NEW YORK —Valentine's Day was a tawdry occasion at Sean "Puffy" Combs trial with jurors hearing about prostitutes, escort services and a Las Vegas mobster nicknamed "Vinnie Aspirin."

Love fared little better outside the courtroom where the rap mogul's camp chose Feb. 14 to announce the end of his romance with songstress Jennifer Lopez.

Combs, the CEO of Bad Boy Entertainment, wore a dour expression for much of the day, but it was unclear if he was upset about the demise of the much-publicized relationship or disturbed by testimony from an escort service chauffeur suggesting he threw a gun from his SUV during a police chase.

The music executive faces 15 years in prison if convicted of gun possession and bribery. The prosecution, which expects to wrap its case Friday, alleges Combs fired a 9mm semiautomatic during a nightclub fight and then fled with Lopez and his bodyguard in a chauffeured Lincoln Navigator. As police pursued them, the prosecution claims, Combs tossed a gun from the car. His chauffeur, Wardel Fenderson, is to testify Thursday that Combs tried to bribe him to take the rap for a second gun found in the SUV.

The jury heard last week from police officers who witnessed Combs' silver Navigator flee the scene of the shooting and then helped stop and apprehend the vehicle after an 11-block chase through midtown Manhattan. On Wednesday, escort service driver George Pappas testified about what happened along the chase route.

The 35-year-old a construction worker from Queens was moonlighting as a chauffeur for Casablanca Escorts on Dec. 27, 1999. He testified that he had driven a woman—whom he described as a 'stripper'— to several appointments throughout the city that night. He said that just before 3 a.m., he dropped her off at her last appointment and then parked on Eighth Avenue to drink a cup of coffee and wait for her to finish.

Suddenly, he said, he heard screeching brakes and looked up as the silver SUV flew past him.

"I heard something hit my car, I'm looking up and I see the window open on the Navigator," said Pappas, a small, balding man who looked the role of a chauffeur in a black suit and black tie. As the Navigator continued on, he said, he glimpsed a hand going back into the window on the rear passenger side. Pappas said he couldn't tell if the hand was male or female, black or white. According to police officers, Combs was seated in the rear passenger seat.

About 10 seconds later, police cruisers sped by in pursuit of the SUV, Pappas said. When the patrol cars passed, Pappas got of his car and saw a black semi-automatic gun on the ground by his bumper, he testified.

Pappas said that instead of turning the gun into police, he wrapped it in a towel and called his boss, Anthony Nastasi.

"I didn't want to get involved. I'm just a private person and I didn't want to be asked questions," he said. Nastasi had friends in law enforcement, Pappas said, and the driver felt he would know what to do.

Pappas, painting a scene that sounded like it came straight from a crime novel, described meeting Nastasi on a Queens street corner later that morning and handing him the gun still wrapped in a towel.

Next up on the stand was Nastasi, a 48-year-old with his white hair blow-dried and coiffed, wearing a green suede jacket. The escort agency owner testified that he took the gun to his home in Long Island and called a friend who was an FBI agent. Two days later, he said, the agent and a New York City police detective came and got the gun.

On cross examination, Combs' attorney Benjamin Brafman pointed out that Pappas had never seen the hand throw the gun and got him to acknowledge that the gun might have been pitched onto his car from someone walking down the sidewalk.

Brafman spent most of his cross-examination highlighting Pappas and Nastasi's work and suggesting that Pappas was a criminal and Nastasi a pimp and career mob informant. Testifying, he said, was a way for them to avoid prosecution. But both men denied that the escort service was a front for prostitution, sometimes to the amusement of dubious jurors.

"You're telling us under oath that you have no knowledge that what's being done here is you're driving prostitutes to johns?" he asked Pappas.

"Correct," Pappas said.

His boss, who he described "a legitimate businessman," got a few chuckles as he claimed that his "entertainers" sometimes visited men in hotel rooms, but only to "do a dance that lasts probably 15 minutes."

Nastasi admitted he was facing several prostitution charges in Las Vegas, where he owns another escort agency, but claimed he was innocent and had been set up by local police. Nastasi is cooperating with the FBI and they are paying his legal bills.

Brafman grew furious at Nastasi's description of himself as a crime fighter "trying to bring down corrupt cops."

"This witness is lying," he shouted during one heated exchange with prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos.

Brafman charged that the reality was that Nastasi became an FBI informant when mobsters tried to move in on his prostitution business. One of those men, Brafman charged, was nicknamed "Vinnie Aspirin" for his penchant for drilling holes in enemies' heads.

Nastasi admitted working undercover for the FBI, but denied the other charges.

After the jury had been sent out, Bogdanos sniped, "All of this stuff is just a smoke screen."