For a time it looked as if the trial would be another smooth-as-silk Puffy Combs production. On Dec. 27, 1999, Combs and his girlfriend Jennifer Lopez led police on a high-speed car chase after fleeing a shooting in a midtown nightclub that left three people injured. The next day, after his arraignment on gun charges, Combs declared his innocence. “I do not own a gun. I do not carry a gun,” he said. “The charges against me are 100 percent false.” Later he was also charged with trying to bribe a witness. Since his trial started last month Combs has arrived each day in court in style, his topflight defense lawyers Ben Brafman and Johnnie Cochran on one side and a private security team and two publicists on the other. All the while he’s continued to do what he does best, marketing his music, his restaurants, his clothing line and his lifestyle. Even as the prosecution began to lay out its case against him, Combs orchestrated a wildly successful fashion show. But lately clouds have appeared on Combs’s horizon. After weeks of denying rumors that he and Lopez had split, he confirmed the breakup. And last week, instead of making a splash at the Grammy Awards, Combs was facing the music in court, where the case against him seemed to gain momentum every day.

After a wobbly start, the prosecution presented two key eyewitnesses who told the jury that they saw Combs firing a gun inside the club. Then Combs’s part-time driver, Wardell Fenderson, testified that he saw Combs slip a gun into his pants before he entered the disco. Fenderson also testified that Combs later offered him a bribe of cash and a $300,000 ring to take the rap. At the police station the night of the incident, Fenderson testified, Combs whispered to him, “I’ll give you $50,000 to say the gun was yours.”

So far the defense’s counterpunch has been weak. Speculation that Lopez would turn up and wow the jury on Combs’s behalf has fizzled. On Friday the Combs team put a Bronx mechanic on the stand to describe how he and Puffy both crouched down when the shots rang out at the Club New York nightspot. “I could see his hands,” said Christopher Chambers. “They were empty. He wasn’t carrying a gun.” But on cross- examination, the prosecutor, Matthew Bogdanos, tore through Chambers’s story, getting Chambers to admit he couldn’t remember many details of the evening, such as how he got to the club or the fight that other eyewitnesses have said preceded the shooting.

There may be more trouble ahead for the defense. On Wednesday police arrested felon and fugitive Matthew (Scar) Allen in Maryland. Although the defense is expected to hammer Allen on his criminal record, he may be crucial to the prosecution. In a handwritten statement to investigators, a reluctant Allen said that Combs was leaving the club with Lopez when the two men got into a fight. Then, according to Allen, Combs pulled out a gun and fired it at the ceiling. Three weeks after the shooting, according to prosecutors, the rap mogul tried–unsuccessfully–to buy Allen’s silence. Combs’s lawyers, muzzled by a gag order, nonetheless termed Allen’s allegations “absurd.” Allen fled rather than testify, but after he was arrested last week on unrelated gun-possession and harassment charges, he agreed to take the stand against Combs.

But the wild card in the trial is how Combs’s fame and wealth will play with the jury once all the testimony has been heard. Defense experts say jurors are often reluctant to convict celebrities. “When you have a client who is larger than life,” says noted defense attorney Gerald Shargel, “you find that, in the minds of the jury, their presumption of innocence has grown right along with them.” And Combs’s defense team has been quick to point out that nearly every witness against Puffy has filed a civil suit against him, making Combs seem like a deep-pocketed victim of money-grubbing hustlers. But prosecutors are hoping another profile of Combs is also emerging–a portrait of a man so arrogant that he papers over his misconduct with cash. If Combs takes the stand in the coming weeks, it will be to ensure that the first picture, rather than the last, lingers in the minds of the jurors.