Harvey said Steven's other reason for coming after him is to suppress what he claims to know about possible tax fraud and other irregularities in the formation of Eastco. "He wants to make me look like a liar and a murderer because he doesn't want the truth to come out," Harvey said.

"If my brother said today that he'd cooperate fully with the police and take a lie-detector test," says Steven Brown, "then I'd call off the dogs. But it's so beyond that now. There's no doubt in my mind that he did this. That's why I filed the suit. I want justice and dignity for my parents. Nobody should die the way they did, and I'm not gonna let the Suffolk Police Department forget about them," he says, exasperated.

"I want to go on with my life. I've got two children, a wife, and hundreds of people that depend on me. But I want to be known as the guy who did the right thing for his parents. When that happens, I'll happily fade into the sunset."

Steven and Harvey grew up in Lake Grove, a relentlessly middle-class town of store managers, small-business owners, and split-levels. It is the Long Island of Billy Joel songs, Joey Buttafuoco diction, and the Smith Haven Mall. Eliot Drive is the kind of street where the houses are so close to one another you can easily see in the window of your neighbor. The Browns were different from their neighbors, however -- at least financially. Their grandfather was the developer of the original rubber pants for babies, the waterproof garment that used to be worn over a cloth diaper. He owned a big factory, which he rode to in a chauffeured car. Steven and Harvey always had more than the other kids in the neighborhood.

The boys had a typically rocky, older-brother-younger-brother relationship: They'd fight, they'd make up, then they'd fight again; and once they reached their teens, with Harvey two grades ahead in school, they didn't spend much time together. Steven was small, wiry, and athletic and devoted much of his time to sports. Harvey, on the other hand, was always more interested in cars and girls. And growing up, Harvey had the closer relationship with their father, based in part on a shared love of machines.

Papers were spread out, and the wills had obviously been read. "In all my years on the force, I've never seen a murderer outside the family stop to read a will," says Pierce.

The trouble seemed to start after Harvey went to college. For his freshman year at the University of Tampa in 1982, Harvey's father bought him a brand-new Celica Supra, the hot new Toyota that every kid on the Island wanted. By the end of his first year at school, Harvey had grown a mustache, started working out, and was tending bar part-time.

When the owner of the bar complained one day that he could never get anyone reliable to clean it, Harvey said that was his family's business: He could do it. He got the contract, and by the end of his sophomore year, he'd built a $200,000 business. Steven, meanwhile, did a semester at Suffolk Community College to get his grades up and worked for his father at night.

"Harvey said to my dad, 'Why doesn't Steven come down here to school and we'll work on the business together,' " Steven remembers. Everyone agreed this was a good idea -- and in hindsight, it was probably the last untarnished moment the three men had.

Within days of his arrival in Florida, Steven began to wonder what he'd gotten himself into. Though he and Harvey lived in a house with two roommates, and there were parties and lots of girls, Steven ended up working in the business as many as 100 hours a week. For $100.

"I was like Harvey's slave. For a while, putting in all the hours seemed like the right thing to do," Steven says. "I mean, we were supposedly trying to build a business. But I was exhausted all the time, my grades began to nosedive, and at the end of a year and a half, I dropped out of school. Maybe even worse was that I learned that my brother was clearly not the guy I thought I knew. He was really into drugs, and he'd gotten really mean."

The breaking point came when Heyward went down to visit the boys. "Late one night, I got a call from this huge black guy who was cleaning one of the bars," Steven remembers. "He told me he was shorted on his pay and if someone didn't come down and straighten it out, he was gonna wreck the bar. Harvey was out somewhere, so I figured I better go see him."

When Steven got to the bar the guy was really worked up, and in an effort to defuse the situation, Steven said he'd call his brother, who ran things. "Luckily I got him on the phone, but Harvey immediately starts screaming and cursing and saying, 'I'll blow that motherfucker's brains out.' Well, my dad was there and he overheard what was going on."

"Where's your brother?" he asked.

"He's at one of the bars," Harvey said.

"Why aren't you there with him if there's a problem? He's your brother."

"So," Steven says, "Harvey came down with a 9-mm. and put it right up against the guy's head. He told him to get the fuck out, he was fired. Which, of course, meant I ended up having to clean the bar. I didn't get home till 7 a.m., and my dad finally saw what was happening."

Steven went back to New York to work with his father, but Harvey was unbowed. In fact, he was ready to expand. He'd met a girl from New York whose father had a seat on the stock exchange. Harvey hired someone to run the cleaning business for him, and with seed money from the girl's father he opened a kosher deli in Tampa.