Tupac died on the afternoon of September 13th. Afeni says that doctors tried to resuscitate him several times, and that she then told them not to try again. She later told me that when he was thrashing about she surmised that he was trying to tell one of his cousins that he wanted him to “pull the plug.” She also said repeatedly that “Tupac would not have wanted to live as an invalid.”

On March 9th, six months after Tupac was murdered in Las Vegas, Biggie Smalls, who had been singled out by Tupac as a traitor and mortal enemy, was shot in his car as he left a music-industry party in Los Angeles No arrests have been made in either Tupac’s or Biggie’s murder. While the Las Vegas police would appear to have been almost lackadaisical in their approach to Tupac’s murder (they made only a perfunctory attempt to question Tupac’s cousins, who were riding in the car behind Knight’s, for example), it is also true that in that group of witnesses—and among their peers—giving information to the police is taboo. When Knight was interviewed on “Primetime Live,” he said that even if he knew who had shot Tupac, he would not say. “I don’t get paid to solve homicides,” he declared.

There have been many theories about who killed Tupac; one of the most prevalent rumors, which began to circulate shortly after Tupac was shot and has persisted to this day, is that Knight himself had something to do with Tupac’s murder. In mid-March he gave an interview from jail to “America’s Most Wanted” and said that he had not been involved. But many of those who were close to Tupac continue to suspect—based only on circumstantial evidence and their understanding of the street—that it was his attempt to leave Death Row that led to his death. Dre had managed to do it, but only by relinquishing any claim on Death Row. A music-business veteran who is close to Dre told me that “if Tupac had left Death Row . . . it would have been worse than devastating—it’s an insult. It’s a public slap in the face. It is not tolerable. ‘I’ve made you and you’re going to leave me? And six months after Dre did it?’ In another culture,” he concluded, “people sue you.”

In the last few months, Knight has been buffeted by one damaging revelation after another. The Los Angeles Times reported in October that he had given a recording contract to the daughter of the deputy district attorney Lawrence Longo, who had helped strike his probation deal in the assault case, and also that David Kenner had rented a nineteen-thousand-dollar-a-month Malibu Colony house from the Longo family and that Knight had stayed in it. (Longo denies any wrongdoing.) Then, in December, the Los Angeles Times reported that Steve Cantrock, Death Row’s accountant and a principal in the L.A. office of Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, a division of Coopers & Lybrand, had signed a document saying that he stole four and a half million dollars from Death Row. Cantrock was said to have told federal investigators that he had been invited to a San Fernando Valley house where Knight, Kenner, and others were gathered, that he had been forced to his knees and, fearing for his life, signed the handwritten confession that Kenner had drafted on the spot. (Knight says that no force was involved. Cantrock denies stealing the money.) Cantrock, who is in hiding, has since been forced out by his firm. He has also been reported to have been an intermediary between Knight and alleged organized-crime figures; federal investigators have reportedly been examining possible links between Death Row and organized-crime families in New York and Chicago. When federal grand-jury subpoenas were sent out last February, they focussed not only on Knight’s role but on Kenner’s as well.

In mid-April, Afeni Shakur filed a racketeering suit against Death Row, Suge Knight, and David Kenner, alleging that they were engaged in a conspiracy to steal from Tupac. The suit included a claim against Kenner for malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty, charging that his “purported representation of Tupac was in hopeless conflict” with his own interests—inasmuch as Kenner, the suit alleges, was both an attorney for Death Row and an owner of it. Several people close to the situation say that the suit is on the verge of being settled, and that Interscope has helped to make that possible.

Since Tupac’s death, Interscope has repeatedly sought to mollify Afeni. In October, when she found Knight and Kenner unresponsive and she was threatening to block the release of Tupac’s last album unless she got an accounting of the money due to him, it was Jimmy Iovine who met with Afeni and her lawyer, Richard Fischbein, and agreed that Interscope would pay her an immediate three million dollars with more to come. And it was Interscope, not Death Row, that underwrote a memorial service for Tupac in Atlanta in November.

Interscope has, in a way, been a model of corporate responsibility. Indeed, in a strictly corporate sense it has done more than was required. Tupac was not officially Interscope’s artist, after all. But Interscope executives may feel a level of responsibility for having pushed Tupac into Suge’s arms. And there is also a compelling business rationale for Interscope to do everything possible to quell the skirmishing between Tupac’s estate and Death Row. As one lawyer close to the situation points out, if Afeni didn’t get what she wanted from Death Row she would surely sue not only Death Row but Interscope as well, on the theory that the companies were so closely related as to have shared exposure. Being subject to a legal process of discovery on this issue could hardly have been an attractive prospect for Interscope—particularly in light of the ongoing criminal probe of Death Row.

If Interscope escapes unscathed in the federal probe, Suge Knight’s undoing could well prove a boon. “Joint ventures are only as successful as the operators are frugal,” an executive close to Interscope points out, and at Death Row the spending was “obscene.” “If they can shift the Death Row assets within Interscope, they’ll come out smelling like roses—and not have the wild card of Suge and Kenner.” A couple of months ago, it was reported that Seagram, the parent of Universal, is considering buying, for three hundred and fifty million dollars, the half of Interscope that Universal does not already own. This would mean a colossal profit for Iovine and Field.

To many blacks in the music business, the lack of congruency in this particular morality tale is bitterly familiar. Suge Knight has retained Milton Grimes, who defended Rodney King, to represent him in the federal investigation. Grimes argues that Death Row did not operate in a vacuum. “Their money came from Interscope, and from MCA, and they”—Interscope—“were hands-on. So if there are going to be indictments, let them take on the industry—not just this one black business.”

That Interscope is widely regarded as the most successful new label since Geffen Records cannot be attributed solely to its affiliation with Death Row. Interscope has hugely successful rock groups, including Nine Inch Nails, Bush, and the Wallflowers, and the pop groups No Doubt and God’s Property. But it was Death Row that rescued them from their early doldrums and that delivered one multi-platinum album after another. And the legacy of Death Row to Interscope is a rich one. “Death Row served an amazing purpose for Interscope, an entertainment executive told me. “It helped put them in the black-music business. Today, no matter what happens, they have that. People in that community feel that they gave a black man power. They gave a black man autonomy. They gave a black man money.”

Iovine and Field did bet on Suge Knight and Dre when other companies would not. They have justified what they did by alluding to the First Amendment, and to their belief in giving a chance to black artists and entrepreneurs from the street. But Death Row was no enterprise zone. And anyone who got near it could have predicted that there would be a price to pay for its cultivation of gangsterism—in lyrics, in social conduct, and perhaps in business practices as well.

Tupac, of course, paid the heaviest price of all. ♦