Feature

The Not So Private Eye

If his daytime life was out of control, his nights were even more so. The locus for his excesses was the China Club, where he worked, partied, and sometimes even slept. "I was having the time of my life," Stanton says, "living paycheck to paycheck and looking for adventure." But he knew he needed focus.

"I told him he was better than just working security at my club and handling the odd private-eye and protection gig," says Michael Barrett. "I told him there was more to life than staying out all night and ending up in bed with some broad he didn't know or care to know. I stayed out and got wild, but I owned the club. He needed to find his niche in life."

Stanton knew Barrett was right. "I felt like I was becoming a party boy," he says. "I felt like the good-looking chick everybody wants to fuck but nobody wants to take home to meet their mother."

Then, thanks to a little serendipity and a good measure of creativity, two things happened that changed his life. Barrett had run into Dominic Barbara at a dinner party, and the blustery litigator asked if he knew anyone who could handle security for a party he was throwing. Barrett immediately thought of Stanton, who was so eager he volunteered to do it for free. The party was Joey Buttafuoco's get-out-of-jail celebration at a Long Island restaurant called Cafe Testarossa.

"After that, Dominic started giving me work," says Stanton, who credits Barbara with enabling him to start his detective agency. "Small jobs at first, but he always said, 'Stick with me, kid, and we'll build something here.' "

Equally important was Stanton's move into Elaine's to get himself a seat at the table with William Bratton, Jack Maple, and the city's other celebrity cops.

"I felt I had to get into Elaine's if I was going to be a player in security and private investigations," he says. "I believed that was the watering hole in every sense -- that's where the buffalo and the rhino went: the top cops, the actors, the writers, the news people, and the producers."

He also decided he needed to meet William Bratton. It was 1994, and Bratton was at the peak of his fifteen minutes. He was the city's new top cop, a cool, commanding presence in crisply starched shirts with white collars and cuffs, and he was reforming the department, cutting crime, getting tons of press, and hanging out at Elaine's. Not exactly a guy Bill Stanton, with his shoulder-length hair, leather pants, and muscle shirts was likely to become friends with. Stanton, however, had a strategy, one that was pure Billy-vision.

Bruce Willis was a China Club regular, and Stanton had become chummy with him. He knew that Willis was a Republican, an enthusiastic supporter of law enforcement, and a guy who liked photo ops with well-known public officials. He also happened to be in town shooting a Die Hard movie. So, on a Monday night on the VIP deck of the China Club, Stanton asked Willis if he'd like to do a public-service announcement for the NYPD.

Willis quickly agreed. The problem was that Stanton knew absolutely no one at police headquarters -- the highest-ranking person he knew was his old partner, Sergeant Al Parlato. He called information and got the phone number for police headquarters. Then he called the main number and actually began to tell his story to an operator. "You represent who? And he wants to do what? Huh?"

Half-a-dozen calls later, the request found its way to the desk of John Miller, who was intrigued enough to call Stanton back. "I really had no idea what to make of Billy until we sat down," says Miller. "And then I got an idea about the level of energy we were dealing with."

Stanton suggested a dinner so everyone could meet, and within a week, Bratton, Willis, Miller, and Stanton were sitting down at Il Mulino. A few weeks later, the NYPD had a TV commercial by Bruce Willis. And everyone was happy. But no one was as happy as Stanton, who had successfully, implausibly, pulled off a deal (scheme) that got him on the inside.

After the commercial was done, Bratton invited Stanton to Elaine's. (He also told him to get a haircut.) "Once I walked in there with him, I was a made man."

His acceptance at Elaine's, he believed then and he still believes now, gave him credibility that was particularly important given his anemic résumé. "Remember, perception is everything. I can bring my clients there, and I've met all kinds of important people in the corporate world and in law enforcement. It creates an aura of success. People say, 'Oh, who's that guy, I see him here all the time?' And it's like a subliminal sale. They think, 'Oh, if he's here all the time, he must be good.' "

For years, Stanton has been haunted by a scene near the end of Raging Bull, where Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), the onetime world middleweight champion, is sitting in a bar in Miami. He is in the midst of an awful, unstoppable downward spiral. He has become a fat, pathetic, cheesy character in cheap clothes, and he starts talking to a blonde at the bar. "Are you 21?" he asks her. "Are you sure you're 21? Can you prove you're 21?" (Of course she wasn't 21, and LaMotta is arrested the next day for statutory rape and has no money to post bail.)

"This is a funny business," Stanton says one night while driving to see a client. "In the cosmetics business, Lauder may have a 50 percent market share, but in this, no one has more than a couple of percent. You know Al Pacino's third cousin might be a retired cop, so he gets some contract that way even though he probably doesn't know shit. It can be tough to build and sustain something."

It is particularly difficult because success for Stanton is so dependent on the larger-than-life character he's developed. "Billy is a very bright, talented guy," says his partner, Jack Maple. "But if I had any reservations about going into business with him, it was the concern that some people wouldn't be able to see past the image. My counsel to him has always been that he's got to show people who he really is. They have to see the serious side as well as the other side."

Stanton knows he has to walk a very fine line when he's performing. He has to maintain the show, but he also has to make sure he doesn't cross over into parody or alienate people he's trying to attract as clients. Particularly since he now spends a lot of his time competing for business in boardrooms.

"How many times can I put on the red nose and big floppy shoes?" he asks. "You know, after a while I get a little tired of it."

On the other hand, practically everything in his life now depends on it. "Believe me," he says one evening just past midnight as he's preparing to go out, "I know that unless I'm out there with the tambourine, it ain't gonna rain."