The Vicodin Thieves—which draws its title from pharmaceutical poachers who raid medicine cabinets during real estate open houses—includes expanded pieces on a high flying smog emissions broker who fell in with shadowy, ex-CIA and military-intelligence operatives to "repatriate" forgotten U.S. government aid from around the globe, and the unsolved, execution-style murder of one of America's most electrifying young mayors blocks from his childhood home.