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And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. -John 1:5
Saturday, September
7: Mike Tyson is a thug's champion. Mighty but vulnerable, streetwise but
naive, standing in a precarious place despite his wealth. The place is
special in the hearts of hustlers. A Tyson fight is an unofficial gangsta
party. It's where the ghetto elite meet: rich niggas with nothing to lose,
indulging their contradictions. The anticipation builds as colorfully dressed
folks file into the MGM Grand on this hot Las Vegas evening. Inside, playas
like Stacey Augmon, New Edition, Gary Payton, Too Short, and Run-DMC settle
in. Among the 'bangers, ballers, dealers, and denizens in the VIP section
are two of America's most infamous: Marion "Suge" Knight, the Death Row
Records CEO who's made no secret of his affiliation with the Bloods, and
his quintuple-platinum superstar, Tupac Shakur. The bell dings, and Mike
Tyson makes quick work of a hapless Bruce Seldon. Too quick for the crowd's
taste. The mood after the 109-second fight is ugly, but Tupac is gleeful,
jumping about like a little boy. "Did you
see Tyson do it to 'em? Tyson did it to 'em! Did y'all see that?"
says 'Pac, baiting a camera crew in the MGM lobby. He becomes more and
more animated talking about Mike. "Did y'all
see that? Fifty punches! I counted, 50 punches! I knew he was gon' take
him out. We bad like that. Come out of prison and now we running shit."
Suge, smiling at Pac's antics, grabs his arm and coaxes him away from the
camera. Tupac returns to his room at the nearby Luxor, a massive black
pyramid with a brightly illuminated top. According to a close friend, he's
slightly upset because he couldn't find his road dawgs, the Outlaws, who
were supposed to be at the fight with him. "He
complained of getting into a scrap with some Crips."
Back outside the MGM, an amateur videographer catches 'Pac and Suge waiting
for their car, surrounded by a bevy of women. Tupac has changed from the
brushed silk shirt he wore to the fight to a black basketball jersey that
better exposes his tattooed biceps and the diamond-and-ruby-encrusted medallion
hanging from his neck. On it is an angel in waiting, wings outspread, gun
in hand.
Well it's time to ride / I'm ready to die right here tonight / And motherfuck they life / That's what they screamin' as they drill me / But I'm hard to kill, so open fire. -2Pac, "Ambitionz az a Ridah"Eleven-fifteen p.m. finds Suge and Pac turning off Las Vegas Boulevard onto Flamingo, heading east toward Suge's Club 662 in a black BMW 750, presumably to get their party on. Several women in an Oldsmobile flash Pac and Suge. Suge's at the wheel and Pac's next to him, his window down. He's all smiles, yelling to his fans, inviting them to join the party. Leading a convoy estimated at anywhere between six and 15 cars, the BMW stops at a red light in front of the Maxim Hotel-just beyond the Strip, where the neon and hubbub end and the darkness of a desert town begins. A late-model white Cadillac with California plates pulls up to the right of the BMW. One of its four passengers takes out a high-caliber firearm. "I heard these sounds and thought it was someone shooting in the air," says an eyewitness who was idling three cars back, "but then I see sparks fly from the gun." Between 10 and 15 shots ring out. Lead pierces metal, glass, flesh. Two bullets tear through Tupac's chest, one through a hand, one in a leg. Bullet fragments graze the top of Suge's head. The Cadillac peels off to the right, heading south down Koval Street. With two tires blown out and the windshield shot through, Suge floors his Beemer, screeching into a wild U-turn against oncoming traffic as vehicles scatter. Two policemen at the Maxim on an unrelated call hear the shots and see the commotion. They immediately give chase. According to a friend of Suge's, who was told the details later, Tupac is now bleeding through his jersey. "Gotta keep your eyes open," Pac says to himself. Suge stops the car and the police arrive. Tupac is stretched out in the back of the BMW bleeding profusely. Ambulance lights flash. "There was blood everywhere," says one witness.
"Get down!" yells a policeman, pointing a shotgun at Suge.
"I gotta get my boy to the hospital," Suge says.
"Shut up. Get down!" Suge bends his knees to the ground.
Across town, a white
Cadillac slips quietly away into the night. "I'm
dying, I'm dying," says Tupac as he's being
brought into University Medical Center's intensive care unit. He's lost
a lot of blood. He undergoes the first of two complicated operations. Afterwards,
Tupac's mother, aunt, and friends-including Mike Tyson, Jasmine Guy, and
Jesse Jackson-rush to his side.
Within hours the
shots have been heard 'round the world. Two years after the last attempt
on his life, hip hop's Lazarus has caught bullets once again and no one
knows what to think. Will he die? Will he return from this ordeal larger,
more invincible? It's difficult to imagine such a kinetic and volatile
figure lying immobilized. This, after all, is the same man who got into
a gun battle with cops on an Atlanta street and bopped out of the courtroom
unscathed. The same man who survived five bullet wounds in a 1994 Times
Square ambush. The same man who, though convicted of sexual abuse, left
a New York jail richer and more popular than when he went in. " Pac will
be all right," says a family member. "He'll
pull through."
Predictably, the
media jumps on the gangsta image, the court cases, the prison terms, and
the thuggish lyrics Bob Dole denounced. But his friends recount other stories.
"I've always known him to be gracious, humane,"
says hip hop mogul Russell Simmons. "All this
gangsta stuff, I've never seen it. I remember him dancing with this woman
in a wheelchair for four hours when everybody else was drinking and partying.
That's how I knew the man. He's a total sophisticate: intelligent, articulate."
"He looks like a sleeping black angel," says a close friend, after visiting Tupac in the hospital. "I talked to him, touched him. I told him to go to his light."
The members of Suge's Death
Row entourage are questioned by police, but provide little information.
Sergeant Kevin Manning of the Las Vegas Police Department says, "They
were not quite candid," about the circumstances
surrounding the shooting.
Fearing gang-related
violence, hospital authorities step up security. Between UMC security,
LVPD, and Death Row bodyguards, the trauma unit is all badges, brawn, and
walkie-talkies. Outside, a local Channel 3 news van backfires twice and
everybody in earshot drops to the ground. At about 8 p.m. police and Tupac's
crew get into a shouting match that results in people getting handcuffed
and detained by police. LVPD's Gang Sergeant Cindi West calls it "a
misunderstanding." Rumors abound.
Depending on who
you ask, Tupac is either on his way to the morgue or in intensive care
puffing on a cigarette. In truth, he's alive but experiencing respiratory
trouble. Surgeons decide to go in a second time and remove Pac's shattered
right lung. "You can live with one lung,"
says Dr. Jonathan Weissler, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine
at Southwestern Medical in Dallas. "And after
a while you can live quite well with it."
After hours of unconsciousness,
Tupac momentarily opens his eyes. Hearts are lifted.
The entire hip
hop world is turned on its ear. Overzealous reporters suggest that the
shooting is tied to the East Coast-West Coast rivalry. A few speculate
that it may be gang-related. Among the names being thrown about are the
Notorious B.I.G. and Mobb Deep (who are both entangled in protracted lyric
feuds with Tupac), Las Vegas Crips, Los Angeles Crips, even Death Row employees.
At least one Bad Boy Entertainment staffer receives death threats, and
the New York-based label cancels a scheduled appearance of some of their
artists.
"That this is gang-related is still pure speculation," says Sergeant Manning. "We have to run by facts." The entire Death Row organization, according to one employee, has been put under a gag order by higher-ups. LVPD, frustrated by the lack of cooperation from Tupac's camp, complain to the press. "The problem is a lack of forthrightness," says Manning, barely concealing his disgust. "It amazes me when they have professional bodyguards who can't even give an accurate description of the vehicle." Meanwhile Suge, who was released from the hospital with minor head wounds, is nowhere to be found.
In the trauma unit there's meditation and prayer. Tupac's aunt, Yaasmyn Fula, a tall, regal woman, removes her glasses and wipes her puffy eyes. "I'm just really, really tired," she says quietly. Afeni Shakur, 50, a woman of small frame and formidable grace, looks about the same. The former Black Panther who Pac calls Mama seems to carry the weight of the world upon her small shoulders. Visiting hours are almost over and she returns to the hotel for an hour or two of restless rest. Pac is still in critical condition.
Family members silently
get into a plain blue Chrysler. An older man wraps his arms around Afeni,
and she leans in heavily as the car drives away.
The morning brings
news of a murder in Los Angeles. A Compton bodyguard, who police say is
connected with the Southside Crips, has been shot in his car and pronounced
dead at Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital at 9:53 a.m. The rumor
is that the homicide was payback for Tupac being shot. "Someone
just drove up alongside and blasted him,"
says LAPD homicide detective Mike Pariz. "This
is only the beginning," says a Compton resident.
"The gang shit is about to be on."
Suge makes himself
available to the LVPD for questioning. Investigators review a videotape
from the MGM taken the night of the Tyson fight, which reportedly shows
Tupac and others in a confrontation with an unknown black man dressed in
jeans and a T-shirt. "This happened at approximately
8:45 p.m.," says Sergeant Manning. "Kicking
and punching were involved." Authorities won't
reveal whether Tupac or Suge personally assaulted the man. Once police
officers arrived at the scene they asked if the victim wanted to file a
complaint. He said "Forget it"
and walked away. Officers never got a name. "There
is no reason to believe that these incidents are at all connected,"
says Manning.
Tupac, his eyes
closed and his remaining lung inflamed, struggles for his life. He's connected
to a respirator, his body convulsing violently at times. Doctors induce
paralysis for fear of Pac hurting himself. Dr. John Fildes, chairman of
the hospital's trauma center, gives him a 20 percent chance of survival.
"It's a very fatal injury,"
he says. "A patient may die from lack of oxygen
or may bleed to death." Despite newspaper
headlines like WOUNDED TUPAC IS UNLIKELY TO LIVE, family members hold out
hope.
"This
is Dale Pugh, marketing and public relations director for the University
Medical Center," says a hospital hotline answering
machine. "This message is being recorded at
approximately 5:15 p.m. on Friday, September 13. Tupac Shakur has passed
away at UMC at approximately 4:03 p.m. Physicians have listed the cause
of death as respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest."
(here it)
At the hospital there's
a stillness, a surreal calm. The contradictions of Tupac's many worlds
are converging. More than 150 people are gathered out front: dark young
girls and their mothers, lanky young men with combs in their uncombed heads;
others wearing do-rags, professional women, young Native-American bangers
and children-dozens and dozens of children. Detached reporters wait with
the teary-eyed. A blond, blue-eyed cop stands next to a white boy with
dollar signs tattooed on his neck.
Surrounded by family, Afeni dashes out of the trauma unit, quiet determination etched on her face. "She is an extremely spiritual person," says a family friend. "I think she knew. She had given her only son to God long before this day."
A member of Tupac's crew leaves the trauma room soon after. He stares down a hospital staffer and screams: "Why the fuck you let him die, yo?! Why the fuck you let him die?"
Behind him, Yakki, Tupac's cousin, who's been at Pac's side since forever, walks out, red in the face. Death Row artist Danny Boy comes in tube socks and slippers, tears falling from behind half-and-half glasses. He bends down on one knee as if in prayer.
There's a trace of crimson in the clouds. Suddenly three shining cars appear and Suge Knight steps out of a black Lexus in a Phoenix Suns T-shirt, the wound up top his head barely noticeable. His massive figure quiets the crowd. He enters the trauma center hugging Danny Boy around the neck and talking quietly with members of Tupac's family. Without his running mate Tupac, Suge seems more solitary. After a few minutes he turns to leave, taking pulls on a barely lit cigar and leaving whispers in his wake. As the minutes go by, an almost festive atmosphere develops outside. Cars roll up bumping Tupac songs. Children begin running beyond their mother's reach. One little boy in naps and slippers lies down between two parked cars, glancing up mischievously to check if anyone sees him. The press packs it up. The crowd begins to disperse. A black Humvee circles the hospital, blaring "If I Die Tonight."
"I'll live eternal / Who
shall I fear / Don't shed a tear for me nigga / I ain't happy here." The
resoluteness in 'Pac's voice is cathartic.
"I hope they bury me and
send me to my rest / Headlines readin' murdered to death / My last breath...."
Such eerily prophetic
lines were not unusual for Tupac, who seemed to be rehearsing his death
from early on. For him, it was valor over violence, destiny over death.
But if his listeners were forewarned, they were still unprepared. "Now
it's real," says Vibe writer Robert Morales. "This scene has lost its cherry.
All the shit people have been talking in the past five years, all the dissing
and posturing, has led to this. Hip hop has crossed a line, and it's gonna
be hard to cross back."