by David Chill
“Want a drink, Coach?” Ryan asked.
“A little early for me,” I said, shaking my head, and looking at the can of hard seltzer in his hand. “But it looks like it’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Ryan laughed and sat on the couch. “We’ve technically been working most of the day. Had a seven-thirty tee time over at Strawberry Farms.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” I said. I couldn’t help thinking back to the two instances when I tried playing golf. The highlight was riding around on an electric cart, with a cooler full of beer. When I tried to swing a golf club, it was more comical than anything else. I was reminded of something one of my coaches at SC mentioned years ago. Except for quarterbacks, a football player who is talented at golf is likely not all that talented at football. Golf is a finesse sport.
“It technically was work,” Sean insisted. “We played a foursome with a couple of hedge fund guys. Trying to get another round of Angel funding up and running. We want to expand into other cities. And maybe go international, too. Sky’s the limit here.”
“It sounds like you fellas are doing okay for yourselves. WAVE is impressive. You’re the founders.”
“It’s pretty cool,” he said. “Making the world a better place and all.”
I looked at Sean. “How’s that?”
“Electric scooters. Means people don’t have to drive cars everywhere. Less use of fossil fuels, reduced carbon emissions. Cuts down on car traffic. Plus, it allows people who can’t afford cars to have access to transportation. It’s all good.”
I looked at him and didn’t bother to mention the growing number of lawsuits from riders injured by falling off of the scooters. Or scooter riders who were not paying attention to what they were doing and had mowed down pedestrians walking on sidewalks. Or the scooter rider who was on the wrong side of the road and got into a head-on collision with a city bus. My lunch conversation with Adam Lazar told me something different from what I was hearing now.
“What brings you down here, Coach?” Ryan asked.
“I’m a private investigator now. Moved out of coaching a few years ago. I’m helping Cody with something. You heard about what happened at WAVE last night?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, his mood darkening quickly. “Cody texted us last night. Scary. He has no idea who did it, or why. Man, that’s crazy.”
I let that sink in. “And you’ve known Cody for a long time?”
“Our whole lives,” Ryan said. “We all met in kindergarten. Grew up together. Even when Cody moved to Irvine with his grandparents, we all went to Mater Dei. We knew Kristy, too, obviously, but she was like five, six years older, so we didn’t hang out or anything.”
“Know of anyone that might have it in for him? Held a grudge about something?”
They thought for a minute and shook their heads no.
“No one who had a beef with Cody?” I asked. “You’re sure?”
They shook their heads again, quicker this time, with no hesitation. “None. He got along with everybody. That’s what makes this so weird.”
“Cody have a girlfriend?”
Sean laughed. “Cody always has a girlfriend.”
“Oh?”
“It’s like,” Ryan said, “there were always girls around. In high school, there were plenty of girls who went out with Cody. But none of it was ever serious. Even at SC, he was always messing around with some girl, but he kind of liked playing the field. I mean senior year, there was one girl he started seeing a lot, someone from Laguna, her name’s Stella. He liked her, but you know. When you’re a celebrity, there’s lots of girls.”
“He still seeing this girl, Stella? What’s her last name?”
“Frey. Stella Frey. And yeah, he still kind of sees her. On and off. You know. She works near the office.”
“They have any problems?” I asked.
“Nah. She’s a little eccentric, but I can’t imagine her doing anything like this.”
“Okay. So maybe the shooter wasn’t gunning for Cody. Maybe they were after his sister. Possible?”
“I dunno,” Ryan thought. “She could be a bitch sometimes. Wasn’t always pleasant to be around. Kind of a know-it-all. But shoot her? Nah. Why bother?”
“Uh-huh. She seeing anyone?” I asked.
“I heard she was.”
“They work at WAVE?”
Ryan stopped for a moment and then said, “Don’t think so. She kind of kept her private life private. Pretty tough to do at a small company.” He looked at Sean. “You know of anyone?”
Sean shrugged. “Near as I could tell, she was all in on her work. She didn’t like to party with us. Probably an age thing, she’s kind of old. Over thirty. You know. Didn’t exactly fit in easily at work.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, suddenly feeling very old myself. “How do you think things are going now at WAVE. Any problems? Something that might lead to this?”
Ryan shrugged. “It’s a startup, so there’s always something.”
“I heard you’re having issues now with the City of L.A.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “You know about that? Yeah. The city wants a piece of the action, not that they’ve done anything to deserve it. We’re a private company. They also want our analytic data, and we told the city to stick it up their ass.”
“Sounds like you have some hoops to jump through.”
“Our legal team is working on it. But the city’s also trying to get us to deploy the scooters where they want us to, not where we want to. They want us to put them in the hood, we want them to go into areas where we make money, like Westwood and the beach, and down by the USC campus. Look, we want to go where people can pay and they don’t trash our product.”
“Did that happen?”
“We worked with them on a test in the Crenshaw district. Within a week, half of our scooters there were lifted off the streets. We got some of them back, with the LAPD’s help.”
“You work with Detective Rainey on that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, a little wide-eyed. “You know him?”
“We’ve met,” I said. “But let’s back up a bit. Tell me about Chicago. You guys were with Cody, right?”
“All the time,” Sean laughed. “We had this cool place off of Michigan Avenue, downtown. Man, that was the shit.”
I took that to mean it was good. “Why don’t you take me through Chicago, how you guys got WAVE started.”
“Pretty simple story. We were over at the Navy Pier one day and saw a couple of guys riding on these scooters. When they were done. They just hopped off and left them there.”
Ryan laughed. “We grabbed them and were going to take them for a ride, but we discovered there was no way to turn them on. They were a Night Hawk brand, and there was an app you had to download to use it. We looked it up and saw we could rent them, right on the spot. So, we did. It was a blast. And we thought, hey, if it works in Chicago, why not L.A.? We discovered that Night Hawk was a startup, and Chicago was their test market. It was an easy business model to duplicate. Only issue was cost of entry, and for us, that wasn’t much of an issue at all.”
“That’s where Cody and his signing bonus came in,” I mused.
“A little,” Sean admitted. “That provided the seed money. But NFL players have a ton of cash, and they like investing in cool stuff. We put together a business plan, and hey, that Marshall School education really paid off. Cody showed it to some guys on the team, and they agreed to put up some capital, but more importantly, that gave us exposure. Guys on the team started chatting it up on social media. That led us to walking into a bank and getting a line of credit. Which allowed us to approach some Angel investors.”
“How much funding does it take to start a business like this?”
“We got ten million. That got us going.”
I let out a low whistle. “And everything began to fall into place.”
“Yup. Started buying some scooters and modifying them. That’s where Kristy came in, s
he’s got an engineering background and she’s wicked-smart. She came out to Chicago and rented a Night Hawk scooter for a few days, then she reverse-engineered it. Pretty easy code to crack, if you know what you’re doing. And she knew what she was doing. We basically took what Night Hawk did, and just did it on a bigger scale.”
“Didn’t they hold the rights to this technology?” I asked.
“Now that’s a bit sticky,” Sean said. “Night Hawk said they had patents pending, but we couldn’t find any. I had my brother check it out. He’s in his second year of law school at UCLA. He said we looked golden.”
“Interesting,” I remarked, and I thought of an old adage that one of my economics professors told us. In business, there were four basic paths to success with a new idea. You could be the first, you could be the smartest, you could have the most resources, or you could cheat. I just wasn’t entirely sure which of the four methods were being employed here.
“Night Hawk took some legal action,” Sean said. “Part of why we need some more funding.”
“They must have been ticked at you,” I said. “Even if you didn’t do anything illegal. It was their baby.”
Ryan shrugged. “That’s the business world,” he said. “Screw them. It’s dog eat dog out there.”
Chapter 5
There was one more person I wanted to talk with today. The more people I spoke with, the more I learned, and this case was evolving into a puzzle where I’d need to learn a lot. I called and was fortunate to catch Marcellus Williams as he was just getting back from the beach. He told me to give him an hour to take care of some immediate business, which posed no problem. It took me a little longer than that just to make it out to Malibu.
Marcellus’s house was on Bayshore Drive, and it was, of course, facing the beach. There were no houses in this neighborhood that did not face the beach, and my quick tour on the internet told me homes here started at eight million dollars. When I knocked on the door, a tall, well-proportioned young woman wearing a blue striped bikini and nothing else opened it. She had hair extensions that went halfway down her back, and she smiled when she saw me.
“You must be the famous Burnside,” she said.
“I must. And who might you be?”
“I’m LeTanya. I work for Marcellus. Kind of his personal assistant.”
“I could use a personal assistant,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure my wife would divorce me if she looked like you.”
She laughed and led me into what was not a spacious living room, but one that appeared large because of an all-glass wall that afforded an unencumbered view of the ocean. Vaulted ceilings with a large skylight made the room very bright. The ocean beckoned from beyond a sprawling redwood deck, which was about the size of the living room itself, and held a sunken Jacuzzi. There were a few easy chairs scattered about the living room, and a 60-inch flat-screen mounted on a wall, the channel set to the NFL Network. I was being treated to an outsized display of wealth today, and I tried not to think about the fact that all of these guys were a lot younger than I was.
“Cell, your guy is here!” LeTanya yelled.
A few moments later, Marcellus Williams, all six-foot-five and 240 pounds of chiseled granite, walked into the room, toweling himself off. He wore a pair of dark blue shorts, a dark blue tank top, and light blue sandals. When he saw me, he flashed his million-dollar smile, one of the reasons he had the nickname, Megawatt.
“It’s my favorite detective!” he exclaimed, and gave me a bear hug. It was like being grabbed by a large steel beam.
“Good to see you, too,” I said, catching my breath and pulling away at the first chance I got. I took another look around. “Nice crib.”
“It’s my spring home,” he said, still smiling as he sprawled onto one of the easy chairs. I sat down across from him, on the other side of the room. LeTanya gave a quick wave, walked out onto the deck, and stepped gingerly into the Jacuzzi. She put on sunglasses and turned away from us to face the beach. I looked at Marcellus. He winked.
“I take it that’s the business you needed to tend to for an hour,” I remarked.
“Women are my weakness. Always have been. What can I say?”
I shook my head. “You don’t need to say much. You’re living the life. You’re a star.”
“I am,” he agreed. “Signed my second contract last year, so I got some monopoly money now. I have some business interests out here, so I decided to get me a beach house. My career in the league, it all worked out in the end.”
“Was there any doubt?”
“Oh, yeah, I was definitely having some moments my first two years. The NFL, it’s unforgiving. My rookie season was just wack.”
“You were drafted by Jacksonville, right?”
Marcellus reached into a cooler and pulled out two bottles of water. He pointed one at me, and when I nodded, he threw it across the room in a perfect spiral. I made a one-handed catch and he smiled his approval.
“Yeah, thought it was all good, going back to Florida. I grew up in Overtown, so it was a quick flight home to Miami whenever I wanted to. But man, that team … ” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Wasn’t working out?”
“They didn’t have a franchise quarterback. I can’t be a top-drawer receiver without someone getting me the damn ball. After a while, I started making my feelings known. The team didn’t like that too much, badmouthed me, said I was a diva, not coachable, you name it. Thankfully, Coach Cleary stepped in and made a trade, he got me to Chicago. Weather was nasty, but the Bears saved my career.”
“Good thing he knew all about you from SC,” I said. Marcellus was a two-time All-American in college, and even as a freshman, his star shined brighter than anyone else’s. So much so that he attracted an agent who wanted to illegally sign him under the table, and lock him into a contract early on. Johnny asked me to step in, and I managed to separate Cliff Roper from Marcellus, and I also managed to stay on civil terms with both. Roper eventually did sign Marcellus to a deal to represent him, but he did it the legitimate way.
“Damn, they was right. It’s all about who you know in this world. If Coach Cleary wasn’t in the NFL, I think I might have just gotten waived out of the league. He gave me the second chance I needed.”
I smiled. “Glad it worked out,” I said.
“What brings you out here?” he asked, taking a long swig of water.
“Working a case. Has to do with your, how should I put this, your business interests.”
“Ah, you mean WAVE?”
I peered at him. “You’ve got other business interests out here?”
“Of course. I’m diversified. Don’t put all my chips on one deal.”
“Tell me about some of them,” I said, genuinely curious. “Aside from this nice beach house.”
“Hey, I got another beach house I bought for my mama in Coral Gables. Got her out of Overtown. She used to work as a housekeeper. Now she gets to hire a housekeeper. Ain’t that something?”
“Nice. You have any siblings?”
“Nope, it was just me and her. Give her a lot of credit. She had me at seventeen, single mom, and managed to provide for me. Wasn’t easy, we never had a lot, but she did it. She got me through, got me out of there. Now I’m paying her back.”
I took a breath. What Marcellus described was something I heard too often from kids I had recruited to SC. They were often the product of a one-parent home, usually a mother struggling to make ends meet. Not all players were able to make it to the NFL and earn money, though. And not all were able to take care of their parent the way Marcellus did. I briefly thought back to my own upbringing and knew there were a few parallels. I just was never able to pay my mother back. I turned to Marcellus.
“What are you working on here in L.A.?” I asked.
“Producing some videos. Bankrolling a couple of rap singers that got potential. Also got a stake in a weed shop. Now there’s a market with real potential. Just trying to get the damn local government
to get out of my way. Need to get licenses for everything here in California. And believe me, I got to grease a lot of palms just to get a ticket in the door.”
“Marcellus, you sound like some of my fellow Trojan alums,” I smiled.
“Hey, it’s what it is. I support who I need to support. My mama don’t understand why I donate my money to Republicans. I tell her, look, I’m a black millionaire. I got to take care of my investments.”
“Sounds like you learned a little something at SC.”
“I did. Made a lot of contacts there, and now I’m leveraging them. And my experience with Jacksonville taught me a lot. If Coach Cleary wasn’t in the league, I might be back living with my mama in that apartment again. After Jacksonville badmouthed me, other teams were reluctant to give me another shot. Coach Cleary knew me, knew what I was capable of. Who you know means a lot.”
“That gets to why I’m here,” I said. “You know Cody Groh.”
“I do,” he answered enthusiastically. “Met him briefly at SC, he was coming in just as I was leaving. He got drafted by the Bears the year after I got traded there. Our lives kept intersecting. He played receiver with me. Not quite like me, though. But hey, Cody, he’s one smart guy. He’ll do just fine in life. Maybe not in football, but he’s got options. He’s going places.”
I frowned. “That’s a mouthful. Tell me more.”
“Look, Cody’s fast, he’s a speed guy, but it’s all straight-line speed. Sprinter speed. It’s fine for kickoff returns, all he needs to do is find that open lane and blow through it. If he has to do a juke move, it’ll work on a kicker, but that’s about it. So he’s kind of a special teams guy. There’s more to being a receiver than just speed and hands.”
I gave him a thumbs up. “You know your craft.”
“Oh, yeah. I know how to use my body as a shield against defenders, when to slow down, when to speed up, how to use my hands to get separation without the refs flagging me. Learning the right way to run routes. Football is about angles. You’re in a contained space, and you only have a couple of seconds to find the open area and get there. Helps if you got my size, but there are little guys who succeed at receiver, too.”