Natasha (58 page)

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 weird, 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.”

Laurel Page and Dennis Bowen, a young engaged couple staying on a boat moored near the
Splendour
, dined at Doug’s that night and formed the same impressions as Ryan during their encounters with the Wagner group. “She was very nice, very personable,” recalls Bowen. “But Wagner was pretty whacked.” Page had a chance to express to Natalie how much she appreciated her work, “and she thanked me very much and was nice and friendly to me… she was just approachable and was just—God, she really was something.” As the evening progressed, Page noticed, “Robert Wagner was really out of it, swaying, just so drunk… could have, in his condition, fallen on the floor. Really drunk.”

Natalie expressed several times to people in the bar or restaurant that night that she was missing her daughters. When R.J. sent their first waitress, Christina Quinn, to the small bathroom to check on Natalie because she had been away from the table for a long time, Quinn walked in on a “very tender moment” between Natalie and a young girl of nine or so, almost the age of Natasha. They were sitting in front of a big, lighted mirror. “Natalie was behind the young girl and looking into the mirror, stroking the girl’s hair, telling her what a pretty young girl she was, and how lucky she was to be a young girl. Honoring the little girl and her childhood, telling her how important childhood was, how valuable that time was. It was a really nice thing in my mind and heart.”

Laurel Page wandered into the ladies’ room before or after Quinn, noticing Natalie with the same little girl and another child, finding herself touched in the same way Quinn was. “Natalie was just sitting there combing their hair, the way a mother would comb—the right hand has the comb and your left hand goes over the hair—smiling, looking in their faces. I watched her comb their hair for a while. Because it was in the bathroom, so private, I was able to have a moment with her. It was a really maternal, tender moment. I’m glad I got to see that. She was reflecting on her daughters.” Or, possibly, her own lost childhood.

Mileski would recall Natalie inviting the young girl to her table afterward, braiding her hair—the way Mud used to do for Natalie, when she was the Pigtail Kid. Dawn Powers, the little girl, felt a sense of “peace” from Natalie, a serenity and kindness.

When an accordion player stopped by the Wagners’ table to play a song on his accordion for Natalie—the haunting “Lara’s Theme” from
Dr. Zhivago
—it seemed, another diner would recall for police, “to make her happy,” perhaps reminding Natalie of her Fahd and his balalaika.

Such poignancy was fleeting. A while later, Mileski would say, “she was fooling around, it seemed like, with Christopher more.” As both Mileski and Quinn would tell police, Natalie suddenly got up and threw a wine glass at the wall next to the Wagners’ table, “and I figured there was a spat going on,” states Mileski. Mileski also felt it was a bid for attention. “Everybody kind of stopped and looked, is what I thought she wanted.” Quinn considered it a “human” reaction of emotion.

Walken would later tell police it was “my fault. I recall that we were making a toast while drinking. At the conclusion of this toast I threw my glass to the floor as I always do, and I remember Natalie, and I think everybody else, did the same.” Walken told police Natalie made the remark that she was Russian, and Russians did this.

Quinn and Mileski stand by their statements that Natalie was the only one to smash a wine glass that night. “I’m surprised Walken would say that,” remarks Quinn.

Susan Bernard, an Orange County resident who was having dinner with a girlfriend at Doug’s, told investigators she saw Natalie break the glass, and a second glass, which she observed, from a distance, as “a touch of drama.”

The restaurant manager, Don Whiting, now deceased, corroborated to police the waitresses’ version of Natalie smashing the glass, mentioning that another glass was broken by accident. “He thought at the time there was a possible problem between Robert Wagner and his wife,” as Duane Rasure, the lead investigator, wrote in Whiting’s statement. “He remembers a glass was broken, possibly thrown.” Dawn Powers, whose hair Natalie braided earlier, noticed, “a fuss going on” or “a commotion” at the Wagner table before the glass was broken. “There was a lot of commotion” at the Wagner table before the glass was broken. “There was a lot of commotion at their table that night.”
Rasure’s partner, Roy Hamilton, noted in his report that Whiting told them Wagner was “irate” with Natalie.

The escalating tension seemed to build to a crescendo around ten o’clock, when R.J. got up to leave the restaurant. Natalie was reluctant to go back to the
Splendour
, Davern would say in a later interview. She had trouble zipping up her jacket, Quinn told the police, and had a hard time walking, Mileski observed. Whiting, the host/manager, noticed R.J. and Natalie in a private tête-à-tête as R.J. put his pea coat around Natalie, shrouding her, Mileski felt, from the stares of other diners. “It was sprinkling out, and he put his coat over her head and they walked out, and she smacked into this wood tiki pole at the front door.”

Both Mileski and Whiting were so concerned about the Wagner party’s level of intoxication, and the slick weather, they made separate calls to Kurt Craig, who was at the dinghy dock in the Harbor Patrol office. Mileski recalls, “I said, ‘They’re coming out, they’re screwed up, just keep an eye on them.’”