Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  Bain did indeed know her way around Washington, D.C. She had come to the capital in the 1970s as a campaign worker for Jimmy Carter, who had found her a position working in the Office of Management and Budget under Carter’s ill-fated friend Bert Lance. Bain survived the scandal that soon swamped Lance and went on to graduate from Georgetown Law School, although she never passed the bar exam and was not licensed as an attorney. Instead she had taken a job representing the boxer Hector “Macho” Camacho in a contract dispute with Don King and impressed a good many people by collecting Camacho’s money for him. She represented a number of other pugilists during the next decade, among them Muhammad Ali. Bain became a somebody in Washington, though, when she helped disgraced D.C. mayor Marion Barry recover from complete self-destruction. Barry had been caught on tape in 1990 smoking a crack pipe in the company of people he had no idea were federal agents. Bain signed on as Barry’s spokeswoman in 1991 on the very day the ex-mayor entered prison and was still by his side during his 1994 campaign to win back his old job. When Barry was reelected as Washington’s mayor, he appointed Bain as his press secretary. Jesse Jackson had by then become a close associate and helped Bain establish a public relations business that landed her an impressive list of black celebrities as clients, including Serena Williams, Deion Sanders, and Michael Jackson’s little sister Janet. By 2005 Bain was the most prominent and influential black public relations spokesperson in the country. Now, at age fifty-two, she had the biggest client of her career, and not just as his spokeswoman, but also as his personal manager.

  When Michael was spotted on Maryland’s eastern shore in early July, it was Bain who told the Washington Post he was looking for real estate, and that all further inquiries about him should be made through her office. Jackson sightings were sporadically reported all across the metropolitan area during the rest of the month until the morning of July 25, when he was seen entering the downtown Washington offices of the powerful Venable law firm accompanied by “a pair of oversize bodyguards,” as a Washington Post gossip columnist described them.

  Bain had set Michael up at Venable, a firm that employed more than six hundred attorneys and was consistently ranked among the most influential in the country, with alumni who included a U.S. senator, a former U.S. attorney general, and assorted CEOs. The firm welcomed few clients who had the effect that a Michael Jackson did, though, and before his arrival a memo was sent to staffers warning them not to “gawk at clients.”

  Awaiting Jackson in the conference room was Howard King, there to conduct the first deposition of the defendant in the lawsuit brought by Dieter Wiesner, who was seated at the attorney’s side. There would be no change of wardrobe this time; Michael wore the same black jacket, white shirt, black pants, white socks, and black loafers throughout and never removed his sunglasses. King was struck by the fact that Michael “seemed more clear-headed” than he had at the London deposition in the Schaffel case, and greeted Dieter far more warmly than he had Marc Schaffel.

  Things got edgy early on, though, when Michael claimed to have forgotten signing the management contract with Wiesner, and suggested that it could have been because he was under the influence of prescription drugs.

  “Were you impaired by the taking of prescription medications or something else at the time you signed these documents?” King asked.

  “I could have been,” answered Michael, who had never before gone on the record with an admission of his drug habit.

  “How long in 2004 were you impaired because of the taking of prescription medication?” King asked a little later.

  “I don’t know,” Michael told him.

  “Was it most of 2003?” King asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Michael told him.

  “Did Dr. Farshchian prescribe medication for you?” King inquired.

  “No, it wasn’t Farshchian,” Michael answered, clearly uncomfortable. “I think it was a local.”

  “During the period of time you were impaired by the taking of prescription medication,” King continued, “was this an impairment that lasted, like, all your waking hours, or did it come and go?”

  “It comes and goes,” Michael replied, “not all of the waking hours, of course not. Yes.”

  Michael had continued to smile at Wiesner even during this part of his interrogation and when it was done agreed with King’s suggestion that he and Dieter go into a room alone and speak privately. “We talked about family and friends for a while,” Wiesner remembered, “and then Michael mentioned that he wanted to work together again, and his voice changed. He told me that he had almost no money coming in, and that he was desperate.” Dieter was among the few people Michael could tell that his only credit card, a black one from American Express with no limit on it, had been canceled a few weeks earlier and that he was unable to obtain a replacement. During his weeks on the East Coast, he had been asked to leave several hotels after using the canceled American Express card to check in. Tears welled up in Michael’s eyes and his voice broke as he described the humiliation of these scenes and the expressions on people’s faces as they watched him and his children march through the lobby onto the sidewalk outside. “He asked for help,” Wiesner recalled. “I could see that it was a very, very hard time for Michael. He had nowhere to go and he was afraid. He felt they might make him go on tour, but he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t know what to do.”

  The only plan Michael seemed to have for his immediate future, Wiesner remembered, was to seek out sanctuary and wait to see what came his way.

  The arrival of the Michael Jackson traveling party at the Cascio home in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, during the first week of August 2007 startled not only the people next door, but also Grace Rwaramba. She had no idea where they were headed, Grace recalled, until they were almost there. The Cascios were used to it. Michael Jackson had been showing up announced on their front porch for nearly a quarter century. More than once, he had awakened them by knocking on the door in the middle of the night. These people he called his “second family” always welcomed him. In return, he had insisted that they fly out to California to be present for the births of each of his children; not a single Jackson family member was invited. Connie Cascio continued to be the only person other than Grace whom Michael trusted to take care of his kids. In recent years, he had spent many more holidays with them than with anyone from his birth family, including his mother Katherine.

  Michael’s relationship with the Cascios had weathered criticism and controversy beginning back in 1993 when the New York tabloids quoted Blanca Francia’s claims about seeing Jackson naked with young boys, naming Frank as one of them. After Frank told his parents it was a lie, they continued to let him travel with Michael. Ten years later, when the allegations of Gavin Arvizo had turned into a criminal complaint by Santa Barbara County authorities, Dominic Cascio sat his children down and asked whether there had ever been any “improprieties” during their sleepovers. Frank, Eddie, and Marie Nicole all told him very firmly that there had not been. After documents surfaced showing that in 2002 Michael had loaned the Cascios $600,000 to start a restaurant, some suggested that it was a “payoff,” noting that more than one year later no such restaurant existed. The Cascios dismissed the story and, by the time of Michael’s acquittal in Santa Maria, were serving customers at their Brick House Italian restaurant in Wyckoff, New Jersey, just a short drive east from the family home on Franklin Avenue.

  Michael settled quickly into the “cave” the Cascios created for him in their basement, right next to the wooden dance floor they had installed. Michael said he and the kids and Grace would be staying for “a while.” The nanny didn’t conceal her displeasure at being forced to share the Cascios’ guest bedroom with all three of the kids. Her description of the Cascio home made the place sound small and shabby when in fact the house was a comfortable white brick and clapboard neocolonial on a raised lot in one of New Jersey’s wealthiest boroughs, a suburban enclave that talk show host Kelly Ripa and assorted profess
ional athletes called home.

  Grace had been shaken and embarrassed by the experience of being asked to leave hotels in both Washington, D.C., and New York City after Michael’s credit card was canceled. She noticed that Michael was trying to pass off the New Jersey visit to both the Cascios and to the kids as a late summer holiday. Privately, Michael told Grace that they were staying until they had some place else to go. “I felt so bad that we were staying such a long time at this family’s small home,” Grace said, as their holiday was extended week after week, but the Cascios didn’t seem to mind. Even though they were only about the same age as Michael’s oldest siblings, Dominic and Connie knew that he enjoyed being treated like their oldest son, returning home after a long absence. Michael especially enjoyed standing around the kitchen counter with the whole family, sharing memories and encouraging the Cascios, one at a time, to tell the others what he or she was most thankful for. Connie cooked the homemade pizzas and pastas Michael loved, and regularly served his favorite dinner, roast turkey with mashed potatoes and stuffing. He always insisted that they hold hands and say grace together at mealtime. As they always did when Michael came for a visit, the Cascios set up the theater-style candy counter that he loved to visit with his kids before settling down to watch a movie on TV.

  Michael was happy to help out with the household chores, Connie Cascio recalled, loading and unloading the dishwasher and dusting the furniture. Michael seemed to delight in vacuuming the floors and would do it daily if asked. He made his own bed each morning and instructed the three children to do the same. He and his family understood better than anyone else how much this facsimile of ordinary life meant to Michael, Frank Cascio would say, how deeply he cherished it. “That’s when he was himself,” Frank said. Michael slept fine at their house, according to the Cascios, and was not using any drugs at all as far as they knew.

  The children’s tutor was staying at a nearby motel with the bodyguards and came to the house daily to teach “school.” Afterward, they would spend hours splashing in the Cascios’ backyard pool and seemed content. While they studied and played, their father was working with Eddie in the Cascios’ basement recording studio.

  Eddie Cascio had already made a name for himself—“Angel Cascio” he was called—in the music business. An article touting the young man’s career had been published in the school newspaper at Drew University, where Eddie had graduated in 2004 with a degree in sociology. With the help of “a family friend with connections in the business,” as Eddie described Michael in the article, he had begun selling songs to Sony/ATV while still an undergraduate. Soon he was working as a producer for ’N Sync on their song “Fallin’” and that landed him jobs working on the Luther Vandross album Dance with My Father and on Usher’s Here I Stand. Before his graduation, Eddie had formed his own company, Angelikson Music. The parents who had started him off with piano lessons years earlier at Michael’s urging paid for the construction of a recording studio in their basement that, while not state of the art, was well enough equipped to convince Michael Jackson that he and his young friend should lay down some tracks together. They recorded twelve songs in all, the most memorable (if not the best) being “Breaking News,” an antitabloid screed in which Michael vented his rage and hurt over what had been done to him during his criminal trial, referring to himself repeatedly by name. He and Eddie had written the song together, with help from James Porte, an arranger and engineer who had worked with Eddie on the Luther Vandross album.

  Within a couple of weeks of landing at the Cascios, Michael began venturing out, most often with Frank, who had been helping him work up disguises for years. The two shopped at malls all over the New Jersey suburbs without Michael being recognized, according to Frank. Michael ate out regularly with members of the Cascio family at the Brick House. The bodyguards who occasionally joined the group, though, were growing unhappy about not being paid, especially when they reflected on the size of the legal bills that were being forwarded to Michael. A complaint by Jackson’s former attorney Brian Ayscough one year earlier had identified more than a dozen lawyers who claimed Michael owed them amounts ranging from $100,000 to $1.25 million. More names had been added to that list in the twelve months since and Jackson simply didn’t have the money to pay them.

  Michael’s cash flow crisis was squeezing him tighter week-by-week. His only way out was the deal to refinance his debt, which had been delayed again by Fortress Investment’s surprising decision to exercise its right to match any financing terms offered by another lender and thereby hold on to Michael’s loans. In the meantime, the list of creditors pursuing him now included any number of people he had once considered close friends, along with his brother Randy and Randy’s girlfriend Taunya Zilkie, who had each filed claims against him.

  After September, Michael began demonstrating less concern about being recognized in public. On October 31, he showed up with Frank Cascio at the Halloween Store in the Boulder Run Mall wearing a disguise that consisted of only a baseball cap worn with sunglasses and a scarf that was wrapped around his neck and lower face. After picking out $200 worth of disguises that included a Mardi Gras mask and a king’s robe, Michael stepped up to the counter and let the scarf slip below his chin. When the young woman ringing up his order saw who it was, she gasped. Less than a minute after Michael and Frank stepped out of the store, she was on the phone with the New York Daily News.

  By the next morning, everyone in the metropolitan area knew that Michael Jackson had been staying for weeks with a family in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. It was time to find another hiding place.

  14

  Michael departed the Cascios’ three days later when he got a phone call from Jesse Jackson, who asked whether he was planning to attend the gala party planned for the reverend’s sixty-sixth birthday at the Beverly Hilton. Michael had no choice but to explain that he didn’t have the cash to pay for the trip, and couldn’t use his credit card. Startled and slightly alarmed, the Reverend Jackson asked mutual friend Ron Burkle to fly Michael, the kids, and Grace—plus his three bodyguards—to Los Angeles and put them up in rooms at the Beverly Hilton for three nights.

  Burkle was a “babe-chasing supermarket billionaire” (as the New York Post enjoyed describing him) best known as the close personal friend and business partner of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who for years had jokingly referred to the billionaire’s private Boeing 747 jet, famous for the number of supermodels who had flown aboard it, as “Air Force Two.” Burkle maintained a wide array of friends and familiars, in large part due to his prominence as a fund-raiser for Democratic political candidates. In 2004, Burkle hosted a fund-raiser at his Beverly Hills estate, “Green Acres,” a home built by silent-screen legend Harold Lloyd, where wealthy Democrats paid $100,000 per couple to attend.

  It was Jesse Jackson who had introduced Burkle to Michael Jackson five years prior, encouraging the billionaire to help Michael deal with his fiscal circumstances. Michael first seriously discussed the subject of his finances with the supermarket mogul after they met at Johnnie Cochran’s funeral in 2005. Like so many advisors before him, Burkle had attempted to persuade Michael it was time to curb his spending and go back to work at what would make him money. Burkle also hired forensic accountants (whom he paid for himself) to examine Jackson’s finances, and in the process convinced Michael that various unnamed advisors were fleecing him. During a deposition in the Prescient Capital case that Jackson gave in Paris during 2006 (on his way to Ireland), Michael credited Burkle with protecting him from the assorted “sharks, charlatans, and imposters”—many of whom, he said, had been introduced by his brother Randy—who were pilfering his wealth. And now, at Jesse Jackson’s birthday party in the grand ballroom at the Beverly Hilton, Michael asked again if Burkle could help him sort out the mess of his current cash flow crisis.

  Burkle had responded, by all accounts, with extraordinary generosity, moving Michael and his children into the Green Acres mansion when their three days at the Hilton w
ere up, and once again hiring accountants to examine Jackson’s situation. It was a thicket, to say the least. The refinancing of Jackson’s enormous debt was still not accomplished. Negotiations had dragged on for eighteen months and new claimants were joining the pool of creditors every week. Lawsuits against Jackson continued to proliferate. The security guard screening Michael’s e-mails would say later that most of those demanding payment were attorneys, with many of the bills in seven figures. What Michael brought on himself was more than matched by the frivolous claims against him. The world was full of people who thought it was fair to carve another two or three or four million dollars out of Michael Jackson and there were enough large predators looking for eight figures to make his world a truly scary place. The family of Roc-A-Fella Records cofounder Damon Dash had sued Jackson ten times in the year 2007 alone. Damon’s cousin Darien Dash was the principal in Prescient Capital, and the force behind the massive lawsuit that had nearly forced Jackson into bankruptcy.

  An accountant hired by Randy Jackson had signed the deal with Dash—whether with or without Michael’s consent was a matter of dispute—to arrange for a $272 million loan to replace the debt Jackson owed to Bank of America, plus find another $573 million in financing to purchase Sony’s half of the Beatles song catalog. The contract had been executed in May 2005 just as Michael was approaching the climax of his criminal trial in Santa Barbara County, when he was most distracted and Randy Jackson’s control was most absolute. Michael’s refusal to honor the commitments made by his brother had cost Prescient Capital—and him personally—some $48 million, according to Darien Dash, who had been blocking the renegotiation of Michael’s debt for months, demanding that the banks settle with him.

  Other more arcane court filings multiplied the cost of being the King of Pop. A London woman who called herself Nona Jackson had sued Jackson in Los Angeles with the claim that she was the mother of all three of his children, demanding not only custody of the kids but compensation for the three thousand songs she claimed to have written for her “longtime lover.” Up in Santa Barbara County, the family of an elderly woman who had died at the Marian Medical Center shortly after Jackson’s stay at the hospital filed a lawsuit claiming her death was caused by being moved to free a room for the entertainer.