Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days (10 page)

Through all of this, Jackson’s only constant was Grace Rwaramba, the children’s nanny, who stayed with him for seventeen years. Rwaramba, a native of Uganda raised in the United States, started working for Jackson in 1992, handling personnel issues for his
Dangerous
tour, and the two became close. When Jackson’s children were born, she was promoted to serve as their primary care-giver. But her real role in Jackson’s life went far beyond that. Despite ongoing health concerns that caused her to be away at times, she was the gatekeeper through whom everyone else was granted access. Her relationship with the children gave her leverage that no one else in Jackson’s universe enjoyed.

By the time Michael Jackson relocated to Las Vegas, this small
crew of people—Grace; Raymone Bain; his assistant, John Feldman—were the only associates tending to his daily affairs. As the newest members of that team, Bill and Javon tried their best to understand the various personalities and office politics shaping their employer’s world. What they slowly came to realize, much to their own discomfort, was that the team around Michael Jackson was even more dysfunctional on the inside than it appeared from the outside.

Bill:
Mr. Jackson’s manager, Raymone Bain, came out to Vegas in February. She and a couple of her staffers drove out from D.C. They didn’t fly because she was bringing Mr. Jackson a briefcase that had a couple hundred thousand in cash in it. You can’t take that kind of money through airport security without having to answer a lot of questions. So she drove.

Her car pulled into the driveway; Feldman came out and got the briefcase, leaving her in the car, and took the case into the house. She and I sat outside and talked a little while. She kept saying she felt she knew me from somewhere, but I didn’t remember meeting her. I think she was just trying to make me feel like we had a connection.

We were out there for a good thirty, forty-five minutes, and by then it was pretty clear that Mr. Jackson wasn’t going to ask her to come into the house, that he didn’t even want to see her. She tried to play it off like it wasn’t embarrassing. She was like, “Okay! I guess I’m gonna get back on the road. You guys take care. Tell Michael to call me if he needs anything.” Then she left.

His own manager drives across the country to see him after he’s been overseas for months, and they don’t even speak? That made me wonder what the hell was going on with his business arrangements. I thought it was strange. But at the same time, everything that was happening was new to me, so I just figured maybe that’s how their relationship was.

As Mr. Jackson’s manager, Raymone was the point person. She kept the schedule, organized his affairs. Most mornings, she
would send an itinerary over: go here, go there, call this person, etc. Sometimes Mr. Jackson would go through that schedule and follow it to the letter. Other times, he’d look at some appointment she’d made and say, “Oh, she has an ulterior motive for that. We’re not going there.”

We started to feel uneasy about their relationship. It was not a trustworthy one. He didn’t speak highly of her, yet here she was handling his business. In the beginning, like that time we talked in the car, she was very nice to me.
Very
nice. Our security trailer? Like an oven. The air conditioning didn’t work. She called me up on her own and said, “Bill, I’m gonna send you guys some extra money to get an air conditioning unit for the trailer.”

She was always calling to make sure I had everything I needed. At the time, I thought, Hey, she’s good like that. We’re cool.

Javon:
Ms. Raymone wanted to know Mr. Jackson’s every move, but Feldman would never tell her anything. I’d think to myself, Damn, she’s his manager. She should know what’s going on. But Feldman would totally stonewall her, shut her out. So she wanted me and Bill there to be her reporters.

For a while, she’d call me or Bill and we’d let her know where we were going, what we were doing. We didn’t know to do any different. But Mr. Jackson, when he found out we were telling her about his movements? He said, “Don’t tell Raymone where we’re going. I know you guys are just doing your job, but if there are things I want her to know, I’ll call her and tell her.” He was adamant about it. He told us, “You guys report to me. If you ever tell her where I’m going and I find out about it, I will fire you myself.”

Every time Raymone came to town, I was the one who had to pick her up from the airport and bring her to the house. While we were driving, she’d ask, “How’s the boss? Where have you guys been? What did he do today?”

I’d say, “We really didn’t do much. I’m sure you can talk to Feldman and find out more.”

She’d get upset that we didn’t report everything to her, but we were just doing as we were told. It put us in an awkward position, because Ms. Raymone was the one who handled our paychecks. Our pay was never on time. If we were supposed to be paid on the 3rd and the 18th of every month, we might get paid by the 7th or the 23rd. Maybe. It was never consistent.

Bill:
Mr. Jackson had several different corporations set up for various purposes. Sometimes we’d get checks drawn on MJJ Productions, sometimes we’d get checks drawn on The Michael Jackson Company. The money just seemed to come from wherever. There was no dedicated account for payroll. There were no systems in place.

Javon:
You’d hear things in the media about his finances, but from where we stood, there was just no way a man like Michael Jackson could be broke. He had stashes all over the place, stacks of cash hidden away. Like that briefcase Ms. Raymone brought him. The same day our pay was late, we’d be going somewhere to spend twenty thousand dollars on something. He’s flat broke and he’s worth millions at the same time? That’s what we never got.

Since he didn’t trust Ms. Raymone, we just assumed that there was no way that she had access to every dime of his money. It seemed as if this one area of his finances, his payroll, was being mismanaged, but he was obviously still incredibly wealthy. That’s what it looked like. I mean, how else was he paying all of these lawyers? These attorneys would call all the time, charging him six hundred dollars just to be on the phone with him for an hour.

Bill:
It only took about a month for the lawyers to show up. Late January, this attorney, Greg Cross, started coming around. Greg was with Venable out of D.C. Big, high-end law firm. He was a
tall, skinny white guy with glasses. Looked like Ichabod Crane.

We often took Mr. Jackson to meetings and depositions at hotels, but Greg was the only lawyer coming to the house. He visited maybe once a month. Greg was always cordial and respectful. I could tell Mr. Jackson trusted him. Feldman didn’t seem to like him. There were times that Greg would call and he’d ask to speak to Mr. Jackson and Feldman would say, “He’s busy right now. I’ll have him call you back.” If it was me, and the boss’s six-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney was on the phone? I’d check to see if he wants to take it. That was another power struggle there.

Javon:
It was never really clear who was in charge. Ms. Raymone was the manager, but she was being kept out of the loop on purpose. Technically, me and Bill and the rest of security reported to Feldman, but he was always being overruled by Ms. Grace. Feldman presented her to us as the nanny, so at first that’s all we knew about her. But we’d see her go shopping and come back with a lot of groceries, things for the kids, things for Mr. Jackson. She’d also handle things for him when it came to business. She used to set up shop with us inside the garage with her laptop and her printer, and she’d be in there handling some of his day-to-day business affairs.

It was obvious pretty quick that Ms. Grace was more than just the nanny. She was the closest to Mr. Jackson, hands down. She was the surrogate mother. The kids loved her. There was nothing about those kids she didn’t know. Anybody on the outside looking in would have seen that she was untouchable.

Bill:
Feldman and Grace were always at odds. Grace would come out and tell him, “Mr. Jackson wants such and such.” And Feldman would say, “I don’t trust that woman. I’m gonna check with Mr. Jackson and make sure that’s what he really wants me to do.”

There were times when Grace would go out and get bottles
of red wine for Mr. Jackson. Feldman didn’t drink or smoke, so he would always hide the wine. Wherever Grace put the wine in the house, Feldman would go into the house, get it, and bring it into the trailer. “Mr. Jackson doesn’t need to be drinking this,” he’d say. “It’s poison.”

Then Grace would come out and go, “Bill, I’m going to run to the store. The boss wants some wine. I could have sworn I bought some, but he must have misplaced it.”

“What kind of wine?” I’d ask. She’d tell me, and I’d say, “Feldman brought it in here.” She’d get pissed and she’d take it back in the house.

A day or so later, Feldman would come looking around. “Where’s that wine at?”

“What wine?”

“The wine I brought in here.”

“I gave it to Grace.”

“No! No! You can’t do that!”

“What? Why not?”

“She’s trying to
poison
him! Do you understand?!”

I thought the dude was crazy. At first, I thought he meant that she was actually trying to poison him, like she was putting real poison in the wine. Those two fought about everything.

Javon:
Feldman stayed in a hotel nearby, and he went back there every night. Sometimes he’d go home on the weekends to his family in California. But even if he wasn’t at the house, he wanted any orders for security to go through him to be filtered down to us. He wanted Grace to call him any time one of us left the property, but Grace wasn’t going to do that. She’d come out to the trailer and she’d say, “The boss wants you to go pick up some cereal for Blanket.”

I’d say, “Did you call Mr. Feldman?”

She’d say, “I don’t have to call him, Javon. Michael’s asking you to go. It’s what he wants. He’s just sending me down to tell you.”

So I’d go to the store, and twenty minutes later I’d get this angry phone call from Feldman. “What’s going on? Where are you?”

“I’m at Walmart getting cereal for the kids.”

“You’re at Walmart?! Why’d you leave the post?!”

“Don’t worry. It’s okay. Bill’s there.”

“Who told you to leave?”

“Ms. Grace came outside and told me Mr. Jackson wanted me to get cereal for the kids.”

“Why didn’t you let me know?!”

“Ms. Grace said it was okay.”

“
Javon, she’s gotta stop this shit!
”

Then Feldman would drive over to the house and come at Grace, saying, “Stop sending my guys off!”

And she’d say, “I don’t answer to you! If Mr. Jackson asks me to do something, I’m going to do it!”

That’s how petty it was. They’d tear into each other over who gets to tell Javon to go to Walmart and pick up Honey Bunches of Oats. It was constant.

Bill:
Feldman was possessive of Mr. Jackson, big time. He’d become overly protective, like a parent. His style could have been a little more diplomatic. I tolerated Feldman. We had our clashes from time to time. When it came to doing the job, we did the job. But outside of that, I tolerated him. For a time, Grace didn’t know where I stood with Feldman. Was I going to be loyal to him or was I someone she could maybe use in her corner? I told her, “Look, I’m my own man. I make decisions for myself.”

After that, she and I started to talk more. I could go to her with some of my questions, and she felt comfortable giving me more of the background, like with Mr. Jackson’s family and that whole Randy situation. He always had issues with Michael, especially financial. She’d share these things with me, and we established a rapport. Only thing I didn’t feel comfortable bringing up with her
was Raymone. Grace and Raymone talked. I liked Grace, but the two of them had their own thing.

Raymone would come into town from time to time to meet with the boss or do some business dealings on his behalf. Whenever she flew down, she would stay at a hotel close to Mr. Jackson, the JW Marriott, and usually one of us would pick her up and take her to her hotel from the airport. After her first few trips, she flew in and I was driving her to Mr. Jackson’s house and she asked me, “Bill, do you know any housekeepers?”

There was a young lady who used to clean my house every couple weeks, so I said, “Yeah, I know somebody.”

She said, “Oh good. Because I need my place cleaned at least once a week. I want to keep it tidy when I’m not here.”

I was like, Huh? She has an apartment in Vegas? I only remembered taking her to the hotel. I was curious, but I didn’t ask her anything about it. I just recommended my cleaning lady, who also happened to be a friend.

Couple weeks later, I was speaking to this woman about coming to clean my house and she said, “Can we change the date? I need to clean Raymone’s place.”

I said, “Where’s Raymone’s place?”

She said, “At the Turnberry.”

“The Turnberry Towers?”

She said, “Yeah, the Turnberry apartments.”

When she told me that, I was like, Wow.

Javon:
Apartments in the Turnberry Towers are
nice
. They can run you a few thousand a month, easy. It’s the kind of place that caters to celebrities and professional athletes. There’s full-time security, valet parking, dry cleaning—all those perks you get for paying these high prices for these little condos. The Turnberry was where Ms. Grace had an apartment. So when Raymone first started asking us to drive her there, I thought I was taking her to visit
Ms. Grace’s. I wasn’t thinking at first that she had her own place.