Around the same time, Coles and Baukman began planning New Jack City: The Next Generation.

Cooper had no involvement in that project, which was, in some ways, an homage to the original movie he had written.

The video also was a takeoff on State Property, a full-length feature released early in 2002 starring Philadelphia rapper Beanie Sigel, a friend of Coles'.

The two video projects, which would move forward in 2003, offered different pictures of a street-hustling Alton Coles.

In Streets Inc., he was Ace Capone, a savvy, urban entrepreneur who saw hip-hop music as a way for young corner boys to get out of the 'hood.

In New Jack City: The Next Generation, he was Ace Capone, cocaine kingpin.

Police were leaning toward the second image as they began pursuing leads about Coles from a Darby Borough police officer. But in 2002, no one in law enforcement was exactly sure who Coles was or what role he might have been playing in the drug underworld.

That spring, a killing outside the Philadelphia Zoo offered the first hints.

New image emerges

On the surface, it looked like a drug deal gone bad.

Two brothers from New Castle, Del., had arranged to buy a "quarter brick" - a half-pound - of crack from Randall "Iran" Austin.

They set the meeting for 7 p.m. on April 14, at their usual spot - along 34th Street outside the fence by the zoo.

The brothers, arriving in a Buick LeSabre, brought $10,500 in cash. And a gun.

Austin, driving a silver Mercedes, had eight ounces of crack. And a gun.

Things quickly went awry. Either the brothers tried to steal the crack, or Austin tried to grab the cash.

In the end, one brother ended up dead, shot in the back and lying in the street. The other, his body spilling out of the LeSabre, survived a bullet to the stomach. He told police Austin had shot them.

Austin, then 26, was no stranger to narcotics investigators. By 2002, the West Philadelphia High School dropout had four drug convictions.

The police search led detectives to Austin's apartment just off Belmont Avenue, where they spotted the silver Mercedes parked in a garage.

As police arrived, a man walking toward an Infiniti Q45 parked outside the apartment hit his car alarm - "an attempt to warn someone inside," according to an ATF document.

The man, Terry "Taz" Walker, denied he lived in the apartment. But one of his keys opened the front door.