by Mavis Kaye
“No doubt,” the taller, bald-headed guard snarled.
“A’ight. Y’all stay here. I’m gon change and go take a dip with these honeys. I paid for ’em, let’s see what they about. Stay here and keep an eye out.”
When Cheeno started toward the bathhouse, the guards stepped outside the glass doors, watching his every move. Kim turned and headed toward the dining room. Time to try some of those hors d’oeuvres, she thought.
Just as she stepped into the dining room, Kim heard shouting from near the monitor where a group of rappers were watching a new video by Nelly. She turned and saw that a scuffle had broken out. Four or five guys were in each other’s face and the scene was escalating. The volume of the cursing accelerated and, as nearby guests scurried to move back, a half-dozen security guards raced over and began pulling the men away from each other. It was then that the lights began flickering. At first Kim thought it was another staged happening, and, seeing that the fight was under control, she ignored it and moved toward one of the buffet tables. Then, suddenly, the room went black—ink black. She pushed her way back toward the arched entrance, but 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 88
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absolutely nothing was visible. Unlike before, even the outside flood-lights illuminating the pool area were off.
“What the fucks goin’ on?” someone shouted.
“Cheeno, turn on the damn lights. This shit ain’t funny,” another voice screamed.
“Nigga, get your hands off my ass!” a woman yelled and for a moment or two the sound of laughter rippled through the crowd.
Kim stood still initially, trusting that the problem would quickly be solved. But after five minutes, she began pushing her way through the pitch darkness toward what she thought was the patio. At least, she thought, outside there would be fewer people. By now a few people had begun igniting their lighters or striking matches to get some momentary illumination and, when someone held up a match near the patio, Kim spied the glass doors. She was almost there when the lights began flickering then snapped back on.
A moment later, someone outside screamed. Immediately she felt a surge of bodies pressing against her back. She was pushed out onto the patio. Another scream came from the Jacuzzi near the bathhouse, and Kim forced her way toward the sound and the crowd surrounding the Jacuzzi. Before she got there, one of the nude starlets fought through the mob yelling hysterically, “He’s dead! Cheeno’s dead!”
When Kim got to the edge of the Jacuzzi, Cheeno was lying face-up, floating in the gurgling water. She watched, horror-struck, as one of his bodyguards waded into the spa and dragged the rapper’s lifeless body to the edge.
Kim sat on the corner stool near the rear of Dan Tana’s in West Hollywood and stared bleary-eyed at her third apple martini. It was her favorite L.A. bar now that Georgia’s had closed, one of the few places in the city where she knew she’d find a true New York City flavor. The owner was a transplanted New York Italian, and he was intent on maintaining the Big Apple ambience. It didn’t hurt that it was also relatively 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 89
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close to the Marmont where she always stayed, and that she had known the bartender, Frankie, when he worked in Sardi’s in New York before he fell in love with L.A.’s sun and surf. He always made sure that a car was available to take her back to the hotel.
She had ordered the scampi, a specialty of the Italian chef, but she had pushed it aside, unable to eat. She was still in shock. The drinks at least blurred her mind and helped ease the pain.
It had been a circus when the police arrived at the Malibu mansion. With so many celebrities present, they weren’t quite sure how to handle the situation. And, of course, since a rapper had died, they immediately assumed that it was some kind of hip-hop vendetta. They had briefly questioned recognizable celebrities first, then allowed them to go. Most of the others, including Kim, had also been interrogated only cursorily. Only the rappers had been grilled intensively about their whereabouts during the ten minutes or so when the lights were out. Few people had a real alibi because few saw anyone else during that time. The only light had come from matches and lighters.
Some insisted that they saw this or that person in the flickering light of a nearby match or, if they were holding the flame, that they saw this or that person standing near them. Kim wasn’t convinced. She had stood next to someone holding a lighter and, because it was held above their heads, she couldn’t with certainty say who it was.
The security guards had also told detectives that some of the guests who had limo drivers waiting had left immediately after the body was found. Security had tried to detain them, but this was Hollywood—no celebrity wanted to be involved in a potential scandal. Some were forced to stay because the valet parking attendants were told not to get anyone’s car. They followed instructions, unless, of course, they were offered enough money to ignore them. So, under the circumstances, any real investigation would have been compromised from the beginning.
Before she was questioned, Kim was able to get an idea of the 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 90
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story that was emerging by talking to some of the other guests. The bodyguards who had been watching Cheeno had apparently turned toward the crowd inside when the scuffle broke out among the rappers. It was then that the lights went out. When they turned to look for Cheeno, they couldn’t see a thing. They had groped their way out to the pool area and one had even found the stairs leading to the bathhouse and gone up to search it. But he had not heard or seen anything. No one had.
When the lights went back on, it was one of the frolicking starlets who discovered the body. It appeared to be an accident, since, as one member of Cheeno’s posse pointed out, the rap star couldn’t swim. He must have stumbled and fallen into the Jacuzzi in the dark. If he had been slightly dazed, the story went, he could have easily drowned.
It wasn’t an implausible theory, but Kim didn’t buy it. The sequence of events seemed too well orchestrated. First the fracas near the monitor, which got the attention of both the security guards and Cheeno’s bodyguards, and then the lights going out at precisely the right moment. It seemed too pat—too coincidental.
After being questioned, Kim expressed her reservations to Sergeant Furston, the chief investigator, but he dismissed her reasoning as fan-ciful speculation. When she argued that there was no reason for the lights to go out, he contended that it was probably the theatrical tin-kering with the lighting during Cheeno’s entrance or, maybe, the loudspeakers blasting out all that nonsensical hip-hop music that had caused the short. One of the sound men who worked with Cheeno, he explained, had gone into the kitchen and replaced a fuse. That’s how the lights were turned on again.
“No, Ms. Carlyle,” he said finally, “it was an accident, sure as I’m standing here. You know that boy couldn’t swim, right.”
Kim bristled at the word “boy,” and struggled to maintain her com-posure.
Noticing her reaction, Sgt. Furston added, “Look, I’ll consider what 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 91
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you’ve said, and we’ll investigate further. But I’ll bet you a Frank Sina-tra CD that there was no foul play.”
When Kim left the room, she was furious. And now, as she sipped her martini and stared at the list of musicians who had died, she still was. There was no apparent connection between the deaths of Tiffany, Brixton, Lester, Renee, and Cheeno, but she was certain that one existed.
“Frankie,” she said, “would you call a car for me?”
“Right away, Kim,” he said, “and I’m terribly sorry about your friends. Hang in there—don’t let it get you down.”
By the time she got back to the Marmont, Kim had decided that she would get to the bottom of this, no matter what it
took. Something sinister was going on; she knew it now. Lying in bed that night, she made a note to call Maurice Jackson the next morning before leaving for the airport and confirm their meeting for the following day. Everything else could wait, she had to see him immediately.
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EIGHT
London—Monday, July 30
A l o n e i n b e d in her small London flat, Mariana Blair awoke in a cold sweat. She had been hounded by nightmares since Brixton’s murder in Atlanta. She couldn’t shake the thought that somehow she was responsible for his death. After all, she was the one who introduced him to Ruff Daddy and suggested that he go to America.
Now she was worried about her own safety. This morning, she couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed and report to work at the Globe. She had gone to her office infrequently since Brixton’s death. Instead she stared blankly at the huge water spot on the ceiling above the bed. Outside, the roar of Kensington traffic signaled that the workday had begun, and, despite her anxiety, she knew that soon she would have to rise and get on with it.
Now, more than ever, she was deeply concerned about the story that had obsessed her for months. She felt guilty about it, but Brixton’s 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 94
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death was more than just a personal loss. He and Kees Van derVall, the Dutch mobster whose activities had led her to stumble onto the story, were both dead. Authorities had not yet connected the deaths, and, although she couldn’t prove there was a connection, she was certain that it wasn’t mere coincidence.
Brixton had been with Ruff Daddy’s entourage when he was killed, and she suspected that his death had been a mistake. She was certain that Ruff Daddy and Van derVall, along with Tiffany Jones’s husband, Klaus Svrenson, had been involved in the conspiracy. They had been key, the only proven links she had discovered between the entertainers she thought were involved and the businessmen and criminals she strongly suspected were behind a multimillion-dollar diamond scam.
Now Van derVall was dead and the other two had disappeared. Svrenson had dropped out of sight after Tiffany’s death and neither she nor, as far as she knew, anyone else had heard from Ruff Daddy since the night of the shooting.
For the twenty-eight-year-old journalist, it was the biggest story of her young career—one that would lift her out of the anonymity of her entertainment beat assignment for the Globe and establish her reputation as an investigative reporter. Still, she wondered if she wasn’t in over her head—if she shouldn’t have gone to the police or shared the information she had uncovered with someone else at the paper. But she had never trusted her editor, Bill Wittington. She wasn’t sure he would believe her if she confided in him, and, if he did, she feared that he would snatch the story away from her and reassign it to one of the older, more experienced reporters. She knew he wouldn’t encourage her efforts.
No, shortly after meeting Kees Van derVall—six months ago when she was sent to Amsterdam to cover the rap concert at the Melkweg and Ruff Daddy had introduced him as the “importer”—Mariana decided that this would be her story, her ticket to fame. Even if she had to go it alone. Her suspicions had been aroused almost immediately 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 95
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because, among her journalist associates, Van derVall had a reputation as a small-time, but ambitious hood. Why, she wondered, was he so cozy with Ruff Daddy, a rap artist whom she had met shortly after taking the job at the Globe.
After the concert, when she returned to London, she did some snooping and found that Van derVall was not as small-time as others thought. Textel International Corporation, a supposed legitimate import/export business, was apparently a front. She had quickly discovered that local authorities were already investigating his possible involvement in a drug and arms smuggling ring. And by using her own contacts and even following Kees when he came to London, she uncovered much more. She was now convinced that he had connections ranging from African mercenaries and U.S. mobsters to high-level De Beers executives in London and shady diamond dealers in Antwerp. So, despite the danger, she wasn’t ready to lay her cards on the table, not just yet. She had much higher aspirations.
For her the entertainment beat at the Globe was just a stepping stone. With the help of her father, a journalism professor, she had taken the job to get her foot in the door. It didn’t matter that it was a tabloid, one of those sleazy half-size newspapers with screaming red headlines and lurid photographs that usually covered the entire front page. Nor did she care that its stories were often no more than unfounded gossip written to justify publication of some scandalous photograph, or that Britain’s journalism establishment considered it utterly tasteless. She had been hired to cover celebrities and entertainers, to dig up as much dirt as she could on pop stars from Britain and elsewhere. And, except for one or two stories that unexpectedly turned out to have some real substance, for more than a year she had delivered just what they wanted. This story was different, however; she had stumbled onto a reporter’s mother lode. It might well lead to a European Union Press Club Award and, if she was lucky, a best-selling book.
The story had dominated her life, and, two months ago, when she 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 96
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met Brixton at a Chelsea pub, it was the primary reason that she hadn’t gotten closer to him. At first she was wary of the name he had taken—
Brixton was the depressed district in south London that had been trans-formed into a battlefield in 1981. Rioting had broken out after authorities started Operation Swamp in response to a steep rise in street crime. Police officers began stopping and searching large numbers of black youths on Brixton’s turf, and both white and black gangs had taken to the street. The young rapper had assumed the name as a symbol of pride in his community, and Mariana had initially thought he was some kind of militant black racist. When she got to know him, all that changed.
Yes, he was a tall, rugged, dark-brown man who exuded virility and race pride. But with his bedroom eyes and glistening smile, he reminded her more of the sexy American soul singer Teddy Pender-grass than of a militant agitator. And he attracted women nearly as readily as Teddy had, wealthy Hyde Park inhabitants as well as rebellious young groupies from the working-class districts. But there was no time for romance or even casual dalliance in her life, and she knew it.
She resisted his advances and, although he wasn’t accustomed to being put off by any woman, they managed to become good friends.
She not only loved being in the company of this brash, handsome, fast-rising star, but he was also a huge asset to making contacts in the entertainer world, particularly among blacks. It was mutually benefi-cial, since Brixton needed publicity and she made sure his name regularly popped up in Globe stories. Still, whenever he whispered that she would always be his “little rosy Brit sugar plum” and patted her bum, as he did quite often, she had difficulty resisting the impulse to invite him back to her flat.
Then, a few weeks after they met, Brixton asked her to introduce him to Ruff Daddy. At first, she resisted, using every excuse except the real one—her belief that Ruff Daddy was up to his neck in some sinister smuggling plot. When Brixton persisted, she finally gave in and 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 97
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called New York. Ruff Daddy met Mariana and Brixton at a pub in Mayfair on his next trip to London. The two men seemed to hit it off, and Ruff Daddy agreed to listen to some of Brixton’s demos if he sent them back to the States. In the weeks before Brixton went to Atlanta, Mariana knew that the men talked several times, and, frankly, she began to worry that Brixton might be getting too close to Ruff Daddy
.
She even considered revealing her suspicions about the hip-hop entrepreneur. She never did. Now she realized it was one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
That’s why, on the past two nights, she had returned to The Lollie, a seedy, overpriced dance club in Camden Town. She had prowled the trendy club looking for the mysterious little man whom Brixton had encountered there a couple of weeks before he went to Atlanta.
She remembered exactly what the man looked like—slender, red-haired with a pockmarked red face and pointed ears, like Mr. Spock.
He had been dressed in dark slacks and a Savile Row sweater that stood out from the outrageous attire that even middle-class Londoners wore when visiting The Lollie. She was certain that he was somehow involved in Brixton’s death.
“Get away from me, bloke!” Brixton had screamed when the man approached them on the dance floor. “This ain’t no time for that shit!”
The man had continued toward them, pushing his way through the hoard of sweating, gyrating bodies. “I have to talk with you, mate,” he insisted. “I know this is unexpected, but something has come up. . . .”
He was shouting, but she and Brixton could barely hear his voice beneath the pounding reggae beat and the voice of Jamaican singer Marcia Hall chiming out the words to “I Shot the Sheriff.”
At first, Mariana had thought he was just an extremely aggressive homosexual. Gays were an accepted part of the scene. The club was full of all kinds of Londoners who liked to mix with West Indians and Africans. But some older, more aggressive gays occasionally got out of 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 98
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hand; Brixton had been approached before. She had moved closer to her friend, ready to grab him in case he tried to punch the guy. When the man reached them and began talking to Brixton, however, she realized that they knew each other.
