Larger Than Lyfe (12 page)

“It’s like that,” Keshari responded.

She was already relenting.

“Well, let’s just say that I know what I want, I go after what I want, and I am abundantly aware that the really good things in life generally only come through hard work and much persistence.”

“Your pursuit of the really good things in life is going to wind you up with a restraining order against you,” Keshari quipped.

“Oh, you’ve got jokes.” Mars smiled, completely undaunted by the remark.

He planted a kiss on Keshari’s forehead.

“I’ve got to go. I cancelled my schedule to come here this morning. I’ll call you as soon as I get back into town and you’d better be prepared to deal with me.”

After he was gone, Keshari was still very conflicted.

“You know you should have ended it,” she said to herself.

LTL’s PR and legal departments had reviewed the information contained in the press release and Terrence was busy at the fax machine, prepared to launch the news to media. The nationwide talent search was a go. It would be the largest, most expensive single project that Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment had ever undertaken. The project would conduct auditions in ten U.S. cities and the auditions would kick off in one month in Los Angeles, at Universal Studios. The first billboards were going up that day on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and at Universal Studios. Then an enormous,
digital billboard on top of the Sony building on the world famous Times Square in New York City had been leased to announce the event to the East Coast. Keshari had a meeting in LTL’s main conference room that day with a senior staff writer for
Billboard
magazine to discuss the launch of the talent search project. A & R executives were visiting major, urban music radio stations across the country over the next four weeks to hype the launch of the talent search project to radio listeners.

Ricky received notification of Machaca’s decision to terminate their business dealings with The Consortium via a letter from Keshari delivered by his attorney. The letter was written in a cryptic numerical code that many crime organizations developed to communicate, particularly when members were imprisoned. Ricky had learned the code, which changed constantly to keep law enforcement from learning to decode it, during his early gangbanging days and, in turn, he had taught the code to Keshari.

The news regarding The Consortium’s exclusive supplier so
infuriated Ricky that he hurled a chair against the window of the small room that he and his attorney used to confer about his case. He yelled obscenities in fury and was immediately restrained and escorted back to his cell. Ricky’
s attorney was instructed by the sheriff’s officers to strongly advise his client to control himself and the attorney was told that he could return to meet with his client, provided that Ricky had his temper fully under control, the following day during visiting hours.

I
t is an everyday occurrence for cocaine to be transported into the United States and circulated throughout the country. In the United States alone, on average, about 250 tons of cocaine are consumed by users annually. Benjamin Arellano Felix of the infamous, Mexican Arellano-Felix cartel once stated that “as long as there exists that kind of demand for cocaine, there will always be a supply of it” and virtually every conceivable group engaged in the business of organized crime participates.

The United States is one of the only nations in the world with an organized tactical
force of law enforcement agents numbering in the thousands who are engaged in a continuous “war on drugs,” yet, after more than twenty years of a changing political arena, stiffer laws and sentencing for drug-related offenses, along with millions and millions of dollars earmarked specifically for the fight, the so-called “war on drugs” is still no closer to being won than it was when the whole war started. A number of factors weigh into such a dismal outcome, one of them being the United States’ covert and not-so-covert involvement in, and profit from, the international drug trade since the beginning.

A freight trailer backed up to the loading dock at FLOSS Auto Customizing in Inglewood. The driver hopped from the truck’s
cab and opened the trailer’s rear doors. Three FLOSS employees came out to the loading dock to help the truck driver and his partner unload. Twenty-six pallets containing stacked cases of eighteen-, twenty-and twenty-two-inch designer auto rims, along with 300 well-concealed keys of 80 percent pure Colombian cocaine, worth nearly $15 million once it was completely distributed to The Consortium’s client base, had made its way unscathed from Bogota to Mexico, from Machaca’s warehouses right outside Mexicali, all the way to the first point of delivery in Los Angeles.

Keshari arrived at FLOSS with Marcus Means. Javier Sandovar, along with four of his men, arrived shortly thereafter. It was the first time that Keshari and Javier had come together since their two organizations had parted ways and the meeting was tense, but Javier needed to be present to confirm that each segment of the shipment arrived in full and intact. They talked briefly before they each went to their separate corners to conduct discussions on their cell phones and wait for the offload work to be completed. It would take two to three hours for all of the auto rims to be unload
ed, unpacked, disassembled and all of the valuable product removed from them by FLOSS employees. Once the delivery had been counted, it would be loaded into the door wells, bumpers, wheel wells, and secret compartments of various automobiles owned by Consortium members, including the black Suburban that Keshari was driving. Then the product would be transported and delivered to several “processing houses” owned by Ricky and The Consortium all over Los Angeles, where the keys would be broken down, most of them diluted, repackaged in accordance to the orders of the client base, and then flown
to various areas of the country for delivery and collection of payment.

It was 1 p.m. when Keshari and Javier confirmed the count of the shipment. The two also confirmed their next meeting in two
days at AESTHETIC, Ricky’s Baldwin Hills art gallery. Javier and his men left. Keshari began issuing instructions to the small group of men and a woman who’d arrived to assist in driving the divided product to the processing houses.

It was a very bold and dangerous mission, moving that much cocaine across the city in a relatively small time window on a single day, both from a law enforcement standpoint and from the standpoint of rival gangs gaining access to information and attempting an ambush. Everyone, including Keshari and Marcus, wore bulletproof vests. All of them carried scanners in order to hear communication between police officers in the field and dispatchers at nearby precincts. The Consortium had acquired special coding that enabled them to switch from channel to channel to pick up the police commu
nications at more than one precinct. All of them came heavily armed, prepared to do battle in the unlikely event of an ambush. They all worked with the full understanding that they were required to guard the product with their lives. If there was a loss of product and it was determined that the product was lost due to someone’s own negligence, the repercussion would be a final one. The Consortium’s loss ratio was a very small one.

“Okay, let’s move,” Keshari ordered. “I need an update from all of you in thirty minutes. I’ll contact each of the processing houses in precisely two hours. Each of the segments must have been delivered, fully received and documented by then. No exceptions. You need to call me immediately if you think you even smell what might be a problem.”

A little way up the alley from FLOSS, a telephone repairman sat, belted near the top of a utility pole directly outside his open repair van, with a high-powered camera, snapping shot after shot of the seemingly routine delivery at the auto customizer, from the moment that the freight trailer backed up to FLOSS’s loading
dock to the moment that the black Suburban that Keshari was driving pulled out of the garage, followed shortly thereafter by five other customized SUVs, a sports car and a sedan, headed for The Consortium’s processing houses.

I
n a serious, navy Armani Collection suit, Richard Tresvant, surrounded by his personal “dream team” of attorneys and a team of professional bodyguards and sheriff’s officers, made his way into the side entrance of Superior Court in Downtown Los Angeles. A throng of newspaper and television reporters, all of them posing questions at once, scurried quickly after the group.

“No comment,” Larry Steinberg, Ricky’s lead attorney, told the media, and then the group quickly hustled into the building, the reporters barred from entry by the sheriff’s officers who maintained the busy courtho
use’s security.

It was day one of
People and the State of California v. Richard Lawrence Tresvant
. His charge was first-degree murder. The victim was prominent, Los Angeles corporate attorney Phinnaeus Bernard III of the prestigious Carlyle, Brown, Von Klaus & Pennington Law Firm. The Honorable Phelton Bartholomew was presiding.

“All rise,” the bailiff said to the packed courtroom, and court was in session.

Ricky sat at the defense table, suavely poised as if a camera was directed at him. He stared straight ahead, except when he leaned over from time to time to converse with one of his attorneys. His facial expression was grave, as it should have been in consideration of the brevity of his charges, but his reputation for arrogance and a hair-trigger temper when crossed had far preceded him to the first day of his murder trial. Spectators in the courtroom watched
his every move, his every gesture, waiting for his facade to slip and expose the murderous gangster who’d managed over and over and over again to slip through the grasp of law enforcement for numerous, heinous crimes to which he was reputedly connected or for which he was directly responsible.