“A lot’s been going on in your life lately,” Rasheed said.
“Yeah,” Keshari said. “This talent search is absolutely wearing me out.”
“You’ve got much transpiring in your life outside the record label,” Rasheed said.
“Very true,” Keshari responded without elaborating.
“I’m leaving the label,” Rasheed said. “My contract is up in six months and I’ve opted not to renew. I’m also requesting release from the remaining six months of my current contract and I’d like to purchase the masters for all of the songs that I produced.”
“Say what?!” Keshari said, snapping up in her seat in complete shock.
“Word has it that a price is now on your head. Are you aware of that?” Rasheed asked.
“Yeah,” Keshari answered seriously, “but I can’t stop the wheels of my life from turning. I’ve got a business to run…and, for the time being, at least, I’ve got a life to live.”
“You know I love you,” Rasheed said. “You are my sister and you always will be, but it’s gotten too dangerous to be around you…and I’m headed in a different direction with my life and my music anyway. I’m taking greater control of my intellectual property and I’m laying the groundwork as we speak for my own label.”
Tears filled Keshari’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
“Maybe you need to take a break and go somewhere for awhile,” Rasheed suggested, “until things calm down or until you can reach some sort of compromise with these people.”
“I can’t go anywhere for awhile, Ra. I’m an unapologetic work-aholic. You may as well tell me to slit my wrists.”
“You can’t keep doing what you’re doing, Keshari, like nothing is seriously wrong. You’re like a moving target at this record label every day…no matter how specialized your security is. You’re endangering your staff.
“Look…,” Rasheed went on, “I never judged you for what you did and I always knew what you were involved in. I’ve got people who were involved in the game. I’ve got some people who are still involved in the game. You know like I know that the Mexicans will walk right into this record label and kill you if you don’t find some way to make this whole thing right. You’ve got DEA breathing down your neck and you think that you can just continue to pretend and try to carry on some semblance of a regular life and ignore the rest? Your whole staff knows about the DEA agent showing up here. Before long, this whole mess is going to blow up in your face.”
“You were the very first artist I signed to my label,” Keshari said nostalgically, changing the subject. “You brought me my very first platinum plaque. You were my very first superstar…and now the whole game’s changing…in so many ways.”
“Yeah,” Rasheed said, squeezing her hand and staring at her seriously.
“Whatever you want,” Keshari said. “I’ll get with my attorney. We’ll touch bases with you and your people to finalize.”
“Get out of here for awhile, Keshari. I mean that. I don’t want to turn on the news and hear that you’ve been killed. You know the game. These people are not fucking around with you.”
“I know,” Keshari responded, “and, as much as it looks like it, I am not asleep at the wheel. I’ve got this thing under control. My entire life’s changing and what’s taking place right now is the ‘storm,’ so to speak, before major transformation.”
A week passed and the sequestered jurors continued to deliberate. The deliberations were ugly. Jurors were practically at each other’s throats, trading ugly words, and then going into complete silence, unable to reach unanimity on the verdict. Los Angeles news stations and news stations in other major cities around the country now covered the trial with the same, around-the-clock fervor as they had on the first day of the trial when Richard Tresvant was escorted into the courthouse, surrounded by law enforcement like a high-profile, political figure. On CNN and truTV, attorneys wielded their legal expertise regarding the likely outcome of the verdict. None of them had any idea that the ferocious arguments taking place behind closed doors among the jurors would easily be almost as hot a story as the notorious defendant and the trial itself.
On more than one occasion, one juror threatened to request a meeting with the judge to discuss what was transpiring in the deliberations room. After two weeks of being no closer to a verdict than they had been on the day that deliberations started, quarters that were entirely too close and disagreements that had grown increasingly personal, had them all at their breaking points. One Black and one White juror were about to come to fisticuffs over their conflicting opinions. They literally had to be physically separated by two other jurors. This information somehow found its way outside to the media and media quickly inserted the race card into what was already madness.
“I know this Richard Tresvant character,” the Black juror said. “I grew up in the neighborhood where he’s done his dirt and where he still probably owns crackhouses. I’ve watched an entire community change for the worse because of scum like him. FUCK A REASONABLE DOUBT! I vote guilty!”
“We took an oath to examine the evidence and testimony of this case…ALL OF IT…and render a fair and IMPARTIAL verdict BASED UPON THE EVIDENCE!” Sally Goldenblatt, the jury’s foreman, reminded all of them. “This is a man’s life! Despite what he’s allegedly done in the past, despite what has been said about who he is and what he’s gotten away with, the real murderer is probably walking the streets right now because a few of you have decided to become vigilantes, instead of doing your civic duty! If we cannot come to the resolve RIGHT NOW to do what we each took an oath to do, I am going to go to the judge myself!”
There was silence as each of the jurors’ consciences seemed to weigh what Sally Goldenblatt had said. They were tired. They all wanted to go home. A couple of them couldn’t wait to put as much distance as possible between themselves and a couple of the other jurors they’d come to despise over the course of the trial and more than two weeks’ worth of completely unsuccessful deliberations. They all reached the agreement that they needed to immediately set aside their personal feelings about the defendant and get seriously down to the business of deciding the right verdict.
After three-and-a-half weeks and Judge Bartholomew not having to intercede, the jury had reached a verdict. Members of the national and local media were lined up outside the courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles, almost as they had been for the verdict on the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial.
Richard Tresvant was brought into the courtroom in black Hugo Boss, surrounded by his throng of attorneys, his assistants, and his attorneys’ assistants. The Bernard family sat together in the gallery right behind the prosecution table. Phinnaeus Bernard’s only son watched Richard Tresvant with venom and disgust. Phinnaeus Bernard’s widow had not been able to sleep at all the night before. She couldn’t even bring herself to look in Richard Tresvant’s direction when he was brought into the courtroom.
“Madam Foreman,” Judge Bartholomew said to Sally Goldenblatt, “has the jury reached a verdict?”
“The jury has, Your Honor.”
She carefully unfolded the verdict form and read it with a strong, loud voice for all to hear. “We, the jury, find the defendant, Richard Lawrence Tresvant, guilty of first-degree murder.”
For a moment, the courtroom was completely silent like the eerie silence that precedes a very destructive storm. Then, all hell broke loose.
“Agh-h-h-h-h!!! I didn’t do this! I didn’t do it! I’m not going to jail for something that I didn’t do!”
Ricky hopped up from the defense table and began throwing laptops, legal pads, the water pitcher, anything and everything that he could lay his hands on. It was an all-out melee, a cyclone of chaos in the tight area of “dream team” attorneys and their out-of-control client. Bailiffs rushed to restrain Richard Tresvant and try to gain some semblance of order in the courtroom. Spectators, the ones who had not hopped up and made an immediate run for the door to get out of harm’s way in the volatile
situation, watched the chaos in horror. Judge Bartholomew banged his gavel furiously to no avail. Phinnaeus Bernard’s wife, who had been seated quietly and with dignity with the rest of her family in the gallery directly behind the prosecution table since the first day of the trial, burst into tears. Family members tried to console her.
Keshari had just wrapped four days of auditions in Philadelphia when the verdict came down on Ricky’s murder trial. She and her crew were all gathering in the hotel lobby at the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia. Their limousines were being loaded with all of their luggage and equipment, preparing to take them to the airport to fly back to Los Angeles.
Terrence was scrolling through the local, Los Angeles news on his BlackBerry when he caught the breaking news regarding Richard Tresvant’s murder trial. Terrence, like everybody else, had gotten himself addicted to the drama and had been following Richard Tresvant’s trial the way people had glued themselves to television sets, newspapers and the internet to watch every detail unfold in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
“Whoa-a-a-a!” Terrence said. “That gangster guy, Richard Tresvant, was just found guilty of first-degree murder.”
Keshari’s legs seemed to turn to jelly under her as she passed out.
A few stories floated around in the entertainment tabloids that Keshari Mitchell might be pregnant after her collapse in the lobby at the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia.
“I really just don’t understand it. I’m not an entertainer. I own a record label. I’m an executive. Why the fuck does the media seem so determined to turn my life into some kind of reality show?!”
Keshari was livid, but, with all else that was going on with her, she had to let the media nonsense go. She should have long ago become accustomed to regular invasions of her privacy by the media. Entertainment media had been relentless in their attempts to get an exclusive story on Keshari’s very private personal life since the day she’d set foot into the music industry. They wanted to deliver the goods on some of the rumors floating around about her, along with some good photos to confirm their stories. Thus far, Keshari consistently operated under the radar with only the exposures to the press that she herself orchestrated typically at the advisements of her public relations team. So, thus far, media had yet to be successful at getting what they really wanted, so they concocted stories from the photographs that paparazzi supplied and prayed that they didn’t encounter a run-in with Keshari’s attorney, and the public ate it all up greedily, not really caring whether what they were seeing and reading was the truth or not.
“I just want to go someplace away from all of this for a few days, enjoy some privacy…some relaxation…someplace really exotic, in the middle of nowhere, where paparazzi can’t even get to me before I go to work on this grand finale show,” Keshari said.
“Then, let’s do it,” Mars said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Let’s go away for a few days…someplace exotic and private. Find a replacement for your spot in the last audition city and let’s just go… whatever you want to do…wherever you want to go.”
Keshari owned a yacht, a seventy-eight-foot, $4.5 million Hargrave Custom Yacht named “Larger Than Lyfe,” that she kept in Florida and rarely got the opportunity to use. She had Terrence organize a crew, and then she and Mars flew off to Miami with strict instructions to Terrence that he, “unfortunately, knew nothing about Keshari’s whereabouts.” She and Mars were going to sail to the Caribbean island of Antigua, do some shopping, explore the island, have a lot of sex, not do a single, work-related thing for the next three days, and just decompress.
The very same night that the Larger Than Lyfe jet lifted off to whisk Keshari and Mars off to Miami, a cluster of photographers and writers hopped another flight, trailing the powerful, attractive, music industry couple on their little adventure.
The first photos to reach Los Angeles newsstands and television entertainment news depicted Keshari sunning in a white bikini on the upper deck of “Larger Than Lyfe” as they sailed into English Harbor, the internationally known, premier yachting port of Antigua. A shirtless Mars, in black cargo shorts, smoothed sunscreen on Keshari’s back while she lay face down, looking almost as if she was taking a nap. The money-maker shot came when a very lucky photographer in a hired helicopter captured Mars leaning in and planting a kiss on Keshari’s rear end as he continued to apply sunscreen. Misha laughed her ass off two days later when she saw the photograph on the cover of the National Enquirer.
The three days on Keshari’s ultra-luxurious yacht off the coast of Antigua had been absolutely amazing. At the most unexpected moments during his day now, all Mars could do was envision every curve of Keshari’s luscious body, every place he had touched, the sound of her voice. He could barely concentrate when he was working. He’d sat in a board meeting, the words of the ASCAP executive trailing off into nothingness as he thought of the three days he’d spent on the water and exploring parts of Antigua with Keshari. He couldn’t remember having been happier in his life. More than once, he thought about the fact that he needed to get with a very good jeweler sometime soon. He’d been seriously thinking about asking Keshari to be his wife.
The Los Angeles DEA was getting extreme pressure from their Washington, D.C. headquarters to come up with a solid case against The Consortium very soon to take before a grand jury or not a penny more would be allocated to the special task force’s ever-increasing budget. DEA brass in Washington were, after nearly two years, drawing the conclusion that the special task force was ineffective, turning up only inconsequential triumphs in an operation that was beginning to reek of a profound waste of man hours and money.
Dissension and low morale were on the rise among the agents. Two agents had lost their lives attempting to go deep undercover into The Consortium. Many of the agents had begun to vocalize their disagreement with the tactics being used. They believed that pursuing the people who reported to Richard Tresvant, instead of going after Richard Tresvant himself, put Richard Tresvant more on guard than ever and made it all the more difficult to connect him to the crimes he’d committed and virtually impossible to convict him of the lengthy list of heinous crimes that he’d committed.
Thomas Hencken, head of the special task force, was adamant that the only sure way that DEA or any other law enforcement agency would be successful at indicting and convicting Richard Tresvant was to take down the key people that Richard Tresvant set up all around him to shield him and do his dirty work. Richard Tresvant had so many people in his employ, doing everything from witness intimidation to murder to keep his hands clean, that the only way to get to him would be to take these people down. For that reason, Thomas Hencken remained concentrated on Keshari Mitchell, The Consortium’s second in command, Richard Tresvant’s protégé, who Richard Tresvant had fully trained himself for organized crime.
Thomas Hencken firmly believed that Keshari Mitchell held the most inside information about The Consortium and would be the easiest to compel to cooperate. Over the course of researching all of The Consortium’s key players, Keshari Mitchell was the strangest bedfellow of them all. She did not fit the profile of a career criminal. She did not fit the sociopathic, narcissistic personality profile of any of the people who surrounded Richard Tresvant. Due to a set of unfortunate circumstances following the death of her mother years before, Keshari had, for the most part, been lured into The Consortium and Richard Tresvant’s intricate web of manipulation and criminality during a period when she was romantically involved with him, when she was little more than a child, and when she was enduring a great deal of emotional turmoil.
Years later, Keshari Mitchell was now a very public figure with much to lose. She owned a multimillion-dollar record label that she’d built from the ground up herself, and she was fiercely dedicated to its operations. The DEA had checked out the legitimacy of Larger Than Lyfe’s business activities since its inception and the company was not a front for the laundering of The Consortium’s drug money in any way. Larger Than Lyfe’s ori
ginal start-up capital had come from a confusing mix of dummy corporations that were eventually traced back to Richard Tresvant’s attorney, Phinnaeus Bernard III, but Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment’s operations after its start-up funding had always been clean. Keshari Mitchell would not want her record label’s operations intercepted in any way or the company’s overall reputation damaged by a massive, DEA investigation, seizure of her company’s records, and the strong potential of a grand jury indictment.
Most recently, Keshari Mitchell had been repeatedly linked romantically in the media to ASCAP entertainment attorney, Mars Buchanan. The DEA ran a complete background check on Mars Buchanan and turned up nothing…no criminal record…not even a negative credit profile. The DEA was confident that Mars Buchanan was not connected in any way to the business operations of The Consortium. Thomas Hencken was even more confident that Mars Buchanan possessed zero knowledge of his new paramour’s affiliation with The Consortium, but all of that was about to change. If the DEA had to throw a wrench into Keshari’s personal and professional life, shake things up, and make her extremely uncomfortable to push her into cooperating, that was precisely what they’d do. Her testimony before a grand jury was absolutely instrumental to a special task force operation that was teetering close to collapse.
Thomas Hencken arrived at ASCAP’s Los Angeles offices and checked the directory in the office building’s busy lobby. He rode the elevator up, displayed his badge, and asked the receptionist if he could see Mars Buchanan. Mars came out to the reception area himself, wearing a bewildered expression on his face.
Drug Enforcement Agency? Mars thought. What could the DEA possibly want to speak to me about?
“Mr.?
“Hencken,” the DEA agent supplied.
Larger Than Lyfe Page 19
