Posted by Jan den Breejen on March 30, 2000 at 07:28:08:
Sean 'Puffy' Combs - and the Lopez/Gun-affair
The clerk in night court called out the official number of yet another lesson to be learned. "Docket ending 593," he said. "Sean Combs, also known as 'Puff Daddy.' Step up." The 30 year-old who had posed as everything from a gangsta to Christ was sitting precisely like a prisoner on a wood bench with his back to the courtroom. He was subway-close to a woman in a neck brace and a cheap black leather coat whose fur trim had gone to mange in the streets. She was charged with attempting to buy a controlled substance, though at the time of her arrest she had been found to possess neither money nor drugs-in her lawyer's words, "no stash, no cash." , The man who now rose beside her had increased his cash by $53.7 million in a single year, much of it by selling anthems of the street life that had left her flotsam. Combs's black leather coat was resplendent in keeping with his wealth. He also wore an oversize white T-shirt and baggy black Sean John pants that marked him the only person ever to appear here for arraignment in his own clothing line. Combs planned to expand his "urban high fashion" line to include children's clothes. He had also spoken of a cartoon series and various movie projects and an acting career and endorsement deals and even an
e-venture, all of which explaineds why his business lawyer looked so much more worried than his defense attorney. The business lawyer knew that Combs had begun to lose some of his puff even before this latest arrest- two of Combs's biggest -selling acts had left his Bad Boy Records, and revenues had plummeted Sales of his own second album were sputtering. The image of him at a polo match had proved to be as unshakable as that of Michael Dukakis in a tank or Hillary Clinton in a Yankees hat. He had been greeted at the Apollo Theater with chants of "Puffy sucks."
The extent of the deflation was apparent to anybody who had witnessed his previous arraignment, on an assault charge back in April. This same drab courthouse in downtown Manhattan had gone giddy. Combs had shaken hands with court officers and readily obliged when two cops and a clerk asked for his autograph. Eight months later, on this night between Christmas and New Year's Eve, the cops and court officers looked at Combs as if he were just another guy who was back too soon, as if he were only additional evidence of what would not be changing in the next millennium. More than the neck brace appeared to keep the woman with no stash and no cash from turning to watch as Combs took half a dozen steps over to the judge. The woman simply did not seem all that interested. Most of the other spectators scattered around Part AP3 shared her lack of curiosity. Combs's celebrity seemed to have lost its luster under a grime more indelible than the jailhouse dirt scuffed on his soft black shoes. The charge this time was gun possession. Combs crossed to face Judge Gabriel Gorenstein without even glancing at the spectators, as if they were one mirror in which he did not want to see himself. Combs is said to prize unconditional love and admiration, and he sure was not going to find that here. The clerk called out the names of the two men who had been arrested with him. "Docket ending 594," the clerk said. Anthony Jolles, also known as 'Wolf.' Step up." Jolles rosein a denim suit that proved Sean John makes sizes big enough to outfit even the most hulking predicate felon. Jolles is the sort of person that Combs's most recent friends had been pressing him to stay away from. Jolles is also the sort of person that Combs felt he needed while his jailed West Coast rival Marion "Suge" Knight still seethed and the killer of his dear friend and prize rapper Biggie Smalls remained unidentified.
"Docket ending 595," the clerk then said. "Wardel Fenderson. Step up." Fenderson had no "also known as," and his gray turdeneck and sweater appeared to have been chosen for value as much as look. He was a chauffeur during the week for an investment banker. He only moonlighted for Combs on the occasional weekend, duty that was not so different from his day job when Combs and his steady girlfriend Jennifer Lopez were hobnobbing with the likes of Donald Tromp or Martha Stewart. Assistant District Attomey Matthew Bogdanos now recounted to the court what was alleged to have occurred when Combs and Lopez went into "Hot Chocolate Night" at Club NewYork in the company of Jamal Barrow, also known as "Shyne." Barrow is a 21-year-old Brooklyn rapper of such promise that people had suggested he could succeed Biggie Smalls as the king of East Coast hip-hop. On another night Combs, Barrow, and Wolf had been photographed at a party in whiteface. Their complicity seemed to run far deeper than the group joke, and Combs appeared to have shaken off the solitude of a man who had once said that With Biggie gone he trusted nobody and had no true friends.
Perhaps Combs had been looking to relive the hip-hop life with Biggie as he swept with Barrow, Lopez, Wolf, and an entourage of maybe 30 into Club New Vork. Combs apparently failed to consider where that adventure had left his departed friend. Bogdanos told the court that there had been a dispute in which somebody "threw a stash of money at Mr. Combs." Bogdanos said that Combs and Barrow both pulled out 9mm semiautomatic pistols. Three bystanders were shot. "Did you say that Combs was observed firing, or just with the gun?" the judge asked. "Just pulling out the pistol, your honor," Bogdanos said. Bogdanos reported that Barrow had been grabbed by a couple of uniformed cops and would be arraigned separately; Combs had fled with Lopez to the back of a gray Lincoln Navigator driven by Fenderson. Jolles hopped into the front passenger seat and they sped off, police in pursuit. "Going through at least 11 red lights," Bogdanos said. That would have afforded plenty of time to hide a weapon in a vehicle that happened to have two "traps," or secret compartments. The police nonetheless maintained that a black Model 915 Smith & Wesson 9mm semiautomatic pistol had been "in plain view" by the front passenger seat after the Navigator was finally stopped.
Lopez had been freed after 14 tearful hours manacled to a station house bench. Bogdanos requested significant bail for all three men -$100,000 for Combs, perhaps an all-time record for a shaky gun case. "Your honor will note that Mr. Combs has a history of violence," Bogdanos said. Bogdanos was referring to the April assault case, in which Combs and two minions had battered a recording executive. Combs's lawyer, Harvey Slovis, had managed to knock the felony charge down to the equivalent of spitting on the sidewalk. Combs had appeared for sentencing with his hands dug into his pockets, what he later confided was a "test," a challenge of the judge's authority. The test had turned on Combs when Judge Martin Murphy ordered, "Get your hands out of your pockets." Combs had complied like the Catholic schoolboy that he in fact was.
Now, back in the courthouse before Judge Gorenstein, Combs kept his hands well out of bis pockets and at his sides as defense attorney Slovis commenced the effort to get him out of a second jam. Slovis contended there were numerous witnesses that his client had not pulled a gun in the club. "Jennifer Lopez is a very famous actress," Slovis said. 'And to think Mr. Combs is walking with Miss Lopez with a loaded gun, and he is not the shooter, and then left. He goes to the car, and he still has the gun. It's ridiculous." Slovis could have found no one to argue with that. He noted that the gun had been discovered in the front of the car and that Lopez had been freed. "Cut loose," Slovis said. "Why? Because it's not reasonable to charge the people in the back." Slovis suggested the bail would not likely be more than $2,500 "if this was not Sean 'Puffy' Combs." The judge settled on $10,000 for Combs and ordered him to be back in court on February 14. That happened to be Valentine's Day, which was only appropriate in a case whose overriding question was what on earth Jennifer Lopez was doing with such a guy. The bail for Fenderson the driver was $5,000, or a 10th of what he would later allege Combs offered him in the station house to say the gun was his. Jones's prior record raised his bail to $20,000, even though his attorney noted that he lived with his mother and had a daughter in a prestigious private school. "I'm getting too old for this," Jones was heard to tell his attorney: "I've got a six-year-old in Horace Mann." The judge called a recess, and the spectators were cleared from the courtroom, a couple of them wondering aloud about parents' night with Wolf at Horace Mann. Combs only then took bis fust glance back, and he looked as empty as the benches. When a custodian swept the aisles, Combs waited with his codefendants for his people to post the bail. He pulled on a black knit cap, then changed his mind and removed it, smoothing his hair. He borrowed a cell phone and turned to lean on the judge's vacated bench as he spoke. He straightened after two minutes to dial another number, but the call did not go through. He tried again to no avail, and for a moment he just stared at the phone. A court officer announced that the ban formalities were complete. The only person who requested Combs's autograph this time was a court sketch artist, who asked him to sign her drawing, as she might with any tabloid bad guy: Combs obliged and left the courthouse with curious ease in those soft, jail-scuffed shoes. He then encountered the media mob waiting outside, and he seemed suddenly weary and shaken as he sought to make these prying strangers see him as he wanted to be seen. He made a statement he had worked out with his publicist during a collect call from a holding-pen pay phone. He insisted that he would be vindicated, his diction that of a valedictorian until two final, street-swallowed syllables. "Then, everything will be aiight," he said. Combs thereupon climbed into a waiting Mercedes, which proceeded all of a quarter block before encountering a red light.
He apparently understood he had blown more than enough lights for one day. The car stopped, idling outside the detention center also known as the Tombs, where the woman with no cash and all the others who could not make bail are consigned. The light turned green, and the Mercedes sped from the Tombs to the Peninsula Hotel; Combs joined Lopez in suite 801 and ordered room service. The dishes were still in the living room the next morning, when Slovis and publicist Dan Klores arrived to help prepare for an afternoon press conference. As recounted by one of those present, Lopez was in the bedroom, drying her hair. She was still in one of the hotel's white terry cloth robes when she came in and sat beside Combs on the sofa. She did not seem to have been at all thrilled by flying bullets and a police chase. She was certainly smart enough to appreciate that a stray round could have landed her famously insured backside, along with the rest of her, on a gurney in the morgue. A manicured hand, whose slender wrist had felt the chill of handcuffs, now freely took Combs's band. Her head rested on his shoulder at one moment. His head rested on her shoulder at another. The two looked exactly like a couple who bad been through a very rough night. She listened to the various advisers counsel him on wbat be should say. She then declared what should be his essential message. "Hey, the whole thing is you bad no gun," she was heard to say. Lopez rose and went into the bedroom, but soon reappeared in black pants and black sweater. She returned to Combs's side as if this were still the only place for her to be. Two years before, people might have said that Lopez was attracted by Combs's incandescent success and celebrity. She was now tbe bigger star by every measure but the one evidenced wben she looked at him. She seemed to calibrate him with a dreamy subjectivity that more than one person has described with the same single word. Love. Combs had himself spoken this word, back in November, at his 30th birthday party. "I never had anyone love me the way she loves me," he had said. "I love her and, hopefully, one day I will be able to marry her." Those who did not love Combs included a growing number of hip-hop fans, who seemed uneasy with raps uttered by the same mouth that described Ron Perelman as "a real cool cat." Combs could not have felt he was doing anything for his album sales as he sat in his $2.5 million Hamptons house with Lopez two days after Christmas. Combs decided they would head into the city and hit Club New York. Lopez would later say that she watched Combs as he dressed and put her arms around his waist and neither saw nor felt a pistol. The night's entourage included Shyne, whom Combs had once coached by mixing polo and rap, telling him not to sing to the beat, but to ride it like a horse. They of course got the VIP treatment at the club, which police say included being spared the indignity of the metal detector. Two mornings later, Combs sat in suite BOl with Lopez and his mother, who arrived in a platinum wig. Combs departed for the press conference in a decidedly nonstreet brown pullover and pants. He again declared himself "100 percent" innocent. Afterward Combs rejoined Lopez at the Peninsula. He worried aloud that Slovis had antagonized the media, but calmed down after they watched the coverage on CNN and NewYork 1. He and Lopez agreed that he had gotten across what she had insisted was the most important message. He departed in the early evening for the recording studio, to prepare for New Year's Eve. On the last Thursday of the millennium, Lopez appeared before the grand jury. She testifted that she had at no time seen Combs with a gun. She allowed that she had been several steps ahead of him at the time of the shooting. Lopez flew down to Miami for a New Year's Eve party, where she reportedly was snubbed by fellow celebrities for reasons unrelated to her boyfriend. Combs stayed in New York and appeared in MTV's hype-athon in Times Square. He spent that Monday night with the returned Lopez and seemed in low spirits. He made a voluntary appearance before the grand jury the next day, the first Tuesday of the new millennium.
++++ Jan's comments
The souffle-syndrome…..The guy's character seems like a souffle; he's 'puffy' when he feels safe but completely deflating when things go wrong ('ín low spirits'):
- 'to prize unconditional love and admiration……..'( loyalty and fear of negative remarks?)
- 'true friend'/group thinking-like behavior: 'their complicity seemned to run deeper….'his dear friend Biggie Smalls'
- needing guns to feel safe; perhaps even drawing them (over-reaction)
- he looks very dependent on the relation with Jennifer Lopez
- importance of marrriage: 'I love her and hopefully one day I will be able to marry her…'
- history over 'violent' behavior
- he worried aloud that Slovis had antagonized the media
- naughty/obedient combination : 'The test had turned on Combs when Judge Martin Murphy ordered; 'Get your hands out of your pockets. Combs had complied; like the Catholic schoolboy he in fact was'
- focus on God and gospel music
- need of true friends
- suspicion
The impression I get of Puffy's character is that it could well match Oldhams Devoted Style (N6 substyle); Oldham writes:
- 'thorougly dedicated to the relationship…highest value on sustained relationships….respect the instrument of marriage…work hard to keep the relationship together'
- pleasing the important person in their live (he gave Jennifer a really absurdly expensive ring)
- unrealistically preoccupied with fears
We could also think of Oldhams Vigilant Style (another N6 substyle); but this doesn't seem right; he's to ''soft" for that; Vigilante characters are also not so dependent on friends.
Jan