Larger Than Lyfe (30 page)

A
few stories floated around in the entertainment tabloids that Keshari Mitchell might be pregnant after her collapse in the lobby at the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia.

“I really just don’t understand it. I’m not an entertainer. I own a record label. I’m an executive. Why the fuck does the media seem so determined to turn my life into some kind of reality show?!”

Keshari was livid, but, with all else that was going on with her, she had to let the media nonsense go. She should have long ago become accustomed to regular invasions of her privacy by the media. Entertainment
media had been relentless in their attempts to get an exclusive story on Keshari’s very private personal life since the day she’d set foot into the music industry. They wanted to deliver the goods on some of the rumors floating around about her, along with some good photos to confirm their stories. Thus far, Keshari consistently operated under the radar with only the exposures to the press that she herself orchestrated typically at the advisements of her public relations team. So, thus far, media had yet to be successful at getting what they really wanted, so they concocted stories from the ph
otographs that paparazzi supplied and prayed that they didn’t encounter a run-in with Keshari’s attorney, and the public ate it all up greedily, not really caring whether what they were seeing and reading was the truth or not.

“I just want to go someplace away from all of this for a few
days, enjoy some privacy…some relaxation…someplace really exotic, in the middle of nowhere, where paparazzi can’t even get to me before I go to work on this grand finale show,” Keshari said.

“Then, let’s do it,” Mars said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Let’s go away for a few days…someplace exotic and private. Find a replacement for your spot in the last audition city and let’s just go… whatever you want to do…wherever you want to go.”

Keshari owned a yacht, a seventy-eight-foot, $4.5 million Hargrave Custom Yacht named “Larger Than Lyfe,” that she kept in Florida and rarely got the opportunity to use. She had Terrence organize a crew, and then she and Mars flew off to Miami with strict instructions to Terrence that he, “unfortunately, knew nothing about Keshari’s whereabouts.” She and Mars were going to sail to the Caribbean island of Antigua, do some shopping, explore the island, have a lot of sex, not do a single, work-related thing for the next three days, and just decompress.

The very same night that the Larger Than Lyfe jet lifted off to whisk Keshari and Mars off to Miami, a cluster of photographers and writers hopped another flight, trailing the powerful, attractive, music industry couple on their little adventure.

The first photos to reach Los Angeles newsstands and television entertainment news depicted Keshari sunning in a white bikini on the upper deck of “Larger Than Lyfe” as they sailed into English Harbor, the internationally known, premier yachting port of Antigua. A shirtless Mars, in black cargo shorts, smoothed sunscreen on Keshari’s back while she lay face down, looking almost as if she was taking a nap. The money-maker shot came
when a very lucky photographer in a hired helicopter captured Mars leaning in and planting a kiss on Keshari’s rear end
as he continued to apply sunscreen. Misha laughed her ass off two days later when she saw the photograph on the cover of the
National Enquirer
.

T
he three days on Keshari’s ultra-luxurious yacht off the coast of Antigua had been absolutely amazing. At the most unexpected moments during his day now, all Mars could do was envision every curve of Keshari’s luscious body, every place he had touched, the sound of her voice. He could barely concentrate when he was working. He’d sat in a board meeting, the words of the ASCAP executive trailing off into nothingness as he thought of the three days he’d spent on the water and exploring parts of Antigua with Keshari. He couldn’t remember having been happier in his life. More t
han once, he thought about the fact that he needed to get with a very good jeweler sometime soon. He’d been seriously thinking about asking Keshari to be his wife.

The Los Angeles DEA was getting extreme pressure from their Washington, D.C. headquarters to come up with a solid case against The Consortium very soon to take before a grand jury or not a penny more would be allocated to the special task force’s ever-increasing budget. DEA brass in Washington were, after nearly two years, drawing the conclusion that the special task force was ineffective, turning up only inconsequential triumphs in an operation that was beginning to reek of a profound waste of man hours and money.

Dissension and low morale were on the rise among the agents. Two agents had lost their lives attempting to go deep undercover into The Consortium. Many of the agents had begun to vocalize their disagreement with the tactics being used. They believed that pursuing the people who reported to Richard Tresvant, instead of going after Richard Tresvant himself, put Richard Tresvant more on guard than ever and made it all the more difficult to connect him to the crimes he’d committed and virtually impossible to convict him of the lengthy list of heinous crimes that he’d committed.

Thomas Hencken, head of the special task force, was adamant that the only sure way that DEA or any other law enforcement agency would be successful at indicting and convicting Richard Tresvant was to take down the key people that Richard Tresvant set up all around him to shield him and do his dirty work. Richard Tresvant had so many people in his employ, doing everything from witness intimidation to murder to keep his hands clean, that the only way to get to him would be to take these people down. For that reason, Thomas Hencken remained concentrated on Keshari Mitchell, The Consor
tium’s second in command, Richard Tresvant’s protégé, who Richard Tresvant had fully trained himself for organized crime.

Thomas Hencken firmly believed that Keshari Mitchell held the most inside information about The Consortium and would be the easiest to compel to cooperate. Over the course of researching all of The Consortium’s key players, Keshari Mitchell was the strangest bedfellow of them all. She did not fit the profile of a career criminal. She did not fit the sociopathic, narcissistic personality profile of any of the people who surrounded Richard Tresvant. Due to a set of unfortunate circumstances following the death of her mother years before, Keshari had, for the most
part, been lured into The Consortium and Richard Tresvant’s intricate web of manipulation and criminality during a period when she was romantically involved with him, when she was little more than a child, and when she was enduring a great deal of emotional turmoil.

Years later, Keshari Mitchell was now a very public figure with much to lose. She owned a multimillion-dollar record label that she’d built from the ground up herself, and she was fiercely dedicated to its operations. The DEA had checked out the legitimacy of Larger Than Lyfe’s business activities since its inception and the company was not a front for the laundering of The Consortium’s drug money in any way. Larger Than Lyfe’s original start-up capital had come from a confusing mix of dummy corporations that were eventually traced back to Richard Tresvant’s attorney, Phinnaeus
Bernard III, but Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment’s operations after its start-up funding had always been clean. Keshari Mitchell would not want her record label’s operations intercepted in any way or the company’s overall reputation damaged by a massive, DEA investigation, seizure of her company’s records, and the strong potential of a grand jury indictment.

Most recently, Keshari Mitchell had been repeatedly linked romantically in the media to ASCAP entertainment attorney, Mars Buchanan. The DEA ran a complete background check on Mars Buchanan and turned up nothing…no criminal record…not even a negative credit profile. The DEA was confident that Mars Buchanan was not connected in any way to the business operations of The Consortium. Thomas Hencken was even more confident that Mars Buchanan possessed zero knowledge of his new paramour’s affiliation with The Consortium, but all of that was about to change. If the DEA had to throw a wrench
into Keshari’s personal and professional life, shake things up, and
make her extremely uncomfortable to push her into cooperating, that was precisely what they’d do. Her testimony before a grand jury was absolutely instrumental to a special task force operation that was teetering close to collapse.

Thomas Hencken arrived at ASCAP’s Los Angeles offices and checked the directory in the office building’s busy lobby. He rode the elevator up, displayed his badge, and asked the receptionist if he could see Mars Buchanan. Mars came out to the reception area himself, wearing a bewildered expression on his face.

Drug Enforcement Agency
? Mars thought.
What could the DEA possibly want to speak to me about
?

“Mr.?

“Hencken,” the DEA agent supplied.

“Why don’t you come on into my office,” Mars said.

Mars closed the door and Thomas Hencken took a seat in one of the leather chairs in front of Mars’s desk. He passed one of his business cards across to Mars.

“What can I do for you?” Mars asked.

“You are currently involved with Keshari Mitchell?”

“Yes, I am,” Mars answered, “but I can’t imagine why that would be of even the remotest interest to the DEA.”

“Do you have any dealings with Ms. Mitchell’s business affairs?”

“In what way?” Mars asked. “I’m general counsel for the American Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers. Directly and indirectly, I have a connection to the business affairs of many record labels.”

“Well, allow me to tell you why I’m here,” Thomas Hencken said. “I head a special task force, a branch of t
he DEA, responsible
for the investigation, indictment, conviction and dismantling of operations of major, West Coast narcotics traffickers and distributors. The DEA possesses substantial evidence that leads us to believe that your girlfriend, Keshari Mitchell, is currently heading, in Richard Lawrence Tresvant’s absence, one of the most notorious, organized crime rings in the United States…The Consortium…responsible for the distribution and sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of Colombian and Mexican cocaine. Do you have any affiliations with this organization?”