LAbyrinth

Randall Sullivan

Description

LA, 1997. The city is restless and simmering with tension. In two seemingly unconnected attacks, rap superstars Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. are brutally murdered. Across town, a black off-duty cop is gunned down by a white undercover cop in broad daylight. Award-winning journalist Randall Sullivan's searing investigation uncovers a mass of connections to Suge Knight and his infamous label Death Row Records. But as Sullivan follows his leads into the darkest corners of the city, he finds the case thwarted at every turn by the LAPD itself - and realises that he is caught in a web of police corruption that spreads wider than he could have ever imagined.

Sujets

• True crime
• California

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 23 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782114109
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Also by Randall Sullivan
The Price of Experience
Corruption and Vice in the L.A.P.D.: The Truth Behind the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls
RANDALL SULLIVAN
First published in the UK in 2002 by
Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This edition first published in 2003
First published in the United States of America under the title
LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records Suge Knight and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal in 2002 by Atlantic Monthly Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright Randall Sullivan, 2002
The moral rights of the author has been asserted
Permission to quote from Notorious B.I.G. s Somebody s Gotta Die by Hal Leonard Corporation. Words and music by Sean Combs, Christopher Wallace, Nashiem Myrick, Carlos Broady, and Tony Hester. Copyright 1997 EMI April Music, Justin Combs Publishing Company, Inc., Big Poppa Music, EMI Longitude Music, Nash Mack Publishing, and July Six Publishing. All rights for Justin Combs Publishing Company, Inc., and Big Poppa Music controlled and administered by EMI April Music, Inc. Contains elements of In the Rain . All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.
This digital edition first published by Canongate Books in 2013
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 1841954063
eISBN 9781782114109
www.canongate.tv
To M.D., who talked me into this.
CONTENTS
ALSO BY RANDALL SULLIVAN
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PROLOGUE
PART I: THE RACE CARDA
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
PART II: DEATH ROW INMATES
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
PART III: NATURAL LEADS
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
PART IV: INVENTING THE SCANDAL
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PART V: HEAT FROM A COLD CASE
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
LABYRINTH ROSTER
TIME LINE
DOCUMENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY/RECOMMENDED READING
PICTURE SECTION
Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
-Robert F. Kennedy
Retaliation for this one won t be minimal
Cuz I m a criminal
Way before the rap shit
Bust the gat shit
Puff won t even know what happened,
If it s done smoothly
-from Somebody s Gotta Die, Notorious B.I.G.
PROLOGUE
March 18, 1997, North Hollywood, California
E ven people in passing cars could see that this was an occasion for steering clear. It was just past four in the afternoon, the beginning of rush hour in Los Angeles, when two men, one white, the other black, became embroiled in what appeared to be an overheated traffic dispute. Both combatants were dressed to display their muscular builds, although in styles at considerable variance. The white man, who drove a battered Buick Regal, wore a pale gray tank top that showed off his bulging biceps and with it a baseball cap bearing the insignia of a marijuana leaf. He sported a bushy Fu Manchu mustache and his long, silver-streaked hair was tied back in a ponytail. The black man, who drove a shiny green Mitsubishi Montero, had a shaved head and a goatee, while the breadth of his bare chest showed beneath a green Nike jacket worn open nearly to the navel.
The Buick had just stopped in heavy traffic at the intersection of Ventura and Lankershim Boulevards when the Montero pulled up on the left, rap music thumping through its open windows. The black man began staring in the direction of the Buick and shaking his head. The white man thought he must be looking at someone on the sidewalk and turned to check, but the sidewalk was empty. The white man rolled down his window and asked, Can I help you?
Roll that window up, you punk motherfucker! the black man shouted back. Get out of my face or I ll put a cap up your ass!
What s your problem? the white man asked.
I m your problem, motherfucker! the black man shouted. Pull over right now and I ll kick your motherfucking ass!
Yeah, sure, the white man replied.
The black man became so enraged that his eyeballs bulged. I ll cap your ass, motherfucker! he screamed. Pull over right now! The man in the Montero punctuated his threat with a series of curious hand gestures, then pointed to the side of the road.
The white man nodded and said, All right, let s go. Pull over.
It looked as if the two were going to climb out of their cars and go at it right there, but as soon as the Montero parked in a red zone on the other side of the intersection, the Buick sped away, veering south on Cahuenga Boulevard. Screaming curses out his window and pounding on his steering wheel, the enraged black man forced his way back into traffic and took off after the Buick, slaloming between cars, even veering into an oncoming lane at one point.
The Montero finally caught up when the Buick was stopped by a red light at Regal Place, four car lengths from an on-ramp to the Hollywood Freeway. As the SUV pulled up next to the sedan, other motorists heard the black man screaming through his passenger-side window, then saw him lean toward the Buick and extend his right arm. The white man, who had been shouting back, suddenly ducked his head, banged his chest against the Buick s steering column, and let his foot slip off the brake as the car lurched slightly forward. The Montero s windows were tinted almost to opacity, and witnesses weren t sure whether the black man had a gun, but the hand that came out of the Buick s open window a moment later, as the white man sat up straight again, definitely was filled with an automatic pistol. A woman in a Mercedes sedan who was a long way from her home in Pacific Palisades remembered that the white man wore this very determined, focused expression as he fired off one shot, then a second.
The first bullet passed through the passenger-side door of the Montero and lodged in a gym bag. The second shot struck the black man on the right side just below his armpit, punctured his heart, and stopped in his left lung.
Though only seconds from death, the black man managed to swing his Montero into the left lane and make a U-turn. A woman working in an office across the street looked up when she heard the gunshots and saw, through the SUV s open window, the full face of this black man smiling and grinning, a sarcastic laugh-grin … holding the steering wheel with his left hand and pumping his right hand. The black man disappeared from the woman s sight as his Montero coasted into the parking lot of an am-pm mini-mart and came to rest against the store s front wall. The Buick, now following the Montero, pulled into the same parking lot moments later.
Behind the store were two California Highway Patrol officers who had just finished a coffee break when they heard gunshots. The CHP officers swung their separate patrol cars around the west side of the building just in time to see a white male wearing a cap with a marijuana leaf on it pointing a handgun at a black male who was slumped forward in the seat of a green SUV. The CHP officer in the lead braked to an abrupt stop, swung open his car door, and crouched behind the vehicle as he drew his sidearm and ordered the white male to drop his weapon. I m a police officer, the marijuana guy shouted back, and pulled on a chain around his neck to lift the gold shield of a Los Angeles Police Department detective above his tank top.
He was Frank Lyga, an undercover narcotics cop assigned to the Hollywood Area Field Enforcement Section. He had never seen the dead man before, Lyga said.
By the time detectives from the LAPD s elite Robbery-Homicide Division arrived on the scene, however, they knew not only the dead man s identity but also what it meant. The deceased was Kevin Gaines, an LAPD officer for the past seven years. Currently assigned to the department s Pacific Division, Gaines was off duty at the time of his death.
As soon as we found out that the dead guy was a black police officer, we knew we were stepping into a political minefield, recalled Russell Poole, who would become lead detective in the LAPD s criminal investigation of the shooting. What Poole couldn t begin to imagine was how widespread and well concealed those mines were laid. The detective began to experience a distinct sense of foreboding, however, when a computer check revealed that the Montero was registered to the address of a production company owned by Death Row Records. Knightlife, it was called.
PART ONE
THE RACE CARD
Detective Poole is an absolutely outstanding detective. He now has 9 years of homicide experience and has handled every possible situation. He is hard-working, loyal, productive, thorough and reliable. His contact with the public is always courteous and professional. He is a definite asset to the Los Angeles Police Department.
-From the final Performance Evaluation Report filed on Detective Russell Poole before his transfer to the LAPD s Robbery-Homicide Division in late 1996
CHAPTER ONE
I t was after dark by the time Russell Poole arrived at the shooting scene. Cahuenga Boulevard, the main thoroughfare linking downtown Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley, was closed off in both directions by yellow police tape and patrol cars with flashing lights. The enclosed area was crawling with brass, captains as well as lieutenants. Poole s squad leader, Lt. Pat Conmay, his partner, Detective Supervisor Fred Miller, and the members of the LAPD s Officer Involved Shooting team were all standing in a group. The Internal Affairs investigators, as always, kept to themselves.
Frank Lyga was still at the scene and had been informed that the dead man was a police officer. Lyga was very confident at that time, Poole recalled. He felt certain he had done nothing wrong. I don t think he realized that the fact Gaines was black was going to be a