"Oh, really?"
"We had a dynamite marriage, I'll tell you."
He was speaking of Linda, his dead wife, not Patti— whom he denied ever marrying. "She's deceitful. She forced my real daughter to kill my wife . . . her little shtick was that I told them to. I didn't tell them to. I loved my wife."
Smiley played it dumb. Even her grammar was that of a woman who'd spent more time in jail than in school. She asked again and again for David to explain exactly what she was to do. Slowly, it seemed to dawn on her. "Okay," she repeated. "I tell them that when I was in jail, I talked to Patti and she told me that you're innocent and that she lied?"
That was it. David asked Smiley to repeat certain details, to expand on her "friendship" with Patti. He didn't want her to lie really, but he told her she would be saving an innocent man and returning him to his child. He would be so grateful if she would talk to his attorney soon and arrange to testify on his behalf.
"And there's no way that they could trace it back to me at all?" Smiley asked. "How about if they want to put me on a lie detector?"
"It is not admissible in court," David said confidently. "Tell them, Fuck off, fella!' "
Smiley was worried about being recorded. She wondered if there were little wires in the phones they talked on as they looked at each other through plate glass. David laughed and shook his head. "No, they can't. I hope they don't have a reason to—because that's why I arranged to have my kid here." He gestured to where Krystal was waiting with Manuela to visit him.
"Why did you have your kid here?"
God, the woman was dumb, he thought. That was okay. She was the best-looking thing he had seen in months. "Because, hopefully, they won't record me talking to my kid—you know, 'I love you, Dada, I love you, Dada, come home, Dada,' and that."
Krystal was only four; already her father was using her.
And then, business over with Smiley, David turned on the charm. "You're beautiful. . . . If you want to get to know me a little better, I could take care of you for the rest of your life. I take care of people; that's how I've managed to get ahead."
Smiley pretended to say a reluctant good-bye, letting David believe she would be back. She left the visiting booth and went immediately to have her hidden wire removed.
The net was tightening around David Arnold Brown.
He didn't know. Instead, David was elated. He had a new woman. He was convinced she found him attractive and that she had been interested when he mentioned the extent of his fortune. The next day, he called Steinhart to crow: "I have a woman interested in me, real interested." He seemed more excited about that than he was about using Smiley to destroy Patti's credibility.
Steinhart feigned enthusiasm and told David that the second female, the hit person, had been dropped off at the Orange County Jail. She was, at that very moment, in Patti's module, ready to carry out her hit—just as soon as "the two cops" were killed. "Fortunately, this girl's done this—on the professional side . . . she's got a track record."
Patti Bailey's death was a fait accompli to David, almost old news to him now. He wanted to talk more about his new woman. "She's a good-looking gal."
"Right on." Steinhart laughed.
"She's got a mouth that God designed for blow jobs," David whispered.
Steinhart laughed. "Right on. Well, hey, we'll have to go out on a date when we all get out."
In his conversations with David, Steinhart sounded as laid-back and cool as ever. But in truth, he was not faring well on the street. His old weaknesses were tripping him up. Within twenty-four hours of his release, he was back with his woman, a woman who was beautiful—but heartbreakingly addicted to speedballs, a deadly combination of heroin and cocaine.
Steinhart stayed with her for three days and nights, all the while keeping up his wired phone calls to David, and his reports to Jay Newell. But he was losing ground. The woman was out of control, and Steinhart could feel himself slipping back. Moreover, Hessian bikers had located him, and they roared past the motel where he was staying, their engines a loud warning.
Newell shook his head remembering. "We were halfway through our phone trap with David Brown. We had to move Richard out of the first motel in the middle of the night because the Hessians who were looking for him had located him. Then he called us from the new place and said he needed help. When we got there, there was blood all over the walls, in the bathroom, in the bedroom. Steinhart's girlfriend was mainlining.
"He turned her in to save her life. It just about killed him. I spent a whole day either sitting in my car or in a coffee shop, with Richard crying and me trying to convince him he'd done the right thing."
And yet, talking to David, Steinhart sounded as controlled and happy-go-lucky as always. He missed only part of one long, bad day. Animal had to take his calls from David. Detective Moran—as Animal—growled at David, leaving him convinced that Steinhart truly had hired a killing machine.
By February 10, Steinhart had a new motel, and two new roommates, Newell and Tom Borris, who moved into a motel on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach with him.
It was almost time to trip the net release.
Newell, Borris, and Steinhart had a two-room suite. The hotel was instructed to accept collect calls from David Brown and put them on Steinhart's bill. When David called, his voice sounding more and more elated, Newell and Borris were listening in and taping his calls.
David Brown, the master manipulator, could never have imagined that his great and good friend Goldie was sharing a motel suite with his archenemies. But then Jay Newell had never imagined that he would be voluntarily sharing accommodations with the man who held a contract on his life. The hunted and the hunter had become friends, a friendship forged in the middle of a grueling investigation. Now, they slept in connecting rooms. Newell never had a nightmare.
Tom Borris did. Or rather, he would have had he been able to get to sleep. He woke Newell just before dawn the first morning and said he hadn't slept all night. He pointed to a figure standing in the open doorway between the two rooms, a figure silently watching them. "It was spooky the way he stood there," Newell recalled. "We figured either Steinhart had flipped or someone had managed to get into our suite."
One hand on his gun, Newell turned on the light.
The "assassin" was only their suit jackets hanging there in the doorway.
Officially, Newell and Borris had to be sure that Steinhart didn't disappear on them, while at the same time protecting him from a number of people who stalked him. Unofficially, the three men got along amazingly well. "I gave him a pair of shoes," Newell remembered. "All Richard had was thongs, and it was cold—our feet were the same size."
Steinhart was a fascinating roommate. "His stories were great," Newell recalled. "We didn't buy them all, but they kept us entertained. He'd told us he worked as Jerry Lewis's bodyguard, and we kind of doubted that one. And then, sure enough, we were waiting for Sunday brunch in the hotel and Richard sees some guy in line and waves him over. The guy's diamond-studded, and he greets Richard like an old buddy. Then he pulls out pictures of Richard and Jerry Lewis!"
Borris and Newell wore "soft clothes" and blended easily into Steinhart's lifestyle. So well, in fact, that Deputy DA Tom Borris was offered a chance to buy the "best Thai sticks you've ever had" by a man who sat on a stool down the bar. Newell, head of the Narcotics Enforcement Team, choked on that one, but he let it go by.
"We had a good time, considering," Newell remembered. "But it was time to close it down. I wanted to be home with my family, and David was demanding action on his 'hits.'"
It was Friday, February 10, 1989.
Steinhart assured David that it was all coming down on Monday, the 13th, or Tuesday. Tom Brown was to deliver the final payment of $ 11,000 after David got word that the first part of the "job" was done. Animal would then head off on his own, and Steinhart would start working on passports and ID for David.
"That's cool," Steinhart promised David. "I'm re
ady . . . we're ready."
"Okay."
"I miss you," Steinhart threw out.
"I miss the hell out of you, Richard. God damn it. I don't believe how much I love you!"
"... I don't think we'll be needing that other five grand— for the escape," Steinhart said. "I think if we get rid of Patti and the two cops, and all your problems, you're going to beat this thing and walk anyway."
"That's what I'm counting on ... we can do everything, no hiding man—that's what I'm so fucking excited about. ... I don't know if I can love you any more except for cruising on a bike ought to give me a new feeling. ... I really do miss you, Fat Bo."
"Fat Bo?' Steinhart laughed. "Okay. You're Hip Bo, Irv's Rat Bo, I'm Fat Bo—the Bo Brothers."
For a moment there, Newell sensed that David Brown was having more fun being one of the boys in jail than he had ever had in his life. But there was a yawning hole where David should have had some vestige of conscience. He had none at all. He was having such a great time as he awaited news of at least three cold-blooded murders.
Patti Bailey, his wife, the mother of his infant child, the woman who had given up everything for the love of him, was about to "back up on a knife,"
At least, David believed she was.
David chafed at the wait over the weekend. He called Steinhart every time he got a free phone. On Monday, he called Steinhart at eight-thirty in the morning. "Hello," he said quietly, waiting.
"Hey, David!" Steinhart crowed. "David, it's done!"
"Say what?"
"I'm done. We're done. We're fucking done. Animal is in the garage right now—torching the pieces; he's melting the fuckers down right now. How did we do, huh?"
"You did great. ..." David's voice was somehow hollow.
"Is that hot, or what?"
"Yeah, it's hot."
"Hey, man, how did we do, huh?"
"Wonderful. You're a good man."
"Wonderful? Is that all?"
David whispered that he was in a crowded area; people could be listening. His voice was flat as he listened to Steinhart describe the "murders" of Jay Newell and Jeoff Robinson. Steinhart said he even had Polaroids to show David. That frightened David. He wanted the Polaroids burned.
"Ah, man, we just walked in—I can't believe your timing."
"Shit, buy yourself an extra pizza on me!" David said.
"... It went like clockwork. Bang! Bang! Right in the back of the head—both of them. Capped 'em both. I didn't have a chance to give them any last words from you though."
". . . That's all right," David stammered.
Steinhart thought the news should hit the papers soon— since the "hits" had happened right out in public. As soon as he and Animal collected the $ 11,000 from Tom, they would give the word on Patti.
"This is so fucking good, man, you won't believe it. They went so good."
"I love you," David said wanly.
And now, Steinhart needed the rest of the directions to the desert treasure. Hadn't he proved how loyal he could be?
Apparently so.
"You know where the left turn is?" David began.
"Yeah."
"You can only go left unless they've dumped some more development out there in the last couple of years. Turn left on that street at the landmark. You will pass the wash. It's less visible on the left than it is on the right. You're going to be headed north, okay? On the far side of the wash—on the right—it's like five, six foot high. Okay, you want to take the north side of the wash. Find a path up there. You will go exactly—on my odometer on a Nissan pickup—one and three-quarter miles. Okay. Then you head exactly north again. You may want a small compass for that because I made sure I was heading due north."
"Exactly north?"
"Exactly one and three-quarter miles. Okay, three-eighths of a mile or thereabouts, you'll see a boulder and a yucca tree. I call it a boulder because it's a heavy motherfucker, probably three—maximum four—feet around."
"Okay."
"Um—it's exactly under the boulder. . . . It's on property I owned at one time, but I made sure it's near a survey marker so if anybody was going to fence it in, they wouldn't have any reason to dig or move that boulder."
"Is your property close by this landmark?"
"It's on the other side of the street that you use to get to the wash."
"What's your address?"
David didn't remember the street name, nor did he remember the numbers. "It's five digits long. It's eight eight eight. . . something." The property address didn't matter; the yucca tree and the boulder did.
David Brown's fortune was buried beneath that boulder. He was willing to share it now with Richard Steinhart. "God, I love you, Richard."
"I love you, too. Anything else I need to know?"
"I did think of something last night that I was going to warn you about."
"Which was what?"
"But apparently you didn't need it."
"Well, what was it anyway?"
"The investigator was armed."
Now David told him. Had David ever intended for Steinhart to survive the two hits? He had forgotten a fairly vital piece of information.
Steinhart's answer was unruffled. "Oh, yeah—they both were. One had one in his briefcase, and one had one on him."
"I never noticed on the attorney."
"Well, I'll tell you what," Steinhart said sardonically. "It don't matter now, does it?"
It was raining and hailing and the parking lot at Bennigan's in Westminster was almost empty as Richard Steinhart and Det. Bob "Animal" Moran waited in their Camaro for Tom Brown's blue Ford Escort to turn in. At ten-twenty A.M., David's older brother arrived. He remained seated behind the wheel as he handed over the last payment: $11,000 of David's money for whatever it was David was buying. David had him running all over the place on one errand or another.
Suddenly, seemingly from out of nowhere, the lot was alive with uniformed and undercover cops—all pointing guns at Tom Brown, Richard Steinhart, and Bob "Animal" Moran. Bewildered, Tom staggered out of his car and was bent over the hood and handcuffed.
"You're all under arrest for murder," a Huntington Beach officer barked.
"For what?" Tom asked.
"For first-degree murder."
Animal Moran and Richard Steinhart, the two "hired killers" were also cuffed and hauled away. For all Tom Brown knew, David had ordered him into a nest of vipers, and he had been caught with the worst of them. He didn't know what in hell this was all about. He was both frightened and furious.
David Brown had now paid $23,400 for three murders that never happened. The "Bo Brothers" were out of business. But David didn't know that yet.
Tom Brown was transported to an interview room at the Huntington Beach Police Department. He sat alone, handcuffed, with a look of total bewilderment on his face for more than half an hour until Jay Newell and Fred McLean arrived to talk with him.
Tom Brown asked repeatedly, "What's going on?"
But Newell could not explain until he had read Tom Brown his Miranda rights.
Then he said slowly, "You're under arrest for murder—"
"For who?"
"Some people got killed," Newell said slowly, "and one of them—it looks like—was the wrong person."
Newell could be forgiven this fib. He suspected the news of a foulup would get back to David, who had been having a wonderful time for weeks orchestrating Jay Newell's sudden death.
Tom Brown now looked both incredulous and panicked. All he knew about the two men at Bennigan's was that they were supposed to be protecting David. "David called me last week and told me to take eleven thousand dollars to them today."
Tom explained that he and his father always went to the office of Joel Baruch, David's attorney, to get checks from David's trust account. "He wouldn't tell me nothing. He just said that his life and Krystal's were in danger and he needed protection."
Tom recalled bringing the two beefy "bodyguards" $10,000 a week b
efore. He remembered too, with some prompting from Newell, that he had delivered $ 1,700 before that—"to show good faith." David had given the orders. Tom had asked no questions. He knew nothing about murders. Nothing. He would have had no part in it. He shouted at Newell and McLean in his rage and fear.
"What would you say if I told you two people got killed—and one of them is the wrong person?" Newell asked.
"Nothing. I don't know anything about it."
Tom Brown was held for four hours and released. Clearly, he had been his brother's dupe and had no idea that he was delivering money intended—at least by David—to pay for three murders. Newell asked him not to tell anyone about what had happened, knowing that Tom would tell, and that it would get back to David.
Newell now had twenty-six audio and/or video tapes that tied David Brown irrevocably to solicitation to commit murder. In David's own words. In David's own voice.
When Tom Brown was dismissed after questioning, still confused and angry at the mess David had dumped him into, he apparently went right to his parents, who called Joel Baruch's office. They didn't know much. They knew only that someone had been killed, and that it was the wrong person. . . .
Later that afternoon, Tom Borris received a breathless call from Joel Baruch's partner, Jack Early. "Is Jeoff Robinson dead?"
"I can't discuss it," Borris answered tensely. "You've called right in the middle of our investigation."
Actually, Robinson was alive and well and working in the office next to Borris. But until all the pieces came together, Borris preferred not to announce that.
At nine-thirty on the night of February 13, David Brown had an official visit from his attorney, Joel Baruch. Deputy Dan Vazquez could not hear what the two were saying, but he saw Baruch wave his arms emphatically, and he could tell that the discussion was an extremely emotional one. David lit one cigarette after another, heedless that he was in a no-smoking area.