The receptionist was a ten-point-five on a scale of ten with coffee-colored skin and features so delicately sculpted it was hard not to stare.
'Mr. Scully?' she said with her beautiful British accent. 'I'm Patch McKenzie. I believe we spoke. Is there anything you'd like to drink?' No stuttering now. She'd recovered her composure since we'd talked.
'I'm fine,' I said softly.
'I'll tell Mr. Wright you've arrived.' She then spoke quietly into a tiny microphone headset that was barely visible at the side of her face.
I was standing on two-inch-thick white plush pile carpet while classical music played softly over an expensive Muzak system. The environment was serene and restful. It felt like God's waiting room. Hardly what I'd been expecting. A moment later, Patch McKenzie smiled up at me.
'Mr. Wright will see you now,' she lilted.
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.
