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The Best American CRIME WRITING 2006 E d i t e d b y M B A R K S e r i e s OW D E N E d i t o r s O T T O T H O M A S P E N Z L E R H. C A N D O O K Contents Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook | Preface v Mark Bowden | Introduction ix John Heilemann | T he C hoirboy 1 Jimmy Breslin | T he E nd of the M ob 29 Mark Jacobson | T he $2,000-an -H our W oman 45 Skip Hollandsworth | The L as t Ride of C owboy B ob 73 Jeffrey Toobin | Killer Instinct s 99 Robert Nelson | A ltar E go 125 S. C. Gwynne | D r. Evil 161 Paige Williams | H ow t o L ose $100,000,000 183 iv Content s Mary Battiata | B lood F eud 195 Howard Blum and John Connolly | H it M en in B lue? 223 Richard Rubin | T he G hos t s of E mmett Till 247 Chuck Hustmyre | B lue on Blu e 265 Devin Friedman | O peration S tealing Saddam ’ s M oney 277 Denise Grollmus | S ex T hief 293 Deanne Stillman | T he G reat M ojave M anhunt 309 Permissions About the Editors The Best American Crime Writing Series Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher P re fa c e In the late Darcy O’Brien’s brilliant study of the Hillside Stranglers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi revel in the grim fantasy of a girl reared from birth exclusively for their pleasure. They watch and wait until the moment of flowering is reached, then rape and murder her. She is not a human being, but a plant grown for one dark harvest, then cut down. Nothing in the history of crime writing more deeply illustrated the banal and commonplace source of criminal acts, that they are rooted in simple selfishness. This year’s edition of The Best American Crime Writing amply demonstrates the irreducible and uncomplicated truth so powerfully rendered by Darcy O’Brien. From the comic to the macabre, bumbling criminals to cunning ones, it is selfishness that rules the day. The continuum runs from narcissism to solipsism, the antisocial to the sociopathic, the Me who must go first to the Me besides whom there is no other. This is not to say that things never get complicated, for as with vi P r e fac e Medusa’s head, odd and coiling things may spring from a single source. One of them is money. It is Saddam Hussein’s money that provides the irresistible temptation in Devin Friedman’s story of G.I. Joe corruption, while in Skip Hollandsworth’s tale, it is the mere proximity of banks, along with an unlikely disguise, that beckons Cowboy Bob to “her” last ride. Howard Blum and John Connolly’s “Hit Men in Blue?” suggests how wickedly money can be gained. Paige Williams’s “How to Lose $100,000,000” demonstrates just how quickly it can be lost. Money is also the issue in Mary Battiata’s riveting study of how little of it, when in dispute, can generate a murder. Sex is predictably the issue at hand in other tales. How much it sometimes costs is the cautionary lesson learned in Mark Jacobson’s “$2,000-an-Hour Woman.” But, again, it is selfishness that provides the dark core of sexual crime. Escaping the consequences of that selfishness is the central focus of Denise Grollmus’s “Sex Thief,” and Robert Nelson’s “Altar Ego.” The failure to escape it forms the narrative thrust of John Heilemann’s “The Choirboy,” a heartrending tale of justice delayed . . . but not forever. Escape also provides the thematic center of Richard Rubin’s “Ghosts of Emmett Till,” an escape that is offered, in this case, by society itself, time and c