And David Brown had crossed far beyond them.

But then their bizarre plans took an unexpected turn. "I was in the yard," Steinhart remembered, "and I was telling Irv Cully how I really felt about Thurston, and he says, 'I'm glad you feel that way about it, 'cause I gave you up.'"

"You what?" Steinhart breathed. Cully, that fat little creep, had snitched him off? "I walked halfway around the yard, trying to absorb what Cully had just told me. My first impulse was to choke him, and I walked back. Then I said, 'You want to tell me that again?'"

Irv Cully had, indeed, gone to the authorities. He was a snitcha"everyone who had spent any time with him in the Orange County Jail knew that. It was almost preordained that he would tell someone about David Brown's outrageous plans.

A snitch is a snitch.

Cully had palmed a note to a jailer, asking that he be "called out" for a dental appointment: Once out of the module, he announced that he had information that he was sure would be of urgent interest to the DA's office. Jay Newell talked to Cully on Friday, January 13, 1989.

Allowing for Cully's tendency to embroider facts a bit, the story that emerged was electrifyinga"and chilling. "David told me he has large quant.i.ties of cash buried in the desert, undeclared income from government and other business deals. He says the government has a 2.1-billion 'petty cash' slush fund that paid him. See, they paid him less than his ten percent fee but they paid him in cash."

Cully had no doubt that David Brown had enough money stashed to buy anything he wanted. He told Jay Newell that David had offered his girl, Doreena Pietro, a job. He had promised that she could live in the Summitridge house if she had herself arrested first so that she could be placed in Patti Bailey's jail module for a few days. "Then Doreena would be a witness for David and make Patti look bad, you knowa"like say stuff that Patti had said about doing the killing and all."

David had also had the Chicago data recovery firm that was handling his contracts while he was in jail wire Doreena Pietro six hundred dollars. If she wasn't willing to arrange to get booked in with Patti, she had promised to find another woman who would bea"for a price, of course. "I told him that it would be five hundred more up front," Irv Cully explained to Newell. "Five thousand dollars total if the gal testified. I told him Doreena had found a girl and her name was 'Smiley.'"

David had instructed his brother Toma"who ran errands without asking questionsa"to put $500 in an envelope addressed simply to "The Girl" and deliver it to Pietro. It was to go either to Doreena Pietro or to Smileya"whichever woman broke probation and arranged to be housed with Patti Bailey. Tom insisted on a receipt, and Doreena signed the back of an envelope. She kept the money. Jay Newell didn't care about the money; he only wanted the physical proof that the envelope would give him. He didn't have it yet, but he knew it existed.

There was, of course, no Smileya"not yet. Cully and Doreena had made her up to get money out of David.

No problem, Newell thought. He would supply Smiley. He had to have David's voice corroborating the plot that Irv Cully had told him about. Although jailhouse snitches are often helpful in investigations, their value as witnesses in court was negligible. Now, all Jay Newell had to do was to find a woman who was willing to visit David Brown and pretend to be the mythical Smiley. She would, of course, be wired.

As Newell walked away from the interview, Cully took a deep breath and called him back. There was something more he should know. David had also come up with an extended surefire solution to the problem of Patti. "I think David's offered Richard Steinhart fifty thousand dollars to kill Patti when she gets out on bail. . . and if all else fails, David's going to give Steinhart all the money he has buried in the desert, to help him escape.

"He'll get another court order to visit the dentist. When he visits the dentista"that's when Richard would get him outa"kill the deputies and all and help David escape."

Newell was aware that Irv Cully was a snitch, just as he knew that Richard Steinhart was not. Steinhart was not a game player. If he was involved with David Brown and making plans, that could mean real danger. When Cully revealed the magnitude of Brown's plotting, Newell knew that, if David had his way, a lot of people were going to die so he could go free.

When Cully broke the news to Steinhart that the DA's office knew about the plans to murder Patti and/or break David out, Steinhart regretted that he had ever met David Brown. "I was about to be called in to testify as a material witness in a big case, and I didn't want to do that. I was getting ready to call some of my government friends and have them get me out. But the way things were going, I knew I might end up in the witness protection plan in Akron, Ohio, or Walla Walla, Washington, and I didn't want to go to either of those places. David was ruining all my plans. I wasn't stupid. I knew that my next visitors were going to be from the DA's office.... I'm stuck. Cully's a self-confessed rat, anywaya"but I kind of got a kick out of the guy. I was glad I hadn't choked him blue in the yard."

On January 18, while he was searching for just the right policewoman to play Smiley, Newell received rather startlinga"but intriguinga"news. Richard Steinhart himself wanted to talk to him.

Steinhart admitted he was hoping for an immediate releasea"if the Brown case was "big enough." But he was realistic; he was more likely to be stashed away as a witness now to two major cases than he was to walk.

The next day, Newell met with Steinhart, who told him the details of David's escape plans. David was sure he could get a court order that would allow him to go to his dentist's office on Seventeenth Street and Tustin Avenue. He had asked if Steinhart had contacts that would help him escape. "He said he'd get me a car, and a place to stay when I got outa"his house up on Summitridge in Orange was empty. He began to call me his 'protector' in here. He put money on my book. It was going to be fifty thousand dollars if I got him out of jail. Then he starts asking me how Patti could be killeda"while she was locked upa"'cause she's the only one whose testimony would really do him harm. He wanted to know what the cost of that would be."

David's other obsessive fear was about what the district attorney was doing to him. "He started talking about killing Patti Bailey . .. and you." Steinhart nodded at Newell, who kept his face expressionless as he absorbed this information.

"And then Jeoff Robinson too."

"What was he going to pay you for killing us?" Newell asked.

"Gold jewelry and maybe five hundred thousand dollars that he has buried in the ground. Plus he's got some one-of-a-kind coin collection and stamp collection."

The escape plan climaxed with Steinhart and David running off to Australia.

As Newell walked with Steinhart from the interview room, he turned to the big man beside him and asked, "Did you consider following through with the plan to kill Patti and mea"and Robinsona"at any time?"

There was a long pause, and then Steinhart nodded. "I wouldn't have done you personally, but I would have arranged it. By the time Cully told me he'd given me up, the plan was already in motion. Brown had arranged to leave some cash and a car to start things moving."

Early in January, David had instructed his family to take his Ford Escort up to Summitridge and leave the keys behind the house. They were to place an envelope containing $600 in the glove compartment of the car. David told his family not to ask questions. However, when Tom and Arthur went up to the house two weeks later to do some work on the pool gate, they found the car had been moved. The keys were in the ignition, and the Escort had a flat tire; the money was gone.

They didn't know who moved the car or took the $600. There was no way Steinhart could have done it; he was still in jail. Possibly, some joyrider had found the keys and the money.

(It was important legally that these preparations had taken placea"before the DA's office learned of the murder-for-hire scheme. The $600 was pin money to David, and yet that $600 left in the Ford Escort was the single overt act that could prove David guilty of conspiracy. Later, when Jay Newell questioned Tom Brown about the money, he verified that David had told him to leave it in the car. And this first payment was weeks before Irv Cully went to the DA's office.) It was a curious thing to hear your own murder plotted. Of all the precarious situations Jay Newell had found himself in, in sixteen years of law enforcement, this was, perhaps, the most surrealistic. Steinhart was so matter-of-fact that it was hard to disbelieve him or oddly, to dislike him. The man with the deep-set black eyes and goatee was a professional. Jay Newell, Jeoff Robinson, and Patti Bailey had been only "a.s.signments" to him. And yet Newell sensed a kind of relief in this tough guy, almost as if he was glad he had been snitched off.

However, that left Newell with a problem. If Steinhart should back off from David Brown now, Newell might not know who the next "professional"a"or the one after thata" would be. He had begun to see how insidious the mind of David Arnold Brown was.

There was no one who was not expendable.

For the moment, the best plan would be to let David go on thinking that Steinhart was his man. As long as David believed he was covered, that the "hits" were in motion, he wouldn't look around for more a.s.sistance.

Newell told Steinhart that he would get back to him as soon as possible. Three days later, Jay Newell, Deputy District Attorney Tom Bonis, Deputy Sheriff Dan Vazquez, and Richard Steinhart's defense attorney, Andy Gale, visited Steinhart again. Tom Bonis would handle the alleged murder plot against his fellow staff members of the DA's office, while Jeoff Robinson moved ahead on the Linda Brown murder case. Bonis knew Richard Steinhart; they had gone to school together, and then their lives had veered off in opposite directions. Fifteen years later, they recognized each other in the Orange County Jail.

Just as Cinnamon Brown's accusations had needed to be corroborateda"from David Brown's own moutha"Bonis explained that Steinhart would have to be willing to wear a wire and have a conversation with David. "They told me this was ita"I had to go with it," Steinhart remembered. "It was the only game in town. If I was in, I was in one hundred percent. I figured the worse that could happen was I'd end up in prisona"as a snitch. I could take care of myself, and I was arroganta"so arrogant."

Steinhart agreed to cooperate and wear a wire. Bonis told him that it had to be David who initiated the subject of contract murders and escape. Only then could a criminal case be filed for "solicitation to commit murder," and only then would Steinhart's testimony be accepted.

Things were getting heavier, Steinhart told the group. "Dave's now willing to pay one hundred thousand dollars up front to have Patti Bailey killeda"while she's in custody. At the very least, he wants her to know that he can get to her anytime he wants." If Patti wasn't physically vulnerable, David wanted her mother and her brothers hurta"just to let her know he was out there.

Things, indeed, were getting heavy. It was time to move.

The wire for Steinhart had to be approved by either the Orange County Sheriffs Office, which supervised the jail, or the Orange County Marshal's Office, which is in charge of all prisoners while they are in the courthouse. The Sheriffs Office declined to become involved. Fortunately, the Marshal's Office agreed to help. Orange County Marshal Michael Carona a.s.signed Capt. Don Spears to place Steinhart and David together, and to wire Steinhart.

With a lot of help from others, Newell and Borris arranged for Steinhart to be released from the Orange County Jail. But he wouldn't really be free; he would simply be transferred to another jail. Chief Grover Payne of Huntington Beach agreed to house Steinhart for a week or two. Judge David Carter, in Department 47, signed the order of transfer.

* * a 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 h.e.l.l out of the guy. All the war stories, all the bulls.h.i.tting.

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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 Davida"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 pa.s.s anything through the mesh, but there was a narrow s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.sed-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 soundsa" 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 girl, 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 all the way.

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

Steinhart could stay in the plush home on Summitridgea" 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sages 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 $700,000a"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"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 rea.s.sured 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 fencea"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 mattera"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."