If You Really Loved Me (45 page)

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

D
avid 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.

Newell cased the property from where he stood. The second home in the compound, the guesthouse that Brown had designed for his parents, had been almost completely invisible from the front. It was big enough to house a separate family. Most of the backyard space was taken up with a pool, and the rest with cement paving. Two white statues of Grecian maidens in togas stood beside the pool, glowing in the moonlight. California Cyprus trees grew close to yet another fence, this one ensuring privacy from the street side of the property. He could make out tables with umbrellas, faded flowers in brick planters.

The place seemed abandoned, vacant. The lights were off in the guesthouse, and he could perceive only a dim glow deep inside the big house. Newell had to estimate how accessible this place might be for an arsonist. He had to find a way in, and a speedy way out, for the torch. There would be no second chance if his information didn't ring true. Brown was so cunning that he would catch Steinhart if he faltered in his descriptions.

Despite the property's abandoned appearance, Newell was sure that Manuela and Arthur still lived there with Krystal, and maybe with Heather too. He grimaced to think of what tragedy might result if he came away with flawed information. Brown would find himself another firebug, one Newell didn't know about. He saw that the expensive new motor home was parked snug against the guesthouse. If it went up, its carpeted walls soaked with gasoline, it would take the guesthouse, the main house, and maybe half the street with it. The resulting inferno would make all those cars on Ball Road and the Orange Freeway rear-end each other as the drivers braked to gawk.

Total destruction wasn't really what Brown had in mind; he had indicated on the tapes with Steinhart that he wanted the houses intact. The insurance payoff on the motor home would be adequate for the first payments to his "hit man."

But if it all went, Brown wouldn't be that upset. All of it was insured. The whole shebang. If the fire burned out of control, he would simply come into a great deal of cash from property that was no longer of any use to him. The money would only add to the wild time Brown planned to have cruising Australia with "Goldie" Steinhart.

A chill flicker of wind picked at the water of the reservoir, and Newell accelerated his survey, shivering. Okay, it was possible for the big blue house to be approached initially from the front; in the dark, if he was quiet and careful, "the arsonist" could slide past the palm trees growing close to the north side of the house. But he would have to be able to get out fast by vaulting the two fences and dashing around the reservoir. The neighbors were curious too. Strangers stood out. Newell made a mental note to remind Steinhart to mention the nosy neighbors.

He counted two cars, but there were supposed to be three. Did that mean the house was empty now? Or did it mean that only Arthur was out? Newell wondered if Brown really cared if the fire he planned took more with it than the motor home and the two houses, perhaps even his mother and father, and his two small daughters. The insurance money seemed all-important to him. It would provide professional fees, premium pay for the most dangerous crime of all.

Murder for hire.

It grew late. Even the cars on the freeway were few and far between. Newell retraced his own path, back through the dried-up oleanders, past the spill of broken concrete, close along Ball Road to the spot where his car waited. He would report back to Steinhart, and in the morning Steinhart would wait for another collect call from David Brown.

Newell looked back at the blue house and was seized with a grim vision of what could have happened. If Cully hadn't snitched Steinhart off, it might well have been Steinhart himself here now. Maybe only the motor home would have burned. Maybe the whole compound of blue buildings would have gone up like a pile of creosoted logs, the Grecian maidens cracking and tumbling into the lonely pool. A total loss.

As he picked foxtails off his socks and pants legs, Newell felt a slight tightening in his gut. When he was in this mode, he did not often allow himself to think about any of it with emotion. He was far too caught up in the layers and twists necessary to make his own plans work. But sometimes it got so intricate, so convoluted, that the players blurred and changed. He was dealing with people he had no reason to trust. He was spending most of his time with an avowed hit man. All it would take would be one misstep to invoke disaster.

He shook his head sharply. He didn't let it get to him often. But now he did. The bleak irony of it caught Jay Newell unawares as he drove home too late to say goodnight to his kids. If this had all worked out the way David Brown planned, Newell himself would have been right there on top of David's list, slated to be the first to get blown away when he least expected it.

Number one to get a bullet in the back of his head.

Richard Steinhart had been given no promises by the DA's office. He had only exchanged one jail cell for another. He had
used
people for years, but he had never set out to destroy them totally. For Steinhart, the frustration of David's killing plans became a kind of crusade. He did it all with words, using the details Newell had given him.

Steinhart proved to be a superb actor. He had lived by his wits for years, and he was good at it. Although he talked on the phone with David Brown from the Huntington Beach Jail, he sounded, always, as free as the wind. Sometimes Steinhart pretended that he was just coming in from a hot date; sometimes he pretended to be eating—pizza, of course. David missed pizza most of all the foods he was denied in jail. Steinhart yawned during some calls, as if he were talking in bed, and he pretended to trail the phone after him as he walked to the "kitchen" to get a beer out of his imaginary refrigerator.

And all the time he was in jail, surrounded by cops, working with Jay Newell to thwart David Brown. David called collect to the "cold phone," and Steinhart or one of his "buddies" or "girlfriends" always accepted the calls. Every word was recorded.

David was anxious without Steinhart to talk to. He called him the day after he "got out"—February 3, 1989. He recognized the exchange as Huntington Beach and that worried him. He hadn't expected Steinhart to be in that area. "Who was that who answered the phone?" he asked suspiciously.

"Huh? That's Animal's old lady—I'm at Animal's house. He's good people."

"Had me kind of nervous to tell ya the truth," David said.

"Oh, you jerk—you stoop—you getting dumb on me or what? It's Animals' house—ah, Jackie's son. So what's happening, man?"

David had a tale of woe. The "district" guy was tormenting him. Now, there was going to be a custody hearing on Krystal.

"Well," Steinhart commiserated, "do you want me to do anything special to him? Give him an extra one for you ... ?"

"No, no. I just—I'm starting to smile at the thought."

The tapes of the conversations between David and Steinhart revealed a paradox. For a man who had achieved a miraculous success in the business world, David Brown had not the slightest clue how to carry on repartee with another man. His world before jail had been dependent young women, family, and sycophants. They had all danced to whatever tune he played, and David seemed to have truly believed that he was larger than life. He still did—but he came across as a computer nerd bantering with a popular, macho man.

Almost. There was a sinuous stream of undiluted evil in David's conversation.