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7-Up vs. Coke Part 2

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But Rachelle's view of the relationship changed after their third "date," on April 11, 2001. It began on a Friday afternoon at the MAX office, she stated in her deposition, and continued with a visit to a strip club before another romp through the office for more cocaine and foreplay with one of Gladney's female friends.

In the evening, Rachelle and Gladney checked into room 1415 at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. There, Rachelle stated, Gladney asked her to put makeup on him. He invited the resident in the room next door to engage in sex with the couple, she testified, and he invited two bellboys into the room, separately, and she performed sex acts on each while Gladney watched.

After a shower, Rachelle testified, Gladney tied her up. He "proceeded to bite my legs," she stated. When she attempted to pull away, she alleged, "[h]e slapped my face and slapped my clitoris and he told me that he would only ease up if he wanted to...." Rachelle testified that Gladney bit her on numerous other parts of her body and wrapped the tie from a terrycloth robe around her neck until she cried.

Eventually Gladney left. Court papers indicate that Rachelle woke up the next morning and ordered room service for breakfast, then departed as well. Sometime later she went to police.

In May 2001 the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office charged Gladney with two felony counts of sodomy and one count of first-degree assault.

Gladney's girlfriend Jeanie Haines, who was pregnant with his child, left him. His ex-wife, Cindy, requested that his custody rights to their son be rescinded, alleging that the boy was in his care at the time of his arrest.

Gladney, still out of work, strenuously fought the charges. He was prepared to go to trial, according to attorney Rosenblum, who says he intended to prove that the alleged victim was sexually active with other men at the time, and to argue that the relations between his client and Rachelle were entirely consensual.

On October 4, 2001, Gladney's second son was born. Haines had taken him back, and by Halloween Gladney had further cause to celebrate: County prosecutors had reviewed the case and decided to drop all charges against the new dad.

Joe Taylor was working late on a summer evening in 2004 when he heard the click-clack of the door to his office suite unlocking. The attorney peered into the lobby and beheld a muscular man, shirtless and wearing a pair of camouflage cut-offs, stumbling in. "He's holding a stepladder and a light bulb, and he's clearly drunk, and I say, 'Can I help you?'" recounts Taylor, a local attorney. "He says, 'I bought the building. I'm your new owner. I came to change a light bulb.'"

The landlord — Andrew Gladney — proceeded to "jaw" at breakneck pace, Taylor says, about the million-dollar professional and residential condos he envisioned for the building. Gladney suggested Taylor should stick around as a tenant.

"You play Ping-Pong?" Taylor says Gladney suddenly blurted. "Come with me!"

Hoping to detach himself as politely as possible from what was becoming an increasingly bizarre encounter, the attorney followed Gladney to the latter's office, where his new landlord began rifling through papers on his desk. "He lifts up a piece of paper, and there's a mound of what appeared to be — and most certainly was — cocaine, sweeps it into his hand, eats it and chases it with a Diet 7-Up," Taylor says.

"I was shocked," the lawyer adds. "Because he had no idea who I was, and he didn't give a shit. And then he goes: 'Let's play!'"

For Gladney, it had been a couple of tumultuous years.

Jeanie Haines had left him in 2002, this time for good. According to a Division of Family Services report in a court file, she was fed up with his alleged addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex and gambling. Gladney had twice gone to rehab but was kicked out once and failed once, according to a statement Haines made to a DFS social worker. The exes had become embroiled in a custody battle. That made two for Gladney, who was still fighting Cindy for guardianship of his elder son. Clayton Police Department memos document several occasions on which officers stood by at Gladney's townhome, at the women's requests, on the days his sons' visits with him ended. Both Haines and Lee had sought protection orders against Gladney, alleging that he repeatedly threatened them.

Court papers also show that Gladney's fortunes were diminished; though he was getting by on $8,750 a month in 2003, among other alleged debts he owed $175,000 to friends and family.

But in the summer of 2004, Gladney (who handily dispatched Joe Taylor at Ping-Pong) was finally getting into a new line of work. He and a former Savvis employee, Joel Crater, had formed G&C Capital in January 2003, in order to develop real estate. For months they worked to seal a deal on their first property, the 1903 Hadley-Dean Glass Building, and on June 1, 2004, they closed, paying $1.6 million.

An attractive brick seven-story set back from Washington Avenue at 1101 Lucas Avenue, the Hadley-Dean was the longtime home of locally based megadeveloper McCormack Baron & Associates (since renamed McCormack Baron Salazar). Shabbiness notwithstanding — it was last renovated in the early 1980s — tenants like Taylor were enraptured with the building's exposed brick, lofty ceilings and expansive windows.

"His architectural renderings looked really exciting and wonderful, and the neighborhood was coming back," says Ken Keiser, another long-standing tenant who was so taken with Gladney's luxury plans, which included a downstairs restaurant and a rooftop pool, that one of his companies bought a second-floor unit before renovations began. "At that time Andrew was very articulate and charming, with real goals and visions."

Another Gladney convert was chef Claus Schmitz. A native German, Schmitz had worked in London, New York and Australia and had moved to the United States in 2003 to marry. He met Gladney and Crater while managing and tending bar at his brother Frank's restaurant, BARcelona in Clayton. Gladney, Claus Schmitz recalls, was "boisterous" and "eccentric," "an excitable chap" — all qualities the 45-year-old chef enjoyed.

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