The Best American Crime Writing 2006 (Best American Crime Reporting)

354 Pages·2006·1.5 MB·English

by  Mark Bowden

T h e B e s t A m e r i c a n
C W
R I M E R I T I N G
2 0 0 6
E d i t e d b y
M A R K B OW D E N
S e ri e s E d i t o rs
O T T O P E N Z L E R A N D
T H O M A S H . C O O K

C o n te n t s
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 ast 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 host 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 power-
fully 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 antiso-
cial 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 pro-
vides 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 conscience the only arbiters of how effective
it will be. In S. C. Gwynne’s “Dr. Evil,” it is an honored profession’s
ineffective self-regulation that opens the escape hatch to a crimi-
nally incompetent doctor, horrendously botched surgery evidently
still no reason to snatch the scalpel from his hand. In Chuck
Hustmyre’s “Blue on Blue,” it is, at least briefly, the blind flash of a
badge that provides a hiding place for a murderous cop, while in
Deanne Stillman’s riveting “The Great Mojave Manhunt,” it is the
desert waste that offers up concealment—nature, as always, indiffer-
ent to the kind of man it hides.
P r e fac e vii
And, of course, there are always those who don’t escape at all,
as Jimmy Breslin illustrates to such comic effect in “The End of
the Mob.”
These then are the stories in this year’s edition of The Best
American Crime Writing, tales by turns harrowing and hilarious, a
feast of human malfeasance chosen to satisfy the connoisseur’s taste
for what Browning called the “fine Felicity . . . of wickedness” that
is the just reward of reading fine true crime.
In terms of the nature and scope of this collection, we defined
the subject matter as any factual story involving crime or the threat
of a crime written by an American or Canadian that was first pub-
lished in the calendar year 2005. Although we examined a huge
array of publications, inevitably the preeminent ones attracted
many of the best pieces. All national and large regional magazines
were searched for appropriate material, as well as nearly two hun-
dred so-called little magazines, reviews, and journals.
We welcome submissions by any writer, editor, publisher, agent,
or other interested party for The Best American Crime Writing 2007.
Please send the publication or a tear sheet with the name of the
publication, the date on which the article appeared, and, if possible,
the name and contact information for the author or representative.
If the first publication was in electronic format, a hard copy must
be submitted. Only material with a 2006 publication date is eligi-
ble. All submissions must be received no later than December 31,
2006; anything received after that date will not be read.This is nei-
ther arrogant nor capricious.The timely nature of the book forces
very tight deadlines that cannot be met if we receive material later
than that.The sooner we receive articles, the more favorable will be
the light in which they are perused.
Please send submissions to Otto Penzler, The Mysterious
viii Pr e fac e
Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Regretfully, no
submissions can be returned. If you wish verification that material
was received, please enclose a self-addressed stamped postcard.
Thank you,
Otto Penzler and
Thomas H. Cook
New York, March 2006