The Day Quincy Jones was robbed by Michael Jackson in the Middle of Los Angeles

              

The arrangements for Jacko’s show funeral that inexplicably pleasant summer Saturday in the center of Los Angeles were sure to go wrong. Musicians, religious leaders and members of the family alternated on the Staples Center stage, the Lakers’ stadium, with a capacity for eighteen thousand people, to say the last goodbye to the King of Pop. Michael had died of cardiac arrest at the age of fifty, on the seventh of June and almost two weeks later he still had not been buried. On the stage, in a gold plated twenty-five thousand dollar casket, for the first time in his life, he could watch everything without anyone bothering him. The first to speak would be his old friend and soul singer, Smokey Robinson, and next Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, and last, after a short speech by his eleven-year-old daughter, Paris, everyone would sing together “We Are the World,” directed by its author, Lionel Ritchie. The show would be watched by a billion people around the world. At this point, Jacko’s brain and lungs were in the hands of the coroner’s team conducting tests to determine the cause of death. In spite of not having produced any recent successes, Michael was selling millions of cd’s to the new generation, and his two greatest successes of all time, “Thriller” and “Off the Wall” were still very much in demand.    

That morning Quincy Jones left his house in Bel Air late, still in shock over the death of a dear friend. At the last moment, he dismissed his chauffeur and left alone for the center of Los Angeles, driving his white Bentley with jaguar seat covers. By this time there were no more parking spaces around Staples Center and the maestro had to content himself with a parking space three blocks from the stadium. After fifteen minutes of maneuvering to get his car into a space that was visibly smaller than the Bentley, Jones left in a hurry trying to control his irritation.

As he was leaving the area he was approached by one of the more than 100 Jacko impersonators that had been cruising that area of the city since early that day. But this one did not seem very friendly; he approached insolently, exclaiming, “Hey m**********r, don’t you recognize me? I am Michael, the King of Pop. Give up your wallet, watch, credit cards, rings and who knows, even that flashy n****r sports coat with the silver lapels and the lilac silk lining.”

Taken by surprise the maestro didn’t know how to react. He sputtered something but Jacko was really mad and wasn’t having any of it. Quincy would have to do better than that. Michael went on:

“What’s the matter with you, n****r, don’t you get it yet, you sack of s**t? Start handing over that stuff, because for me ain’t nothing, but I know for you it’s your whole life, you disgusting sell-out. Remember how you did those damn arrangements for “Thriller” and “Off the Wall,” but now it’s my turn to deal the cards, and this arrangement you can’t rehearse for. Musically, I’m your slave, and I’ve danced a lot for you, but now you’re gonna dance for me.”

Coming to his senses, Quincy counter attacked:

“Michael, at the beginning when you were just beginning to write more mature pieces but didn’t know how to end them, and you were still doubtful whether when things weren’t going well to use those high-pitched falsettos which made you a big name, who really got behind you?”

And he went on angrily:

“And wasn’t it me who brought the director John Landis to write and direct “Thriller,” a half million dollar investment which end up in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful video ever, selling more than nine million copies? And whose idea was it to get Eddie Van Halen, the heavy metal guy to get your music to hit harder?”

Michael seemed to agree with all that for a moment, but he couldn’t soften his stance and enter into a conversation with Quincy, forgetting that the real Jacko was being waked at that moment, and that he was really a low rent thief, toothless, shoeless, a grotesque fake in a slapdash costume trying to rob a rich and powerful producer of the real King of Pop.

He de-plumed the celebrated musician, who ended up driving to the theater in only a shirt and trousers, while the fake Michael, full of himself, entered a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Downtown Los Angeles, and arrogantly ordered the jumbo bucket, wearing a glittering sports jacket that matched nothing he was wearing.

The next day, The E Channel ran an exclusive showing Quincy at the Staples Center disguised with sunglasses, the big car in which he had passed only yesterday nowhere to be seen. Lost in solitude, from the pool at his mansion in the Bel Air Hills, the maestro watched in embarrassment drinking straight whiskey and thinking seriously about leaving the artistic life.