Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (30 page)

“Let’s get started, then,” I suggested in my most evenhanded tone.

“Look,” she said. “If Suge finds out about this…” Her words trailed off. Even before we started we had reached the crux of the dilemma that Theresa had put herself in. She had to know as well as we did that there was no way we could guarantee that what she might tell us would remain confidential. Nor could we promise her that Suge would never find out about her cooperation with us. There was, first and foremost, the possibility that she might have to testify — before a grand jury or in the glaring public forum of a high profile trial — if we ever tried to advance a case against Knight based, wholly or in part, on evidence she might provide.

But the possibility of exposure went beyond even that scenario. We were cops. She was a criminal. We all knew how thin and permeable the barrier was that separated what we knew from what she knew. In a case the scope and size of the Biggie Smalls murder investigation, information has a way of leaching through either side of that barrier. Detectives often aren’t privy to what another colleague has told a source, or heard from an informant. Neither can one bad guy ever be sure what a partner in crime has revealed to the police. Whatever Theresa might say to us would, it seemed likely, become part of other investigations looking into Suge’s multifarious activities. All of us in that room had been around the block too many times to take bland assurances of confidentiality at face value. Making such promises might only have convinced Theresa that we were willing to say anything to gain her cooperation.

There was another transparent ploy that we also seemed, by silent consent, to quickly dispense with. Even if Theresa revealed information that resulted in a prosecution of Suge Knight, squirreling her away in a Witness Protection Program would be hugely complicated by the mere fact that she was the mother of his child. Would her right for protection trump his rights as a parent? That would seem to be the very definition of a quintessential legal quagmire.

At the same time, Daryn and I harbored the hope that the ruse we devised might provide some plausible deniability if she were ever confronted by Suge about her cooperation with us. If she believed
The Declaration of Darnell Bolton
, then she would also believe that it had been Poochie who had dropped the dime on Suge, not her. The point of our deception was to allow her to confirm what she thought we already knew, compelled to do so under the pressure of having her children, including Suge’s own daughter, taken away. Under those circumstances she could probably make a very convincing case.

Of course, it was all speculation on our part. Whatever other assumptions we all shared that morning, the most obvious was our common inability to peer into the darkest recesses of Suge Knight’s mind. Not even she knew what went on in there. And it was on that unknowable pivot that her choices, and ours, were balanced. Under other circumstances, protecting Theresa Swann from her complicity in the crimes of Suge Knight might have been a priority for us. But other concerns took precedence. It was clear that the choice we had presented to Theresa was agonizing. But it was certainly no more agonizing than the pain felt by Voletta Wallace over the death of her son. There were no legal ethicists assembled in that room at the crucial juncture. It was up to us to make the call as to how justice would best be served. We did the best we could.

“Theresa,” Bennett replied leaning across the table. “You know we’ll do our best to handle the situation.”

“How you going to handle Suge?” Theresa snapped back scornfully. She stared at us in defiance, waiting for answers she knew we didn’t have.

A long silence followed before Daryn took our package of bogus documents from his briefcase and pushed it across the table to Theresa. She stared at it as if he had pulled out a rattlesnake and placed it on the table. I watched carefully as she studied Poochie’s picture on the driver’s license, then carefully read “
The Declaration of Darnell Bolton”
and the sham lawyer’s letter. It wasn’t as if I could actually see her attitude change as she studied our handiwork, but by the time she was finished some of the electric tension in the room had dissipated.

“That’s right,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “What Poochie says, that’s what happened.”

I resisted the urge to look over at Daryn, not wanting my elation to give away the game. Had our strategy actually worked? Was she telling us that we had correctly identified Biggie Smalls’s killer? Was the “
Declaration”
an essentially accurate account of the motivations behind the murder — in retaliation for the shooting of Tupac — not to mention the sequence of events that led to it: the contract, the payoff…all of it? I took a deep breath. Theresa
seemed
to be confirming what we suspected. But we needed to hear it from her, directly.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened, Theresa?” I said. “In your own words.”

At that moment, it was hard to know whether the chance we had taken by pointing her toward Poochie had really paid off. There was, instead, the ever-present possibility that we had simply provided her with a way to tell us what she thought we wanted to hear. And it was true, as she began her account, that the relief in her voice was palpable. Maybe that was because we’d given her a way to hide the truth. But it seemed just as likely that we might have provided her a way to
tell
the truth. And as her story unfolded, in a rush of details, it was hard for her to stop. She couldn’t get it off her chest fast enough.

“After Tupac was shot,” her account began, “Suge was real upset. I never saw him like that before, like he’d lost a brother or something. And being in jail and all, for violating his parole, that didn’t help none.”

“You went to see him a lot in jail,” Daryn reminded her.

“All the time,” Theresa nodded. “He
needed
me there. But it was hard. I had to pretend to be Kenner’s assistant so they’d let me be alone with him.”

“David Kenner, Suge’s attorney?” I asked, wanting to get it on the record.

I knew who David Kenner was. In my line of work it would be hard
not
to know. Described by the
L.A. Times
as “a very aggressive, well-prepared criminal defense lawyer who establishes strong rapport with his clients,” his name had appeared often in the course of our investigation.

Underscoring his “strong rapport,” for example, was a 1996 FBI report, citing “a relationship between Suge Knight and Kenner that goes well beyond an attorney client relationship,” and that included Kenner’s presence “during incidents involving assaults and intimidation carried out by Knight on various victims.”

Now he had turned up again, at least according to Theresa. “I come up there all dressed up like Kenner’s legal secretary,” she continued, “supposed to be consulting on his case. And we’d be in this room with no guards, just me and Suge and him. And most times, David wasn’t paying no attention to what was going on, anyway.”

“What
was
going on, Theresa?” I asked, trying to keep the narrative moving in the right direction.

The words that had been coming in a flood abruptly stopped. She looked at us looking at her, as we looked back.

“Suge said he wanted me to talk to Poochie,” she continued, her voice barely audible. “You know…about Biggie.”

“What about Biggie?” Daryn urged. We still needed to hear it from her.

“You know…pay Poochie to take care of him,” she asserted. “’Cause of Tupac and all. He was really mad about that. Like I never saw him before. He told me where Biggie would be…you know, that party at the car museum. He told me to tell Poochie to get over there and take care of it, you know what I mean?”

“Did you?” I asked.

She nodded again. “We met a couple times,” she claimed. “To talk things over.”

“Where?” Daryn asked.

“That Denny’s on Lakewood.”

We knew the place she was talking about. It wasn’t far from the Chevrolet dealership where Suge had bought Poochie a brand-new Impala in happier days. In fact, Theresa went on, Poochie had arrived at a meeting shortly after the Biggie shooting in an Impala that looked to her as if it had recently been repainted.

“What did you talk about?” Daryn and I were trading questions now, a well-oiled interrogation unit.

“About the money, mostly,” she maintained. “How I could get it to him. I went back to Suge and he told me that would be all right, that he’d have it in my bank when I needed it. You know…after the thing.”

I flashed back on Reggie Wright, Jr.’s account of the search for $25,000 to secure a credit card. Had that been the way the contract killing was funded?

“What happened then?” Daryn pressed.

Once again, Theresa’s voice faltered. “I was there, that night, at the party,” she continued after a moment. “But I left before anything happened. I swear.”

“Did you see Poochie there?” I asked.

She shook her head vehemently. “I didn’t see him for another couple weeks. Then he comes by, says he wants to get paid. So I go back to Suge and tell him. He put the money in the bank, just like he said.”

“How much?” Daryn wanted to know.

“Nine thousand dollars, the first time.”

“The first time?” I repeated.

“Poochie came back after that. Said he needed more. That he had to get out of town for a while until things cooled down. So Suge got me another four thousand. That was the last I heard of him.”

A long silence followed, and in its wake Theresa began sobbing, a full-throated wail. “You can’t make me say nothing in court,” she cried. “I got my rights. I know my rights.”

“We can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” I assured her. “But we can’t help you unless you help us.”

“What do you think I been doing?” she demanded indignantly.

“Theresa,” Daryn said, turning to face her. “How would you feel about being a documented confidential source for this investigation?”

“What’s that mean?” she asked, her eyes sparking with suspicion.

“It means we want you to go to Suge,” I told her. “Get him to talk.”

“Talk about
what
?” There was a rising edge of hysteria in her voice.

“What you just told us. Poochie, the money, the whole thing.”

Her face went slack, and she looked suddenly gaunt, hollowed out, with only her eyes alive and blazing with fear and defiance. Nothing she had told us, even between the lines, had suggested the slightest understanding of what she had done to facilitate the death of another human being. Instead, in the place of remorse, was only the primal urge for self-preservation. I felt certain that we had taken her as far as she would go. To continue would have required courage and a conscience that were simply beyond her. I understood that. I accepted it. After so many years doing what I do, you learn to take people as you find them.

Regardless, we never actually had any intention of coaxing Theresa to confirm her story by wearing a body wire and recording an incriminating conversation with Suge. Unlike Keffe D, Theresa was never going to be comfortable standing face to face with her co-conspirator and act natural while prompting him to discuss the details of the Biggie murder. From what I had seen, her body language and quivering voice would alert Suge’s sixth sense and he would be frisking her for the device before the show ever started. Besides, we had something else in mind all along: a telephone wiretap.

There are strict legal conditions that must be met before a judge will grant a wiretap request. One of the primary stipulations is that all other means of investigation have been exhausted. Both Daryn and I knew beforehand that Theresa would be reluctant to wearing a recording device. But we had to go through the motions of asking her before we could approach a judge to grant us what we really wanted: to bug Suge’s phone.

Of course, Theresa didn’t know any of this and we wanted to keep it that way, at least until we secured the judicial go-ahead for the phone tap. The prospect of being a fly on the wall in the day-to day-life of Suge Knight had the potential to pay huge dividends in our investigation.

CHAPTER
25

Reckless Disregard