used by certain military forces. It has a quality that makes it very difficult for a forensic pathologist to identify any cut made by a karambit. I learned about them at a seminar for cops who deal with deadly gangs. The end of the karambit knife’s handle has a circular opening that fits over the index finger like a ring. The handle is squeezed in the fist, and the short blade comes out from the fist next to the little finger. So you can stab with it the same way you’d pound your fist on a table. The blade is curved like a four-inch claw. If you hold your fist down at your side, the blade points to the rear and curves down. In many situations, a person can hold it in their fist and no one notices the blade.”
“That certainly sounds dangerous.”
“No kidding. Like all knives, it can be stabbed into a victim, the power intensified by the finger hole in the grip. But what makes the karambit horrific is that the design is such that one can hold it while punching. And if a punch is modified into a sweeping arc, the trailing blade will cut deeply through whatever it strikes, the most common target being an opponent’s neck. There is no practical purpose for a karambit knife beyond killing humans. At the seminar, they showed us some disgusting videos and, afterward, most of the cops who’d watched it looked ill.”
“So The Brödraskapet get their tricks from Indonesia.”
“You’d think,” Diamond said. “But the reality is they probably get their tricks from the same place as most other gang members. It’s a terrible blight my people have to face, but almost half of all gang members are Hispanic. Drives me and my Hispanic friends crazy. It’s probably the same craziness that good Italians experience when they try to understand why a majority of mafia members are Italian.”
I said, “You’re saying that the worst gang stuff going is invented by Hispanic crime lords. Other gangs all over the world pick it up from them.”
“Right.”
“Is this because the Hispanic gangs are so good at what they do?” I asked.
“No. The thing to remember regarding those who adopt other people’s behavior is that the appeal of taking on the behavior of a distant and discreet group seems to exist independently of whether or not that behavior has any redeeming qualities.”
“You mean, Swedish gangs adopt characteristics of South Central L.A. gangs because they’re cool, not because they have any practical value?”
“Yeah,” Diamond said.
“Then what about the stolen funds and payoff money that accrues to those who violently intimidate people?”
“Ah, the usefulness of theft. Hard to dismiss that,” Diamond said. “But no. It’s more of a copycat situation. See it. Copy it. Spread it. Look what that gang over there does. We could do that, too, and then we’d really be scary. Never mind if it’s useful or stupid. In fact, as is often the case, the more stupid the behavior, the more it seems to appeal.”
“You think gangbangers are stupid?” I asked.
“Sí. Clever, but stupid. If some intelligent alien species ever makes an assessment of humanity, they will focus on the stupid as in, ‘Why in the world would such clever creatures do such stupid things?’ But of course, it’s not just crooks who engage in stupid behavior.”
“Is this a dark-thought moment?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Diamond said. “But I have some bright-looking taco shells almost ready to come out of the oven. I think they need me.”
“Spot would like you to be his keeper,” I said.
“When you’re done with him, I’ll take him. But only if you provide an endowment sufficient to cover his food bill in perpetuity.”
“And why would this gang come to Tahoe?” I asked.
“Same reason they go anyplace. It’s a ripe new territory.”
“So what is my takeaway regarding the Brödraskapet?” I asked.
“Assume the Swedish gang has chosen the worst Hispanic gangs as role models. Conclude that they are therefore very dangerous, very demented, and very lacking in any morality.”
“A cheerful thought to take to bed,” I said.
“No thought about gangs is cheerful. Not even locking them away, because they organize in prison and take over. Prison wardens everywhere have their hands tied by gangs. In some cases, they work for the gangs and are on their payroll, and the lives of their spouses and children are dependent on their complicity.”
“A reassuring thought,” I said.
We said goodbye and hung up.