Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days (33 page)

Yep. This is Tinker Bell, dude.

We put this thing together, and I was standing there looking at a damn near seven-foot-tall Tinker Bell. He loved it. He wanted it in a certain area of the room. He was going, “This is great! This is great!”

That was a difficult moment. Here I was, really bending over backwards to try and help him in whatever little ways I could, but he was still doing the same things that got him in this mess. He can’t even pay for the roof he’s living under, and he’s off buying crap on eBay? In some ways I blamed him, and in some ways I didn’t. There were times I felt this situation was his responsibility and I was furious with him. Other times, I felt this was all because of what other people had done to him and it wasn’t fair and I was angry at them. There were days when I felt I really understood him and what he was going through, and there were days I didn’t understand him at all.

Javon:
That day we were at FAO Schwarz, that’s the angriest I ever was with him. But even then I couldn’t stay mad at him for more than ten minutes. I’m sure he said something on the way home that made me forget all about it. There was just something about him, his demeanor. He was so sweet and soft-spoken. You could be in
a bad mood, and his good spirit and his energy would instantly soften you and cheer you up. That’s just the way his inner being rubbed off on people. He knew how to make people love him. Just the way he spoke to you made you think that everything that came out of his mouth was genuine.

I saw how this man brought smiles to everyone that came around him. Everyone that came in contact with him, from celebrities to average Joes, he brightened up their lives. We couldn’t see why, in business, he couldn’t put people in place that he could trust. We couldn’t believe that as brilliant as he was, he could be taken advantage of the way he was being taken advantage of. It made you feel sorry for him and for the kids. They were living out of suitcases. There was no structure about where they were going to stay. It made you want to protect them and make sure nothing happened to them. That’s why it stopped being just a job for us. It was more like you felt you were on a mission.

You’d see him in his naive stage and you’d think, This guy can’t even authorize his own credit card. He’s so used to people taking care of him, maybe it’s really not his fault that we’re not getting paid. But at the same time, he could set up a sting with the paparazzi to test me to see if I’m trustworthy or not. To me, that’s a guy who’s very clued in and very aware of what’s going on. So which was it?

I had a harder time with it than Bill. I would get more upset, and Bill would always talk me down, saying, “It’s not Mr. Jackson’s fault.” And I’d say, “But Bill, at some point it
has
to be his fault.” Yeah, he had all these people taking advantage of him, but he’s the one who hired those people. And even if other people did this to him, whatever problems you have in your life, they become your fault eventually if you haven’t done anything to fix them. That’s why you always wanted to grab him and tell him, “Mr. Jackson, man up! It’s time to take a hold of what you built. All it takes is for you to put your foot down.” But he couldn’t. He was afraid to give
orders. He’d walk on eggshells around his own employees. I couldn’t fathom it.

Bill:
Whenever I hear that whole thing about how Michael Jackson missed out on his childhood or how he never got to be a kid, I hear it different than most people. He wants to play with toys and ride roller coasters and have sleepovers and this and that. Okay, that’s some of what he missed out on. That’s part of what childhood is, but it’s also a lot more than that. “Clean your room.” That’s childhood. “Take out the garbage.” “Apologize to your sister.” That’s childhood. It’s not just about playing games and having fun. Childhood isn’t just about being a child. It’s about becoming an adult. Because eventually you will be an adult, whether you want to or not.

He loved all those stories about Peter Pan and all that. But I sometimes wondered if he really got what that story’s about. I think he just took from it what he wanted to take. Because what happens in that book is that the children leave Neverland and go back to their parents and grow up. That’s the point. That’s reality. You do have to grow up. But if the people around you never pushed you to do that? If nobody taught you the things that you needed to learn? Then you’re not going to have the skills that you need to be able to deal with the world. Did Michael Jackson miss out on his childhood? He missed out on a lot.

New Year’s Eve came around and we were still at the Palms, still waiting for something to happen. That night, Javon took off to be with his family. I went down to the hotel by myself. There were guys posted at his door, but I wanted to be nearby, just in case he called. I figured something might come up. New Year’s Eve at the Palms is crazy. There’s two or three different nightclubs in there, so it’s packed.

I settled in at one of the restaurants downstairs and had dinner. I sat there most of the evening, wondering if things were going
to get better. Because if it kept getting worse, I was going to have to do what I had to do to take care of my family. You talk about soul searching. That’s exactly what it was. Midnight came, and I was walking through the lobby and this huge crowd was all around me, counting down and ringing in the new year. I stood there in the middle of all of those people laughing and drinking and having a good time, and I just wasn’t happy. I was not happy, because I didn’t see the light at the end of this tunnel.

PART THREE

THIS IS IT

15

January 2008 found Michael Jackson still at the Palms, working around the clock in the hotel’s studio in an effort to deliver his long-overdue tracks for
Thriller 25
—tracks he had to deliver even though Sony had informed him that he wouldn’t actually be seeing any income from the album’s release. The label would be keeping any royalties it generated to cover Jackson’s half of the administrative costs from the Sony/ATV catalog, which the singer had fallen behind on.

In addition to the work for the album, Jackson and Londell McMillan had indeed been finalizing a deal to avert the singer’s short-term cash crisis. Barclays bank had purchased and refinanced the $300 million loan Jackson had taken out against the Sony/ATV catalog. HSBC and Plainfield Asset Management, a hedge fund, had lent the singer an additional $70 million against Mijac, the catalog that held the rights to Jackson’s own music. And Sony had guaranteed Jackson’s new debt load in exchange for the first right of refusal to buy him out of the Beatles catalog if he defaulted. However, Fortress Investment Group did hold on to the $23 million note on Neverland; if Jackson failed to save it from foreclosure by March 19, the investment group stood to make millions from dumping the estate at auction.

Most of this new $370 million influx Jackson would never see. It went to settle old lawsuits and claims and to cover outstanding expenses, like the $300,000 in back pay owed to the staff at Neverland.
Jackson received an $11 million living allowance, and the balance of what remained was set aside for the sole purpose of covering the interest payments on the new loans.

Amazingly, on paper, Michael Jackson was still not broke. The cash value of his assets—the publishing catalogs, his property holdings, his vast collection of cars and antiques—was still greater than his debts. But he remained cash poor. Short of liquidating everything he owned and walking away from the business of being the King of Pop, his only real option, as he had known for some time, was to go back onstage.

After several years in financial free-fall, Michael Jackson was once again standing on his feet, at least temporarily. But this new state of affairs created as many problems as it solved. When the world believed that the singer was broke and broken, most people were content to just leave him be. Now, word was beginning to circulate that the King of Pop might be coming back to life. Over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, as Bill and Javon had suspected, their employer had dismissed Raymone Bain; in one of the many settlements to come out of the new loan package, she was paid a considerable amount of money to go away. There was now a power vacuum at the center of his organization, and all sorts of people were rushing in to fill it.

Bill
: After a couple weeks at the Palms, I heard that Michael Amir was in Vegas. He was going to be around, helping out. He’d first been introduced to Mr. Jackson by Feldman, back when we were staying at the Monte Cristo house. That’s when his name first came up. Then he was around while we were in Virginia. He started out like an intern. He was cataloging all of Mr. Jackson’s books with a computer program, helping Mr. Jackson with his film projects, doing stuff like that. Whenever he came to town, I had to make arrangements to get him from the airport, so we’d spoken a number of times. We were cordial. We were cool.

When Michael Amir hit Vegas, he called me and asked if he could use one of the trucks because the boss wanted him to go on a couple of errands. Before, whenever Mr. Jackson sent him to get film equipment at Best Buy or wherever, either me or Javon would drive him. I didn’t give him the keys to the truck. I didn’t know him that well. I wasn’t okay with that. Then at the Palms, he was suddenly asking for the truck and telling me that the boss said it was okay. I checked with Mr. Jackson and he said it was fine, so I didn’t question it too much.

Pretty soon, though, Michael Amir was communicating with Mr. Jackson every day. Since Grace wasn’t around, he started taking over some of the things that Grace used to do. I started to notice that, when he came up to the Palms, he wouldn’t even have to ask us if Mr. Jackson was in his room or the studio; he already knew, and he’d go straight to wherever Mr. Jackson was. They seemed to be getting closer and closer. On the one hand, I was cool with it because I wouldn’t have to do so much running around. On the other hand, I also wondered what his agenda was.

At the same time, we were still under a lot of pressure to find a house. We needed to get the hell out of the Palms. The Maloof brothers weren’t putting Mr. Jackson up out of charity. When Peter Lopez made that deal and told George Maloof, “Michael Jackson’s going to come and stay at your hotel,” I’m pretty sure Maloof said yes under the impression that Michael Jackson would be eating in his restaurants, making appearances in his nightclubs—generating press. But Mr. Jackson didn’t do any of that. He just worked in the studio and took the service elevator back upstairs. And once it was clear that he wasn’t leaving his room? That free ride was over. Time to go.

Around mid-January, Mr. Jackson called me and said he’d found a house and that he was going to be moving. That was news to me, because he’d had me working on all those arrangements during Christmas and New Year’s. Then Mr. Jackson said, “Call Michael Amir. He’ll give you all of the details.”

Michael Amir?

There it was. He’d stepped up. It had happened almost overnight. Suddenly he wasn’t just a gofer. He was coming to me and Javon and saying, “Mr. Jackson needs you to do this or do that.” He was in Mr. Jackson’s ear now. He’d taken over the house search without me even knowing about it. That made me nervous. Not because I didn’t like the guy; he and I never had problems. But it was always suspect when people were maneuvering and being secretive around Mr. Jackson. I’d seen how that played out with Grace and Raymone and Feldman before. But I wasn’t there to question what Mr. Jackson wanted. I just called Michael Amir to find out what was going on with the house.

As soon as he told me about the place, I knew which one he was talking about. I had passed it a few times and seen it was available, but I’d never even considered it because I knew Mr. Jackson wouldn’t have picked it. The house was this Spanish hacienda-type estate on Palomino, right off Rancho, north of where the Monte Cristo place was. I knew the area. It’s not a great neighborhood. The neighbors’ houses were right up on top of it, and Rancho is a real busy street, which meant a lot of traffic, a lot of eyeballs to worry about.

It was also near a school; there was an elementary school right across the street. I saw that and I was like, Are you kidding me? The flak he’s going to get over that? I know Michael Jackson wasn’t a child molester, but there are still people out there who think otherwise. Parents started complaining almost from the day he moved in, saying that it was dangerous to have Michael Jackson living near a school. It was all over Vegas. It made the local news. Knowing how much he wants his privacy, why would you put him through that by renting that house? Plus, you’re teasing Prince and Paris and Blanket every day. All the other kids playing across the street and they’ve got to hear it? Terrible idea. But nobody asked me.

Javon and I didn’t even help with the move. Michael Amir made the arrangements. He had six or seven guys from the Nation of Islam come out, and they packed everything up at the Palms and brought it over. Once Mr. Jackson was at the house, word came down that these guys from the Nation were going to be handling security at the house, and Javon and I would be working alongside them, handling the logistics of taking Mr. Jackson on details. That surprised me because he got a lot of flak for using Nation of Islam people during his trial. That was the whole reason I’d been brought on in the first place.

Javon
: As far as the Nation moving him into the Palomino house, I didn’t see it as us being pushed aside. I was relieved. I needed the break after being on the road with him all that time. And there was still plenty of things me and Bill were doing. We had the relationships with all the restaurants and theaters he liked to go to, so we still handled the details when he left the house. That didn’t change. Plus, I knew that the Nation was very protective of Mr. Jackson. Those guys are dedicated. They’re soldiers. Nothing was going to happen to him on their watch. And with them watching the house, working for Mr. Jackson became more like a regular nine-to-five type gig again. Show up for work, provide your service, and go home. Which was fine with me.