“Anywhere in particular, sir?”
“No, just drive. I want to look at the lights.”
We’d drive from the Sahara all the way to the Tropicana, bust a U-turn and head back the way we came. Sometimes he’d want to stop and see the water show at the Bellagio or the volcano at Treasure Island. But mostly we’d just circle around the Strip about six or seven times. He wouldn’t say much; we wouldn’t say much, either. We’d just drive slow. He’d crack the window a little bit, look at the lights, look out at the people. We must have done that at least twenty or thirty times.
There was one time we passed the big sign for Cirque du Soleil’s Love show at the Mirage, the one based on the songs of the Beatles, which Mr. Jackson owned the rights to. He saw the sign for it and said, “When did that start?”
I said, “That’s been here for at least two or three months now.”
He said, “What? Nobody asked me about that. They didn’t get my permission for that.” He was livid. He said, “I have to make some phone calls.” Then he asked Bill to make arrangements so he could go see the show. We went. He said it was okay.
Bill: What he really wanted to be able to do was get out and walk around, so we had to figure out a disguise for him. “I’ve tried everything,” he said. “I’ve been through two- to three-hour makeup sessions not to be recognized, but people always recognize me.”
That’s when I came up with the idea for the motorcycle helmet. We’d dress him up like a biker from head to toe and he could wear a motorcycle helmet with a tinted visor. He said he had never done that before. It would draw stares, but nobody would know it was him, and there are plenty of stranger things to see out on the Strip on a Saturday night. So I said, “Let’s go for it.”
That outfit must have cost about six hundred dollars, from the jacket to the pants to the boots. We drove down, parked at the Bellagio, he put the helmet on, and we walked. We kept our distance to give him space. We didn’t wanna bring attention to him by our presence. Javon and I both had street clothes on. No earpieces. We just strolled. We walked from the Bellagio to the Excalibur, maybe six or seven blocks, which are long blocks on the Strip, maybe about a mile and a half. It was hot as hell out there. He must have been burning up in that thing. Every few minutes, I’d ask him, “You all right, sir?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
After we’d walked all the way down, Javon went back to get the car. We sat on a bench, and he came and picked us up. Mr. Jackson got in the car. When he took that helmet off, sweat just poured down his face. But aside from the heat, he loved it. He was almost giddy about it. “Nobody knew who I was!” He was amazed at that. It was very therapeutic for him. He said, “I needed that. I just needed to get out of the house and go for a walk.”
Javon: One night, we were driving home from the Strip, and there was this on-ramp for the freeway that we had to pass to get back to the house. We were stopped at a red light by this ramp, and right off the road there was a homeless man and woman. They were arguing with each other about something. The man was sitting and the woman was standing with a sign; it’s the kind of thing you see all the time out here, people with signs that say “Homeless, Please Help.” Vegas is a hard town. You get caught up in gambling and all that? It’ll ruin you.
Bill: Mr. Jackson saw these people and said, “Why are these people out there?”
“Those are homeless people, sir.”
He was like, “Really? Wow.”
He told Javon to pull over. We pulled over to the curb and we just watched for a minute. Mr. Jackson saw all the other cars passing by, and he asked, “Why isn’t anybody helping them? Why isn’t anybody stopping?” Then he said to Javon, “Call the woman over to the car.”
Javon rolled down his window, waved her over. When she got to the car, Mr. Jackson rolled his window down just a little bit and said, “What’s your name?”
“Amanda,” she said.
They talked for a bit. He wanted to know her story. He asked her where she was from, where’s her family at. She said she used to be a dancer, a showgirl. Then I heard him reaching around in the backseat for something. I heard the sound of paper. He was pulling out money. He pulled out three one-hundred-dollar bills, gave them to her and said, “Here. Take this.”
She was floored. She was almost crying, saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Javon: After he gave her the money, she backed up a few steps and I started to drive off. The guy that had been sitting near her got up, came over to her, and tried to snatch the money away. She pulled back, but he kept trying to grab it from her and they started fighting again. She started yelling, “No! This is mine!”
Mr. Jackson saw that and said, “No, no, no! Javon, stop the car. Pull back over.”
I pulled back over, he leaned back out of the window and called the man over this time, saying, “Don’t do that! Here, I’ve got something for you too.” He pulled out another three hundred dollars and gave it to the man. The lady started crying, like she’d been saved.
Bill: He told them to use the money for food. “Get something nourishing,” he said. “Don’t get any drugs.”
“No, sir!” they said. “No, sir!” They were both gushing with thank-yous and God-bless-yous when all of a sudden the man stopped and looked in the car window and said, “Are you Michael Jackson?”
“No. No, I’m not.”
I turned to the backseat. “Are you ready to go, sir?”
“Yeah, I’m ready,” he said. And we pulled off. As we were driving, Mr. Jackson said, “Are there a lot of people like that in Vegas?”
“Yeah,” I said. “There are parts of Vegas where a lot of homeless people live.”
“Really? Can we go there?”
I hesitated a moment. “You want to go there tonight, sir? Tonight wouldn’t be a good time.”
“No, no,” he said. “We can go another day. I just want to see.”
The bad part of Vegas is on the north side, Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard, over by Cashman Field. When he mentioned going there, I was hoping he’d forget about it. Sometimes when he made unusual requests, things I knew weren’t feasible or just weren’t a good idea, I’d wait a bit before following up, to see if he’d drop it. Sometimes he would. If he reminded me again, I knew he was very serious. This time, he remembered. A couple days later, he came to me and said, “When are we going to go to that side of town?”
“What side of town is that, sir?”
“Where the homeless people are.”
“We can go there today.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
So we took him to the other side of town, about twenty minutes from the house. We headed north up Main Street, and all of these people were out. You could hear in his voice that he was shocked that all of these people out here were homeless. He couldn’t believe it. “It’s just amazing,” he said. “This country is so rich and these people are poor and living on the street.”
He asked Javon to pull over, so we pulled over. I was a little antsy. I wasn’t cool pulling over in a nice car with all these people around. We sat there on the side of the road for a bit. Then Mr. Jackson said, “I want to give them something.”
I thought he meant he wanted to get out of the car. I said, “I don’t think it’d be a good idea to go out there, sir.”
He said, “No, no, no. I’ll pass it out of the window.”
He cracked the window and started waving people over. He had a fanny pack he was wearing. He opened it up and the whole thing was stuffed full of cash. They would come to the window and he would pass out a hundred-dollar bill through the crack in the window to each one. One thing I noticed was that he was trying to catch the attention of the women. He wanted to make sure they were the ones who got the money. He was like, “Come here. No, no, no. You. You come here.” A lot of men got money too, but I could hear him singling the women out of the crowd, calling them forward. People started lining up outside his window, like it was an ATM.
After that, we went and handed out food to the homeless a number of times. He’d say, “Me and the kids are not going to eat this. Let’s take this down and give it away.” One time, he wanted the kids to come with us and see it, so we brought them along.
Bill: He read the Bible a lot. Oftentimes, if he answered the door for some reason, he would have a Bible in his hand and his reading glasses on. That was common. I remember he’d say things like “God bless you” to fans, but he always used “Jehovah” when talking to the kids, like, “Jehovah wouldn’t like that.” There were these merchandising people who used to call him all the time to put his name and his image on slot machines. He wouldn’t do it because of his religion. He’d say, “No, Jehovah wouldn’t like that.” But they’ve got Michael Jackson slot machines now. I see them all the time. Every hotel in Vegas has those same slot machines he said he did not want. Somebody signed off on it.
Javon: His favorite thing to do was go to the movies. He loved taking the kids, especially to the big action blockbusters like Spider-Man or Transformers. There’s a big multiplex at the Palms, which is where we’d usually go. We’d call a day or so beforehand, talk to the manager, and they’d set aside a screen for a private viewing. The only time it was a problem was for Spider-Man 3. He wanted to go on opening day. We called the manager, and she said she didn’t think they could close down a theater on short notice for opening day. Mr. Jackson said that was fine; he wanted to see it with a big crowd anyway. Sometimes he liked watching things with an audience. Whenever he wanted to do that, I’d go in and save the seats. Then we’d wait for the previews to start and the lights to go down, and Bill would radio me that he was walking in with Mr. Jackson and the kids. I’d light up my phone and let them know where I was at. They’d come and sit down, and me and Bill would walk out and stand by the door.
Bill: Any time we went to the movies, he insisted on bringing spray butter and hot sauce for the popcorn. Had to have them. Would not start the movie without them. Sometimes we’d get to the theater, and I’d be thinking that Javon had brought the spray butter and hot sauce, and Javon was thinking that I’d brought the spray butter and hot sauce. When we realized our mistake, one of us would have to run to the store to pick them up. Sometimes we’d have the managers hold the movie until we could get the spray butter and hot sauce safely delivered.
I don’t care what anybody says about Michael Jackson trying to act like or turn himself into a white man. Anybody who insists on taking his own spray butter and hot sauce to a movie theater? That man is black, ghetto, and hood.
Javon: He had these particular fixations. Once he wanted something, he wanted it, period. There was no getting that thought out of his mind. He’d point to something and say, “I want that.” That meant, Make it happen. Didn’t matter what obstacles there were, how difficult it was to get. Just make it happen.
When Spider-Man 3 was out, we were driving on Spring Mountain Road. We passed a Burger King and they had a promotion going on. They had these life-sized Spider-Man figurines attached to the lampposts outside of the store. Mr. Jackson said, “Javon, you see that? I need one of those. Stop the car.”
I pulled the car over. Mr. Jackson said, “Do you think you could get up there and get that?”
This was in the middle of the day on a major street, in broad daylight. I said, “Sir, I don’t think that would be a smart idea.”
“I think you can do it,” he said. “I think you can.”
“Sir, I don’t think so.”
“You look like you don’t want to do it.”
“I kinda really don’t, sir.”
“Well, do you think you could come back and get it?”
“I can try. But I still don’t think it would be a good idea.”
But he wanted that Spider-Man figurine. There was nothing I could tell him. I tried to go back at night and get it. I was up there, trying to jimmy it down with this little knife, cut the strings from the pole, but it was way too high. I would have needed an eight-foot ladder. It was crazy. I went home and told him it was a no go. He was really disappointed. He said, “Can you do some research to see where I can buy one?” We did. We couldn’t find it.
Bill: He wasn’t used to being told no. This one time, his attorney called me up and said, “Bill, Mr. Jackson is upset because he said that you yelled at him.”
That was another thing about him. He didn’t deal well with confrontation. He’d never tell you directly that you’d upset him. You’d just get a call. I know, because I made a lot of those calls myself, telling people, “Mr. Jackson didn’t like when you did such and such.” So I got this call from his attorney saying I’d yelled at him. And maybe I had, but it was only because he’d asked for something that was impossible. There were times Javon was off handling something, and Mr. Jackson wanted to go somewhere with just me, him, and three kids, with no pre-detail. I didn’t feel comfortable with that. I didn’t feel it was safe. So I told him no. We told him no a few times. Sometimes he respected us for telling him no. Sometimes he really didn’t like it.
I’m sure at one time, at the height of his fame, he’d snap his fingers and things would magically happen for him. And he honestly felt that the world just operated that way. He’d go into a store, pull a piece of candy off the shelf, open it up, throw the wrapper down, and eat it. Like, don’t even worry about it. He also had a thing for umbrellas. We went to a store once, we were in a Staples, and he went by this rack of umbrellas, pulled one out, took the tag off, popped the thing open. We walked around the store like that. And he wasn’t stealing. He’d grab the candy, pop the umbrella, and say something like, “Make sure I pay for this.”
Javon: There was a helicopter flight simulator at FAO Schwarz. Blanket loved to ride in it. We were shopping one day, and Mr. Jackson said, “I want that. Find out how much that is.” Me and Bill were like, what? This thing was the size of an actual helicopter cockpit. I don’t think it was even for sale. It was just a ride they had for kids to play with in the store. We asked the manager, who said it cost something like $75,000. But this thing was so big, you couldn’t even get it inside a house. Fortunately he kind of dropped it after a few days. We just got used to those kinds of requests.
Bill: The thing he wanted most was the thing he couldn’t have. There was a house in Vegas that he’d wanted for years, going back long before we worked for him. It was this sprawling estate, right off Durango near the Spanish Trail Country Club, this massive place owned by some Middle Eastern prince who’d built it but never actually lived in it. It was the largest estate, I believe, in all of Las Vegas. Mr. Jackson always wanted to go and visit that house. He was constantly talking to realtors about buying it.
We set up a number of appointments to go see it. The caretaker for the property would meet us at the front gate and let us in. The first time I was in that house, I walked around with my jaw on the floor. Indoor pool. Walls painted in gold leaf. A kitchen like you’d find in a hotel. It was amazing. Mr. Jackson and the kids went around the grounds like they had been there before, almost like they already owned the place. The kids would run around and say, “This is my room! This is my room!” Mr. Jackson would point and say, “We’ll need more trees over there. We’re going to need guard dogs.”
He showed us the guesthouses on the property. He showed us this other building where he said we were going to stay; that was going to be the security center, he said. It was a hell of a lot nicer than the trailer we had at Monte Cristo. He said he was going to buy a fleet of mini golf carts and have a garage for them. If you lived there, you’d need a golf cart just to get around the place. It was that big. He wanted a property so
huge that he could go outside and feel like he was free. He could go and climb a tree, do whatever. He said he was going to buy it and call it Wonderland.
Javon: We found out this place was on the market for something crazy, like $55 million. Part of us was thinking, How can he possibly afford this? How? But at the same time, he was so convincing in the way he talked about it. He talked about the house like it was already his, like the deal to buy it was basically finished, and there were a couple of formalities holding things up and that was the only reason he didn’t live there already. If we were going to the movies or the bookstore, he’d want to drive by it just to take a look. He’d say, “Let’s drive by my house.”
Bill: He’d visit nearly every chance he got. Sometimes it was once a week, usually on Sunday. This one time, we couldn’t reach anybody to make an appointment. We pulled up out front, and there was a chain on the gate. We sat there almost thirty minutes trying to reach somebody to let us in. Finally Mr. Jackson said, “I wish we could just get in there somehow.”
I looked at Javon, and Javon looked at me. We both knew what he was asking us to do. Back of my mind, I wanted to say to the guy, “Don’t you think you’ve got enough lawsuits against you without adding a charge for breaking and entering?” And me, I wasn’t keen on going to jail. But Michael Jackson wants what Michael Jackson wants. He just sort of sat there with this sense of expectation.
Javon: We had a toolbox in the back with a pair of bolt cutters in it. I didn’t want to volunteer that I could break into someone’s house for him. But he stayed on it. He was like, “Don’t you guys have something to get that chain off the fence?”
I said, “We do, sir. But I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
He said, “It’s no problem, Javon. It’s going to be my house. The realtor knows. It’s okay, I’m telling you.”
And he wore us down. He was that convincing. He believed that this house was his, so much so that he made you believe it was his and it was okay for him to do what he wanted with it. I got the bolt cutters and got out. This was right off a busy street, broad daylight, cars going by. The whole time Mr. Jackson was giddy. It was like this little adventure for him. Not me. I was too busy looking around for the police and thinking, How the hell we gonna explain this shit? I popped the lock and got the gate open and we went onto the property. The door to the house was unlocked, and they all went in and walked around and ran through the kitchens and the bedrooms like they always did.
Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days Page 13
