LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implications of Death Row Records’ Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal
author: Randall Sullivan
name: Paul
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2012/04/10
date added: 2012/04/11
shelves: conspiracy, non-fiction, true-crime
review:
A couple of months ago my wife and I got sucked into some television show about 90s gangster rap and the glib details in that program prompted a discussion about the shooting deaths of Christopher Wallace (Notorious B.I.G./Biggie Smalls) and Tupac Shakur. I got kind of interested in the story because of course I had heard about it and I remember the news coming out at the time, and I’d heard the grumblings and rumblings since that there was something fishy about the way the murders had never been solved. That interest prompted me to watch the Nick Bloomfield documentary “Biggie & Tupac” (which was okay but not great) and check out Randall Sullivan‘s book LAbyrinth from the local library.
Like the documentary, Sullivan’s book is okay, but not great. The story underneath this is interesting, but watching the two you get the distinct sense that all the conspiracy theorizing smoke is coming from a single source, an ex-LAPD detective named Russell Poole. Poole worked on the Wallace murder case and was part of the task force investigating internal corruption that would eventually be known as the Rampart Task Force. Sullivan goes as far out of his way as possible to make Poole look like a supercop and something of an idealized example of the perfect police officer, which makes sense when you realize that his book hinges on the credibility of this one principal source.
Documentarian Bloomfield cites and interviews Poole in his film as well, which further reinforces the notion that a lot of the “this came from the top” language and veiled (or not-so-veiled) cries of “cover up” originates in a single man’s mind and is propagated by those who either believe or are predisposed to believe his tale. Which is not to say Poole is incredible, only that it would be nice if the characterization Poole gives that there were others in his department who agreed that something odd was going on during the investigations would step forward and either state definitively that they believe in Poole’s evaluation or that they dismiss him out of hand.
The nutshell version of the yarn is that Shakur and Wallace were killed as part of an elaborate plot by CEO of Death Row Records, Marion “Suge” Knight, to get rid of Shakur who was preparing to leave the label, and solidify the cover story that Shakur was killed as a result of the surging East Coast/West Coast tensions in the rap world, notably between Death Row and Sean “Puffy” Combs’s Bad Boy Entertainment label (of which Biggie was a part). By this explanation, then, Wallace’s death was more of an opportunity to prove, after the fact, that Shakur’s death was related to the rivalry. The explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense; if Suge Knight wanted to blame Shakur’s death on Bad Boy Entertainment, it might have been more logical to kill Wallace first and have Shakur die as the retaliation. Of course, the case could be made that such a reversal might have cast more suspicion on Death Row for instigating/escalating the tensions as opposed to casting them as simply wanting revenge for their downed star. In any case the story only makes sufficient sense when Sullivan characterizes the attack on Wallace’s convoy that left him dead as being most likely intended to eliminate Bad Boy CEO Combs, but his car had run through a yellow light, leaving Wallace’s car as the de facto convoy lead, suggesting the bullets weren’t meant for him at all.
Sullivan paints a portrait of Suge Knight as a gangster in the sense of Al Capone, perhaps even worse. Sullivan gleeful recounts hearsay of every mythical or urban legend style tale of brutality, intimidation and shady deal perpetrated by Knight and explains away the brazenness by saying that he was protected by a group of cronies who were dual employed by both Death Row and the LAPD. These gangster cops seem to float through Sullivan’s narrative like phantoms, showing up when it seems convenient and drifting away whenever legitimate law enforcement personnel try to make solid connections between the label and the department. Of course, they have help from a corrupt Deputy Chief (and later Chief), Bernard Parks (among others), who pushed back on any avenue of inquiry that may have revealed links between the record label and the police.
However, Sullivan somehow manages to both connect and decouple the insinuations at the same time by contextualizing the whole attitude of the department (and perhaps the city at large) in the framework of the heavy racial tensions of the time. This is, remember, the era of Rodney King and the riots in 1992, OJ Simpson and the racially-charged “Trial of the Century,” not to mention the event that Sullivan opens the book with, the shooting of African-American Kevin Gaines by white cop Frank Lyga (Gaines, it turned out, was also a cop who may have had ties to Death Row). The problem with explaining why the department wouldn’t deal with the possibility that black cops might be working with Death Row is because it fully explains why the department would be reluctant to investigate black cops, period. Sullivan (and Poole) try to characterize the feet dragging by the top brass as indications that Suge Knight had more than just a few dirty cops on his payroll but had the direct or implicit backing at the highest levels, but I think that’s just sensationalist wishful thinking. It doesn’t necessarily excuse the LAPD from making matters worse by not dealing with dirty cops, but it isn’t quite as book-selling as saying “Parks helped cover up hundreds of crimes on Death Row’s behalf!”
In a lot of ways that summarizes my complaints with LAbyrinth. Sullivan comes across like Oliver Stone in JFK, making every possible connection he can and tying it all into a central—and intentionally vague—thesis of “There Is A Conspiracy!” Some of the items stick, I’m sure, but for all of Sullivan’s shots leveled at the LA media (principally The Los Angeles Times) for being predisposed to dismissing a conspiracy angle, he’s no better, just working from the flip side of that coin. Sullivan also comes across as a strangely prejudicial narrator, injecting his personal politics not overtly but at that just-beneath-the-surface level of a slightly off Vietnam veteran talking about the war. There may not be any actual racial slurs tossed or anything you can pinpoint as being obviously racist, but the tone and phrasing leaves no doubt what the opinion really is. It’s evidenced even in the way Sullivan throws in disgusted asides about how white cops can’t follow the evidence if it looks like it might lead to anyone black being accused of a heinous crime. The subtext of reverse racism is obvious and highly distasteful coming from the author of the book. If these kinds of accusations are pertinent to the material, a truly neutral journalist would let them come in quotations from sources.
I’m really rather torn about this book. On one hand, it’s a fascinating look at a set of cases that will probably always be linked together, it’s a wonderful conspiracy tale and an incredibly interesting, if frightening, look at a particular time in Los Angeles’ history. On the other hand, the book is clumsily written and lacks a lot of journalistic integrity which makes it feel salacious. I suppose that may just come with the territory for conspiracy books (another example is Jim Marrs‘s Crossfire about the JFK assassination, which has the same grudging appeal to a reader like me), but one wishes there were somehow a more studious examination of the subjects out there.