Secrets of the invisible men

Scott Herwitz travels in a world of celebrity, privilege and, sometimes, drama. Wearing a dark suit and shades, he is silent and nearly invisible -- qualities that make him privy to secrets, deals and the occasional romantic liaison.

Herwitz is a limousine driver, one of thousands in Los Angeles. To those on the other side of the partition, he is simply “the driver.” But he sees and hears everything.

“You’re the ultimate fly on the wall,” says Herwitz. “You see the best and worst of people -- on their way to the Oscars, and coming back with nothing.”

The professional code is simple: What goes on in the car stays in the car. Some drivers keep their passengers’ secrets. A few leave a scuttlebutt trail.

On rare occasions, the driver takes center stage. Phil Spector’s driver, for example, was swept up in a celebrity homicide case last week. (After dropping off the music producer and actress Lana Clarkson at Spector’s Alhambra mansion, he heard gunshots. He called the police. Arriving officers found Clarkson dead in the foyer.) During the O.J. Simpson trial, limo driver Allan Park delivered crucial testimony and became a reluctant celebrity in his own right.

There are private and company drivers, and actor-drivers moonlighting on prom nights. But there are also the journeymen, the self-described chauffeurs. On average, full-time drivers make $40,000 a year, but the elite -- who can tell you the make of bottled water currently favored by the rich and famous -- can earn close to $100,000. And driving is the least of their job.

In a dozen years as both a company driver and a private driver, Herwitz hasn’t witnessed a killing, but he has seen just about everything else. “I’ve been in the bedrooms of the most beautiful women in the world,” he says, grinning. “The only problem: I’m carrying the luggage.”

The partition between the front and back seats is a symbolic reminder of the upstairs-downstairs relationship between driver and client. “The hardest thing to do,” he says, is “to tell Arnold Schwarzenegger to put out his cigar and put on a seat belt.”

Herwitz drives for Playboy, routinely taking centerfolds to Hugh Hefner’s mansion. He has driven actor Jack Nicholson, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and billionaire oil tycoon Marvin Davis. The last “only said three words, ‘Speed, speed, speed.’ ”

Other passengers have been more relaxed. Promoter David Gest and singer Petula Clark sang Beatles songs and ate chitterlings and black-eyed peas during one trip.

There is an inverse relation between a client’s power and the size of the car he chooses, Herwitz says. Limos are for those who think they’re important. Sedans are for those who are important. “The SUV is ‘not only am I important, but I’m hip.’”

Herwitz has heard business deals go down and often knows about Hollywood hires and fires before they’re in the trades. And although he says he would never seek to profit from information overheard in the car, there are tales of less scrupulous colleagues.

In one popular -- if unverifiable -- story, a chauffeur who drove Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone heard of Viacom’s plans to acquire Paramount well before rumors started to circulate outside the car. He bought stock and made out like a bandit.

The rearview mirror can also be a window on more personal dealings. Herwitz heard a prominent attorney verbally abuse his wife but bit his tongue. Drivers’ discretion, after all, is the better part of valor.

‘A mobile concierge’

“Shut your mouth and get where you’re going” is how Charlie Horky puts it.

Twenty years ago, Horky drove his first client, singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg. Today, he owns CLS, one of the largest limousine companies in the country -- with 220 cars and 400 drivers in Los Angeles alone -- and ferries the Rolling Stones, U2 and, says Horky, “the Katzenbergs of this world.”

Preston Snyder is one of Horky’s top guys. “A chauffeur,” says Snyder, “not a driver.” It’s an important distinction. A driver simply drives. A chauffeur, he says with pride, “is a mobile concierge.”

Snyder says he can get his passengers the best table at the best restaurant, entree to the hottest club in town and -- unlike a concierge or a personal assistant -- a quick or discreet escape.

He studies the city, doing geographical and social reconnaissance. Or, in his words, “advance work.” He is on a first-name basis with the top concierge at the Four Seasons and at most other high-end hotels. He knows maitre d’s and doormen across the city. He also knows most backdoors and alleyways. “You have to be up on everything,” he says.

Every morning, he washes and stocks his “baby,” a sleek and shiny BMW 745 Li. Even the water in the car is carefully selected. “I used to do Volvic and Evian,” Snyder says, “but I find more people are requesting Fiji.”

His consideration is not always reciprocal. “I’ve had clients throw up on me,” he says, adding stoically, “It’s part of the job.” Of course, he won’t reveal who. He never gossips.

“It’s really simple: My car is a sanctuary,” Snyder says. “When the client is in the car, the last thing they should have to worry about is a nosy driver.”

Even when chatting with other drivers, he doesn’t talk. Snyder and “Candy” Castillo, a driver with the competing company Music Express, have developed a ritual when they see each other. “I’ll go to Candy and ask, ‘Who are you driving?’ and he’ll just give me that smile,” Snyder says. “And he’ll ask, ‘Who are you driving?’ and I’ll say, ‘My mom crazy.’ ”

‘I’ve been privy’

Unlike cab drivers, who socialize at taxi stands, limo drivers generally keep to themselves. On occasion, they see one another during awards shows and Hollywood premieres. Shoptalk is mostly about gratuities.

“Who’s driving who, whether or not they tip well,” says Dale St. John, a driver. “Robert De Niro is known as No Dinero.”

St. John’s clients have included the late TV anchor Jessica Savitch and actor Freddie Prinze Sr. When Christian Brando was accused in the death of his half-sister’s boyfriend, St. John was driving his father, Marlon. He drove O.J. Simpson to Nicole Brown Simpson’s funeral. But some people he won’t drive, he says. Actress Faye Dunaway is one.

“I’ve been privy to some interesting stuff,” he says of his 15 years in the business.

Routinely, passengers want to re-create the steamy limo scene from the movie “No Way Out,” he says. A preferred backdrop is Sunset Boulevard. While some couples forget the driver, “in some cases, maybe they liked that I was there.”

On one trip, St. John picked up a woman who wanted to surprise her boyfriend on his 40th birthday. She waited in the car, wearing only a mink coat. “You could hear the guy go, ‘Holy jeez!’ ” Another passenger had just been released from prison after four years and wanted to be picked up with a date. It took 120 miles before it was quiet in the back.

Simpson’s driver

St. John owned the limousine company that drove for Simpson. On the night Simpson’s former wife and her friend, Ron Goldman, were killed, St. John, Simpson’s regular driver, had to coach his son’s Little League game and asked Allan Park to drive instead.

“It was a very interesting night, and a very interesting life after,” Park says by phone from Texas, where he lives now.

At the height of the trial, Park’s fame in the front seat would sometimes rival the fame in the back. One night, at a party for NBC’s fall season preview, a minor TV star approached him in the parking lot. TV anchor Barbara Walters had been pointing him out. “I guess I was the talk of the party,” he says.

Although he gave a few select interviews (“Larry King,” People magazine), Park turned down a $50,000 offer from the National Enquirer. He never took money, he says. Once, though, he took a free trip -- as a featured speaker on “The O.J. Trial of the Century Cruise,” a weekend trip off the California coast. “It was weird,” he says.

Eventually, the attention became too much and Park left for Catalina Island, where he spent the next six years. A few years ago, he moved to Austin, Texas. People still recognize him. “A lot of times I’ll have fun with it and say, ‘People say I look like O.J’s driver, but I don’t think I look like him. That guy was a geek, man.’ ”

Recently, when his wife was in the hospital giving birth to twins, the anesthesiologist remembered him from TV. “My poor wife is having a baby, and he’s sitting there, talking about the trial.”

Park stopped driving limousines after the trial. Today he is applying to become a sheriff’s deputy. He’s really interested in forensics, he says. And he still drives -- for UPS.

“It’s a profession that you hear so many stories about,” he says of the limo business. “Everyone wants to know what goes on in the back. ‘Is it sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll?’ Not always, but sometimes.”