Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

by Bill Whitfield

  Without the per diem, we didn’t even have petty cash on hand to do our jobs right. We used to take the trucks to get them professionally washed and detailed every week. Didn’t have money for that anymore. We started going to those little do-it-yourself car washes where you pump in a bunch of quarters and wash and dry the car yourself. Some weeks, we couldn’t even do that. Mr. Jackson and the kids would get in the car and there’d be dirt and food crumbs in the seats. We couldn’t get our suits cleaned and pressed, either.

  Bill: Tempers were running short. We were tired, frustrated, hungry. I tried to be the Buddha in the situation, tried to keep spirits up and keep calm. To me, having done this longer, it was all part of the business. But a lot of it was new to Javon. He had a harder time.

  Javon: We tried our best to not let Mr. Jackson see our frustration, but he would catch it at times. Some days, he’d call us and ask us to do something last minute. He’d call us at six-thirty in the morning and say, “I need you guys to get some things from the store.” We’d have to get up out of bed, put on our suits, our equilibrium all messed up, driving over there with an attitude. He could tell. He’d say, “Hey Javon, what’s the matter? I don’t see a smile.”

  He was so sweet and disarming and gentle all the time. That made it really hard to stay mad.

  Bill: I wasn’t getting any petty cash and I’d damn near maxed out my credit cards, but the way he was still shopping, you’d think there was no problem. During the day, we would go to these antique stores on Park and Lexington Avenue in the city, the ones with those big antique globes. He would pick out a bunch of things that he wanted and have me make arrangements to get it.

  There’s a mall in New Jersey off Route 4, The Mall at Short Hills. We went there a few times. Near one of the entrances where we’d go in, there was this huge Ferris wheel, an indoor amusement park type of thing. He checked it out as we walked past, and then on the way back to the car, he said, “Bill, I want you to find out who makes that Ferris wheel. See what it costs. I want that.”

  You can only imagine what was going through my head. Where the hell was he going to put a Ferris wheel? Dude didn’t even have a house; he was crashing in someone’s basement. I went back to the mall later that evening and took a picture of the manufacturer’s tag and did some follow-up, and the thing cost about $300,000. I gave him the information. Thankfully there wasn’t any further discussion about it.

  What was really difficult was knowing that he had the cash to pay us. He carried enough cash on his person that he could have made us whole at any time. We didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer. We knew how he felt about that money. That was separate. It was for him and his kids. He didn’t think of that money as part of the money for his business. It was frustrating. He’d give you a thousand dollars because he wanted something. Something ridiculous, unnecessary. He’d call and say, “Bill, I left some money at the back door. I need a flat screen TV and some new iPhone attachments.” We’d go pick up whatever it was. Then, when we dropped it off, sometimes we’d try and keep the change. You know, so we could eat something? He would ask for the change.

  Javon: The anger, the animosity, the frustration—me and Bill started taking it out on each other. We’d go on details and not say a word to each other unless we had to. I remember one night we almost went at it. I’d been hand-washing my shirts and my suits and hanging them up in the shower and using a hair dryer to dry them. Stranded in this cheap hotel, living on soup and crackers. I went to tell Bill I couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t even want to see me. I banged on his door for an hour, yelling at him, before he even let me in. When he finally opened the door, I could tell he was really pissed off. I told him, “I need to send my suit to the cleaners, so I’m gonna need some money for that. You’re gonna have to call Ms. Raymone and let her know.”

  Bill lit up. “What the fuck?! We both need our suits cleaned. Why is this about you?!”

  “Well, what the fuck you want me to do? You’re the one communicatin’ with Ms. Raymone!”

  We got into it for a good twenty minutes, going back and forth.

  “I maxed out all my credit cards!”

  “I maxed out mine too!”

  We kept throwing all these complaints at each other, but everything one of us was going through we were both going through. I had a newborn back at home. Bill was a single father, away from his daughter. We had to catch ourselves. Like, wait a minute. Why are we fighting with each other? We were tired of it. We both could have used a drink, but we couldn’t afford one.

  There were days we were so frustrated we were begging for someone to take it out on. There were days we wished somebody would try to hurt the boss. We wished somebody would come at us, because that person was going to get fucked up. I had a brass-knuckle stun gun that puts out 950,000 volts per second. I kept telling Bill that I was itching to use it. I said, “Please let somebody say something crazy to Mr. Jackson or walk up to him in the wrong way. Please let somebody get out of line.”

  Bill: We wanted to whip somebody’s ass in front of Michael Jackson. Just to show him our frustrations. We wanted him to be right there to see it. That’s how we felt.

  We’d let him get a few kicks in too, ’cause we knew he had some frustrations of his own to work out. “Hey, Mr. Jackson, come kick this motherfucker. Get a few good hits in.”

  Javon: The question we get all the time is “Why did you stay? Why didn’t you quit?” It sounds strange, but we felt like staying was not just our professional obligation, but it was the most practical thing to do. We knew exactly how much money he owed to other people. If we left, we’d be at the back of that line with everybody else. We’d never see a dime.

  Bill: We decided that no matter how hard it got, Mr. Jackson wasn’t leaving our sight, because as long as he was standing there next to us, they’d have to pay us eventually. So that was the practical side of it. But on the other side, the personal side, I can tell you exactly why we stayed. We stayed for the kids, for Paris, Prince, and Blanket. You couldn’t turn your back on them. You knew what they were up against. Isolated. Alone. What were they going to do if something happened to him? It was like what he told me on the phone in Virginia: as much as he loved them, there were certain things he couldn’t do for them on his own. We sacrificed time with our own kids to be able to give them that, and we were afraid of new people coming in and not caring as much.

  Javon: We kind of broke security protocol. You’re not supposed to become that attached to your clients. But we were around them sixteen hours a day and we couldn’t help it. Any time we might have thought about leaving, we’d bring the kids something from the store and they’d light up, saying, “Thank you, Javon! Thank you!” and we’d just melt.

  We always felt needed. We felt like we were doing something important, more than you’d get from just a regular job. We’d be driving on a detail and Mr. Jackson would say, “You guys, I’m really proud of you, and the kids really like you. You’re doing a really good job. I don’t want you to think I’m not appreciative.” Times like that made us feel good. This was Michael Jackson telling us this. I don’t care what nobody says, when Michael Jackson is telling you that you did a good job, you just take it differently than working a regular nine to five. And when we finally did get paid? He got so excited about it. He wanted so much for us to feel good about working for him.

  It was after we’d been in New Jersey for a couple weeks, when we went and did the photo shoot for Italian Vogue. The magazine put us up at The Carlyle in Manhattan on the Upper East Side. The shoot was at a studio off the West Side Highway on 53rd or 54th Street, this huge loft in an old warehouse building. It had an elevator big enough for our SUVs, so we drove the trucks right into the building and rode up and parked on the floor where they were doing the shoot. They had racks of clothes and all this expensive jewelry for him to wear.

  Mr. Jackson was in the makeup chair getting ready when Ms. Raymone showed up. She came in with a stack of mail and packages to give h
im. In that stack were two envelopes for me and Bill. When she handed him that? He stopped the photo shoot. He just stopped everything. He jumped out of his chair—makeup half done, with the smock still on, curlers in his hair—and he ran across the room waving these envelopes, going, “Bill! Javon! I’ve got a surprise for you!”

  He had this huge smile on his face as he handed them to us. “See? Here you go! I told you guys. I promised. I’m sorry it took so long. Thank you so much for sticking by me. Anybody else would have left.” We said thank you, and he said, “Now we can go back to work, right? I need your morale back. Now you can give me some smiles again, okay?”

  It was so heartfelt. He was so proud of himself that he got us paid. We were excited, too. Then we opened the envelopes.

  Bill: It was half. Raymone paid us half of what we were owed. She came over after Mr. Jackson left, and she said, “Are you guys satisfied now?” Like she was doing us a favor. That made us real hot. I told her we’d discuss it with her later.

  When the shoot was over, we got in the car and Mr. Jackson said, “Everybody’s happy? Are you guys happy?”

  I forced a smile. I said, “Yes, sir. We’re good.”

  I wasn’t good. I was pissed. I was pissed off that I didn’t get all of my paycheck. But I’d seen the excitement on his face, the joy that he had done this for us. He was happy, and it was so rare to see him happy. How was I going to take that away from him?

  Javon: Later that night, we were back at The Carlyle. I ran into Raymone and two of her colleagues in the restaurant and she was flagging me down. “Javon, come here! Come here! How are you doin’? What’s goin’ on?”

  Raymone was always more cordial to me in person than to Bill. I wasn’t on the phone getting in between her and Mr. Jackson, so in her eyes I was just the errand boy. So I walked over with a little fake smile, and she could tell it was fake. She said, “Where you going?”

  I said, “Going to get something to eat.”

  “Oh, sit down with us and have a drink!”

  I didn’t want to be difficult and make more tension than there already was, so I sat down with them for a while. When the check came, I caught a glimpse of it. The bill came to $2,300 for the five of us. They must have been drinking the good stuff. I just sat there looking at the check like, Damn, that’s most of what I’m short right there.

  Raymone said, “Javon, what’s the problem?”

  I didn’t think it was appropriate to say anything with other people there, so I said, “Nothing. I’m just not in a good mood right now. I’m going to go back up to my room.”

  “Okay, you have a good night.”

  Bill: I think she thought we were stupid. Like we couldn’t see right through what she was trying to do with Mike LaPerruque. Like how she’d rented that condo in Vegas under Mr. Jackson’s name and then had us drop her off there routinely without thinking maybe we’d put two and two together about it. Mr. Jackson clearly didn’t trust her. Why was she still in the picture? We didn’t know.

  Fortunately, we didn’t have to worry about Mike LaPerruque for very long. He fell out of favor with Mr. Jackson right after he showed up. Couple days after the Vogue shoot, we were in Jersey driving home from the mall. It was me, Mr. Jackson, and Mike, and it came over the radio that O. J. Simpson had been arrested in Las Vegas. This was the time he got busted for armed robbery, trying to steal some of his own sports memorabilia from some people at a hotel. This news came over the radio, and Mike LaPerruque said, “They finally got him! They finally got O. J.!”

  Mr. Jackson was in the backseat. He said, “What? What’s that about O. J.?”

  Mike said, “They finally got him.”

  “What do you mean they finally got him?”

  “He was arrested, in Vegas.”

  Mr. Jackson didn’t really react. He just said, “Oh.” We stopped a few minutes later, and Mike had to run inside a store to get something, and Mr. Jackson said, “Bill, I didn’t like that.”

  I said, “What’s that, sir?”

  “I didn’t like that comment about O. J. O. J. and I were friends. No one knows this, but he stayed with me at Neverland after he was acquitted.”

  I sat there thinking, Whaaat? I’d never heard that before.

  I didn’t get a clear sense on whether he thought O. J. was guilty or not, but I think his sympathies were with O. J. on the way he was hounded, how even after he was acquitted, people never left him alone. Mr. Jackson said he knew exactly what O. J. was going through. He said, “O. J. should have just left the country. He should have left and never come back.”

  So after Mike made that O. J. comment? Mr. Jackson wasn’t feeling him so much. It was also obvious early on that Mike was feeding Raymone information, and Mr. Jackson didn’t like that, either. He said, “That’s not the same guy that used to work with me.” Mr. Jackson didn’t fire him. He stuck around, but we started to go on details without him.

  About a week after the Vogue shoot, we did the second one for Ebony. That was a big deal. They put us up at the Four Seasons. The shoot itself took place at the Brooklyn Museum. The whole place was shut down for the day. Ebony took it over. We brought Mr. Jackson in around eight in the morning. He had a dressing room, racks of designer clothes. There was all this activity swirling around him. The magazine people were there, a lot of executives.

  It was one thing to see fans screaming and trying to get at him. When you have fans, you’re trying to be a buffer; you’re in a protective mode. Here, I wasn’t trying to push anyone away, so I could see just how all these people approached him and interacted with him, how deferential everyone was. These were all successful, important people in the industry, but they all bowed to him. Everything moved around him. Everywhere he stepped his presence would shift the whole energy of the room.

  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 usi
ng 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.”