BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family (23 page)

Shortly after midnight, investigators obtained a search warrant for the house. Before charging inside, however, they set up a surveillance operation to see who might be leaving the house. Less than an hour later, a gray Chrysler 300 fell into the trap. The Chrysler was pulled over. The driver, Michael “Playboy” Harris, had been arrested four years earlier for the murder of Raul Rosales during the NBA All-Stars game in D.C. (The charges, however, were later dropped.) Jerry “J-Rock” Davis was in the Chrysler’s passenger seat.

The investigators confiscated both men’s cell phones. They wanted to compare their numbers to the two numbers believed to be involved in the attack that afternoon. It turned out that the number Wonnie had called while hiding behind the insulation was J-Rock’s.

J-Rock told the investigators that he and Playboy were temporarily staying at the Dunwoody house. He also admitted that he received Wonnie’s distress call earlier that day. But he denied making any other call to assist his friend. After that, he shut his mouth.

Once it became clear that they’d be coaxing no additional info from J-Rock or Playboy, investigators cuffed both men. By then, they had moved forward with the search warrant.

The investigators forced their way through the front door of the house on Spalding Drive, only to find that there was no one inside. It seemed, however, that the occupants had just recently left, and that they left in a hurry. There were six cars in the driveway, an impossibly strong scent of weed in the living area, and guns and cash lying all over the place. One of those guns, ballistics tests would later prove, was the one used to fire on the marshals. And in one of the bedrooms, investigators found the cell phone that J-Rock had called after Wonnie called him, presumably to request the hit.

While the search warrant was being carried out, investigators read J-Rock his rights. But there wasn’t enough to hold him for good. They detained him for a total of nine hours, after which he was not charged with any crime. The following morning, J-Rock was released.

All of a sudden I feel a pop, and fall to the ground.

—HENRY “POOKIE LOC” CLARK

B
ig Meech was done with Atlanta. Back in October of 2005, after he’d given a fake name at a roadblock outside the strip club Pin Ups, he was warned by the local cops to stay out of DeKalb County. A month later and one county over, authorities raided the Buckhead house where they believed Meech lived, on Paran Place. Meech was in Miami by the time the search warrant was executed on Space Mountain—a search that, to him, seemed way out of line. At that point, he decided he’d had enough.

There were certain rules to the game, even on the other side of the law. And the Space Mountain raid seemed to him to be a signal that authorities in Georgia weren’t playing fair. No investigator ever saw him at that house. There was nothing on paper that tied him to it. Basically, he told himself, they were just operating on the
assumption
that he lived there. Meech believed the Space Mountain search warrant was filled with such assumptions. To him, the investigator
who drafted the warrant crossed the line when he quoted an article from hip-hop magazine the
Source.
In the article, Meech stated that his crew didn’t rob, steal, or kill for their money. The investigator took that to be an admission of sorts. “Although Flenory denied killing people
for money
,” the investigator wrote in the warrant, “he did not claim that they do not commit murder.”

If they wanted him so bad, Meech wondered, why didn’t they just keep him in jail after the roadblock arrest at Pin Ups? Why not save themselves the trouble of trying to shadow his every move?
Oh, yeah
, he told himself.
They don’t have shit
.

In Atlanta, Meech felt he’d never be able to live down the hype. The Chaos killings had seen to that. It was as if once he stepped into the club parking lot that night in 2003, he’d crossed into an inverted reality. The deaths of Wolf and Riz followed him everywhere. He’d never be the guy he was just five minutes before. He’d been branded a murderer, and the scar was permanent. Never mind that he’d been shot that night, too—shot from behind (literally
in
the behind). Never mind that no indictment was ever filed. From that point on, everywhere he went in the city, Meech was the guy who killed Wolf, despite the fact that he swears he wasn’t.

Even the billboards, which were an attempt, however indiscreet, to restore his reputation, had been misconstrued. He put them up to make a point:
I’m a businessman, with a legitimate product to promote—and I’m not going to back down
. They were intended as damage control. After all, what killer would put his face on a billboard? For that matter, what drug dealer would advertise his merchandise in such a place? BMF Entertainment was a record label, pure and simple, and that’s what the billboards were trying to say.

Never mind, though. He’d say it in Miami.

Miami was a friendlier place, a place where the authorities didn’t seem so interested in him, and that’s where he intended to stay. He’d still have to go back and forth between the cities, for business. But for pleasure, Miami would be home. Sheltered in his South Beach mansion
and encouraged by the locals to come out and party, Miami was easy. Miami was perfect weather and glitzier clubs and more beautiful women than you could stand around and count. Atlanta, on the other hand, was aggressive roadblocks and after-dark search warrants and his name in the paper for all the wrong reasons.

In Miami, Meech would deliver his message not through the use of billboards but with another documentary-style video, a follow-up to the 2004 DVD chronicling the making of Bleu DaVinci. Meech invited DVD magazine
Smack
to come down to Miami and check out BMF Entertainment in action. He hoped that what the film crew captured would resonate throughout the industry, all the way to the big-time record execs who Meech believed could validate him. Meech made the video exclusively for them, to get their attention and, ideally, some of the money they’re known to invest in smaller, up-and-coming labels.

The docu-video was split into four chapters, each named for one of BMF Entertainment’s top players: “Meech,” “J-Bo,” “Ill,” and “Bleu.” Miami couldn’t have been a more perfect setting. The “Ill” chapter showed all four men milling around a reception in an all-white, lofty space in South Beach. Dressed identically in black cargo shirts over black tees, with black bandannas tied around their heads (with the exception of J-Bo, whose bald head gleamed unobstructed) and huge sparkling chains hanging from their necks, the four of them hobnobbed with some official-looking types. A white-haired man in a dark suit, his skin so flushed that it had assumed a hue not far from that of his ruby-red tie, appeared to be hosting the soiree. The mood in the room was celebratory, if a bit awkward. Ill, who is short, tough, and more boyish than the other BMF attendees, motioned to the corner and said in a measured and breathless voice, “That’s the mayor over there.” Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, dressed in jeans and a white linen shirt unbuttoned at the neck, waved in recognition.

“We appreciate Miami,” Ill said, turning back to the camera. “We appreciate the hospitality. …”

Meech, standing just to Ill’s right, smacked the gum he was chewing and grinned.

Before Ill could continue what he was saying, the guy in the suit ambled up from behind him and placed both hands on Ill’s shoulders. He hovered over him for a second, then leaned in.

“Miami appreciates you,” the man said, a trace of Kennedy-era Massachusetts in his ambassador’s voice, though he stumbled slightly over his words. “Thirty years ago, it was rhythm and blues, soul, all of that. It was what it was.” Motioning to Meech, Ill, J-Bo and Bleu, he continued, “This is what it is. The dichotomy, the community, the people, the culture, the variation—it’s a big event, with this group here. Unparalleled as far as peace.”

Meech turned to face the man, stretching his grin even wider until he beamed. The glee of the smile rivaled the sparkle of his trademark diamond cross. He shook the man’s hand. “That’s what’s up,” he said, a low, friendly grumble.

In the next scene, the “J-Bo” chapter, a large crew of BMF members arrived at South Beach strip club Teasers to celebrate J-Bo’s birthday. By then, the crew had switched outfits. This time, the four main players, as well as their followers, wore matching white jerseys printed with
BMF
.

“This is one of the greatest men alive right here,” Meech said to the camera, arm slung around J-Bo’s shoulder as they walked inside the club. “It don’t get no better than this.”

“It
can’t
get no better than this,” J-Bo responded.

Meech had just set up a six-month deal with one of South Beach’s wildest nightclubs, Crobar. BMF Entertainment would host a party there every Sunday, and depending on the size of the crowd Meech pulled in, he’d get a decent cut of the money earned at the door. Crobar boasted three VIP areas, including a three-story, glassed-in, club-within-a-club, and it could accommodate 1,600 people who often paid upward of fifty dollars each. It was legitimate money earned on street cred, and Meech was ecstatic.

On the night of J-Bo’s birthday, as with most nights that BMF was out partying in South Beach, the VIP area of Teasers was BMF’s exclusive stomping ground. For much of the night, Meech and J-Bo sat on the highest ledge within the all-red room, and rappers and BMF members pushed through the mass of bodies to pay their respects.

“J-Bo!” a voice called out from the crowd. It belonged to the pint-sized, tomboyish rapper Da Brat. “Happy birthday, brother!” Seeing who it was, J-Bo extended an arm to pull her up, as if reaching down from a throne.

Moments later, Meech descended from his seat alongside J-Bo to join Bleu, who was rapping in synch with one of his songs. It was playing over the club’s sound system. The VIP crowd bounced and swayed to the track, a sweaty mass to which Meech had arrived fully prepared. In one hand, he gripped a bottle of Cristal, dancing gingerly enough so as not to spill the precious champagne. In the other, he clutched a bottle of water and a hand towel, rehydration tools for his intense level of partying.

In the DVD’s next-to-last scene, Bleu offered the camera crew a tour of the cars parked on the grounds of the South Beach house where the crew was staying. There, in matching silver, were the Lamborghini Gallardo, Rolls-Royce Phantom, and Bentley GT coupe. Opening the door of the Phantom, Bleu spoke in mock British refinement and acted out a drug transaction during which the passenger of the Rolls seeks some high-grade marijuana.

“Do you have any Grey ‘Chronic’ Poupon blunts?” he giggled.

“As a matter of fact, Bleu,” he said, answering his own question in the same ridiculous voice, “we have some kush.”

“It’ll be a pleasant day, sir.”

The DVD concluded with a soliloquy from Meech. The sun was setting, and in the breezy Miami dusk Meech stood, illuminated by a dim spotlight, in the courtyard of the lemon-tinted, Spanish-tiled home. Walled in by eight-foot hedges and a stucco privacy wall, dressed in a crisp oversized white T-shirt and staring dead-on into
the camera, Meech spoke with the calm authority of a seasoned prophet, his diamond cross flickering in the cool, bluish light. He spoke plainly, offering an in-depth description of his crew’s rare camaraderie. Yet his intended audience wasn’t immediately clear. His words didn’t have the luster or substance of a business pitch. Rather, he seemed to be delivering an anti-pitch, an assertion of his independence and a testament to his prowess—not as a CEO, but as a mob boss. If Meech hoped to win over a music mogul—one who was willing to boost BMF Entertainment’s legitimacy with a distribution deal establishing the company as a major-label subsidiary—the mogul would have had to be sold on Meech’s street cred alone.

“You don’t get nothing like this nowhere,” Meech told the camera, motioning to the group of men who, one by one, whether by stepping into the frame or by the camera zooming out, begin to fill the shadows behind him. “Everybody move like brothers, and everybody is from different places: St. Louis, Detroit, Texas, Atlanta, Cali, Florida. We got people from everywhere in our mob. Everybody move as one. Everybody is prospering in some kind of way, in their own way. Every man plays his own role. And everything starts with the leader.”

The men in the background nodded.

“I’m a good leader,” Meech continued, his voice rising and falling in a gravelly cadence, “so I got good people that follow. It’s simple. You can only be like the nigga that’s running your crew. If you’ve got a robbin’-ass boss, then you’re gonna be a robbin’-ass crew. If you got a real boss, who knows how to sacrifice and take the bad along with the good and show his crew how to be men, then that’s what you get. Everybody’s shinin’ like new money.”

As he continued to speak, his movements became more hypnotic. He stepped forward and back, forward and back, giving a gentle, steady sway to his broad shoulders. He moved in time to a deep instrumental hip-hop beat, and the motion mimicked a charmer trying to tame a snake. But considering it was a camera, not a cobra, into
whose eye Meech stared, there was a hint of self-consciousness to his words, a trace of him trying to convince the outside world that the hardships that have plagued other crews won’t spread to his:

There ain’t no other crew like this in the world, and there never will be another one—not black. If niggas like this are shinin’ all together, doing shit every day, then they’re going to fall out over some money, or somebody’s going to rob, steal, or kill. I have yet to see that. All of us get along, with money. We’ve had money. Money ain’t nothing without us being together.