Larger Than Lyfe

by Cynthia Diane Thornton

  “OH, MY GOD!” Misha screamed, realizing what was being conveyed in Keshari’s letter to her.

  She dropped everything she held on the floor and went racing frantically out to her car.

  Mars was in his office when his secretary came to his door, escorting a messenger carrying a letter that could only be signed for by Mars Buchanan himself. Mars opened the messenger envelope and instantly recognized the pink parchment stationery. He closed the door to his office and sat down to carefully read Keshari’s first communication to him since their break-up. His secretary had no idea what was going on as he went running for the elevator. A moment later, his Mercedes was speeding at 100 miles per hour up the 405 freeway toward Keshari’s Palos Verdes mansion.

  Mars arrived at Keshari’s house to a scene of utter chaos. Police cars lined the street and police officers contended with the television news crews arriving on the scene as they attempted to capture a breaking story and the police attempted to bring order to the chaos. Mars could barely get through the pandemonium as he pulled up outside the mansion’s gates. A reporter recognized him and was instantly in his face.

  “Get the FUCK away from me!” Mars yelled, rolling up his window.

  Sam Perkins, head of security at Keshari’s residence, opened the gates and Mars’s car pulled quickly inside.

  “Mr. Perkins, what’s going on?” Mars asked anxiously, hopping out of the car.

  Sam Perkins bowed his head and Mars took off running up the drive.

  Misha Tierney was standing on the lawn just off the drive in front of the house. She was being consoled by a police officer. Mars went to her and she collapsed in sobs in his arms. Cold, frozen fear took hold of Mars’s heart.

  “What’s happened, Misha?” Mars asked, hugging her and attempting to console her.

  “She’s…she’s…she’s…dead,” Misha garbled through her uncontrollable sobs. “She’s GONE!”

  Misha had arrived at Keshari’s mansion that morning, directly after receiving Keshari’s letter, and had demanded to be let in. The access codes to the gate sealing off the house’s entrance had all been changed, so Misha was unable to just let herself in. The security officer manning the entrance curtly informed Misha that Ms. Mitchell was not receiving any visitors that day and Misha promptly commenced to curse him out. She had stirred up such a ruckus, verbally castrating the security officer with a stream of profanities, that he had quickly radioed Sam Perkins for assistance. Sam Perkins came to the scene from the rear of the property and took control of the heated situation. Because Sam Perkins knew that Misha Tierney was Keshari’s best friend, he immediately called the house and told the housekeeper to let Keshari know that Misha was there. Misha explained to him that the situation was an emergency and that Keshari may have done something to harm herself. Sam Perkins tried to explain to her, as calmly as he could, why he couldn’t allow her to go on up to the house as he typically did. Keshari had issued very specific instructions and there were to be NO EXCEPTIONS. When the housekeeper went up to Keshari’s bedroom suite to tell her that the security office was on the line, she found an unconscious Keshari in her robe, on the bathroom floor with a nearly empty bottle of sleeping pills splayed out on the bathroom counter. The housekeeper went into hysterics and came back to the phone, babbling in a mixture of her native Spanish and broken English. Sam Perkins opened the gates for Misha and the two of them rushed up to the house, Sam Perkins radioing “9-1-1” as they went.

  Misha found Keshari unconscious on her bathroom floor. Misha checked and Keshari was not breathing. Sam Perkins quickly began to administer CPR while they waited for paramedics. Everything that was happening seemed surreal. Misha felt as if she was floating in the middle of a nightmare. She held Keshari’s hand and sobbed, almost hysterically, as Sam Perkins continued CPR and chest compressions. Misha begged God not to let this happen. She begged Keshari to wake up.

  Emergency medical technicians burst into the room and began to work on Keshari. They worked on Keshari for what seemed like hours. A police officer escorted a distraught Misha downstairs and out onto the mansion’s lawn so that she could get some air and allow the paramedics to continue trying to revive her best friend. When they brought Keshari out of the house on a stretcher with a sheet pulled over her face, Misha screamed inconsolably, running toward the stretcher, and had to be restrained.

  When Mars arrived, the ambulance with Keshari inside had just left. When Misha tearfully told him that Keshari was gone, Mars couldn’t bring himself to believe her. His entire body went ice cold and he stood paralyzed, the chaos all around him suddenly seeming far away.

  “This is not happening…this is not happening…this is NOT happening,” Mars said over and over again, in confusion and disbelief.

  Thomas Hencken’s office received the call regarding Keshari Mitchell’s collapse in her home just after emergency units were dispatched to her residence. Thomas Hencken quickly loaded two cars with DEA agents and rushed to Palos Verdes, arriving just after the ambulance had sped away with Keshari inside, sirens blaring, for South Bay Hospital.

  Thomas Hencken’s mind was reeling. The news was not at all what he’d expected. He’d been preparing to pay Keshari another visit to show her some of the evidence that the DEA was continuing to mount against her to take before a grand jury, still convinced that she would break down and provide the testimony that he needed. Although the evidence was still mostly circumstantial, it included an intricate maze of dummy corporations that had funded the start-up of Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment. This peculiar string of business enterprises had eventually led back to Phinnaeus Bernard III, Richard Tresvant’s murdered attorney. There were also photographs of Keshari Mitchell outside two known cocaine processing houses reputedly owned by The Consortium, one of which had been raided by the Los Angeles Police Department. Now this woman that the task force had been relying upon to give a two-year-old investigation on life support new life was gone and Washington was not going to give the task force another dime, and Thomas Hencken knew that he had a lot of blame to take for most of it.

  When Thomas Hencken regrouped from the initial shock, his gut instincts quickly went into overdrive. Something kept telling him that there was something amiss about Keshari Mitchell’s untimely death. Thomas Hencken was not fooled. Over the course of his career, he’d seen it all. Behind celebrity, wealth, power and a prestigious, Wharton MBA, Keshari had very successfully managed to keep hidden for years a double life that involved major crime. That was not to be overlooked. She may not have fit the profile of the kind of criminal that typically surrounded Richard Tresvant. She may have had some kind of epiphany of conscience that had compelled her to separate from The Consortium. But no one, particularly a woman, held a controlling position in a major, organized drug ring without possessing a Machiavellian level of cunning and strategy accompanied by nerves of steel. That kind of person would not swallow a bottle of pills and call it quits on life because of, what amounted to people like them, a few, relatively minor legal problems. That kind of person kept local and federal law enforcement on their payroll. That kind of person had a wealth of connections and virtually unlimited financial resources at hand to fake her own death.

  A suicide would free Keshari Mitchell from persecution by The Consortium and anyone else who might put a price on her head. A suicide would free Keshari Mitchell from being subpoenaed to testify in front of a grand jury about the operations of The Consortium and its client list and suppliers. A suicide would certainly keep Keshari Mitchell from having to face the recent murder-for-hire charges against her. A faked suicide was very plausible and, considering Keshari Mitchell’s current circumstances, easily believed.

  Thomas Hencken got on the phone to secure the warrants necessary to view Keshari’s body at the coroner’s office and mortuary. It required more than a few strings to be pulled and he had to call in a lot of favors all the way to Washington, D.C. Un-fortunately, things took yet another turn for the worst when he arrived at the co
roner’s office the next day and Keshari Mitchell’s body had been quickly moved to a mortuary by her attorney for immediate cremation. The pathologist allowed the DEA agents to review the paperwork containing Keshari Mitchell’s cause of death as well as the contents from her stomach pump provided by the paramedics. Keshari’s apparent cause of death was an acute overdose of secobarbital.

  Thomas Hencken was livid. The special task force was being dismantled, agents were being assigned to other cases and Thomas Hencken’s superiors in Washington, D.C. called him and demanded a meeting. In Washington’s eyes, as well as in the eyes of many of the task force’s agents, the special task force simply had not made enough progress to continue putting good money after bad. Two agents had lost their lives. The convictions that had been made through the work of the special task force agents were at the bottom of The Consortium’s hierarchy. Thomas Hencken strongly believed that there might be some DEA agents in The Consortium’s pocket. Such was often the case in America’s “war on drugs.” Criminals were often two or more steps ahead of law enforcement. Major criminals’ pockets were almost always deeper than law enforcement task force budgets. When law enforcement budgets were depleted, they were forced to move on, whether or not they had accomplished their mission; and even if they had accomplished their mission, there was always a new criminal organization at the ready to assume position wherever the prior organization had left off. Drug trafficking in the United States was a trillion-dollar enterprise and sometimes it was made crystal clear to law enforcement that trying to eradicate its operation was akin to trying to take on a missile launcher with a peashooter. There was simply too much money and corruption involved to realistically foresee any REAL progress.

  But Thomas Hencken was determined that he would not let go.

  Security was extremely tight. Police and news helicopters flew overhead. Live television news crews captured the Who’s Who of the entertainment industry arriving in limousines and forming a lengthy procession of respectful mourners heading up the stone steps and into St. Thomas Cathedral on Figueroa. Keshari’s mother was deceased. So was the grandmother who had tried to care for her following Keshari’s mother’s passing. Keshari had no real family to speak of except for Misha, although the two of them were not related by blood. Most of the funeral’s attendees were nothing more than business associates of Keshari’s, some of them were total strangers, and many of them had the most selfish of ulterior motives for coming. Keshari’s funeral, like a Def Jam party thrown by Russell Simmons himself, was just another place where everybody who was anybody needed to be. Fans of the Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment record label and Larger Than Lyfe’s roster of superstar artists watched the procession behind barricades on the opposite sides of the street outside St. Thomas Cathedral. Many of them snapped photographs with their cell phones, digital cameras, and disposable cameras. All of them craned their necks to take in the celebrity faces that dotted the crowd of mourners.

  The front pages of all of Los Angeles’ newspapers and tabloids had been dedicated to Keshari Mitchell, reporting the details of her career, the mystery and the rumors that had constantly surrounded her life, and the questions that now surrounded her death. An exquisite, huge, hand-carved, mahogany urn that had been imported from Egypt, topped by an enormous spray of white roses, was carried into St. Thomas Cathedral by Andre DeJesus, Terrence Henderson, Shaquille O’Neal and Rasheed the Refugee, the pallbearers. The female “Jane Doe” who had been quickly cremated and transferred into the urn that was supposed to contain Keshari’s remains was receiving a VIP send-off instead of a pauper’s grave.

  Misha Tierney was escorted into a side door by her handsome, New York Knicks fiancé and a throng of security. Dressed in black Chanel and huge, black, Christian Dior sunglasses, Misha was but a shell of her usual, beautiful, well-known to be outspoken self. She had been under heavy sedation since the fateful day that she’d discovered Keshari’s body on the bathroom floor of Keshari’s master suite. She had been so distraught days after Keshari’s death that everyone felt certain that she was having some sort of nervous breakdown. Her assistant had had to cancel two large projects of hers because Misha was in no condition to do anything. Misha had been the obvious choice to give the eulogy at Keshari’s funeral, but, because of her current mental state, Andre DeJesus had stepped in to give the eulogy instead.

  Mars adamantly refused to go to the church to attend Keshari’s funeral. He refused to sit in the same room where Keshari’s remains were in a box and then ride to a cemetery to watch that box being placed into a mausoleum. That was too much for him to take. He’d had to take a brief leave from work because of what the shock of Keshari’s death had done to his head. He lost the mental and physical ability and desire to function, professionally or otherwise.

  Even though he had not spoken to Keshari since the night that he’d confirmed the truth of the federal agent’s story about Keshari’s link to organized crime, Mars still loved Keshari as deeply as when he’d fallen in love with her in Negril. He had always known that, one day, he would overcome his hurt and anger and judgment at Keshari’s violation of their trust. He had always known deep down that, eventually, he would have forgiven her. His heart would have compelled him to forgive her and, if Keshari would have had him, the two of them would probably have reconciled…her past in the past, all cards on the table, the future bright. Now all of that was nothing more than wishful thinking, possibilities that would always be nothing more than possibilities, time that could never be recaptured, and a chain of events that could never be changed.

  Since the day that the entire music industry was shocked and saddened by the news of Keshari’s suicide, Mars had lay in a disheveled mess on a chaise longue on his terrace. He hadn’t shaven. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t even taken off the suit he’d worn on the day he’d gone rushing up to Keshari’s house, only to find out that she was gone. The mix of emotions that had dominated his thoughts since their break-up were quickly replaced by profound guilt and grief.

  Mars’s best friend, Jason Payne, came to Mars’s condo repeatedly to check on his grieving brother. Mars wouldn’t let him in. He didn’t want to see nor be around anyone. Mars’s mother and sister had been watching coverage on the news in New York and called Mars to let him know that they were flying to L.A. to be with him. Mars had his answering service tell them not to worry, that he was okay and just needed to be by himself for a while.

  The one time that Mars did finally answer his phone himself, Portia Foster had the temerity to be on the other end of the line. Her voice, filled with sympathy, said that she was calling Mars to make sure that he was okay, that she’d been so worried about him since Keshari’s…well, since her…uhm…passing, and that she’d like to come by and bring him some food, a little “care package” to help him to feel better.

  “You crazy BITCH!” Mars yelled before slamming down the phone. “Why couldn’t it have been YOU?!”

  He lay in a drunken stupor on the chaise longue that had become his bed on his terrace. He should have passed out from alcohol poisoning after all of the liquor that he’d consumed. He sent his housekeeper on a two-week, paid vacation to her native Mexico to visit family. Between bottles of Patrón tequila and Heineken, Mars questioned the very meaning of life.

  In his restless sleep, Keshari came to Mars in his dreams. Wearing a $40,000 sable coat with nothing underneath except the platinum-and-diamond belly chain that Mars had purchased as a gift for her at Raffinity, Keshari curled up on the chaise longue beside him, kicking off high-heeled sandals, her red toes tickling his legs, and whispered in his ear, “See…I’m still here.” She planted soft, seductive kisses on his neck and he smiled, her every touch taking him to special places. He couldn’t control himself as he took her aggressively on top of that sable coat, her perfect, brown legs wrapped around his waist.

  “See…I’m still here,” she murmured over and over again in his ear, arching her back, making him come faster than he wanted to.


  When he climaxed, it was like an explosion that snapped him awake. He looked all around him at the dimly lit terrace. Keshari was gone. Mars was all alone. He started to cry. Keshari was gone forever.

  David Weisberg’s messenger service hand-delivered requests for the presence of the entire list of Keshari’s heirs at his firm’s offices exactly one week after Keshari’s funeral. Misha was away on a trip to the Caribbean with her fiancé. The handsome player for the New York Knicks believed that a change of scenery would be just the thing to help Misha overcome the debilitating grief that she’d suffered after losing her best friend.

  David Weisberg secured the particulars of Misha’s travel arrangements from her fiancé’s assistant and hired a messenger service in Trinidad to hand-deliver the notification regarding the reading of Keshari’s will. Misha handled the situation extremely well. With her fiancé at her side, she shed more tears, but she resolved herself to the fact that it was time to get back to the business of living her life. She had a business to run and her own wedding to plan and the distribution of Keshari’s assets would help to bring some closure to one of the most painful situations of her life.

  Mars was still on leave from ASCAP and notification was delivered to his condo. He was drunk, disheveled, and completely out of himself when the messenger rang his doorbell. He tossed the notification regarding the reading of the will over the railing of his terrace and told himself that he would not go.

  On the afternoon of the reading of the will, all of the heirs who’d received notification were assembled in the main conference room at David Weisberg’s offices. Misha appeared to be getting back to her old self. She wafted into the room on a cloud of Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb perfume, dressed to kill in charcoal gray Gucci and wearing the tan that she’d acquired in Trinidad very well. Her handsome fiancé had accompanied her for moral support. Andre DeJesus, Sharonda Richards, and Terrence Henderson all sat together. Everyone was present with the exception of Mars Buchanan.