I was still in the middle of taking things out of my pockets; I hadn’t even gone through the metal detector yet. They said, “Don’t worry about your pockets, sir. Just come on through.”
I went to the other side and they turned the briefcase around. There was at least $300,000 in there. Ten-thousand-dollar stacks. Nothing but the Benjamins. And these two guys didn’t know who I was with. Mr. Jackson had gone through separately. They thought this belonged to me. My first instinct was to run. My mind snapped into ghetto mode, you know? I’m a black man at the airport with a suitcase full of cash. I didn’t know what to do.
They said, “You have to claim this.”
Just as they were telling me what I needed to do and who I needed to call, the manager who’d escorted Mr. Jackson to the plane happened to be walking back. I flagged her down and said, “Ma’am, can you please tell them who I’m with?”
The manager looked down and saw the briefcase and said, “Oh, you’re with the . . .” She gestured back toward the gate. “Right. You’re fine.” She turned to the two agents. “He’s fine. Let him through.”
They let me through, and I got the carry-ons and headed to the gate. You talk about relief? I thought I was going to be detained. I didn’t know what.
We flew into LAX and we were met by a car service and a couple other security guys who worked for Jesse Jackson. The schoolteacher, the hairstylist, and I were going to stay at a hotel by the airport. Mr. Jackson and the kids were staying as the guest of some friend of Jesse Jackson’s in Beverly Hills. Mike LaPerruque was from L.A., so he stayed at his own house, and he didn’t live too far. Javon had his people in L.A. too; he stayed with his grandmother. I took Mr. Jackson and the kids to the house and then crashed at the hotel.
The party was at the Beverly Hilton two days later. I got in touch with Jesse Jackson’s people to go over the arrangements, which way we’d be coming in, what time, where. That night when we arrived, Jesse Jackson was outside waiting for us. Lots of big names. Larry King. Don Cornelius from Soul Train. We got out of the car, and the flashes from the cameras started going off—boom, boom, boom! They were all around us. Everywhere. We did the whole red carpet thing and then went inside.
As I was walking Mr. Jackson to his table, I saw Berry Gordy. I knew he’d been instrumental in Mr. Jackson’s career coming up at Motown, but I’d never heard Mr. Jackson mention his name before, so I wasn’t sure if there was some animosity between them. I whispered to Mr. Jackson, “Sir, there’s Berry Gordy.” When Mr. Jackson saw him? He damn near knocked a woman down rushing over to see him. He ran straight over to Berry Gordy and grabbed him and gave him the biggest hug.
It was a real friendship hug that they gave each other. When I saw that, I felt good about it. After the event, we went upstairs to a suite for the after-party, and Mr. Jackson and Berry Gordy were talking again. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but just from the looks on their faces, I could tell the conversation was deep. At one point, I did hear Mr. Jackson say, “Thank you. I miss you. I could use your help.” Maybe he was really opening up about the state he was in, the problems he was having. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it was good that he could talk to someone who went back that far, someone he knew. Once the party was over, we got the cars ready. Jesse Jackson walked him to the door and thanked him for being there, and we bounced.
The next morning, I got a call from the hotel desk around eleven. They said, “Will you be checking out today?”
I said, “I don’t think so.”
“Well, we only had a prepayment for three days, and we’re going to need another credit card to put on the account by noon.”
I called Mr. Jackson and made him aware of the situation. He told me to call Londell. I called Londell. Londell said, “Why are you guys still there?”
I said, “I don’t know. Nobody told me any different.”
He said, “Only three days were paid for at the hotel. He’s supposed to be out of the house he’s staying at too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. That guy has other guests coming in. We told him that Mr. Jackson only needed the house for three days.”
Londell told me the rest was up to us. “Figure it out,” he said. Those were his exact words. I called Mr. Jackson and told him that Londell said there was nothing he could do and that we were going to have to leave the hotel. Mr. Jackson said, “Okay. I’ll call you right back.”
That was at noon. One o’clock came and I was still sitting in my room, waiting. I stayed there until three, when they finally came and kicked my ass out. The schoolteacher and the hairstylist were there with me; they got kicked out too.
I had just enough room on my card to pay for one room for one more night, so I got a room for the schoolteacher. She needed a place to stay and we had a bunch of luggage that had to go somewhere. The stylist, she left and stayed with friends. I figured I’d wait and find out what to do with myself. I called Mr. Jackson a couple of times. Didn’t hear from him. I was pissed. I decided to give it until seven o’clock. I said, “If he doesn’t hit me back by seven, I’m out of here.” I sat in the hotel lounge with my bags all afternoon. I called Mr. Jackson one last time at 7:30, and his phone went straight to voicemail. I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that I had to get home. I’ve been away from my daughter. I’m broke. I’m ready to go home.
I had no credit card, just a little bit of cash, so I called a friend of mine and had him book a car for me to drive back to Vegas. I called Javon and let him know what was going on.
Javon: Bill was like, “I’m not going to stay here if nobody’s on the same page. I’m gone.”
I said I’d stay in L.A. a little while longer, but eventually I had to get back to my family too. I asked Bill, “Is there anything I need to do? Do I need to check on him?”
He said, “He has your number. If he hasn’t called, then I guess he’s fine.”
I totally lied to my family about the whole situation. I told them that Mr. Jackson just gave me a little time off because we had been on the road for so long. I didn’t want to tell my grandmother, “I’m here because I don’t have money for a hotel.” I didn’t want to create a panic about how deep in the hole I was.
Bill: I knew that Vegas was the next stop, and since we didn’t know where Mr. Jackson was going to be staying, I needed to go back and start looking into that anyway. My mind was running through all kinds of options. I just knew I had to figure something out. I got back to Vegas late that night. Early the next morning, around eight o’clock, I was sitting at my kitchen table looking at houses online when the phone rang. It was Mr. Jackson. He said, “Bill, I need one of you guys to run out and get me a radio. I don’t have any music in this house.”
No mention of anything that happened the day before. The schoolteacher. Getting kicked out of the hotel. Like it never happened. I said, “Mr. Jackson, I’m in Vegas.”
“Vegas? What are you doing in Vegas?”
“Mr. Jackson, I called you last night, remember? I told you they were kicking me out of my hotel, so I came back to find you a place to stay for when you come home.”
“Well, who’s here with me and my kids?”
“Javon’s there, and Mike is there too.”
“When am I coming back to Vegas?”
“That’s what I’m working on right now.”
“Okay. Find out where we’re going to stay and call me back.”
Then he hung up. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I had no idea what was going on.
Javon: Mr. Jackson didn’t call the whole time I was in L.A. I stayed about four or five days and finally decided to head back myself. I had my sister book me a flight.
I was happy to be home, especially when I saw my baby. But it was also kind of like a letdown. I didn’t want to tell my girlfriend what was really going on. She could tell I came back kind of distraught. I’d been gone all this time, and I didn’t have a lot to show for it. I should have come back bearing gifts, and
I had nothing but the clothes on my back and a piece of luggage.
It was bittersweet. It was sweet because I got to see my family, and it was bitter because with work, it was here we go again. I was looking at a stack of bills that had piled up. In my head I was thinking, Should I hold on or look for another job? Do I walk away now and call my old company, see if maybe I can get back on there? Here I was at Christmastime and I couldn’t even buy presents. That’s when the reality of it set in: I wasn’t going to be able to do Christmas for my kids this year. Bill kept saying, “Hold on.” But I was thinking, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I was really in a bad place.
Bill: Thanksgiving came and went. Pretty soon, Christmas was approaching, and Mr. Jackson was still at the house in Beverly Hills, the one he was only supposed to be at for three days. He’d talked his way into staying for three weeks. I was going around Vegas, looking at houses, hotels, trying to come up with a plan. I called Raymone, tried to work something out through her. She was no help. She said, “Bill, I don’t know.” Okay. Next call: Peter Lopez. I couldn’t reach him. He was out of the country. Next call: Londell. Londell said he’d help out and he put me in touch with his assistant. I told her about the Green Valley Ranch, the place we’d stayed before when we had to evacuate the Monte Cristo house.
She said, “Okay, we’ll just have him go back there. We’ll put it on Londell’s credit card and he can be reimbursed.”
We hired a bus to drive Mr. Jackson and the kids from L.A. to Vegas. I called him and told him that he was coming back to the Green Valley Ranch. When he stayed there before, he was in the Presidential Suite. It had an indoor pool. The kids liked it. He told me he wanted the same room. I called Londell and told him. Londell said, “How much is it?”
I said, “Twenty-five hundred a night.”
“What the fuck!?”
“Yo, man, I’m just tellin’ you what he wants.”
Londell damn near lost it. He started off about Mr. Jackson needing to get his finances under control. He said, “I’m not putting him in a $2,500-a-night room. Put him in a regular room. He needs to know how fucked up his finances are.” We talked about the spending for a bit. He finally agreed to pay for a suite for two weeks, but it wasn’t the Presidential Suite. I just called Mr. Jackson and told him it wasn’t available. While we were on the phone, he asked me about Mike LaPerruque. He said, “Is Mike coming with us to Vegas?”
I said, “Yeah, as far as I know.”
He said, “Well, we can just . . . hold off on that. We’ll send for him later.”
I knew what he meant. That was the last we saw of Mike LaPerruque.
Javon: We stayed at Green Valley Ranch for a couple of weeks. Bill and I both had rooms directly across from Mr. Jackson’s, but a majority of the time, I was in Bill’s room because that’s where we had CCTV monitors set up for the cameras outside Mr. Jackson’s suite. We would take shifts watching the monitors, doing patrols. He wasn’t really leaving his room much. Grace wasn’t around, and the kids were on winter break from school, so the teacher wasn’t around much, either. After a few days, Prince’s dog arrived. The kids got real excited about that.
The whole time, Mr. Jackson made it seem like he was just chilling for a bit until he moved into that house off Durango, that $55 million estate. He kept talking about it like it was his house. He kept saying, “That’s going to be my house.” And when he said it, he was completely convinced of it. He’d say, “I’ve got some deals that are about to go through. I’m going to buy this house, and you guys are going to be fine. Don’t worry.” While we were out shopping, he even told us, “You guys look for some golf carts. We’re going to need golf carts for you to patrol the property once we move in.”
We kept thinking, How is he going to afford this? How? But who were we to say that Michael Jackson didn’t have some big deal about to happen? He’s Michael Jackson. And we’d put in so much time, sweat, and tears, we wanted to believe it was true. We wanted a reason to stick with him and see things turn around.
Bill: The schoolteacher had a place to stay. She had a small apartment that was still available because it had been paid for in advance for a year, so it was available for her when we got back. Grace was traveling. She’d been in Jersey for about three days and then she’d bounced. I hadn’t seen her since. That got me thinking about her apartment at the Turnberry, where Raymone had her place too. I didn’t know if Grace was coming back, but I knew Raymone’s had to be empty. So I said to Mr. Jackson, “Why don’t you stay at Raymone’s apartment?”
He said, “Raymone has a place in Vegas?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“At the Turnberry Towers.”
He didn’t know what that was. I had to explain it to him. High-end, gated community, luxury condos. He said, “Bill, I need you to find out who’s paying for that.”
I called the property manager that was renting them out and he said, “I can’t give that information to you.”
I said, “Well, if the apartment is in Michael Jackson’s name then surely you can give the information to him.”
He said he could, so I put Mr. Jackson on the phone and that’s when he learned that the apartment was being paid for out of an account Raymone controlled on his behalf. He was livid. He told me he wanted both apartments, Grace’s and Raymone’s. He said, “I want my mom to have one of those apartments and I’ll stay in the other one.”
I said I’d get right on it. I called Raymone and told her, “Mr. Jackson wants the apartments.”
She said, “What apartments?”
“The ones over at the Turnberry.”
She seemed caught off guard. She said that we didn’t have those anymore. A friend was letting her use them.
I didn’t say anything. I knew this was one of those times I should just play dumb and stay out of it.
A few days later, she came out to Vegas because that situation got ugly. The first thing she said on the way home from the airport was, “Bill, we don’t have those apartments anymore. I don’t know why he thinks that we have those apartments and that we were paying for them out of his money.” I didn’t argue with her. She didn’t need to justify herself to me; she needed to justify herself to Mr. Jackson.
I took her to meet with him. Whatever went down between them in that conversation, I have no idea. The apartments never came up again. They were gone. They were unavailable. Maybe the rent was already late on them? Maybe Mr. Jackson had known about them at one point but then forgot? That wouldn’t have surprised me. It was never explained. But that was the last I ever saw or heard from Raymone Bain.
After two weeks at the Green Valley Ranch, the manager called me and said, “Mr. Whitfield, we’re going to need another credit card. The card that was on this account has been withdrawn.”
I got in touch with Londell. He confirmed that he’d withdrawn his card. He said two weeks was all he’d agreed to do and he couldn’t run an endless tab for the hotel. It was like, You’re on your own.
I went to Mr. Jackson and told him, “Sir, the credit card on file is being declined. We’re going to need another card to put on the account.”
He said, “Okay. So give them another card.”
He said it like I could just reach into my pocket and pull out a Platinum American Express. I said, “Sir, I don’t have another card to give them.”
He didn’t really have an answer to that. He just expected me to call someone and handle it. I went back to the hotel manager and tried to negotiate for more time. He wouldn’t budge. He wanted us gone by the end of the day or the hotel would have us removed. If word of something like that got out to the tabloids? I couldn’t let that happen. I was scrambling. Javon was already packing up our security gear and putting it in my car so that it wouldn’t get locked inside the room.
I couldn’t call Raymone. Couldn’t call Londell. Finally, I got a hold of Peter Lopez. He said he’d work on something and call me back. He called me back a coup
le hours later and said, “You guys are going to go to the Palms.” Peter was friends with George Maloof, the owner of the hotel, and he’d agreed to put up Mr. Jackson and the kids for a couple of days.
We had to be out of the Green Valley Ranch in a matter of hours. Packing his things was an ordeal in and of itself. Michael Jackson didn’t pack his own luggage. When he was ready to move, he would just pull all his stuff into the middle of the hotel suite and leave it for us to pack up. That was the usual routine. When I was packing up his room, I went into his bathroom to check for stuff in there. I opened the door, and the whole bathroom was covered with posters of Bruce Lee. There were stacks of books about Bruce Lee, framed pictures of Bruce Lee next to the sink. There was a shirt with a Chinese dragon on it hanging on the wall. It was like he’d decorated the bathroom to look like a Chinese restaurant. I didn’t even know where all this stuff had come from. The Bruce Lee pictures really caught my attention. The kung fu poses reminded me of some of the dance moves that Mr. Jackson did in his videos. Was he in here practicing his dance routine? Was he meditating? I could only wonder.
Late that night, we headed to the Palms. I was in direct contact with George Maloof about where and what time we were coming in; he was handling it personally. We came through the loading dock and took the service elevator up. They were putting Mr. Jackson in the Hugh Hefner suite. That place is huge, almost four thousand square feet. Two stories, penthouse level, amazing floor-to-ceiling views of the city. There’s an elevator inside the suite. It even has its own bowling lane. This room typically went for twenty thousand dollars a night. George Maloof gave it to Mr. Jackson for free.
Once we got there, Peter Lopez was supposed to meet us. I was exhausted. I’d been working since dawn. Normally, any time we hit a new hotel, I’d be out on point. I’d do a full advance of what’s going on, find out if the rooms next to us were occupied, who the residents were, etc. But to be honest, I couldn’t motivate myself to do it. I was just walking around the suite and checking out the view. At that point in time, I was on my own. Javon had a family situation. He’d taken a few days off.
Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days Page 23