Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

by Bill Whitfield

  George Maloof came upstairs to talk to Mr. Jackson and show him where everything was. Peter Lopez called and said that he was coming over with Akon; Mr. Jackson wanted to do some studio time with him. This was after midnight, and they were talking about a studio session. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I told Mr. Jackson that I’d be outside. I grabbed a chair, went into the hallway and set up outside his door, killed some time on my iPhone. About forty-five minutes later, Peter Lopez and Akon came up. I greeted them both and called Mr. Jackson to let him know they were here. Mr. Jackson opened the door, and they all went inside.

  I sat there for another two hours. The battery on my phone died, and I was stuck there with nothing to do and no way to communicate. Now it was close to three in the morning. I was dead tired, wondering what was going on. Were they ever going down to the studio? I knocked on the door. No answer. And I knew they were all right inside the suite. I just sat there, falling asleep, nobody telling me what was going on. Finally I said, “Fuck this. I’m out. I’m going home.”

  I got up, went to the elevator, and pressed the button for the lobby. I was gone. I went down to the parking lot, got in my car, and plugged the phone into the charger. I sat there for a minute, wondering if I should really just leave. Then the phone rang. It was him, all frantic. “Bill! Where are you?”

  “I’m downstairs, Mr. Jackson.”

  “Downstairs? Downstairs where?”

  “I just came down to uh . . .” Shit. “Sir, I just came down to check something at the front desk.”

  “Bill, you can’t just leave me. You just can’t leave me and my kids.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m on my way back upstairs.”

  “Okay. We’re going to the studio. Do you know where the studio is?”

  “Yes, I know where the studio is.”

  “Okay, we’ll be at the studio, but I need you to watch the kids.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jackson.”

  By the time I got back upstairs, they were at the studio already. I sat back down in that chair, tired, hungry, and pissed off. They didn’t come back upstairs until about eight-thirty that morning. I needed to go home. I needed rest. I called Javon. He was tied up. I called Mr. Jackson and told him I needed to run home and get something to eat. He said, “Who’s going to stay here with the kids?”

  “I’ll get someone from hotel security.”

  “Can you trust them?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a dude I knew who worked security for the hotel; he had done a few details for me in the past. I found him and told him I needed a favor, explained what it was. He said he had to clear it with his supervisor. I told him I’d do him one better and call George Maloof right then and clear it with him. I called Maloof and told him what I was going to do, and he said it was fine. So this guy went up and sat in front of Mr. Jackson’s door, and I went home and crashed. I slept until late that afternoon. When I woke up and looked at my phone, I had all of these missed calls from Mr. Jackson. He’d been blowing me up all day. Little stuff, errands, packages to pick up.

  As I was going through all these messages, I seriously felt like I was done. My daughter was upset with me, crying that I was never home. I couldn’t afford to get any Christmas presents for her or the rest of my family. Things were not cool at this time. But I also didn’t know what to do except go back to the Palms and see it through, see what was going to happen. So I showered up and went back later on that evening.

  Akon was still in town. They were doing more studio work. There was actually a lot going on, all of a sudden, a lot of faxes going back and forth, things for him to sign, more so than usual. Something was in the works. It seemed like some kind of deal was maybe about to go off. But whatever was supposed to happen didn’t happen fast enough. We were getting closer to Christmas. Mr. Jackson was insisting that he did not want to have Christmas with his kids in a hotel, but it was obvious that there wasn’t going to be any alternative.

  Once Mr. Jackson knew he’d be staying, he came to me and said he wanted the place to look “Christmassy.” He asked me to go get a tree and decorations and lights. I said, “Mr. Jackson, there isn’t any money to—”

  “Oh, how much do you need?”

  “I don’t know. Two, three hundred bucks?”

  He went over to a table where he had a stack of hundreds and he gave me a thousand. I went out and bought him a tree, some lights, a bunch of little reindeer figurines. I brought all that back, and he and the kids decked it out.

  Two days before Christmas, he came to me and said he wanted to set up a shopping trip to get the kids presents. I called FAO Schwarz and made arrangements to shop there after the store closed that night. Javon was back on board by this time. We drove down to the store, met the manager by the loading dock and took an elevator up to the back entrance. We went through, aisle by aisle. Mr. Jackson was picking things out, train sets and stuffed animals and dolls. An associate was following him with this empty stockroom cart, this big cage. It was huge, and Mr. Jackson was just filling this thing up. I was standing there watching him and looking at Javon, and we were not thrilled with the situation. Javon was in my ear on the radio, telling me how he couldn’t even buy diapers. At one point, Mr. Jackson was looking at these girls’ dolls and he picked one up and looked at me and said, “Bill, aren’t you getting anything for your daughter?”

  I said, “No, sir. We haven’t been paid yet.”

  “Oh.”

  That was all he said. Then he turned around and went right on shopping. At that moment, I wanted to slap the shit out of him. I saw myself doing it, too, in my mind. I envisioned it. I saw myself slapping the shit out of him, him falling back over this big pile of action figures. I saw the headlines coming out the next day: Michael Jackson’s Security Slaps the Shit Out of Him.

  But of course I didn’t say or do anything. I just let it go.

  Javon: I was standing a couple feet away, and I could see the look on Bill’s face. After Mr. Jackson walked away, Bill radioed me and said, “Can you believe he just asked me that?!”

  I said, “Bill, why don’t you let me ask him if he’s going to buy your daughter something. Let me. I’ll do it.”

  Because I’d had it. I was tired of tiptoeing around the facts. I wanted to talk to Mr. Jackson and tell him, “Look, Christmas is important to us too. We’re fathers too. We want to do the exact same thing for our kids that you’re doing for your kids right now, but we can’t. So let’s get this straight. How are we going to make that happen?”

  That’s all I was really thinking about. I didn’t care about all our back pay. I just wanted enough money in my hands that I could do Christmas. I didn’t even have to take my kids to FAO Schwarz. That’s all overpriced toys, anyway. I could take them to KB Toys and get them a little something. That’s all I needed. And I was ready to get in Mr. Jackson’s face and tell him that. I was tired of not saying anything. But Bill kept saying, “Let me handle it. I’ll figure something out. I’ll talk to Londell.”

  Bill: When Michael Jackson saw kids in Africa living in poverty, or when he saw kids with cancer living in hospitals, his heart would immediately go out to them. He could read a fan letter about a family going through financial hardship, and he’d literally start to cry. He could be the most sensitive and caring person you’d ever met. In his lifetime, he gave hundreds of millions of dollars to charity. And I’m not just talking about handing the big check over to the United Way in front of the cameras. I’m talking about him personally reaching out and helping people in need. Like with Dave, the guy in New York who’d been burned. There were dozens of people like Dave over the years. In some cases, Michael Jackson literally saved their lives.

  That compassion was totally genuine, and it came through in his music, too. Which is why so many of his fans saw him as a saint, this incredibly generous and loving person. And he was. On that level. But when it came to the pain caused by his own actions to the people right in front of him? He couldn’t see
it. He didn’t want to see it. Given the life he’d lived, being isolated from such a very young age, I don’t think he ever really developed the skills you need to cope with personal relationships. So he shut those feelings out, refused to deal with them. If you had people that worked for you and they hadn’t been paid for months, you’d understand how that would mess them up. You’d know it. You’d see it. He didn’t. He couldn’t. And that’s why I kept saying to myself, “It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault.”

  Once we finished all the shopping, we went up to the register. Mr. Jackson was standing behind me while I watched the clerk ring everything up. The bill was close to ten thousand dollars. When the guy gave me the total, I turned around to Mr. Jackson, expecting him to give me cash as usual. Instead, he pulled out a credit card. I didn’t know where that credit card came from. I didn’t even know he had one. It was new. It still had that white activation sticker across it, like it had never been used. I gave the credit card to the guy. He swiped it. It wasn’t declined, but it came up as “Not Authorized.”

  I said, “Mr. Jackson, did you authorize the card?”

  He said, “Yes, I authorize you to use it.”

  He said it totally straight-faced. Like, “Sure, Bill. You can use it.” He thought that’s what it meant to authorize a credit card, like his words were some kind of “abracadabra” that would magically make the thing work. I tried talking to him, seeing if he’d called the number to activate it. He honestly didn’t know what I was talking about. He’d never had to handle that for himself. He just kept saying, “Oh, there’s plenty of money on there. Do it again. Do it again.”

  Guy swiped it again. Nothing. Couple more times. Nothing. I was whispering back and forth with Mr. Jackson, seeing what he wanted to do. He said, “Just tell them we’ll come back and pay for it.”

  I was like, Does he really think they’re just going to let him walk out of here with ten thousand dollars worth of toys and come back and pay for it later? And he wants everything gift-wrapped? I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I asked the manager anyway. I said, “Is it possible that we can come back and pay for this?”

  He just gave me this look, like, Really? Do you really think I’m going to do that?

  I was trying to negotiate something with this guy and meanwhile I had Mr. Jackson in my ear, going, “I shop here all the time. Just tell them it’s okay.” So finally I was like, Okay, call Londell. It was almost four in the morning New York time, but I didn’t care. I called him, told him the situation we were in. Londell said, “Put the manager on. I’ll see if he’ll take my card over the phone.” Londell gave them his card number, paid for everything, and that was that. We got it all wrapped, took it back to the Palms, and put it under the tree.

  After that, I was pretty much on hiatus. I made arrangements with hotel security to have people do shifts in front of his door, so that Javon and I could get a little time off. Those guys showed up, and I went home. I was spent. I felt like I needed to vent to somebody. Since Londell had got us out of a few different jams, I thought it would be okay to vent to him. I called him to talk about a few things and I filled him in on my and Javon’s situation. He was stunned. He said, “You guys haven’t been paid since when? Do you need something? What do you need?” Fortunately, he got it without me really having to beg for help or embarrass myself like that. He wired us $2,500 so that we’d have some breathing room for the holidays. That was a huge relief.

  Christmas came without much happening. I called Mr. Jackson that afternoon to wish him and the kids merry Christmas. He asked me, “Did your daughter get everything that she wants?”

  I said, “Yes, sir. She’s good.”

  He said, “Does she have an iPhone?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Get her an iPhone and tell her it’s from me. I’ll pay you back.”

  It felt good that he did that, like maybe he recognized a little bit of what we were going through. So I bought my daughter an iPhone and wrapped it up for her like it was from him, and he did reimburse me for it. A couple days later, I was speaking to Mr. Jackson on the phone and I said, “Sir, my daughter would like to thank you for the iPhone.”

  He said, “Yeah, sure.”

  I gave her the phone and they talked for a minute. She said thank you, and he said, “You’re welcome.” I could just see the joy on my daughter’s face while she was talking to him. She couldn’t believe she was on the phone with Michael Jackson. That was one of the few bright spots in that time.

  Right after Christmas, we were asked to change rooms. Some high roller was coming in for New Year’s, and they wanted a paying guest in that room. Peter Lopez called me and said, “Bill, we have to get Mr. Jackson into another suite.” We moved to a smaller room on the opposite side of the hallway.

  While all this was going on, one morning UPS delivered these three packages to my house. There were three big boxes wrapped in Bubble Wrap. The eBay account Mr. Jackson used was set up in my name, and whenever he ordered something, it was shipped to my house. I called him and let him know that his package arrived. He was real excited and asked me to bring it right over.

  I drove the boxes over to the Palms and got a luggage cart to bring them from the car to the room. I brought them in, and Mr. Jackson was like, “Great, great!” We got a knife and started opening these boxes. We opened up the first one and the only thing in it was these legs, like a set of life-sized mannequin legs. Kind of a porcelain color with red shoes on. That was odd. Then we opened up the second box. Inside that one was a torso. It had these wings on it, coming out of the back. I pulled this thing out and I was thinking, Huh, this looks like Tinker Bell. But this can’t be Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell’s tiny, and this thing is enormous. Then we opened up the third box.

  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.