The Man in the Mire

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Wherever Michael Jackson is right now, it can't possibly feel far enough away. As the vanished king of pop's legal battles intensified last week, all his tribulations, the very stuff of talk shows, took on aspects of farce and tragedy. Isolated and invisible, the superstar has proclaimed his addiction to prescription drugs even as he hides away in a Europe crawling with journalists looking for him. Meanwhile, investigations proceed into the child-molestation charges that have ended his age of innocence -- charges that his lawyers have handled clumsily. For Jackson, sanctuary has become a kind of never-never land.

Last week's round of trouble began with a second lawsuit, this one leveled against Jackson by five former bodyguards in Los Angeles. The security team, dismissed by Jackson's MJJ productions last February, claims that its services were terminated because the guards had come to know too much about the star's fondness for closed-door evenings with young boys. The suit alleges that Jackson hid male children in the guards' shack at his family's Encino estate, summoning them to his suite after his parents had gone to sleep. Charles Mathews, an attorney for the guards, says that from 1987 until early 1993, his clients saw Jackson bring 30 to 40 boys between the ages of 9 and 14 to his quarters in the middle of the night. According to the suit, Jackson personally ordered one guard to recover and destroy a Polaroid of a naked boy from Jackson's private bathroom. The guard followed instructions and retrieved the photograph, which he says depicted a young teenager in profile revealing his genitals and buttocks. Says Mathews: "In addition to what they did in his private suite, Michael frequently took the boys to the jacuzzi and swimming pool."

Why did Jackson's dismissed protectors wait 10 months to sue? Mathews says the guards had been busy trying to figure out just why they had been dismissed. "In summer when the ((child-molestation)) allegations hit," says Mathews, "they realized what really happened." Bert Fields, one of the two attorney-spokesmen for the Jackson camp, responded to the allegations by stating, "No one was ever fired by Michael Jackson for knowing too much." Moreover, J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of an unauthorized Jackson biography, noted the singer's profound distaste for ever being under the same roof with his parents. "For years Michael would drive up to the house and do a U-turn if he saw his father's car in the driveway." Nevertheless, says Mathews, "We'll let a jury decide. We hope to go to trial next summer."

In the atmosphere of rumor and speculation, no one was immune from passing on misinformation. A day after the fired guards filed suit in L.A., Fields was in a Santa Monica courtroom seeking a six-year postponement of the civil suit that started off the current saga. Fields let slip that because a grand jury in Santa Barbara was considering a criminal indictment in the same case (leveled by a 13-year-old boy who says the entertainer sexually abused him), the civil suit should be put on hold lest Jackson inadvertently incriminate himself during the proceedings. The other lawyer on the Jackson team, as well as everyone else following the case, suddenly did a double-take. What criminal indictment? As the press made frantic but fruitless calls to the Santa Barbara County office, Fields backpedaled and admitted that he had received the information from someone else and that "evidently it turned out the rumor was false." In any case, the judge denied his request for a delay of the civil suit, setting a trial date for March 21.

Meanwhile, a few of the people around Jackson have been drawn into the investigation. The Los Angeles Police department last week sought to question Norma Staikos, a Jackson aide, and executive director at his MJJ Productions. It was Staikos, according to the complaint, who told the bodyguards their jobs were being eliminated. The police have also seized medical records from the offices of two of Jackson's physicians -- Dr. Arnold Klein, a Beverly Hills dermatologist, and Dr. Stephen Hoefflin, a Santa Monica plastic surgeon. The L.A. police have yet to announce their findings. Neither doctor could be reached for comment.

Hoefflin, whose clients reportedly include Joan Rivers, Ivana Trump and ^ Elizabeth Taylor, appears to have close ties to Jackson. Though a plastic surgeon, he attended Jackson when the singer complained of chest pains three years ago. He has spent time at Jackson's home and is credited with the singer's 1982 nose job as well as the 1984 scalp surgery for burns Jackson received while filming a Pepsi commercial. Says one source: "He kept telling Hoefflin to make it smaller, make it smaller." Jackson has said it was the painful after-effects of scalp surgery that started him on his addiction to drugs. One source has told TIME Jackson may have abused prescribed Demerol, a narcotic the singer first used when he was receiving steroid treatments to soften scar tissue.

At least one doctor affiliated with London's Charter Nightingale Hospital -- Britain's version of the Betty Ford Center -- has intimated that Jackson may be undergoing psychodrama therapy for drug use. No officials of the clinic, however, will say whether the star is actually there. Some Jackson watchers have downplayed the drug angle, speculating that it is a feint to draw attention away from the child-molestation charges.

Ironically, all the scandal has had little adverse effect on Jackson's finances. Jackson's personal publicist announced a new agreement between the superstar's ATV Music Publishing catalogue (which retains many of the Beatles songs) and recorded-music giant EMI. The deal will reportedly make Jackson $90 million richer. Meanwhile, a video compilation called Dangerous: The Short Films has just been released. According to one technician who worked on the compilation, there were serious discussions earlier this fall of cutting out every scene in the video that featured Michael playing around with little kids, but that never happened. Now it appears to be moving briskly. "We never doubted it would sell well," said a buyer at Tower Video in Los Angeles. "A lot of times, controversy just fuels the flame."

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/London and Jeffrey Ressner and Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles