ABSTRACT
This chapter updates and greatly expands the case study of Sam Goodman's fencing activity found in Steffensmeier's award-winning 1986 book The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds. Sam Goodman, was a long-time thief, fence, and quasi-legitimate businessman. The chapter combines Sam's colorful narrative accounts with substantive commentary by the authors to provide a more nuanced portrayal of criminal careers, illegal enterprise, and the broad landscape comprising the entity called "crime." The fencing started small, then grew to where it got to be Sam's main thing. Off and on the fencing might shoot up, but mostly it was smalltime. It's hard to be fence and not be known to the police. Louie was the main fence in town at that time. Really, he was into a lot of things—gambling, shylock loans, a big used-car dealership, and was a slum landlord.
