And Coles had a thriving business hosting parties and after-concert events for big-name rappers at area clubs. Local rappers, wannabes and others would flock to these parties, paying cash at the door to get in.

"Ace was good at that," said Joseph Marrone, the lawyer who worked with Coles on entertainment issues. "He was able to talk to people outside the city. He had contacts. To me, the guy was going places."

Lisa Natson, the popular radio personality known as "Golden Girl" from Power 99 FM, agrees.

Natson said she worked as a consultant for Coles and Take Down Records and hosted his parties at Palmer, which by 2003 had become "the hot spot" on Friday nights.

Coles had approached her during an NBA All-Star weekend event in Philadelphia in February 2002, she recalled.

"When I first met him, he already had the look of a hip-hop star. . . . But businesswise, he was really focused. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew about branding, about getting Take Down Records out there."

She said he wanted to get into promotion. The parties at Palmer, she said, were his launching pad.

Starting at 10 p.m. and going strong until 4 a.m., they were, she said, like no other event in the city.

"There's no one out there now promoting who knew the business the way Ace did," she said.

It didn't hurt, she added, that celebrities like Allen Iverson and Donovan McNabb and rappers like Kanye West dropped by.

"It was a phenomenal thing," she said.

Like screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper, Natson said she never saw any signs of the drug world when she was around Coles.

In fact, she said, Coles and Take Down Records sometimes sponsored her radio station's "Peace on the Streets" rallies, often providing artists who performed at the events.

"He was trying to help," she said, which makes the charges he now faces difficult to comprehend.

"I don't believe it," Natson said. "This was a guy who had everything going for him. He was making money . . . riding in a Bentley . . . living the life of a rock star."

Investigators knew about the parties, and about Coles' high-profile promotions. Informants told them that he was using the events to launder drug proceeds, that the cash spent to rent the club, pay for the liquor, and provide security came from drug deals.

It came back to Coles, they said, washed clean as profits from a legitimate business enterprise.

Philly Swain, 26, a rapper who'd appeared with Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek at a Take Down Records concert at the Spectrum, often worked the door at Palmer. To him, Coles and Baukman seemed staunchly antidrug.

"I was a nickel-and-dime dude for a while," Swain said recently, referring to his involvement in the drug trade. "I was in and out of jail. They told me I needed to get focused."