Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days (29 page)

When it came time to do the shoot, he was excited. He was doing all these poses, just crazy poses, grabbing his crotch and dancing while the photographers snapped away. At one point, he spun around and his pants ripped in the back, and he just turned around and ripped it again and damn near ripped his pants off, and everybody was cheering him on. He went into full performance mode. For me, a kid who grew up on the Jackson 5 and
Ebony?
That was amazing to see. A real live
Ebony
magazine shoot. Michael Jackson.
Thriller
. It was goose-bump time.

That day, I saw a side of him that I hadn’t really seen before.
When he got up in front of the cameras, it was like a bright light turned on inside him. His whole demeanor changed. This was my first time meeting the King of Pop. Up to that point, I’d only ever worked for Michael Jackson. Those were two different people, I realized. The King of Pop had designers and stylists hanging all over him. Michael Jackson did his own laundry. Javon and I, all we’d seen was him hanging out in pajamas with his kids and going to the movies; that was the guy we knew. But this other guy, this King of Pop, he was unfamiliar to us.

Javon:
After the
Ebony
shoot, we were expecting we’d go home. There wasn’t really anything important left to do. But Mr. Jackson wanted to hang out. Every morning, we’d drive the teacher over to the Cascios’ for school. We’d stay close to the house, just in case Mr. Jackson needed us. We’d circle the block and see if there were any paparazzi. But there were never any problems because it was such a quiet neighborhood. The majority of the time, he just stayed at the house and sent us on errands. Sometimes we wouldn’t hear from him for three or four days.

You could tell that he and the Cascios had a long history together. He was so relaxed and happy there. That was one of the best times I remember as far as him being in a good place, just relaxing around other people. We’d never seen him like that before. I knew he was happy, because one day, I went to pick him up and he got in the car and I said, “Mr. Jackson, looks like you’ve gained weight a little bit. You look good.”

He said, “Yeah, Javon. I’m eating good. Angel’s mom is making me fat. They’re feeding me all kinds of Italian food. The kids can’t get enough.”

Bill:
Mr. Jackson was also using that time to work on his music. Angel Cascio had that studio in the basement, and the two of them would spend hours down there. There were also a few meetings
about
Thriller 25
. Peter Lopez arranged for Mr. Jackson to meet with the R & B artist Ne-Yo. There was also a meeting with Kanye West; they discussed working together on the remix of “Billie Jean” for the anniversary album.

Javon:
When Kanye West met Mr. Jackson? He was totally starstruck. They met at Lyor Cohen’s house, the president of Def Jam Recordings. Me and Bill were outside with the truck, and we saw this little guy and a tall guy walking down the street, and as they got close, we saw that the little guy was Kanye. We were like,
Wow
,
that’s Kanye West
. We walked Kanye in, and once Kanye saw Mr. Jackson,
he
was the one who was starstruck. He started gushing. “Oh my God, Mr. Jackson, it’s such a pleasure and an honor to meet you. You just don’t know. I’m your biggest fan. I love you so much.”

Mr. Jackson said, “God bless you. Thank you. I’m a fan of your work too.”

The whole time, Kanye was like a kid in a candy store. I’ve never seen somebody be so humble. To see him that way was surreal. Everybody knows that Kanye can be very arrogant, and here he was, just amazed to be in the same room as Mr. Jackson. When Ne-Yo was introduced to Mr. Jackson, he was just as starstruck as Kanye. Ne-Yo was so nervous, he couldn’t stop shaking. Experiences like that made you remember just how special Mr. Jackson was to people.

Bill:
One day Mr. Jackson called and asked me to come to the house. When I arrived, he said, “I need you to do me a favor. I need you to bring a package to a friend of mine in the city.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, Bill,” he said, “I want you to be prepared for when you meet him. He’s been through a terrible tragedy. When he was a baby, his father set him on fire. His name is David; you may have heard of him. They made a movie about his life.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bill, when you see him, you’ll be startled. So you have to prepare yourself so that he doesn’t see that you look shocked.”

“Yes, sir.”

Then he handed me a package. It was wrapped in newspaper and bound up with a few layers of masking tape. It was at least an inch thick. Just from the size and the feel I could tell it was money, a lot of it. Along with the package, he gave me David’s number; he’d be expecting my call when I got into the city.

As I drove over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, I couldn’t help but wonder what David was going to look like. Was he handicapped in some way? In a wheelchair? I didn’t know. When I hit the Henry Hudson Parkway, I called him and we arranged to meet across from Madison Square Garden. I got to the arena, pulled over, got out of the car, and called him to let him know I was there. He said he was a block away. Couple minutes later, I noticed this guy coming toward me, a slim, Caucasian dude with a green hat that was pulled down, covering his face. As he got closer, he looked up and said, “Bill?”

I tried not to stare. His entire face was scarred from being burned. His ears, nose, and hands were all deformed. I could only imagine what it was like for him, being out in public. I said, “Hey, Dave. How you doing?”

“I’m good, thanks. How’s Michael?”

“He’s doing great.”

I gave him the package. He said, “Thank you, and tell Michael I love him.”

“I sure will.” I gave him a hug and said, “Take care of yourself.”

He pulled his hat back down and walked toward the subway station. I got in the truck and headed back to New Jersey.

Beyond that, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. We just kicked it around the Cascios for almost two months, running errands, going to the mall. Part of it, I think, was that Mr. Jackson was just comfortable there. He didn’t want to leave. The stability he got
from their family life was something he didn’t get very often. But it was also becoming obvious that we weren’t leaving because he couldn’t afford to. By the end of October, it wasn’t just payroll that was messed up. There was no more money, period.

Javon got up one morning and went down to the hotel gym to work out. When he came back, he couldn’t get in his room. He went to the front desk to see what was going on, and they said there were some problems with the card on file. Checkout was at some automatic time. When the payment didn’t go through, he’d been locked out. He called me and I went downstairs and talked to the manager. They told me there was an outstanding balance that needed to be paid. They couldn’t let us back in the rooms until it was taken care of.

Raymone’s office was dealing with that bill; it went directly to her. Hotel management told me they had been talking to her about it. I called her and of course she wasn’t answering my calls. And she knew it was important why I was calling, because she’d been talking to these people at the hotel. I ended up talking to someone else in her office, and I just got the usual excuse: “Mr. Jackson’s money is tied up right now.”

We hung out in the lobby for a couple of hours, and finally we were told we could get back into our rooms. I checked with the hotel to see whose credit card had been put up, and it belonged to this woman who worked for Raymone. Some junior person in Raymone’s office was putting up her personal credit card to cover Michael Jackson’s bills.

Javon:
At first, I thought Ms. Raymone was just procrastinating in paying the people, that it was just a temporary thing. Then the reality started setting in. It was very disturbing. What’s going on here? Are we just kicked out for a couple hours, or should I be packing my stuff to go home? Why am I getting kicked out of hotels when I work for Michael Jackson?

We had a company card that we used to put gas in the trucks. That got cut off too, right around the same time. Bill started using his own money to buy gas. We were already so deep in the hole, and he started going and putting fifty dollars into each truck every couple days just to keep us to where we could function. I told him he was crazy. I said, “Bill, this ain’t your responsibility. We should make an example out of this. The next time there’s an important detail, we’ll just tell Mr. Jackson, ‘We don’t have any gas and we can’t come get you.’ Then they’ll have to do something.”

Bill said he wasn’t going to do that because it would make us look bad. Bill took it like he was a soldier on a mission; that was his mentality. Just because other people aren’t doing their job doesn’t mean you stop doing your job. He kept saying, “Nah, I’ll put the gas in the vehicle.” I don’t know where he got the money from, who he borrowed it from. All he’d tell me was, “I took care of it.”

Bill:
It had come to the point where we were just barely holding things together. Last week of October, Mike LaPerruque and I took Mr. Jackson into the city for a dinner with Peter Lopez at Mr. K’s, this Chinese joint on Lexington Avenue. I didn’t sit in on the dinner or anything, but I have to assume it was related to the phone call they’d had back in Virginia: “Can you help me find my money?”

Javon:
On the night of the
Ebony
photo shoot, we were driving Mr. Jackson through Midtown on our way back to the hotel. We were near the Apple Store, around 57th street, and we saw a billboard for Tyler Perry’s
Why Did I Get Married?
, this movie that Janet Jackson was starring in. She was front and center on this big poster up on the side of a building. We were sitting at a red light and Mr. Jackson looked up at the billboard and said, “Is that my sister? What is that? Is that a play she’s in?”

I said, “No, that’s her movie, sir. She’s in a movie.”

“When does it come out?”

This movie had been out for a few months. The billboard for it was all torn and faded around the edges—that’s how long it had been in the theater. But I didn’t want to tell him that. I said, “It just came out, sir.”

Then real soft, almost in a whisper, he said, “Oh. I wonder why no one told me.”

Me and Bill looked at each other. We were shocked. Like, how does he not know that his own sister is in this big movie? We knew he was isolated. We knew he didn’t have many friends. But how had he not even had a casual conversation with someone in all these months to say, “Hey, Janet was really great in that movie”? How was he that cut off from the people in his own life?

As we drove off, he said, “I wonder if it’s a good movie.”

I said, “Yes, sir. I’ve seen it. It’s an excellent movie.”

And that was all he ever said on it. He never mentioned it again.

Bill:
At the time, seeing how much his affairs were out of order, I thought, This is just how it is. Now, looking back, I honestly believe that if his relationship with his family had been better, if he’d had the same relationship with his own family that he had with the Cascios, his life would not have been like this. That’s where the problem was.

There were a few conversations that I had with Grace about the early days, when his life was more organized. I remember one time she said that when Mr. Jackson was married to Lisa Marie Presley, that was a really good time for him. Grace felt that she really loved him and that he really loved her too. Things were more in order because of that trust they had. Lisa Marie made sure the wrong people weren’t getting in his ear, that people weren’t using him. Or she tried to, anyway. And if you’re in a position like
Michael Jackson was, you have to have that person who’s in your corner, someone who’s not there to get a paycheck, someone who doesn’t have an agenda.

When we first got there, and Mr. Jackson wouldn’t let his family past the gate without an appointment, I thought that was messed up. But with all the nasty stuff we’d been told about them, it sort of made sense. We’d heard that the family was rotten, that they were trying to feed off him, that they wanted to control him. We heard that they were going to try and kidnap him. Whenever nasty stories turned up in the tabloids, we’d hear that someone in the family had leaked it.

But honestly, after being around for a while, with most of the family I never got any kind of rotten vibe. With Randy? Yes. Randy was just Randy. He and Michael had that falling-out over some business deal. And Jermaine, he was friendly enough, but whenever he called or came around, he always seemed to have an angle, some deal he was working that he was going to get himself in on. Jermaine was the one that left the group first; he was supposed to have the solo career that blew up, but that never really happened for him. There might have been some jealousy there. Jermaine also tried to sell a book during the trial, and I don’t think Mr. Jackson ever forgave him for that. Jermaine wasn’t as tight with Michael as some people may think, at least not from what we could see.

But everyone else? Jackie and Rebbie and Tito and the rest? I never got a bad vibe. They were always cordial, always respectful. The only vibe I ever got from them was concern. They were concerned about their brother. Even Joe Jackson. As nasty as he was to me the times I met him, as terrible as the stories are about him in the press—people want to make him the bad guy but it was more complicated than that. That was another thing Grace said that stuck with me. She said the only person who never stole from Michael Jackson was his father.