Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (16 page)

But in order for our plan to work, we had to build an airtight case that would meet federal guidelines for a life sentence and clinch our bargaining power when the time came. In order to accomplish that, we had to meet a threshold of quantity the feds had established for any major drug prosecution. Eventually we were able to fulfill that requirement when Dirt Rock arranged with Keffe D for the sale of a gallon of PCP. The drug is so dangerous and deadly that its users commonly called it “Embalming Fluid,” and a large amount would automatically meet federal guidelines. A gallon of PCP is potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars when sold on the streets in individually soaked cigarettes called “Shermans” after the preferred brand of smokes.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis (in hat) and his nephew Orlando Anderson (far right) with their Southside Crips crew. Davis and Anderson would later participate in the killing of Tupac Shakur.

Dirt Rock had once again arranged the deal with our Confidential Source acting as the buyer. In the garage of a Compton bungalow, Keffe D handed over a gallon jug inside a plastic bag. Dirt Rock opened it and, smelling the amber-colored contents, recoiled. There was no mistaking the noxious odor of Embalming Fluid. For $10,500, provided once again by the DEA, the deal was done.

CHAPTER
12

The Sit Down

W
ITH THE VARIOUS DRUG DEALS
we had set in motion, combined with his prior convictions, we were confident that we could dangle a twenty-five-years-to-life sentence over Keffe D; great incentive for him to spill whatever he knew about whatever we wanted to know. Everything was in place for what we hoped would be a major breakthrough in the case.

Meanwhile, we moved in to clear up the PCP operation that our wiretaps and surveillance had exposed. We had been able to identify Keffe D’s supplier, a major manufacturer under investigation by the Texas DEA, which reached out to us when it discovered that our cases were converging. With their assistance we raided his PCP and meth lab and promptly extradited the suspect back to Texas to face charges.

Accompanying us on the raid was Detective Frank Lyga of the LAPD, who shot Kevin Gaines in the infamous 1997 road rage incident that had prompted Russell Poole’s initial conjectures of a police conspiracy. Beyond that unwelcome notoriety, Lyga also happened to be one of the nation’s foremost experts on illegal drug labs. It was his compelling testimony that helped to convict the drug manufacturer.

Moving in on our primary target, Daryn Dupree and I manned a stakeout at the Corona home of Paula Davis, Keffe D’s wife, monitoring activity from a car parked down the street. It wasn’t long before our wait was rewarded when Keffe D ambled out, carrying trash bags to the curb. We watched him go back inside, and a moment later the automatic garage door swung open and his black Lexus pulled out into the driveway. We moved quickly, blocking the car’s exit and approaching it on both sides. But Keffe D wasn’t behind the wheel. Instead we found his wife, Paula, glaring at us through the tinted glass.

“Where’s your husband?” I asked when she rolled down the window.

“He’s not here,” she answered defiantly.

“That’s funny,” Daryn interjected, “because we just saw him take out the trash.”

“I tell you what,” I continued, in my soothing and reasonable “good cop” voice. “Why don’t you go back inside and tell him we’re here. Let him know we’re not going to arrest him. We just want to talk.”

Paula got out of the car and hurried back into the house through the access door at the rear of the garage. Daryn and I waited for a few minutes in the driveway, alert to any possibility. Keffe D was an authentic gangster, a powerful man accustomed to enforcing his will. We were invading his inner sanctum, tucked away in a pleasant middle-class housing development, far from the mean streets of Compton. Under the circumstances, anything could happen.

Finally, the door through which Paula had disappeared opened again and Keffe D emerged. I have to admit that seeing him in the flesh made an impression on me. For so long he had only been a name in a file; a character in stories spun by sources; a voice at the other end of a wiretapped line. Now, suddenly, we were face to face and I could see in his heavyset features a full range of emotions: fear, anger, and even a kind of resignation, as if he’d been expecting this moment for a long time.

“Do we have to do this on the street?” he asked plaintively, looking up and down the block to see if the neighbors were peeking out from behind their kitchen curtains.

Daryn suggested we move into the garage and we crossed into the cool, dimly lit interior. Keffe D punched the button behind us to shut the heavy door. He took three folding chairs from a corner and, opening them, set them out in the middle of the concrete floor. We sat down and, just at that moment, the lights went out, plunging the garage into pitch darkness.

My hand instinctively went for my gun. Had we been set up? Had he trapped us in the garage? I could hear a sharp intake of breath from Daryn, sitting next to me, and then a scraping sound as Keffe D got to his feet. What seemed like an endless stretch of silence followed until the lights suddenly flickered back on and we saw him standing at the automatic shutoff switch, turning the timer back on. I glanced over at Daryn. His hand was inside his jacket, resting on his service weapon, just like mine was. We started to breathe again.

Keffe D moved back to take his seat and in the next few minutes we laid it out for him: the surveillance, the wiretaps, the drug deals, the federal narcotics rap and the stiff sentence that would come with it. In the interests of protecting our informants, we deliberately steered clear of the specific details of the evidence we had gathered. But it was a fine line between telling him too much and not telling him enough and, in the end, he didn’t seem entirely convinced we had an airtight case against him. We could see that from the skeptical glint in his eye.

“You think it over,” Daryn said as we both stood up, preparing to leave. “And get yourself a lawyer.”

“But let me give you a word of advice,” I added, handing him my business card. “If you’re thinking of being represented by Edi Faal, think again. You need to know up front that we’re not going to work with him. Find someone else.”

Keffe D rose and hit the button to open the garage door. Sunshine flooded in and we squinted against the bright light. His skepticism had begun to fade. He was thinking now, figuring the angles and weighing his options. “What do you want from me?” he asked at last.

I paused on my way to the car and turned to him. “Let me put it this way,” I replied. “We’re homicide investigators.”

It was less than an hour later, while we were still driving back to the task force headquarters, that my cell phone rang. On the line was an attorney named Wayne Higgins, whose reputation for integrity put him in a different league from Edi Faal. Higgins was one of those rare lawyers whose concern for his client was tempered by his interest in justice being served. Keffe D had a new lawyer, one who was open to negotiation. It was a good sign.

In response to Higgins’s request, we filled him in on the outlines of the case, at the same time suggesting that the best course of action might be a meeting between the parties concerned at everyone’s earliest convenience. By two o’clock that afternoon, Higgins, Keffe D, Daryn, and I were sitting around a large table in the conference room of Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Searight’s office.

We let Searight take the lead. In a reasoned, modulated tone he explained in detail the scope of the case we had against Keith Davis and the probable life sentence that came with it. Keffe D and Higgins listened impassively, and then requested some time alone to discuss their options. We left the room and fifteen minutes later were summoned back. Higgins announced that his client was ready to cooperate with us.

It was, all in all, a banner day for the investigation. After so many false starts and dead ends, we had finally achieved our goal of putting a potentially key witness under pressure to tell us something we didn’t already know. And it wasn’t just any witness. It was Keffe D. He’d been on hand for the deaths of both Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls and was uniquely positioned to dispel the decade’s worth of rumor and innuendo that had grown up like weeds around the murders. We were, understandably, optimistic.

Searight ended the meeting with the possibility of putting forward a formal proffer, a government assurance of consideration in Keffe D’s case in exchange for his cooperation. What didn’t need spelling out were the stringent terms of a formal proffer. Keffe D and his attorney both knew it had to be the whole truth and nothing but. Anything Keffe D would tell us would need to be corroborated by another, independent source. If, in the process of confirming his story, we discovered that he was lying to us about even the smallest detail, all bets were off and the proffer would be null and void.

It was coming up on Thanksgiving, 2008, more than two long years since the task force had been formed. We were on the verge of a major break in the case and wanted to savor the moment. We also wanted to give Keffe D chance to think long and hard about doing the right thing. For those reasons, I suggested a time out. “Go home,” I told Keffe D that afternoon in Searight’s office. “Enjoy the holiday with your family. Then we can get down to business.” It was also decided that, in deference to Higgins, all future interviews would take place at the attorney’s Beverly Hills offices. On that magnanimous note the meeting broke up and we arranged to reconvene in mid-December.

In the interim, news of our progress spread like wildfire through law enforcement ranks. Considering Keffe D’s stature in the South Side Crips — one of our informants consistently referred to him as the “president” of the gang — it seemed as if everyone, from Robbery-Homicide to Narcotics to the Sheriff’s Department, had one or more unsolved cases that they were certain Keffe D could help clear up. It was evident from the onset that our witness would be doing a lot of talking. But it was crucial from the standpoint of simple manageability that the interviews would need to be tightly controlled. I immediately made it clear that, once we had gotten what we needed from our star informant, other interviews would be doled out on a strict need-to-know basis, methodically covering one subject at a time.

It was in this period that I pretty much took over investigative control of the task force. I had been front and center, along with Daryn, in the effort to reel in Keffe D. The work was made easier by the fact that Tyndall had recently retired and Holcomb was soon to follow. Accordingly, I was promoted to head the task force. Of course, there was still a chain of command to which I was responsible, not to mention the political considerations of the case that needed constant tending. But with Keffe D now cooperating I was pretty much calling the shots. Daryn Dupree was, in all practical respects, my partner on the case and officers Trujillo and Bazulto were proving their worth on a daily basis. Alan Hunter, meanwhile, seemed to be intent on alienating himself from the team, declining repeated offers to participate. From here on out, I needed to keep close tabs on the internal dynamics of the team, which was now, to all intent and purposes, under my supervision.

Shortly before our follow-up meeting with Keffe D, I received a call from Higgins. He had a simple question: what exactly was the nature of the information we were seeking from his client? I was equally direct in my response: we’d want to know what really happened outside the Petersen Museum on the night of March 9, 1997. In short, who killed Biggie Smalls and why?

It was a question that hung in the air as Bill Holcomb, Daryn Dupree, the FBI’s Special Agent Jeff Bennett, and I made our way through the plush lobby of the Beverly Hills high-rise where Wayne Higgins did business. It was 10:30 on a clear, crisp morning, the sun just beginning to break through a wintery haze as we emerged from the elevator, which emptied into a hallway leading to the lawyer’s office.