At Masta Kutterz, a scruffy Hollis Avenue barbershop, foam padding peeps through the peeling plastic-covered chairs. Magazine pictures featuring braiding and weaving styles adorn the purple-and- blue walls. A sign instructs patrons: NO SMOKING. NO LOITERING. NO PROFANITY. Masta Kutterz is a place one goes to chew the fat and exchange gossip about what's going on in Hollis. "Barbers always get the news first, know what I mean?" says the genial owner, Preston Harts.

On a sweltering afternoon, a rogue's gallery of ex-criminals in spotless sneakers starts to congregate outside, but not to get a $10 trim. News has filtered through the grapevine that Curtis Scoon is back in town. As recently as 10 years ago Scoon was a prominent fixture of Hollis street life. Since shortly after Jay's death he's been living in Atlanta (to pursue a career as a screenwriter, he says). He gained a brief moment of notoriety following Jay's death when his name was plastered all over the newspapers as the prime suspect. Like Jay, DMC (Darryl McDaniels) and Run (Joseph Simmons), Scoon grew up in Hollis.

Soon a steady parade of former comrades in crime comes by the barbershop to say hello. Scoon has persuaded some of his press- and cop-shy friends -- now older, somewhat calmer and decidedly thicker around the waist than in their hell-raising heyday -- to divulge what they know about the circumstances of Jam Master Jay's tragic demise.

Pep, a friend of Scoon's, rolls up and squeezes his wide girth out of a Nissan Maxima. Scoon and Pep (whom some call Pep the Pimp, though not to his face) go back a long way: The two were co-defendants in a 1985 robbery-and-kidnapping case in which they were both acquitted. He's dressed in a baggy Washington Wizards shirt with a thick platinum chain around his neck.

"Am I getting paid for this interview?" Pep wants to know.

Most of the people at Masta Kutterz initially claim they won't talk to a journalist. Why risk it, especially when they aren't getting paid for their trouble? "We're skating on very thin ice here," says one. But after a little prodding they begin to gossip like a bunch of Park Avenue matrons.

Few people in the neighborhood believe Scoon killed Jam Master Jay, but at one time the rumor made a certain amount of sense. A notorious argument between the two men is part of Hollis street lore. "Everybody knew Scoon had a beef with Jay," says Pep. "It was easy to believe that Scoon did it."

The dispute originated in the early 1990s when Scoon and Jay had a business arrangement. Many in the neighborhood say it was a drug deal gone bad. They say Scoon and Jay put up cash ($15,000 apiece is the figure bandied about), and a third party ran off with the money. Scoon, however, says it was simply a small loan that Jay failed to repay promptly. Whatever the truth, Scoon, who readily admits he has "a checkered past," felt that Jay owed him and wanted the debt paid. At six-foot-four and 250 pounds, Scoon is a big man with a booming voice and an easygoing wit, though one gets the impression his mien can darken in an instant. "If Jay was dealing drugs, it wasn't with me," insists Scoon. "He paid the debt. I had to get a little heavy with him, but he paid. Jay did not owe me a dollar at the time of his death. I hadn't been in contact with Jay for at least four years."

"Jay always hung on the block," adds Pep. "He always came back to the neighborhood. There was no real hate out here for him." Still, nearly everyone interviewed for this article agrees that Jam Master Jay's murderer must have come from nearby -- someone familiar to Jay and intimate with his movements either killed him or set him up. Scoon claims it was common knowledge that Jay was mixed up in narcotics trafficking. The perception is that as he traveled around the country, he served as a middleman -- putting buyers and sellers together and taking a cut of the profits without ever handling the drugs. "Everybody in Jay's inner circle knows that Jay was involved in arranging deals," Scoon maintains, "but nobody wants to talk about it because they don't want to tarnish his image. Jay kept a gun on him because he was in a lot of business disputes. He owed a lot of people money. He was so broke he was pawning his jewelry to drug dealers. Everybody loved Jay except the people he did business with."

In the middle of our chat, undercover detectives, seeing this OG reunion on the corner, drive by in an unwashed sedan to check us out. "Five-O, Five- O," the warning goes up, and we all trek back inside the barbershop.

Ten months later the questions surrounding Jay's death have only deepened. Detectives have admitted to the New York tabloids that their investigation has been stymied by the uncooperative attitude of Jay's friends in the studio. Nearly all the murder details have come into question. Various parts of the accepted scenario -- Boe's haircut, Jay's gun, how the killers entered the studio -- have been filtered through police leaks, conflicting tabloid accounts and sometimes contradictory sources. Either the security cameras were inoperable or the tape is missing. There is even confusion about the number of witnesses, who was actually in the studio and whether the gun Jay was said to be carrying was in fact a .380 (the description of the so-called studio gun). THE STREETS IS WATCHING, BUT NOBODY'S TALKING, blared MTV.com in an article about the stalled probe.

"It's bullshit to say that the street don't talk," scoffs Scoon. "The street always talks." Just not necessarily to law enforcement officials.

When Scoon ambles outside, whom should he see gliding down Hollis Avenue on luxury German wheels but Randy Allen, making one of his few brief appearances in the neighborhood since Jay's death. At first Scoon can hardly trust his eyes: Here is his nemesis, the man he believes put out the story that he shot the beloved rap icon. As Randy drives past in his Mercedes, Scoon fixes him with an icy stare. Randy looks at Scoon, incredulous.

It's one hell of a convoluted tale, a story told by myriad street sources, some of whom are dangerous individuals with serious criminal records, many of whom have never before spoken to the press or the police. The drama unites some of the biggest names in hip-hop with a cast that ranges from street-level hustlers to big-time drug suppliers. The narrative reaches as far afield as the underworlds of the Midwest and Baltimore. But in the end, it all comes back to Hollis.

In 1987 Jay moved to nearby Parkside Hills, to a three-story house with wrought iron gates, ornamental trees and a carriage lamp in the front garden, but he always kept one foot in the streets of Hollis. It was where his inspiration came from.

The Bronx may be the Mecca of hiphop, but a strong case can be made that Hollis and the surrounding neighborhoods are rap music's Medina. A 30- minute train ride from Manhattan, this tight-knit neighborhood of modest single- family homes has raised an extraordinary number of rap's movers and shakers; it's where hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons, older brother of Joseph "Run" Simmons, got his start dealing weed at the local high school. In addition to Simmons and Run- DMC, rap heavies from Hollis and the nearby environs of Jamaica and St. Albans include LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest, 50 Cent, Ja Rule and local radio personality Ed Lover. Hollis is also the birthplace of Irv Gotti (a.k.a. Irving Lorenzo), founder of the rap label Murder Inc. (which bills itself as "the world's most dangerous record company"). Gotti grew up several blocks from Jay, who taught the young Irving how to deejay. Gotti too is suffering from his association with street toughs, and his label is currently the subject of an FBI probe.

Tension between lower-middle-class respectability and the siren call of the streets characterizes life in the neighborhood -- a decent address before white flight in the 1970s and crack cocaine in the early 1980s turned the prosperous and racially integrated community into a suburban ghetto. During the day Hollis has a village vibe, like a place where everybody either is related to or knows everybody else, and strangers draw perplexed stares. But at night respectable residents retreat indoors. Outside it's guns, drugs and crime.

Within hours of Jay's death, mourners gather on 203rd Street, outside the house where Jay grew up. His sister, Bonita, lives there now. A friend of Bonita's named Jahliek, who regularly crashes on her couch, hears a commotion outside and investigates. According to Jahliek -- a tall, thin man with cornrows -- he finds Bonita's son Boe Skagz shouting at the crowd clustered in the light of the street lamps and the shadows of nearby trees. Boe sees him, he says, and then attacks him, cracking him over the head with a gun and leaving a serious gash. "He was angry," says Jahliek. "Later he apologized. He said he was upset because certain people had told him a bunch of bullshit that I was affiliated with his uncle's murder." Instead of going to the hospital and attracting the police, Jahliek uses Krazy Glue to close the wound. "I wasn't going to make a fuss, so I doctored myself," he says. Aversion to fuss is common in Hollis -- just ask the cops.

Police cruisers block off several Jamaica streets. Throngs of onlookers pack the sidewalks and press against barricades as an NYPD helicopter hovers overhead. Plainclothes officers shoot video from rooftops and take photos as stretch limos disgorge hip-hop dignitaries: LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Kurtis Blow, Foxy Brown, Chuck D, Russell Simmons, the Beastie Boys, P. Diddy and Grandmaster Flash. A glass-covered carriage pulled by four white horses comes down Merrick Boulevard.

Jam Master Jay's funeral is a grand and sober affair, not unlike a statesman's. Fans, family and friends pack the Greater Allen Cathedral in Queens, where some 2,000 mourners hold their hands aloft and bow their heads in prayer. Church ladies dressed in white robes dispense tissues and water to the crying masses.

Funeral wreaths, including a floral arrangement in the shape of twin turntables, adorn the altar. Pallbearers wear black fedoras, leather jackets and unlaced shell-toe Adidas -- the look Jay invented for Run-DMC. According to witnesses, Lydia High, who was in the studio the night Jay was murdered, barges to the front row -- traditionally reserved for family members -- and tries to sit with Jay's mother, Connie Mizell. Mizell tells her to sit at the back with her brother, Randy Allen, who, the story goes, has arrived at the funeral accompanied by a bodyguard. Randy greets a guest and gasps, "I can hardly breathe. I've got to get out of here." (As Lydia leaves the service, witnesses say, she is picked up by NYPD detectives from the 103rd Precinct and whisked away to be questioned again.)

From the pulpit Darryl McDaniels, a.k.a. DMC, fights back tears and eulogizes his friend: "Jam Master Jay was not a thug. Jam Master Jay was not a gangster. He was the personification, the embodiment, of hip-hop."

In the week before his murder Jam Master Jay spent four days with his friend Eric "Shake" James at Shake's bachelor pad, an unremarkable aluminum- sided house in a Milwaukee suburb. It was a personal visit. "We were just popping shit and hanging out," says Shake. Jay seemed relieved to be out of Hollis. He was reluctant to go home but had to be in Queens to put the finishing touches on Rusty Waters' debut album. Afterward Jay was to travel to D.C. to spin during halftime at a Wizards–Celtics basketball game.

"Jay told me he was going through some problems," Shake says. "It was regular everyday bullshit. People owed him money."

Jay also told Shake about a recent incident in Jay's studio involving an acquaintance named Goldie. Goldie allegedly owed Jay money from some sort of fishy business arrangement. When Goldie walked into the studio sporting a new set of clothes, a perturbed Jay demanded his money. "I need to get my cheese," he insisted. Goldie thought Jay wasn't serious and laughed off the request. Jay whipped out a .45 automatic and waved it in Goldie's face. "I was shocked when Jay told me that," says Shake.

Except for a brief trip to Chicago to see 50 Cent at the House of Blues, Jay and Shake spent most of their time together in the living room, playing an NFL video game. Jay loved games and would sometimes play for 24 hours at a stretch. After playing awhile, he turned to Shake and said, "I ain't going home. I'm happy out here." The memory pains Shake. "He kept saying that he'd rather stay in Milwaukee and chill," he says. "But I kept telling him that he had to go home and take care of business."

While Jay was there the mother of rapper Mos Def called and asked Jay to write the music for an upcoming play she and her son were producing. To Shake it seemed that Jay's career must be booming again, but his street-regal exterior masked his worrisome involvement in numerous beefs. "Randy is taking my money, man," Jay told Shake. "I'm glad that Rusty Waters is signed to Virgin. I'm happy that Randy is finally out of my pocket."

"Jay didn't suspect Randy was stealing from him," says Shake. "He knew Randy was stealing from him. It had been going on for a while."

The last conversation Shake had with his old friend was the day after Jay left Milwaukee. "He'd forgotten his two-way, and he called me from a sandwich shop near the studio and asked me for 50 Cent's number," Shake says. "He was with Randy, and they were just about to go upstairs and work on the album. That was the last time I ever heard from him. You can't imagine how bad that makes me feel, knowing I was the one who persuaded him to go back to New York."