Chapter 5: FBI / NCAA

Thursday December 8
The J-drama filming schedule had evolved to where we worked Sunday through Wednesday plus half a day on Thursday. This gave the production people two and a half days to make sure they had everything they needed for that week’s episode. It also gave the cast some much-needed time off.

For me, that meant I would work on Halle’s movie. When we arrived on set, I sent Lexi to find out what I was doing today and walked to Halle’s trailer. I thought I would surprise her, so I just walked in. Halle had her headphones on and was dancing around in nothing but her underwear. I got my phone out and filmed her for a minute before she noticed me.

“David!” she shrieked and lunged for the phone.

I held it up over her head so she couldn’t get it. She stomped her foot.

“You’d better delete that.”

“No, I don’t think so. I always want to remember the carefree girl comfortable enough to dance around in her underwear. I bet if we posted this on the web, we could make good money.”

Halle grabbed me by my balls.

“Not so full of yourself now, are you?”

“Deleting,” I assured her.

I just hoped it had backed up a copy to the cloud. That might be my video Christmas card this year.

“Jerk,” she huffed, then went back to her bedroom to put some clothes on.

“Mom was happy when she got your email about the songs,” she called out. “She said she would get someone to help you prepare for the show.”

Halle came out dressed for her next scene.

“I’m a little nervous. I’m worried I’ll mess up her show.”

“It’s just acting. You’ll do fine,” Halle assured me.

I didn’t know what to say to that. In the shower, I thought I rocked. Other people who heard me sing weren’t as impressed. I still couldn’t believe that I’d survived singing in The Royal Palm.

That reminded me. Mom had seen the first ad for the movie on TV. It was scheduled to come out in a couple of weeks. I’d set aside time off from the J-drama to do a quick publicity tour right before it released. Now that I thought about it, I also realized I should probably remind Brook that she needed to buy a dress for the premiere. I didn’t want her killing me when I said something at the last minute.

“Did you ever sort out your PA?”

“For now. We’ll see, though,” I said, and then changed the subject back to the songs. “Your mom put names next to the songs. One of them was Priyanka Amarnath. Who is that?”

“She’s huge in India,” Halle said as her eyes got excited. “She’s about to release her first album here, and she is out of this world. I was just listening to her cover of It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.”

She handed me her headphones, and she started the music. I was embarrassed to admit that one, the song was before my time, and two, the only version of it I could recall was from the TV show Glee. I remembered it as being very vanilla. Priyanka’s take wasn’t anything like what had been sung on Glee.

When she sang the first line, my head snapped up, and I locked eyes with Halle. A big smile broke over my face as I heard a bluesy, sexy, Janis Joplinesque version of the song. The girl had some pipes. Her voice growled and cried in ways that could never be taught. I began to bounce to the beat as she shredded it.

There was no way I was going on stage next to her.

“You’ll have fun singing with her,” Halle assured me.

“No way! I might be a fanboy, but I absolutely will make a fool of myself if I do that.”

“Come on, goof. We have to get on set.”

Today’s scenes were mostly with just Halle and me as she went on and on about Ben’s character. I played the dutiful best friend who was secretly in love with her. It was similar to the J-drama’s plotline. How could Halle not see that I was a better choice than Ben?

“I need you to act with more longing. I want to see the emotion that pours out of you from seeing your world crumbling before your very eyes,” Kitty urged me.

Suddenly, I had an epiphany. If I thought of Halle as Brook, and her telling me she’d met the perfect guy...

“I think I’ve got it,” I said, and we reran the scene.

This time I felt the emotion deep in my gut. Each time Halle spewed another line about her longing or how perfect he was, it felt like she’d thrown acid in my face. I was about to explode in frustration.

“ ... he does the funniest thing when...”

“Enough!” I exploded and stood up.

Halle looked up at me in disbelief. I threw my hands over my head and stormed out of the room.

“Cut!” Kitty called out and hurried over to me as I leaned against the set wall and tried to gather myself.

“What was that all about?” Kitty asked when she found me.

Halle peeked around the door behind Kitty.

“I’m sorry. I got into character, and if I had to listen to her prattle on about Ben one more second, I was going to have to throttle her.”

“David, I love you, too,” Halle said as she came and hugged me.

“Okay. Get back into character, and we’ll reshoot it. This time, dial it back just a notch,” Kitty suggested.

“Kitty, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” I promised.

“Don’t do that. There are times I want honest emotion. You should never be sorry when you expose yourself like that,” Kitty assured me.

Thinking of Halle’s character as my girlfriend probably wasn’t a good idea. I think if I saw Ben right now, I might punch him. I know it made no sense, but that was how I felt at that moment. Then I got the giggles. It struck me as funny that I’d fallen so hard for Brook. I knew I loved her, but it was just hitting me that the mere thought of her talking about another guy might send me off the deep end.

I went back, and we reshot the last scene without incident.

After we finished, Halle dragged me back to her trailer. As soon as the door closed, she turned on me.

“What was that all about?”

I closed my eyes to give myself a moment to think.

“Kitty wanted me to show more emotion, so I thought what it would be like if Brook was reciting all those lines. I forgot for a moment that it was make believe and sort of lost it.”

Halle sat down on her couch and looked defeated.

“I messed up, didn’t I?” Halle asked.

I’m sure I looked confused as I tried to decipher what she’d just asked me. Halle saw I wasn’t about to answer, so she pressed on.

“I know I did what was right for me, and I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s just that when I see what you have with Brook, I get jealous.

“I knew when I moved to go to school with you that I’d made a mistake. You were so sad when Tami rejected you. I should have packed up then and come back to LA. You weren’t ready for a serious girlfriend. But I stayed, and I got comfortable. Even though I only had you part-time, it was enough.

“I kept thinking that we would just be casual during high school. You would get over Tami, and we would figure it out when you finally came here and made movies. We would be the perfect Hollywood couple,” Halle said.

“You had it all planned out.”

She shook her head.

“Is it wrong of me to wish you had never fallen for Brook?”

“Can I tell you a secret?” I asked.

“If you make me cry, I will beat your ass,” she warned.

“I’m not sure Brook is my forever girl,” I admitted for the first time out loud.

This time it was her turn to look confused.

“Think about it. We’re in high school. My mom assures me that I will only keep in touch with a handful of friends once I graduate. She also warned me that the odds of a high school sweetheart being your wife someday are slim to none,” I said.

“You don’t buy that, do you?”

“I don’t know. I know that I have feelings for Brook like I’ve never had before. Believe me when I tell you that I thought I was in love with every girl I ever went out with. It’s different with her. Being away from each other is killing me. I can hardly wait until she finishes with finals and comes out here.”

“You’re horny. I could help you with that,” Halle said and batted her eyes.

“That’s part of it,” I admitted. “But even if we never had sex again, Brook would make me happy.”

Halle closed her eyes, and her bottom lip quivered.

“Dammit, David.”

“Even though I care for her so much, I know that come the end of school, she’ll leave me.”

Now it was my turn to get a little misty-eyed.

“You don’t plan to keep seeing her after you graduate?” Halle asked incredulously.

“How would that work? If I’m going this crazy without seeing her for two weeks, how will I survive if I don’t see her for months on end?”

“Oh.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. There was a knock on the door, meaning we had to get back to work. Halle gave me a little smile. Who knew, if things worked out, maybe her dreams of us being the power Hollywood couple might come true someday. There that word was again... ‘someday.’

When I had some free time, I called around to my friends in LA to see if they knew of any parties this weekend. Okay, I called one person: Zak Verwood.

“This is Zak’s phone,” Bec Carson, Zak’s girlfriend, answered.

“Why am I talking to you? He was supposed to be on set a half-hour ago,” I said with my best authoritative voice.

“Oh. I had no idea. Hang on,” she said.

I could hear her chewing him out and his clueless response. “Talk to the man,” she ordered.

“I’m so sorry...”

“For not inviting me to a party,” I said.

“David?”

“Yep. I’m in LA and in need of entertainment.”

“You dick!” he said and covered the phone as he explained to Bec. “It was David Dawson pranking me.” Then he got back on the line. “I saw your dustup with the paparazzi. I thought you might have forgotten about me. Now that you need something, you come crawling to good old Zak.”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, you’re in luck. We’re having one tomorrow night.”

“Can I crash with like a bazillion people?” I asked.

“I don’t know about a bazillion...”

“You see, I’m shooting a Japanese drama, and the cast wants to go out. I might also have some model and actor friends who are looking to get out. No more than fifty or so,” I told him.

“Sure. I’ll put the word out that you’ll be here. I guarantee it’ll be packed.”

We talked for another minute, and I was called back onto the set. Zak had been in The Secret Circle with Halle and me. When I first met him, he was what we affectionately called a pussy-hound. Zak had shared with me that he’d been thirteen when he first had sex. When we were filming, it wasn’t uncommon for him to have sex with two to three different girls each day. That was until he started dating Bec.

I passed the word that I’d found a party.

The best part of Love Letters was that they let us out in time to go home for dinner. The even better part was I had tomorrow off. Kitty said to be back next week. Lexi told me she had some stuff to take care of and would see me Monday. I was sure I could survive without her being around for a few days.

I came home and found Dad drinking wine with a woman I’d never met before. The first thing I noticed was her hard eyes. At first, I thought she might be a cop. Then I figured it out.

“Ms. Addison?” I asked as I put my hand out to shake hers.

“Call me Maddie.”

“I’m starved. Can I convince you two to go to dinner with me?” I asked.

“I didn’t feel like cooking,” Dad admitted.

Manaia had trailed after me. I turned to him.

“We’re going out to eat. Where do you want to go?” I asked.

The poor guy looked shocked. I figured it was the least I could do for making him work a ton of overtime since I’d gotten here.

“How about pizza?” he asked.

“Only if they serve beer,” Maddie added.

Manaia took us to Greco’s New York Pizzeria. I was all smiles when the waitress mentioned they had a humongous twenty-eight-inch pizza. Even with the four of us, I would have pizza for breakfast tomorrow. The waitress tried to talk me out of it. She warned it was the equivalent of three large pizzas.

“Trust me. He will make a serious dent in it,” Dad assured the girl.

After she left, and the beer came, we got down to why Maddie was there.

“I talked to your PA and found time tomorrow for us to go talk to the FBI.”

“I’ve got the whole day off tomorrow,” I said.

Dad shared with her our concerns about being the ones to bring this to light and how it might adversely affect me.

“You might have more reason to worry about the NCAA than the FBI. The NCAA has a history of ignoring whistleblower claims. There was a recent one at the University of Missouri where a tutor sat down with both the university and NCAA to expose cheating. She admitted she helped 42 Missouri athletes commit varying degrees of academic fraud.

“The tutor made it easy for them to discount her, though. She later offered to sell her documented evidence online so she could pay her tuition bills. She said she told the NCAA she completed assignments for students from all sports but only completed courses or took exams for football players and men’s basketball players. The University came back and pinned it all on her, saying she was the one who initiated everything.

“The bottom line is, even if she did it on her own, without direction from the University, the athletes cheated. They let someone else do their work for them, and that’s against the rules. In spite of that, to this day, neither the NCAA nor the University of Missouri has made a move against any student-athletes.

“We are going to the FBI voluntarily. I can ask that they keep your identity confidential, but that doesn’t mean that they will. At the very least, you’ll be seen as a cooperating witness and not a bad actor. I doubt that you’ll rise to the level of a confidential informant, to be honest. You don’t have enough ongoing information for them to classify you as such,” Maddie explained.

“Then I’m not sure we should come forward,” Dad said.

“Let’s do this: we’ll go to the meeting and tell them what you’re worried about. If they don’t want to give you assurances, we’ll walk. I’m betting they will,” she said.

Our pizza came, and I realized I might have ordered too much. When the waitress said humongous, she meant it. There were twenty-eight slices. We would be taking some home.

“The FBI is not an organization with which to play fast and loose with facts. It’s against the law to lie to them. People have been convicted of just that. They don’t even have to get you on any actual underlying crimes,” Maddie said, making both Dad and me even more hesitant.

Maddie smiled at us.

“You’re bringing them information. They aren’t in the business of locking people up for no reason. I might be a little jaded because my clients usually have a reason to worry about an FBI interview. Just listen to me if I say something and stick to the facts. If you don’t know, tell them that.

“From what I understand, you both have been questioned by the police before. It shouldn’t be any more worrisome than that,” she assured us.

“Except for the accidentally lying and then going to jail part,” I mumbled.

“Yes. That would be bad,” Maddie said.

I hated lawyers who thought they had a sense of humor.

Friday December 9
I rolled out of bed at nine, put on a pair of shorts, and wandered down to the kitchen. Intent on eating some leftover pizza, I threw three slices onto a cookie sheet and put them in the oven. I didn’t like how the microwave made the crust soggy on a thin-crust pizza.

While I waited, I put on some hot water for tea.

Adrienne and Tyler came strolling in. Tyler sniffed the air when she smelled my pizza warming up. I decided that instead of letting them eat all my pizza, I would put two more slices into the oven to warm up for them.

They both looked at me and grinned like they had a secret. I raised an eyebrow in response.

“What are you two up to?” I asked.

“The cleaning girl is here,” Adrienne said.

If I hadn’t been hungry, I might have bolted. Right on cue, the vision that had haunted my dreams the last few nights walked in. I might have crumbled if she wasn’t made up and wearing the porn version of a maid’s outfit. The skirt was so short you caught a glimpse of her panties, such as they were; she made a point to show me that she had a thong on. The smell of her perfume—the same fragrance that was on my sheets—mingled with the yummy smell of pizza. Her appearance showed she was pushing the boundaries and made the big brain engage.

As I took her in, she was doing the same with me. I probably should have worn a shirt, but everyone in the house had seen me in less, so I hadn’t bothered.

I glanced over at Tyler and Adrienne, and they both were trying not to laugh at me. They seemed to sense that I was about to ignore her.

“Hi, I’m Teresa.”

“David” was my one-word response.

Adrienne had seen me in action and knew I could chat-up a girl. She’d never seen shy David before. When I was younger, I could talk to all of my brother’s girlfriends without getting tongue-tied. Back then, if you got me with someone my age, I was a stammering fool. I reasoned I didn’t have a chance with my brother’s older girlfriends.

I thought I’d gotten past this; I hadn’t acted shy in a few years. Even though I knew better, Teresa got my motor running.

“Where did you get the outfit?” Adrienne asked.

“A little specialty shop that carries items like this.”

I imagined Brook in that little getup. Adrienne was doing the same for Tyler.

“We should go shopping,” she suggested to her girlfriend.

“Think again,” Tyler smirked.

Thankfully, the timer on the oven buzzed to break the spell. I darted over and started to pull the pizza out and put it on plates.

“Aren’t you going to offer Teresa any?” Adrienne asked sweetly.

I was so getting even with her.

“Would you like a slice?” I asked.

“Sure,” Teresa said and sat down at the table.

I think Tyler saw through my next plan.

“Come sit with us,” the evil woman said.

Plans for eating elsewhere flew out the window. I had to be polite, so I sat down and focused on eating my food.

“I hear that we’re all invited to a party tonight,” Adrienne said innocently.

Tyler gave me and then Teresa a meaningful look. They could bite me if they thought I was about to ask her.

“You should come,” Tyler said to Teresa when she saw I wasn’t about to ask.

“I would need a ride,” Teresa said.

“David will send his driver over to pick you up,” Tyler said and then turned to me. “What time should she expect him?”

I almost said, “When Hell freezes over,” but stopped myself. Teresa was just a girl, and I had nothing to worry about. I had a girlfriend who loved me. The only problem was, I hadn’t seen her in two weeks.

“Eight should work.”

Teresa was smart enough to make a hasty retreat once she’d accomplished her goal with the help of the evil twosome. When she was out of earshot, I turned on them.

“You both are going with us and keeping me out of trouble.”

“We wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Adrienne assured me.

Frick!

I caught up on the last two episodes of Jeff Delahey’s documentary series. The first one focused on the defense. Tim had a long segment as he talked about his injury and the rehab he’d gone through. Each starter had garnered some face time.

The second featured the offense. I was glad to see that I only had a small amount of screen time. The largest portion was an interview Jeff had with our offensive line. Ty and Wolf also had longer segments.

Dad found me and said that we had another conference call with my lawyers. Mr. Morris had talked to the NCAA. Ms. Addison—Maddie—had stayed with us to save on hotel expenses, so she joined us in the dining room.

When we called in, Mr. Morris got right to the point.

“Well, it was drama-free, but they have a request. They want you to meet with the coach from Southwest Central State and see if he will admit to the pay-for-play scheme. When he talked to your mom, he only alluded to the fact that he knew you took the meeting with Springbok. The coach never confirmed that he knew that money was offered.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Ms. Addison said. “We would, at the very least, have to clear it with the FBI.”

“I didn’t tell the NCAA that the FBI was going to be informed,” Mr. Morris said.

“I don’t think you should,” Bev Mass said to jump into the conversation. “FBI investigations are kept confidential for a reason. This could lead back to the NCAA. As a matter of fact, it does, indirectly, for allowing this to involve one of its member institutions that it is supposed to be governing. If that’s the case, you don’t want to give them a heads-up.”

“So, we should tell the FBI what the NCAA wants us to do. And we’re not to let the NCAA know that we’re keeping the FBI in the loop,” Dad said to clarify.

“That sounds about right,” Ms. Dixon agreed.

“I would also suggest that if David has this meeting with the coach from Southwest Central State, that there is only one. Don’t get him roped into doing multiple meetings or meeting with other schools,” Bev Mass suggested.

“Let’s talk to the FBI first and see what they say,” Ms. Addison said, which everyone agreed to.

As everyone began to drop off the call, Ms. Dixon asked Dad and me to stay on. She told Ms. Addison that she wasn’t needed, so Maddie left the room, leaving us to talk to Ms. Dixon alone.

“We hired Jason Voorhees, the lawyer Chubby Feldman recommended. Mr. Voorhees had his meeting with Zander’s lawyers yesterday. I attended via conference call and told him I would update you on what transpired. Mr. Voorhees submitted a settlement demand letter. It summarizes the incident that caused your injury, the damages you suffered, and the amount you’re seeking for compensation. For damages, we are asking for reimbursement of all your actual out-of-pocket expenses. That includes doctor bills, hospitalization, what you had to pay for the damaged rental vehicle, our fees, and the like,” Ms. Dixon explained.

Caryn had all the documentation for those items sent to Ms. Dixon.

“Unlike the cost of the MRI or hospital stay, there’s no clear way to put a price on David’s emotional distress. In a case like this, the pain and suffering award will be determined by reviewing David’s symptoms of lingering pain and emotional distress, taking into account their severity and duration. Under normal circumstances, that part of it would be looked at like a claims adjuster would for an insurance company. That is, it would be assumed it was an accident,” Ms. Dixon said.