If You Really Loved Me (42 page)

From the moment David took her into his home, she felt no longer "like a black sheep," but "I felt like I had a family."

In an interview with
LA. Times
reporter Eric Lichtblau, Patti tried to explain the hold David had over her. "He'd let me sit on his lap and give me attention and tell me I'm a good kid and go out and buy me clothes and make me feel real good about myself."

This was an eleven-year-old child, the very last of eleven children born to poverty. "He's a hell of a talker," Patti told Lichtblau. "If he told me the sky was purple, I'd have believed it. . . . David was everything to me. He was my family. If I thought he was going to be taken away, that'd be like pulling the plug."

With the threat of the loss of David, Patti had indeed participated in plans to kill Linda. She had yet to reveal the plethora of murder scenarios. Patti recalled later in jail that David had suggested running Linda down with an ATV in the desert; that Patti and Cinnamon ride their bikes to a shopping mall and shoot Linda as she shopped; releasing jacks holding up a car so that it would fall on her; running her over with a car; and creeping up on Linda from behind with a crowbar.

Patti had never allowed herself to think about what Linda's death would mean; she had blocked it off in a faraway place in her mind. But she had been so depressed. David had not allowed her to see a counselor unless he was in the room. Even after she tried to commit suicide by taking three boxes of No Doz pills and tranquilizers, when she slit her wrists, David would not allow her to be hospitalized. He was always afraid she would tell. And so, she could never confide her grief and terror to anyone.

Patti Bailey had belonged to David Brown, body and mind and soul, for a decade. He was the only male she had ever really known. He was practically the only
person
she had contact with. Was it surprising that she would have done almost anything to keep David safe? To please David?

On January 19, 1989, Judge Schenk ordered David Brown held over for trial for murder and conspiracy. Judge Schenk also decided that there was enough evidence to support a special allegation that Brown had plotted his wife's death for financial gain. This special finding meant that David Brown might face the death penalty.

On February 2, Superior Court judge Myron S. Brown set David Arnold Brown's trial date for. March 29, 1989. Patti Bailey would face charges in juvenile court first, because she was only seventeen when Linda Brown was murdered. Jeoff Robinson said he would ask, however, that she be tried as an adult. Her age at the time of the murder ruled out the death penalty for the victim's sister.

36

B
y the time David Brown had a trial date, he had already begun to construct other plans. As he was fond of saying, "I
always
know what I'm doing." David, in this new milieu, had new friends. Like a chameleon, he adapted quickly to any environment. The past did not haunt him.

Christmas in jail is, at best, a bleak holiday. Richard Steinhart, "Yahtahey" on the street, thirty-five, had found himself in any number of unusual spots on Christmases past—many of them plush and pricey, a good number of them dangerous. He hadn't spent a Christmas Eve "at home" in years. On December 24, 1988, Steinhart was arrested for probation violation and lodged in the Orange County Jail. In truth, he was picked up because he was a most important material witness in an upcoming murder trial (unconnected to the David Brown trial). The trial involved bikers and counterfeiting, and the accused were powerful men.

Orange County deputy DA Rick King needed Steinhart. He was a percipient witness; he had voluntarily told investigators of events in 1982 that strengthened the State's current case. The defendants had every reason to want Steinhart out of the way, and Steinhart had every reason to want to be swallowed up on the streets of some large city in southern California, to become anonymous. But Steinhart was in the Orange County Jail, Rick King would be able to find him when he needed him, and Steinhart would have to testify against some heavy hitters.

Actually, Richard Steinhart was a heavy hitter himself. He had been in jail before, and he knew the protocol better than a duchess going to tea with the queen. It was not his favorite place to be, but for the moment, it was probably safer than the streets of Orange County.

Steinhart was a long way from home, or where home had been once. Born on December 13, 1953, in Somerville, New Jersey, Steinhart never knew who his birth father was. His mother was an organist in the St. Luke's Methodist Church in Somerville. She played the massive pipe organ, dressed Richard in a "little Lord Fauntleroy suit," and did her best to raise her young son in the church, but he was such a wild one that sometimes she despaired. "My mom really did care about us when we were young," Steinhart recalled. "She worked two jobs—and it was really hard on her."

They moved from New Jersey, and Richard grew up with his mother and stepfather in Buena Park, California. He was a smart kid who did "very well in school" without really trying. He was a rebel, a hyperactive teenager who gravitated toward trouble.

Steinhart became a superb athlete. He was six feet tall, but he gave the appearance of being six three; his shoulders were massive and his chest was deep. He had black hair, long and combed straight back, a "cookie-duster" mustache, and a goatee. He was heavily tattooed and usually wore a black leather vest and Harley-Davidson T-shirt. When he was silent, he was unapproachable. When he talked, he talked ninety miles a minute. There was an electric quality about Steinhart, pure energy unfettered by restraints. He was always charismatic; he was often witty, and on occasion his intensity could intimidate.

If one thing only might be said of Richard Steinhart, it was that for most of his life, he had never been exactly what he appeared to be.

Steinhart attended Fullerton Community College where he played guard and tackle for a team that never lost a game all season. His interest in college dwindled as he began to make more and more money in other pursuits.

It was in martial arts where Steinhart soared. His step-father had many master's belts, and Richard became the youngest certified grand master of the martial arts in the United States, a two-time national karate champion, and world champion of the UKKA, the Universal Kenpo Kung Fu Association. He had black belts in third degree—or higher—in six martial arts. He once had his own studio where he instructed his students in the techniques of laying a man out with quick blows from the hands and feet, graceful killing movements too fast for the eye to follow.

Not surprisingly, Steinhart was working as a nightclub bouncer by the time he was seventeen. He would become, in his own words, "a modern-day ninja. I worked for serious people in the 'professional' area; I was sought after as a bodyguard. I was an arm-breaker and a leg-breaker—if I had to be. ... I had no feelings about what I did—not for the target; I was a professional." Steinhart would also become, at various stages of his life, "internal affairs officer" for the Hessian motorcycle gang, a bodyguard for comedian Jerry Lewis, a gunrunner, a drag runner, a drug
addict,
and a contracted hit man.

Steinhart worked, he recalled, for whoever had the money to pay him—the government, celebrities, the mob, the drug lords. Many of his contacts had the clout to keep him out of jail, and he often walked away when he knew he should have been booked. All it took was a nod and a word from the right agency or organization. But in the end, even Steinhart's high-placed government "friends" were telling him to clean up his act; they couldn't help him any longer, no matter how valuable his services were.

"I sold drugs for two years before I tried them," he recalled somewhat ruefully. "I wouldn't touch the stuff. Some of the clientele I worked for ran a half ton to a ton of cocaine. Everybody was trying to get me to sample it—but I held out And then I tried it. Since 1978, I've put a half million dollars of cocaine in my own nose."

He also bought his mother a new upper plate and a house in Huntington Beach. "Those dentures made her the happiest I've ever seen her."

Steinhart's name was familiar to southern-California cops, and not because they admired him. Arresting Steinhart was a dicey proposition. He was almost impossible to subdue if he didn't care to go quietly. "I remember I got arrested once," he said. "They had me on my hands and knees, and this one cop came up and said, 'Mr. Steinhart, we know who you are—and if you move, I'm going to put a bullet in your head.' And I said, That's what I would do if I were you, 'cause
I know me!' "

Steinhart could take on six or more opponents and "destroy" them. He had the respect of the Hessians; he taught them how to use martial arts, and he rode along with them on his big hog of a bike, his long hair streaming behind him. He always had a woman, or two or three.

But things started turning sour on Steinhart toward the end of 1987. "I was getting arrested for stupid drug beefs. I had no wife, no kid—I'd lost them. I had no place to live. I was burned-out. I always had girls who were willing to pay my way, but ..."

Steinhart wanted to do "one big thing to pay for my kid," but he had somehow lost his timing, or maybe only his taste for the game.

On Christmas Eve, 1988, the newly arrested Richard Steinhart recalled that he just wanted to "mind my own business. I got my stuff and I went right to my cell that first night in there. I came out in the morning. See, there's a pecking system in the IRC. So I sat at the lowest table, kept my head down; I didn't want to mess with nobody." Steinhart had been booked into David Brown's module. By this time, David had been in the Orange County Jail for three months and had long since bribed and bragged his way to the head table.

Jail and prison culture spawns nicknames. Steinhart answered to "Goldie" when he was in jail. Other inmates were called Mouse and Cockroach and Shadow. It guaranteed a kind of anonymity. Outside this raucous boys club they lived in another world with other names.

The IRC prisoners called Brown "Dave" to his face; behind his back, they called him Hunchy for the awkward, hunchbacked stance he took when playing handball, his omnipresent cigarette clenched between his lips, or "Thurston Howell III" for the rich castaway—played by Jim Backus—in the television series "Gilligan's Island." David hated being called Thurston. But he had been quick to let his jail mates know that he was a tremendously wealthy man. They deferred to him, even as they scorned him.

"I remember the first time I talked to Dave," Steinhart recalled. "I'd been sitting there keeping quiet, but these guys were talking, pretending they knew karate and martial arts and everything. I was trying to keep my mouth shut, but it got my professional goat. Finally, I stood up and said, This is how you do it,' and went ka-ba-boom! The guy went, 'Arrghh,' and went down, of course, and Brown looks up and whistles and says, 'Hey, this is
my
kind of guy'—and invites me over to the head table."

Christmas Day dinner in the Orange County Jail.

Steinhart's "victim" got up from the floor holding his neck and muttering. The guards politely asked Steinhart not to demonstrate martial arts. "You move so fast, Richard; we don't know if you're just fooling around or . . ."

He nodded. They had a point, and he wasn't about to make the guards nervous.

Steinhart peeled his tangerine and observed the squat, pale man who had been so impressed with his physical prowess. This guy was no athlete. Steinhart saw at once that Brown was naive in the ways of the con, how he longed to be one of the boys.

"I watched him and studied him and saw that David Brown did not have a real friend in the world—probably never had. He was the abused little rag doll—the one with one eye—that the little girl gets mad at and socks a little bit, and then she goes and hugs the
pretty
dolls. David appeared to be that kind of person. Very vulnerable as far as being streetwise—but a ruthless,
ruthless,
person. Serious obsession. There was a very ruthless person inside."

Steinhart, operating then as the con man's con,
knew.

Steinhart was looking for a chicken ripe for plucking, and the word in the module was that Brown was loaded. He was putting money on the books of many of the prisoners—for favors. Some bought him extra candy bars and cigarettes. (David went through his ration in no time.) Some hinted they might be able to help him win his case. For whatever reason, men with no money on their books suddenly had $10 to $50 deposited to their accounts by Arthur Brown (who used a number of transparent aliases). David convinced his family that his life was in danger, and that it was necessary to buy "protection" from other prisoners. Not until the advent of Richard Steinhart, however, had David found a man in whom he placed his full trust.

"David really opened up to me," Steinhart recalled. "And me just being me—from a professional side. See, you have to rise or lower yourself to the occasion and be what you have to be to any man to get what you can get out of it—whatever role-playing it calls for. It keeps you
alive. "

Another prisoner, Irv Cully*, who wore the "jacket" of a snitch, hovered obsequiously by David Brown's side. Cully had sat with David at the head table on Christmas Day because he had "seniority"; he had been there longer than anyone. When Steinhart joined their exclusive little group, he sensed he was in the presence of jailhouse power. "They had some little plan going—I didn't pay too much attention," Steinhart remembered. "Something with Cully and his girl, Doreena*."

Steinhart "worked" David Brown, listened with pretended fascination to his stories about his business successes, his great wealth, his women. He responded in just the way he knew would please Brown. He perceived that David longed to be a real man, macho, respected in jail. David, in turn, admired Steinhart, who came complete with
his
own set of war stories.

By the time Patti Bailey testified in January, virtually blowing David out of the water with her bleak confidences, David was ready to employ desperate measures. For the first time, perhaps, he realized that he might
not
be acquitted. His own attorney had warned him how good Jeoff Robinson was, filling him in on Robinson's track record.

It was unthinkable that David should go to prison. He had always told Cinnamon and Patti, "Keep me out of this." He had meant to be only the puppeteer, not a participant. He hadn't the stomach for up-close violence, and his health was far too fragile for him actually to serve time.

David didn't want to go to trial and have Jeoff Robinson cross-examine him. Nor did he want Jay Newell sniffing around anymore. Newell had found out things about his very private life that David thought he had covered over years ago.

Not to worry. David had a new best buddy who was going to take care of his problems. Richard Steinhart. Steinhart had convinced him that he could do
anything
—for a price—and what he couldn't do, he had the connections to have done. David and Steinhart planned how to raise money, escape, wreak revenge,
and
find a new life far away on another continent. "There was no emotion involved," Steinhart explained. "I wasn't his 'friend.' You might say I was an acquaintance. But he was talking big, big,
serious
money. Was I going to do what he wanted me to? Hell, yes. For three hundred thousand dollars, I was going to do it."

With Cully eavesdropping like some misplaced Dickensian toady, David approached Steinhart with plans. Steinhart hinted that he might be released at any moment, and David needed a good man on the outside. "David started talking about arson—to begin with," Steinhart recalled. "He wanted me to torch his motor home and the house. I was going to do that first."