The rough crossing to Catalina that Friday afternoon harbingered strange tempests of emotion gathering momentum on the Splendour. Davern could sense it in the air. “As soon as Christopher and Natalie and R.J. entered the boat is when there was a feeling of jealousy going on between R.J. and Christopher,” he told a British documentary group. “And it just kept on getting more like that as the time would go on.”
Alcohol was the leitmotiv. The East Coast-based Walken, who was an inexperienced sailor, started the voyage with two Bloody Marys, according to his later statement, becoming so seasick he had to lie down for the rest of the cruise. By the time he roused, around five in the afternoon, the Splendour was moored a quarter of a mile from the historic domed casino at Avalon, the tourist-populated side of Catalina Island, a picturesque seaside village of boutiques and restaurants associated with carefree gaiety.
Shortly after Walken got up, he and Natalie and R.J. took the Valiant, the Wagners’ motorized dinghy, to shore, leaving Davern behind to prepare dinner. As revealed in Walken and R.J.’s statements to police, they and Natalie spent a cold, drizzly afternoon into evening drinking beer and margaritas, beginning at a Mexican restaurant and ending at El Galleon, a popular waterfront bar with an outdoor veranda where Natalie and R.J. once celebrated one of their special private anniversaries.
Between barhopping, the trio shopped a bit in a nearby arcade, where Walken wandered into a gallery, purchasing a painting, and the Wagners browsed at David Stein Jeweler’s. Natalie bought an early Christmas gift to surprise the skipper, and R.J. indulged Natalie with a $5000 one-carat diamond necklace set in a barnacle she admired in one of the display cases.
The manager of the bar at the El Galleon, the actors’ last stop, remembered them as leaving for the dock around ten P.M., which meant they had been consuming alcohol on and off for five hours from the time they arrived onshore, in addition to Walken’s earlier two Bloody Marys and whatever Natalie and R.J. may have been drinking aboard the Splendour from noon to five. The emotional dynamics during those five hours from five to ten P.M. when Walken was drinking with Natalie and R.J. in Avalon is unknown, though Davern later said in the same British documentary that R.J. was even more “irritated” by the attention Natalie paid to Walken once they returned from shore.
According to both R.J. and Walken’s later statements, when they got to the dock, Natalie did not want to get into the motorized rubber dinghy to go back to sea where the Splendour was moored, even with R.J. and Walken beside her, “because it was dark, it was cold, and she was afraid she would get wet.” Natalie told R.J. she wanted to ride back to the Splendour in a larger shoreboat. He eventually “talked her into” getting in the Valiant with him and Walken, R.J.’s statement reveals, and all three returned to the Splendour together, where Davern was preparing a barbecue.
Walken recalled “more drinking” on the boat, until he felt ill and went to his stateroom, leaving Natalie, R.J., and Davern to dine without him.
What happened next set the tone for the disturbing, mysterious rest of the weekend. In his less-than-six-minute original statement to police in the first chilling hours after Natalie’s body was found at sea Sunday morning, R.J. said nothing about the events of Friday night. During his second, and final, interview on December 4, he would tell authorities the sea had high swells that Friday night and everyone on the boat discussed crossing the channel to return to the mainland—although, in their statements, neither Walken nor Davern would mention any group discussion of a night crossing cutting their trip short. Duane Rasure, the lead investigator, noted R.J. telling him that Natalie “didn’t want to go back at night in the dark.”
By R.J.’s December 4 version, he and Natalie had a “strong disagreement” about whether to move the boat closer to shore Friday night to get out of the rough waves. R.J. told authorities Natalie objected to repositioning the boat, so he told her to spend the night in a hotel in Avalon and take Davern with her. Investigators never asked R.J. why Natalie would object to moving the Splendour to calmer waters, or why he wanted to send Davern to the hotel with her instead of himself.
Davern’s original statement, taken that Sunday morning, mentioned none of this. In a second statement on December 10, with lawyers hired by R.J. present on his behalf, he mirrored R.J.’s follow-up statement, saying the sea was “grumpy” that night, and that the Wagners disagreed about whether to move the boat, though Davern stated it was Natalie’s idea for her to stay in a hotel in Avalon that night.
Walken’s brief original interview barely referred to Friday night. When he was interviewed the second time, he told sheriff’s investigators he heard “some sort of hubbub” between Natalie and R.J. after he had been in bed, seasick, for twenty minutes; then he heard what sounded like an anchor chain, and Natalie knocked on his door to say, “He wants to cross during the night.” By Walken’s second account, Natalie left the room and Davern appeared, asking Walken to come to the main salon to mediate. Walken told Davern, “Never get involved in an argument between a man and a wife.” When Davern left his room, Walken went back to sleep, evidently until morning, though he felt the boat move and noticed through the porthole that they were closer to shore.
As years passed, Davern would reveal there was more to that hour on the Splendour than in either of his statements. His expanded account, printed in several magazines and repeated on British television, describes “a fight” between Natalie and R.J. creating such “unbearable tension” on the boat that Natalie decided she wanted to go home, requesting that Davern take her ashore. Davern then knocked on Walken’s door, seeking his intervention. When Walken refused, Davern “thought the best thing for me to do was to go ashore with her,” he told the U.K. film company.
Davern drove Natalie to shore in the Valiant, by his and R.J.’s accounts, leaving R.J. on the boat, agitated, and Natalie’s guest, Walken, in his cabin, seasick and asleep.
Natalie walked the few short blocks from the dock at Avalon to her and R.J.’s sentimental favorite spot, El Galleon, distressed, deeply intoxicated, with only a duffel bag, and Davern, from the statements of witnesses. Paul Reynolds, the manager of El Galleon who saw Natalie leave with R.J. and Walken that night at ten, re-encountered her in the bar at eleven, accompanied by a “man with a beard” he identified as Davern. Natalie wanted to know when the next public boat was leaving for the mainland, which was not until morning.
Then she asked Reynolds to help her find two available hotel rooms. While the bartender called to make reservations at a modest motel a few doors down called the Pavilion Lodge, Natalie and Davern, according to Reynolds, had “a couple of drinks,” ogled by other patrons “looking at [Natalie Wood] get tipsy.”
This awful drama carried over to the Pavilion Lodge, where Natalie walked in with Davern close to 11:15 P.M., both so intoxicated they had trouble getting in the door, as later told to police by the night clerk, Ann Laughton, who would remember Natalie wearing a red quilted jacket, the same thing she would have on approximately twenty-four hours later during her desperate struggle to keep from drowning.
Natalie prepaid by American Express for rooms 126 and 219, asking Laughton for some ice. Laughton showed Natalie and Davern how to use the ice machine and escorted them, together, to room 126, one of the Pavilion’s standard motel-style rooms, with a king-sized bed. When Laughton asked Natalie if she wanted to see room 219, Natalie responded, “Not at this time, we’ll see it later.” The maids’ records would reveal that room 219 was undisturbed the next day.
In the original statements given to the Sheriff’s Department, R.J. said nothing about Friday night to investigators, Walken implied everyone stayed on the boat that night, and Davern told police they all four slept on the Splendour, which investigators knew from motel personnel was a lie. Nobody in the sheriff’s office questioned R.J. or Walken about Natalie’s Friday night in Avalon during their first statements. But lead investigator Duane Rasure did confront Davern about it, who told Rasure that “before answering, he
would rather talk to R.J. and possibly an attorney,” adding, “If you check the hotel, you will find that there were two rooms rented.”
In Davern’s follow-up statement, with attorneys arranged by R.J. there to represent him, he disclosed that he spent Friday night at the Pavilion Lodge with Natalie, acting “as her bodyguard” at R.J.’s request. R.J. confirmed Natalie’s Friday night in Avalon when he was questioned for the second time.
While they were in room 126 at the Pavilion Lodge with midnight approaching, Natalie asked Davern to stay with her through the night; afraid, as she always was, to be alone at night. They drank more wine, he would remember, and talked.
Natalie got up before eight A.M. and wanted to go home, hoping to telephone Lana, Davern would recall to friend and coauthor Rulli. “Natalie tried to call Lana that morning to leave the island. She wasn’t going to go back to the boat.” Davern did not want to return either, he told Rulli. “Why put trouble on top of trouble?”
Natalie left Davern in room 126 at 8:00 and went to the front desk with the key to room 219, telling the day clerk, “Excuse me, I can’t find my room.” The clerk, Linda Winkler, astonished to see Natalie Wood at the Pavilion Lodge, directed her to room 219, noticing Natalie was “disoriented,” as Winkler told investigators.
Natalie left Winkler for about twenty minutes, returning to pay her bill, surprised to find out she had paid it by credit card the night before. Natalie asked the clerk where she could catch a boat back to the mainland. Winkler was “amazed that a movie star like Miss Wood would be taking public transportation back to the mainland.” Natalie told the clerk she was on her way to the boat dock, and to send “the captain” there.
When Davern joined Natalie at the dock fifteen minutes later, she had changed her mind about taking a public cruise line home, after looking them over. Instead, they got into the Valiant together and Davern steered the rubber dinghy back to the Splendour that Saturday morning, November 28, another chilly, overcast day. Sometime that morning, Walken would tell authorities, Natalie woke him up in his cabin on the Splendour to tell him that she was taking a seaplane back to Los Angeles and she wanted to know if he was staying on the boat. “I’m not in this,” was Walken’s all-too-wise reply.
The mood on the boat, especially Natalie’s, shifted again, drastically, by the time Walken got up and went to the main salon, where he saw Natalie busy cooking her famous huevos rancheros. Suddenly, “everybody seemed happy,” Walken later told police. Natalie dropped her plans to go home, telling Walken they were taking the Splendour over to the Isthmus at Two Harbors, the remote side of Catalina Island. Davern was as puzzled as Walken by the sea change in the Wagners’ behavior. “Everyone acted like nothing happened,” Davern told Vanity Fair, “and everything was beautiful again.”
R.J. suggested to Walken they do some fishing once they got to Two Harbors, though after what R.J. described to police as a “nice ride” across the ocean from Avalon, where they were recorded by the harbor patrolman as leaving at 11:30 that morning, he and Walken decided to take a nap. Natalie read screenplays in the main salon and Davern went for a short ride on the dinghy.
The harbormaster at the Isthmus assigned the Wagners Mooring #N1, about a hundred yards from shore, where the Splendour was one of an assemblage of fifty to seventy pleasure boats moored in front of Two Harbors that blustery Thanksgiving weekend. For some reason, R.J. chose not to use the Wagners’ permanent mooring at Emerald Bay, possibly because the Isthmus was closer to Doug’s Harbor Reef Restaurant in Two Harbors, where the group planned to have dinner on what would be Natalie’s last night.
By early afternoon, as the weather turned drizzly and threatening, Davern returned from his dinghy ride and settled in to take a nap. As he and R.J. snoozed, Walken awakened around 2:00 and he and Natalie decided to take the Valiant to Two Harbors, leaving a note for R.J. that they had gone ashore, as R.J. would later tell police. Natalie put on her red quilted jacket over a pair of designer blue jeans, a yellow turtleneck sweater, and high-heeled suede shoes, carrying a red-white-and-blue bag.
The two costars sat on stools in the wood-paneled inside bar at Doug’s Harbor Reef, a “funky” quasi-nautical, tropical-themed restaurant that was literally the only place to go in desolate, rustic Two Harbors. When the weather was warm, the outdoor bar at Doug’s was like a Jimmy Buffett tune, flowing with margaritas and weekend revelers in from their boats for a good time. This gloomy, wet November afternoon, any action at Doug’s was removed to the indoor bar, where Walken and Natalie continued the weekend bacchanal. Inside the bar, they resumed their playfulness from the Brainstorm set, discussing their last few weeks of filming, in which Natalie had two or three scenes.
When R.J. woke up from his nap to find Natalie ashore with Walken, he became more agitated as time passed, Davern would later tell journalists. Sometime before 4:00 in the afternoon, R.J. took a shoreboat to Two Harbors with Davern, in search of Natalie and Walken, who had the dinghy tied at the dock at Two Harbors.
When he found them, drinking at the bar, “Natalie and Chris were having such a good time that I think it started to really upset R.J.,” Davern disclosed to the British documentary team in 1999. He told Vanity Fair that Walken and Natalie “were out of it—giggling and laughing,” an observation that comports with the memory of waitress Michelle Mileski, who passed Natalie in the bar off and on from four P.M., and later served her dinner. “She was buzzed, she was screwed up in the afternoon, if you want to know the truth.” (Mileski, who came on duty at four, thought Davern and R.J. had preceded Natalie and Walken into the bar.)
Natalie’s internal conflict between her “Natalie Wood” movie star personality, created by Mud, and the serious actress who longed for the Kazan/Ray/Dean “golden world” collided that afternoon and evening, in the charged company of R.J. and Walken, who represented the competing sides of her complex dual identity. This struggle would come out in her mercurial behavior that night at Doug’s Harbor Reef.
R.J. made a 7:00 reservation in the dining room, and then he and Davern joined Walken and Natalie at the bar, where they would spend the next three hours, as a storm gusted outside. Davern would later tell his coauthor he noticed a “jealous rage” simmering in R.J., who was watching Natalie and Walken share private jokes from their movie, leaving R.J. the odd man out, fanning the flames of any rumors he may have heard that they were having an affair.
Sometime before dinner, Natalie and R.J. expressed displeasure with the wine list, asking Davern to go back to the Splendour and choose something from the wine cellar. Davern told Vanity Fair he and Walken rode the dinghy back, smoking a joint on the Splendour before selecting three bottles of wine, one of which they left in the Valiant. When he and Walken got back to Doug’s Harbor Reef, Davern was “right in tune with Christopher and Natalie—high as a kite.”
By the time Natalie, R.J., Walken and Davern sat down for dinner in the adjoining dining room at seven, they were all “inebriated,” in the description of Doug’s host/manager, Don Whiting. Whiting seated them in the corner at a round table big enough for eight people, with R.J. taking the “King’s chair,” Natalie to his right, Walken to her right, and Davern to the left of R.J. Whiting told police, later, “he was of the impression that Robert Wagner was a little bit irritated with his wife.”
Christina Quinn, their original waitress, noticed that Natalie’s mood shifted quickly, “from light to dark, not in the brightest of spirits.” She fussed about the lighting, the size of the table, the freshness of her fish, eventually sending her meal back, saying she would “just drink her dinner.”
Michelle Mileski, a waitress with more experience at Doug’s, recalls that Quinn eventually found the Wagner group “such pain in the butts that I took ’em over for her.” Mileski felt a “strange” vibration from R.J. directed toward Natalie and Walken. “Christina or someone said Natalie and Christopher Walken were holding hands under the table kinda deal. There definitely was something going on, the table just felt weir
d, that’s why Christina was just not into it that much. So then we both kind of waited on them.” The host/manager, Whiting, who was homosexual, later told his partner “he saw R.J. flirting with Walken,” noticing “there was a little touching going on that—well, that he recognized, anyway, as flirting.”
The “eerie” feeling at the Wagners’ table, as Mileski described it, was made more incendiary by massive quantities of alcohol. During dinner, from seven to ten P.M.—as recalled by both waitresses, who also gave statements to the police—the already inebriated Wagner party consumed two bottles of wine from the Splendour, two bottles of champagne and cocktails sent by star-struck fellow diners, daiquiris ordered by Walken, and cognac for R.J. and Davern. That was in addition to the drinks they all had earlier at the bar.
Mileski observed that R.J. seemed detached from the group somehow, less visibly intoxicated at the table, an outsider to Natalie and Walken’s conversations. “I remember thinking along the line like, ‘He’s not even partying with them.’ ” She got a strange feeling from him, describing R.J. as a “jealous shmoo.”
John Ryan, a fifteen-year-old at the table next to the Wagners, talked back and forth with them throughout the evening after Ryan’s “Uncle Warren” Archer, who owned a boat called the Vantage, sent a bottle of champagne to Natalie and R.J., who reciprocated. Ryan found Natalie spectacularly beautiful that night, “a babe,” her hair and makeup done up as “Natalie Wood,” even on a casual boating weekend. She flirted sweetly with Ryan, flattering his teenage ego, impressing him as “more together” than Walken and R.J., whom Ryan, his mother, and Archer observed as “whacked out, particularly Robert Wagner,” whose behavior seemed, to them, bizarre. “He and Walken were not with all their faculties.”
Natasha Page 51