THENASTYBITS by Anthony Bourdain

witnesses, recorded emergency calls, droning coroners, and preening lawyers are the background music to my leisure hours. While I sip my morning coffee in bed, friends are betraying friends on the stand, pathologists coldly recite the particulars of damage to bones and tissue, stone killers affectlessly describe the circumstances leading up to murder, dismemberment, arson . . . and worse. Lawyers aggressively examine and cross-examine, shrieking with feigned outrage, while outside my windows, car alarms whoop and wail—the occasional urban percussion of shattering safety glass when yet another young entrepreneur makes off with a car stereo. It's like jazz to me, and I miss it when I'm away. The familiar criminal sounds are almost comforting.
    A lot of crime buffs favor the lone sociopath, the serial killer, the pathological narcissist. They like maladjusted teens who listen to Metallica, shave their heads, and then go on killing sprees, or former bed wetters who kill their mothers, then describe how they could still hear Mom's voice, chastising them as they flushed her vocal cords down the food disposal. They thrive on the special little moments in criminal trials when, for instance, the best friend of this month's latest juvenile mass-murderer balks at admitting on the stand that he saw his buddy cry—this just after cheerfully implicating him in the slaughter of ten of his classmates:

Lawyer: So, after emptying his weapon, am I to understand that Mr. Sprewell adorned his person with the blood of his victims? Is that correct}
Witness: Huh?
Lawyer: His face . . . he put blood on his face after killing them?
Witness: Oh, yeah. He, like smeared blood on his cheeks . . . like an Indian, you know? Stripes like. He said it looked cool.
Lawyer: And later. . . after you say you both went back to the defendant's home to play video games and kill his parents . . . did the defendant at any point cry?
Witness: Cry? I don't know . . . I don't know if he like . . . cried. He was . . . you know . . . upset.

    Me? I'm bored by the lone nut and the sexual psychopath. I don't care to what degree Metallica recordings played a role in young Timmy's transition from honor student to thrill killer. I don't care "who dunnit" ... or even "why he dunnit," and my tastes in crime fiction reflect that attitude: I'm interested in
    professional criminals. I'm interested in crimes where you know from the get-go why they did it: because it was their job to do it. As in the case of the mob-style execution of Gambino capo Paul Castellano, shot to death out front of a popular Midtown restaurant, it's the little things I want to know about: Before the killers loaded their weapons and dressed themselves in identical raincoats and hats, before they set out separately from their modest family homes in Staten Island and Queens, did the killers kiss their children, jot down brief shopping lists of groceries to bring back on their return? (One box Cheerios . . . half gallon milk . . . dozen eggs . . . tampons, large . . . two cans tuna, chunk style.) Did their voices tighten at all at the breakfast table when they told their wives that they might be a little late tonight? Did they program the VCR to tape their favorite sitcom? And what sitcom was it? It's the jargon of crime—the characters, the rituals, the workaday details—that fascinate me.
Crime is hard work, after all.
    As a red-blooded American child, I always wanted to be a criminal. My heroes, like those of so many American children, were an unlovely assortment of back-shooters like Billy the Kid, bank robbers like John Dillinger, racketeers like Legs Diamond, capitalist visionaries like Bugsy Siegel, and innovators like Lucky Luciano. These were guys who did what they wanted, when they wanted, said whatever the fuck they felt like saying, and, in general, avoided the restrictions of societal convention—attractive qualities to a young kid weaned on the MG5 and the Stooges. Later, when I actually became