Chapter 252 - 156: Secret Base
"Should we talk to the Giants’ PR and legal departments about this?"
Early morning at Li Wei’s home in Battery City Park.
Li Wei asked as he read the newspaper, glancing over at Don Quixote, who was sipping coffee.
He wasn’t surprised that the New York Post had made him their top story in the sports section. Plenty of people had seen what happened on the way to the private room that day. He just hadn’t expected it to hit the news so fast.
"’The Two Hundred Million USD Man Angrily Tears Up an Outrageous Bill?’" Don Quixote recited from his phone without looking up. "PR already notified me. She said not to worry, it’s a small issue."
"Is that so?" Li Wei chuckled, looking at the paper. "All right then... They did make me look pretty handsome, though."
Don Quixote looked up at Li Wei, and a smile touched his lips. "You know, this might actually be a good thing for you."
"How so?" Li Wei glanced at Don Quixote, raising an eyebrow. "Is someone going to give me an ’Anti-Bullying Pioneer’ award or something?"
"Not exactly. It’s a message I got from Nike today," Don Quixote said, shaking his phone. "Your merchandise, especially your jerseys and shoes, are selling very well. And with today’s news report, sales have spiked. At this rate, you might be getting that 2 million USD from Nike in less than a week."
The endorsement contract he’d signed with Nike had a clause stating that if his merchandise sales exceeded 40 million USD, he would receive a one-time bonus of 2 million USD.
Since the official announcement in April, Li Wei knew his merch was selling well, but he hadn’t expected to hit his goal when the year was only a third of the way through.
"That’s great," Li Wei said happily. "I should be able to get that whole 2 million USD, right?"
"That’s right," Don Quixote said, wagging a finger. "This payment goes directly to the corporate account, so it avoids personal income tax."
This meant that after deducting Don Quixote’s 3% agent fee, he would get 1.94 million USD. Adding that to the 1.7-million-plus he already had, Li Wei now had over 3.6 million in post-tax cash to spend.
"By the way," Li Wei still had his heart set on his private shooting range and training facility, "what’s the status on the shooting range I wanted?"
Hearing Li Wei bring it up, Don Quixote turned off his phone screen, tossed it on the table, and rubbed his face.
"I’m working on it right now," he said with a heavy sigh. "It’s just more complicated than we thought. The lawyer Susan introduced said that the paperwork required to get a shooting range approved in a Blue State like New York is incredibly tedious and time-consuming. I have to go run more errands for it today."
"Right," Li Wei nodded. "If possible, buy the land outright."
He wanted his own private sanctuary, so it was definitely better to buy the land. It would make future expansions much easier, too.
"You just love making things difficult for me," Don Quixote said, standing up and grabbing his phone. "I’m off."
Just when Li Wei, Don Quixote, Lawrence, and even the Giants’ PR team thought the whole thing would blow over as just another piece of gossip, an unexpected group emerged to champion his cause.
His fanbase.
Due to Li Wei’s youthful, mixed-race looks, that one viral photo, and his backstory of being an orphan who crossed the ocean to the United States of America alone, he perfectly fit the female ideal of the "beautiful, strong, and tragic" archetype. This led to a very interesting phenomenon—his female fans made up nearly 40% of his entire fanbase.
This was an unprecedented phenomenon in a violent, direct sport like the NFL.
And when Li Wei’s fanbase discovered that he was being bullied like this by those veterans in New York, they spontaneously organized to fight the injustice on his behalf.
They first dug up all the social media accounts of Dexter Lawrence, the ringleader of the locker room bullying, and began scouring for dirt on him as if with a magnifying glass.
In less than 24 hours, his social media accounts had been picked clean. Someone then unearthed several photos of him hanging out with some drug dealers from the Bronx. Following that, an exposé on Dexter Lawrence went public, accusing him of drug trafficking, drug use, and taking banned substances.
"Damn it!"
In his mansion, Lawrence violently slammed the water bottle in his hand onto the floor. Water splashed everywhere, startling the few women around him.
His eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at the photos being frantically shared by Li Wei’s fans on his phone screen. In the photos, he had his arm around a few notorious gang members from the Bronx. On the glass table in the background, some extremely sensitive white powder and syringes were faintly visible.
"Fuck! These crazy bitches! Where the hell did they dig up these photos from? Some fossilized post from a hundred years ago?!"
"Is the rookie’s PR team behind this?" one of his lackeys next to him swallowed hard. "Should we contact your agent and get the legal department to sue them for defamation?"
"The problem is, this shit is fucking real," Lawrence said, grabbing a handful of his dreadlocks in frustration. "I really did party with them for a while during the offseason a couple of years ago. Now I’m worried the NFL Alliance’s compliance department will storm the training camp because of the public outcry and hit me with a urine test or blood screen. The steroid metabolites in my system won’t be completely gone for at least another two weeks."
Hearing this, the faces of the lackeys around him instantly paled. In the business of the NFL, crossing the line on the league’s strict policy on substance abuse and banned drugs meant, at best, a suspension without pay, and at worst, having your major contract terminated by the team.
"Damn it, this is going to cost at least a million USD for lawyers and a crisis PR team to make this go away," Lawrence got angrier the more he thought about it, so angry he could spit. "And I’ll have to bribe those vampires in the league who are in charge of drug testing."
Originally, he just wanted to put Li Wei in his place at the rookie dinner and extort a few tens of thousands of USD for the meal to feel better. But now, not only had he become a laughingstock across the United States of America, he was also facing a massive career crisis and was forced to dig into his own pocket to fill a hole of over 1 million USD.
"You damn yellow-skinned monkey, trying to walk all over me... Now you’re trying to smash my rice bowl..." He clenched his fists. "Come the second half of the preseason, I swear you won’t be walking off that stadium turf on your own two feet!"
Li Wei, of course, had no idea that the spontaneous actions of his fanbase had forced that guy Lawrence to cough up a huge sum of money.
He was currently discussing the land issue with Don Quixote.
Through the work of a land agent, Li Wei’s secretly-held company in Delaware spent 1.3 million USD to buy 12 acres of land in Maurice County, in the suburbs of New Jersey. The price included the confidentiality agreement and agent’s fees.
It was a plot of about 46,000 square meters, completely shielded by dense natural forest. At the same time, it was neither too far nor too close to civilization, making it perfectly suitable for developing Li Wei’s secret base. It was only an hour’s drive from New York.
However, buying the land was only the first step. The subsequent flood of paperwork for approvals gave both Li Wei and Don Quixote a headache.
Don Quixote SLAMMED a thick stack of documents onto the wide marble island, then collapsed onto a barstool as if completely drained, tugging at his tie in frustration.
"Take a look. This is your ’secret base’," he said, pointing to a pile of files several inches thick. "Good news is, all this can be handled eventually. Bad news is, ’eventually’ is going to take a while."
Li Wei put down the tactical manual in his hands and walked over to flip open the top document.
He opened it to find a rejection notice stamped in red.
"I’ve run myself ragged these past few days, meeting with the heads of at least five different departments," Don Quixote chugged a glass of ice water and let out a long breath. "The zoning board and planning commission told us that if we want to dig a deep basement and change the land use, we have to apply for a land use variance, but that requires a lengthy series of hearings."
"And what’s even more of a pain in the ass," he said, pulling out another document, "the Environmental Protection Agency has its eye on our proposed project. This is New Jersey, a Blue State, one of the strictest in the United States of America for gun control and environmental regulations, just like New York. They’re demanding we use their standard air filtration system for approval, and that alone will take half a year."
"Can money solve all this? What about procuring the weapons?" Li Wei was more concerned about this part.
"That’s the hardest part," Don Quixote scratched his head. "You want to purchase sniper rifles and stuff, right? Some of the weapons you want can only be obtained by applying for a Federal Firearms License in the company’s name. This not only requires a background check from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but the final sign-off is in the hands of the local Maurice County sheriff."
"Why don’t we contact Mamenov?" Li Wei thought for a moment. "Doesn’t he have a way to get these things? Since the shooting range is proving difficult, should we just put it on hold for now?"
"I just feel like going through them will leave some loose ends," Don Quixote was still a bit sore about Mamenov joking with him last time. He thought for a moment. "But since this is what you want, let’s put the official channels on the back burner and think of other ways."
Li Wei nodded and looked at the stack of documents on the table. "Speaking of which, I’m trending all over social media in the States right now. Could donating a sum of money to the local police union solve these problems?"
Don Quixote laughed when he heard this.
"My dear nephew, you are indeed a big star, but you don’t understand the bureaucratic system of the United States of America," he said, shaking his head with a smile. "In the eyes of the local bigwigs who hold the power of approval, your name is worthless. You’re just starting out. You might be a big star to your fans, but you’re not part of these officials’ ecosystem. That’s the problem."
After listening, Li Wei gently tapped his fingers on the marble countertop, making a rhythmic TAP, TAP sound.
For new money with no connections, this was the ceiling he was bound to hit. He had money and fame, but he couldn’t find the key person who could open the revolving door for him.
’Do I have to go find that Mayor Holmes?’ Li Wei thought. Holmes could definitely help him solve this problem if he got involved.
But the moment he thought of that garishly colored lion dance, Li Wei felt an instinctual disgust for the man.
Holmes was someone who had absolutely no respect for Chinese culture. He couldn’t be bothered to get involved with him again.
Just as he was thinking, his phone suddenly rang.
"This is Li Wei," Li Wei said, picking up his phone. "Miss Elizabeth?"