White sister

Chapter 40

The inner office occupied half the top floor in the East Tower and had one full wall of tinted plate glass that looked out across the valley toward the purple San Gabriel Mountains. The white-on-white color scheme continued in here but there was now a distinct commercial flair. One interior wall featured lighted glass nooks showcasing Bust A Cap merchandise everything from clothing, hair products and street warrior videos, to a line of male cosmetics called Bust A Move For Men. There were several prominently displayed, framed concert posters of Lionel Wright in various performance poses as Bust A Cap. In each he was stripped to the waist, chiseled chest and arm muscles glistening, sweat flying as he flipped his head, screaming into cordless microphones.

Slouched in a club chair across from a large partner's desk was a classic street banger; ebony black complexion, hair in beads and braids. He wore designer warm-ups and had multiple diamond-encrusted medals hanging from gold chains around his muscled neck. Completing the look were four-hundred-dollar basketball shoes. As I entered, he started clocking me with an unfriendly stare.

Standing by the window was a tall African American about thirty. Handsome, with a classic profile, he was dressed casually in jeans and a white tux shirt, talking into a Bluetooth phone headset that flashed maniacally at his left ear.

"That would all be fine, Andre, except I found out this morning that you forgot to let the Nation of Islam contract," he said. "I've been scrambling to hire fifty Fruit of Islam event guards on extremely short notice. They're gouging me. I also just learned that despite our contract, your merchandise manager isn't staffing the lobby or manning our event display racks, so I'm also faced with that."

He listened for a moment, and then waved a hand in my direction motioning me to hang on.

"That's not gonna happen because your hall fees need to come way down. All these screw-ups are killing my take home. I never let event overhead eat up more than twenty percent of gross."

"Fucking-A," the banger seated at the desk muttered.

Now I recognized the deep bass voice. I had it on the mini-tape in my pocket from yesterday. Curtis Clark.

"It's too late for me to change venues, and you know it, so don't even start with that. Life is long and there's lots of business for us to do in the future. If you wanta see me down the road, you gotta leave a little something on the table, my brotha."

He listened for a moment and said, "Done. I'll have Jared send you an e-mail confirmation. Peace out, babe." He pushed the little button on his earpiece, took off the Bluetooth, and folded it up.

"Event coordinators. Buncha pirates. Sorry." He crossed to me and stood a few feet away. I could smell his cologne pleasant musk tinged with pine. Not at all bad. Maybe I'd have to check out Bust A Move products for men. "I'm Lionel Wright," he said.

"Shane Scully." We shook hands. His grip was firm and dry.

"I understand you have a badge. Want to show me?"

I fished my credentials out of my pocket and handed them to him. He took his time studying them.

"On the job almost twenty years," he observed.

I've been tinning people since '86 and he was the first one who'd actually read my date of issuance. It told me something about him.

"This is Curtis Clark," he said. "I understand your business also concerns him."

I looked over at Clark, who didn't acknowledge the introduction, but continued to glare, gangsta-style, looking through me like a pane of glass.

"Okay, Detective, this just happens to be a pretty busy day. I'm producing a big awards show tonight. I wouldn't have made room for you, but you frightened my assistant, Miss McKenzie, and she insisted. So if we could get to it?"

"Maybe you should just hear what I've got."

I pulled out the tape recorder. I'd already cued it up, so I hit Play and put it on his mahogany desk. The first recording was of Stacy and Curtis in his office on Sunset. Curtis shifted uneasily, as Stacy gave him classified information about the accounting and performance royalty thefts at Lethal Force Inc. I stopped the tape before we got to the blow job.

Lionel looked at me for a moment when the tape stopped, then said, "Okay, well, that's Louis and Stacy for you. Lou never got the memo sayin' we're leaving our weapons at home now. He still thinks it's cool to negotiate over gun sights. It's a good thing Curtis made a friend outta Stacy, or he never would a known how much they were stealing from him."

Lionel's voice was soft velvet. He had a very cultured presentation. I knew he was a record mogul and a rap star, but I was having trouble reconciling this handsome businessman with the posters of him on the walls screaming and flinging sweat around.

"Back in the day, Louis once hung the lead singer from Brothers With Voices over a balcony at the Sunset Marquis and threatened to drop the poor bastard unless BWV jumped labels to Lethal Force," he continued. "That's the day he earned the nickname Luna. But that kind of behavior is strictly yesterday. Like Stacy said, it's a different business now. The big corporate labels won't stand for that. Hip-hop's gone mainstream."

"Maybe, maybe not."

I recued the tape, pushed the Play button again and let them listen to the second recording, the one I'd made just an hour before. It was hard to hear through the slight hiss, and both Curtis and Lionel instinctively leaned forward. Curtis glanced over at Lionel when Stacy mentioned wanting to take out both of them tonight. It wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting to hear from a woman who gave him sex and inside information. The tape played on as the talk turned to the key man clause and Dante Watts. Curtis frowned again when Stacy said that Lionel still had big trouble down on Sixtieth Street.

When the tape concluded I stood there and waited. Silence can be a great tool in an interview. A subject often gets nervous and attempts to fill the lull by blurting something useful. Curtis was agitated and angry. He felt betrayed. But Lionel only nodded his head and gave me a sleepy smile.

"No comment?" I finally said.

"The man is painfully consistent," he purred.

"Seems like Stacy is a pretty manipulative woman," I said. "Playing a dangerous game. Kind of the Lady Macbeth of hip-hop. You're not worried."

"Somebody got to finally close the brotha and this cave bitch down," Curtis said, suddenly exploding to his feet.

Lionel raised a hand and silenced him. " 'Course I'm worried. Who wouldn't be? Lou's a homicidal maniac and Stacy's a lying, scheming whore. But Curtis and I are equipped to deal with them."

"Do you really trust the Fruit of Islam to protect you on a long-term basis?" I asked. "If I had a head case like Maluga coming after me I'd want my own people."

"I'm only using FOI for my event tonight. They're concert specialists, not a bodyguard service. My personal security is all taken care of, but thanks for your concern."

We locked gazes so I moved on.

"What was all that about Dante Watts and the key man clause?" I asked.

He took a moment to decide if he wanted to confide anything in me. But then, because I'd just brought him some useful information, he gave a small shrug and said, "This is already on the vine, so what the hell." He leaned on the edge of his desk. "In the late nineties Dante Watts was a label exec and A amp;R man for Lethal Force. He discovered a lot of new acts. But he had his own way a doing things, and that pissed the Malugas off. Two years ago, Dante discovered Curtis and Floor Score on an underground label."

Curtis Clark again shifted slightly.

"Dante hooked Curtis up with Lethal Force and got an outside attorney to cut his first two-album deal. Watts picked a good lawyer, and without telling Curtis, he had a clever escape paragraph written into the contract. The language was good and the Malugas' business affairs guys completely missed it; so did Curtis. The key man clause stated that if Dante Watts ever left Lethal Force or died, Curtis could walk out of his deal. Dante had a sweet cut of Curtis's coin and he put that clause in to protect his ass from Lou in case Lou tried to fire him or kill him. Last year he got into a big row with the Malugas over missing royalties and performance fees on Floor Score's concert appearances. He thought the Malugas were skimming net profits and holding back prepayment guarantees. In the middle of this beef, Dante Watts just disappeared. That's Lou's way of making problems go away. He disappears you. He musta whacked poor Dante before he could tell him about the clause. Stacy was the one who finally told Curtis. Apparently, she reads all the contracts and found the clause. We've been doing a forensic audit and we're still trying to get to the bottom of it. Looks like somebody over there illegally pocketed about ten million dollars. The bottom line is when Dante went missing, it gave a multi-million-dollar act his right to walk. Now Curtis is gonna record for me, but that's not gonna be a headline until we file our lawsuit."

"You guys are missing a piece," I said once he finished. "She helps Curtis break his contract and then goes to Lou and uses that knowledge to get him to commit a murder. You got a few dots that aren't connecting." The room fell silent. Then I asked, "How about your problems down on Sixtieth Street?"

"Everybody has a past, my friend, even you."

Then Lionel's desk phone rang. He picked up a headset off his desk and spoke into it. "Hang on a minute, Patch. I'm almost done here." He watched as I retrieved my tape recorder.

"Why don't you take me on as temporary security?" I said.

"With all this intrigue, it might be nice to have a badge-carrying cop on hand."

He smiled. "I run my security team under strict State of California guidelines to eliminate any hassles with your buddies down at Parker Center. So unless you've already been to the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services and have your PPO license, I can't use you."

Without my noticing, Vondell Richmond and his partner, Taylor Hays, had quietly reentered the room, and were standing just inside the door, summoned mysteriously at exactly the right moment.

"You're making a mistake," I said.

"Then you're invited to my funeral," he said without an ounce of sarcasm or irony.

Vonnie and Taylor escorted me out of the room while Curtis Clark practiced his Murder One stare.

The outer office was momentarily unoccupied. Patch McKenzie was off beautifying some other part of the building. I glanced down and noticed some backstage passes in envelopes lying on her blotter. While Vonnie and Taylor moved ahead of me to the elevator, I palmed one off her desk.

"You guys better strap up," I said to them as we all stepped into the elevator. "I think your boss is gonna need you tonight."

"That's why we come to work every morning," Vondell said pleasantly.

The doors closed on this plush-pile wonderland and we zipped down to the ugly realities of the street below.