If You Really Loved Me

  * * *

  David Brown considered Richard Steinhart the closest friend he had ever had. No other man of such intelligence and strength had given him the time of day, but Steinhart was going all out for him. When David learned that Steinhart was being released on February 2, 1989, he knew he would miss the hell out of the guy. All the war stories, all the bullshitting.

  But they would be together again, roaring around Australia, soon enough. Two adventurers . . .

  David thought it was only benign coincidence when he found himself locked in the "Birdcage" holding cell in the basement of the Orange County Courthouse at noon on the very Thursday Steinhart was getting out. David actually had a hearing that day and was in the tiny lockup over the noon hour. Steinhart, of course, had been deliberately placed where he could talk to David—on tape.

  The Birdcage was a bisected cell constructed of steel mesh. It had been painted so many times over the years that the layers of color could probably stand alone. Presently, it was a chipped, dull yellow. Each half of the Birdcage had its own bolted-down bench. Prisoners could not pass anything through the mesh, but there, was a narrow space at the bottom of the divider, where they sometimes exchanged cigarettes, matches, notes. Men brought over from the jail waited in the Birdcage to go up to court, or to be transported back to jail. Outside, a ramp led to the glassed-in guards' station eight feet away, and in the other direction, stairs rose to the barred door to the sally port.

  It was a noisy place, and the taped conversation between David and Steinhart was counterpointed with jail sounds— men shouting, doors clanging, laughter, profanity. Steinhart explained that he was getting out, but that David could call him at "Jackie's" house. Jackie was "Animal's" mother. Richard planned to use "Animal" for "the job." But for now David needed to know that their plans were set. They spoke in a kind of code, as men do who are locked up. Steinhart knew Newell and Borris would be listening to the wire tape, but he spoke obscurely because that was what David expected. ("The girl upstairs" was Patti Bailey; Jeoff Robinson and Jay Newell were referred to as "state attorneys," "the two cops," "my buddies," and "the local district guys.")

  David was positive. He was ready. He wanted everything done as he had outlined. The only one he had not made up his mind about was the "one on Juno."

  ". . . Brenda?"

  "Yeah . . . that's the only one there's any doubt about."

  "So Bailey ... ?"

  "Yes, everyone else."

  "Okay," Steinhart said. ". . . The two cops."

  "Yeah."

  "If upstairs [Patti Bailey] is done . . . how am I going to get the monies and stuff?"

  "I'm working on it. I already have a check for seventeen [seventeen hundred dollars] with my attorney."

  David explained that Joel Baruch was to get the money to either Arthur, Manuela, or to Tom Brown. "That's all I told. him."

  Steinhart said, "... I think we'll go with the dentist's office . . . we'll go with yours first."

  David smiled. Steinhart would help him escape first, when the deputies who transported him to his dentist were caught unawares.

  "The two cops . . . ," Steinhart continued.

  "The girl?" David suggested. Patti's death was vital.

  "The gir, yeah," Steinhart agreed. ". . . Anything else you want me to do for you?"

  No, that would do for the moment. David wanted a telephone number for Jackie's house, and an idea of when he might be there.

  "You know I won't be there," Steinhart said with a laugh. "Leave a message." He said he would pick his messages up at Jackie's until he got a phone. David seemed to savor every stupid little detail of this intrigue. Richard played along. "Okay, so you have seventeen hundred dollars for me. . . . You're working on that ten grand?" he said.

  "I'm working on that."

  "Now, do you still want me to go out and torch the motor home and your guesthouse? Doesn't that take thirty to ninety days for the insurance?"

  "Not if it's totaled, no."

  "All right so . . . you want Bailey first?" Steinhart switched the order of the plans.

  "I would think so." David deferred to Steinhart always; he was, after all, the professional.

  "Okay, but then I have to run my homework on some people to find out where I can get a sleeper in there to off her," Steinhart pointed out. "That's going to cost some bread. What about the maps? You going to give it to me right now for all the monies?"

  The "monies" were, according to David, buried under a boulder in the desert. David's wariness seeped into his voice. If Steinhart had the maps and found "the monies," he could dig them up and be long gone.

  David had never truly trusted anyone ail the way.

  Steinhart changed the subject. He wanted to know whom he could trust. David assured him he could trust Tom, Tom believed that Steinhart was only a bodyguard being paid to protect David and Krystal—from the dreaded Patti Bailey. Arthur and Manuela had been told the same story.

  Steinhart could stay in the plush home on Summitridge— no problem. His cover story would be that he was there to protect the property. Not for long though. David was anxious to get going on the murders and the escape, but Steinhart cautioned him again that there was "homework" to do. He assured David he was trying to keep costs down. Calling in favors, he said, from old friends.

  David wanted to speak again about the hits on "his buddies." Where would be a good place for Steinhart and his men to ambush them? The word was that Robinson and Newell were always coming and going from the courthouse, walking, jogging. There were lonely, shrubbery-shrouded passages where a hit would not be seen. "There's no problem, right?" David asked eagerly.

  "There's no problem with me taking them out. . . . I'll kill them."

  "Leave me out," David warned, suddenly nervous.

  The payoff would come from the insurance after the fire. David figured $300,000 right away. (He didn't tell Steinhart it would really be $700,000—that he had upped his insurance by $400,000.)

  "That's number one," David said, ticking off on his stubby fingers. The fire. ". . . Ah, I would say that the two cops and the girl should either coincide or be very close to each other."

  Okay, say they saved the escape until after the murders. With Robinson and Newell dead, David would face a green team from the Orange County District Attorney's Office —a new prosecutor and a new investigator who would have to play catch-up in a hurry. That would put them at a great disadvantage in trial.

  Unless they got to Patti before she was killed. . . . So Patti must not outlive Jeoff Robinson and Jay Newell by more than a few hours. "Whoever replaces them may want to go to talk to her," David reasoned hurriedly. "Yeah, it's got to be pretty close because if it happens to the girl first, it might make them aware."

  David relished the thought that his tormentors would all be dead, and that he, the man still totally in charge, had a force such as Richard Steinhart to do his bidding. He dragged out the conversation, discussing victim combinations and times and who would die first.

  And then the escape. It did not seem to occur to David that he might not be allowed a dental visit in the wake of the sudden violent deaths of the prime witness against him, the arresting investigator, and the prosecutor who had charged him with murder.

  He had blind spots. He wasn't stupid. But he had blind spots.

  He suggested that Steinhart use gas to set the fires on Chantilly Street, the reasoning of a rank amateur. Fires started by accelerants are the easiest for arson investigators to spot. Gasoline leaves behind a distinct tracing where it has been splashed.

  While Steinhart expressed concern about who might be in the big house, David was not at all worried. The pool would keep the flames from leaping across. His parents and Krystal would have plenty of time to get out.

  "See, I don't want to kill anybody I don't have to."

  "No," David reassured him. "I'm getting them out of there as soon as I can. It doesn't have to be a total wipeout." But he warned Steinhart, "I do have various
sophisticated alarm systems, so as soon as the smoke can be detected, it's reported directly to the fire department."

  "Okay . . . I'll gas the whole house. I'll gas a good part of it." Steinhart knew better, but he was playing along.

  David explained the way out for Steinhart. There was a wall in back, but he thought Steinhart could jump. No, maybe he should take a short wooden ladder with him. No, maybe a collapsible ladder.

  "Well, how tall is this fence—six feet?" Steinhart asked.

  "Ah . . . yeah."

  "Ah, that's a piece of cake," Steinhart said. "Easy for me. I can still get over."

  Inside, Richard Steinhart was laughing, but he repeated dutifully David's ponderous instructions. "Number one, the motor home and the house. . . . Number two, ah, depending on the order. It doesn't matter—the girl in G-4?"

  "That's something you'll have to judge," David said.

  ". ... Brenda I can put on the back burner for now?"

  "Yeah."

  Steinhart needed money for throwaway pistols.

  "And pizza," David put in, laughing.

  "And pan pizza." Steinhart chortled in agreement. "Yeah, definitely put money in for pizza. Well, and I need that money for personal use."

  A jailer approached the Birdcage, offering the two men a bathroom visit. As David was led out of his side of the Birdcage, the jailer whispered to Steinhart, "We need to know about the dentist's office and whether he wants them hurt or he wants them killed."

  David returned. The man was a pigeon, Steinhart thought. It was fitting he was sitting in the Birdcage. David was locked up now because he had been trapped by the wire on Cinnamon, but Steinhart saw no suspicion at all in his eyes. Hell, David thought Steinhart was Superman, Bruce Lee, and the Hessians all rolled up together. Good old Thurston loved this too much to suspect his loyal bodyguard/hit man. His Goldie.

  David hadn't missed a trick on his first visit to his dentist. He had memorized the whole damn place. He described the exact layout of the "miniplaza" where his dentist's office was. The front entrance on Tustin, the computer store, the doctor's office, the emergency treatment center, the walkways, the parking area. The walkway was hidden from the street; no one could see when the shooting started.

  David had it all figured out. The deputies usually radioed the dispatcher when they turned into the driveway of the miniplaza to let him know they were arriving. "You know— whatever their language is—'Everything's okay and we're here.' . . . Both deputies sat in front and I sat in the back of the patrol car. . . . They walked me to the office . . . but first the driver got out. He walked up to the front parking lot, walked around, came back, and told him okay."

  "So he does use a lookout first?"

  "Correct."

  David had noted that the deputies had checked all the areas around the dentist's entrance on his last visit. Then one walked ahead of him and one behind. "They both walked me in through the lobby. The dentist and her husband take me back without the deputies watching."

  "What's that tell you?" Steinhart breathed with just the right touch of triumph.

  "Man," David said, grinning, "that's why I'm telling you."

  The deputies had locked David in the lobby and checked all the rooms. "When the dentist called me back to the chair, the deputy said they could just watch the door."

  "Okay. So you don't have no problems," Steinhart said grimly. "I may have to kill a cop or two, and I just wanted to let you know."

  "I realize that ... I realized it all along. Better them than me."

  They worried over the plan, the lookout points, the layout of the dentist's office. David gloated over each detail.

  "All right, good deal," Steinhart said. "Well that makes it okay. I'm going to ask you something—professionally— and you got to—I just have to ask you this. See where your head's at. The two cops—the DA's—you want them dead ... or hurt?" .

  David smiled at the ridiculous question.

  "Dead. "

  David was concerned about other, more important, questions. For instance, he had not gotten his lunch. And he wanted to be sure that Steinhart understood that the real reason he had to escape from jail was for "my little girl, and I didn't see any hope."

  "Right on," Steinhart said. "I'll get you out."

  "Promise?"

  "I promise. I will get you out of this."

  "Guaranteed?"

  "Guaranteed ... as long as you can live with yourself after I kill the cops. As long as you can live with yourself—"

  David laughed. "They won't—but I will."

  "All right, you smart ass." Steinhart chuckled. "I think you like this."

  "No, I don't," David argued. "But when it comes down to survival . . . Okay, I'm not egotistical at all. I think you know that. But I think I'm worth more than they are. "

  And then two box lunches were delivered to the Birdcage. David was delighted to discover he had been given four packages of cookies. He and his very best friend discussed Australia and going to Disneyland, and pizza and Pee-Wee Herman and guns.

  37

  David Brown almost choked up as he bade farewell to Richard Steinhart. Whether he was playing Steinhart as he had played everyone in his life—or whether he truly loved him—was an interesting question. In all their further conversations, which were also taped, David expressed affection for the big biker. He spoke to Steinhart as he might have spoken to a women he was enthralled with.

  If David was depressed when "Goldie" Steinhart left, at least he reassured himself that Steinhart was out there working for him, orchestrating his escape and the destruction of his enemies. In reality, of course, Richard was locked up too—in the Huntington Beach Jail. The phone he talked to David on was wired to record. And Jay Newell would monitor every call.

  "We had a cold phone connected in the Huntington Beach Police Department," Newell recalled. "That's a phone that absolutely cannot be traced. When David thought he was calling collect from the Orange County Jail to his good buddy on the outside, he was really calling the Huntington Beach police."

  And so it began. Newell was about to become an information conduit between the man who had agreed to kill him and the man who wanted him dead. Although Steinhart wouldn't be free, he would have to report facts and details to David that made it sound as if he were out there circling Orange County, setting up the arson and murders that David had ordered. Steinhart also had to make David believe that the escape plan was in the works.

  Since all Steinhart would "see" would have to come through the eyes of the DA's Investigator Jay Newell, Newell would, in essence, be helping to set up his own sudden "death." Sure, it was all play-acting, but it cut close to the bone. The thought of what might have been if Irv Cully hadn't tattled never quite went away.

  In every sense, this scheme was going to be a double reverse-twist, end around, gotcha.

  Jay Newell was a big man, but he seemed somehow larger than he actually was, his stride as long and true as any rancher's back in the Oklahoma of his youth. He moved effortlessly, deliberately unhurried, silent. It was long-ingrained habit. He doubted that anyone would spot him as he strode across the Orange County Water Department land in the dark winter night. Employees had long since left the little service building at the end of the dirt road a hundred yards north of him. He had no company beyond an occasional wild creature startled into flight by his footfall. If anyone should approach him and question him, he carried ID that would satisfy the questioner.

  Even so, on this mission he preferred to be invisible and anonymous. He was at his best on nights such as this. Newell was essentially a watcher, a listener, a quiet man by nature and by avocation. Silence had always served him well. He had reached this drab oasis in Anaheim by driving west along Ball Road, across the bridge that traversed the Santa Ana River, past factories and car lots, beyond the cement plant with its silos and chutes, and then suddenly turning right off the main drag onto a dirt road few knew about. He had parked his dark car on the hardscrabble sand and
gravel of county property. Another eight seconds and he would have eased onto the ramp that led to the 57 North Freeway, the "Orange."

  Now, he scarcely heard the steady hum of Ball Road as it merged with the roar of the Orange Freeway, a throbbing sound that never ceased. Every so often, there was a mufflerless engine as noisy as a helicopter or a scream of brakes that set his teeth on edge and his heart running double. With that background cacophony, there was no reason for him to walk quietly, nothing more than instinct.

  Where Newell walked now, the night air smelled of almost-spring, car exhaust, fresh water from the reservoir beside him, orange blossoms, and burning rubber. Even though the homes ahead of him cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, they were continually dusted with the black powder of disintegrating tires—patio furniture and hibiscus alike sprinkled with rubber grit.

  He could taste rubber, bitter on his tongue. Newell was not afraid. He avoided nasty surprises by being one step ahead of his adversaries. To the best of his knowledge, he was still ahead. He had scouted these acres in the daytime, but not as close up, and the dark made them alien. The slope toward the water was gentle, but half of its circumference was covered with broken rock and concrete, a quick way to break an ankle. He knew he would have to clamber up an eight- to ten-foot berm of earth just before he got to the backyard of the house.

  His eyes adjusted to the dark as Newell drew nearer to his destination. The place loomed ahead like a fortress, a compound protected as if an assault were expected. Well, the assault had come and gone on the morning of September 22. And he had been part of the first enemy onslaught.

  Chantilly Street South. A nice, upper-scale family street. He had gazed at 1166 Chantilly from the front and it looked only like a big pale-blue barn. Inside, it had been the same—square and dull. Now, Newell had to view David Brown's latest home as if Richard Steinhart's eyes stared through his own. Steinhart couldn't be here, but he would have to describe it board by board to Brown.

  Their plan had Steinhart approaching from the rear of the property. From Newell's present angle, he could see that almost all the houses on the east side of the street were shrouded with trees and bushes and protected from four-footed and two-footed predators by a high chain-link fence along the reservoir property. Brown had gone even further and erected a cement-block wall inside the steel mesh barrier. A ridiculous barrier. A man with any vestige of muscle could easily heave himself over both the fence and the wall and into the backyard.