STEVE MARBLE -- Notebook

Among the spoils he left behind in his Huntington Beach trilevel was a

Robert Maplethorpe photogravure.

“A Season in Hell,” it was called.

And how appropriate that was.

Robert Dixon was a conflict of a man -- a gracious, quick-witted, warm

and endearing city bureaucrat poised to be the next city manager of

Newport Beach; a thief who stole repeatedly and spent compulsively,

stupidly, audaciously.

By the time the cops showed up and handcuffed him on the steps of City

Hall, the city utilities director had siphoned about $1.8 million from the city’s water budget.

Dixon’s looting had been going on for a while. Eleven years. In all,

he forged more than 400 City Hall checks. The checks were made out to

nonexistent property owners who supposedly lived along a route the city

was trying to acquire for a pipeline. As a ranking and trusted city

official, Dixon had the power to negotiate contracts with property

owners.

Instead, he funneled the money into his own bank account.

The stealing went unchecked until a bank official -- and who knows why

then and not before -- questioned the number of two-party checks, and all

for large amounts, being deposited in Dixon’s account.

Dixon was in a late-afternoon City Council study session when the cops

showed up. They tapped him on the shoulder, asked him if he wouldn’t mind

stepping outside. It was broad daylight and they cuffed him.

So what did he do with all the money? And why would a lifelong

bachelor with an annual salary of $86,000 need to steal?

Investigators found out quickly enough when they searched his

townhouse. Plowing through the place, they found dresser drawers and

Louis Vuitton steamer trunks filled with pricey clothing, some of it

still unwrapped. There were 225 neckties, 125 sweaters, 110 dress shirts, 60 woolen scarves, 30 hats, 40 umbrellas, a tux, a cape and more than

1,000 compact discs.

Clearly, the guy liked to shop.

And there were the weekend theater dashes to New York City, Paris and

London. There was the artwork. The paintings. The photos. And “A Season

in Hell.”

Dixon -- tearful, melancholy, repentant, spent, tortured, used-up and

looking like a man with one helluva nasty hangover -- pleaded guilty

rather than go to trial.

The judge gave him four years in prison. Instead -- and the justice

system is inclined to taking such detours at times -- he did 18 months at

a correctional facility in San Diego and then a couple months at a

halfway house in Orange.

In early 1984 -- roughly two years after his arrest -- he was quietly

released. He headed north, settled down in Berkeley and dropped out of

sight.

Trying to recover its embarrassing losses, the city sold off the

shirts and scarves and steamer trunks. City officials got first crack at

the items. In all, the city came away with $700,000.

But as part of his sentencing, Dixon signed a deal with the city, not

only stipulating that he would pay back the rest of the money, but that

if he didn’t settle up by early 1993, the city could collect another

$512,900 in interest. He has yet to pay back one cent.

And so it is that Robert Dixon still owes the taxpayers of Newport

Beach $1.6 million. And the city is getting restless.

Last year, the Daily Pilot sent a reporter up to the Bay Area to track

down Dixon and ask him whether he still planned on paying off his debt.

The reporter, Theresa Moreau, waited for Dixon outside a drab, slate

gray tenement house until she saw him round the corner, bundled in a red

jacket with the collar turned up, khaki pants and a soft leather

briefcase that he held up in front of his face when he saw the reporter.

He looked plumb and balding and, suddenly, very middle age.

“Sorry,” he stammered when asked about his debt. And then he

retreated, slipped a key in the front door and vanished into whatever

awaited him.

City officials have now opted to track down Dixon themselves and see

if he has any cash, something to put a dent in his tab. The thinking,

though, is that he’s a poor man, doomed to live alone with his demons.

A season in hell.

*

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor of Times Community News and can

be reached at o7 steve.marble@latimes.comf7 .