The Redemption Lie

by Amanda J. Clay

  She was taking a corner when she heard something over the low buzz of her music. Tourist chatter? Birds? She turned down the music and heard it again, it sounded like her name. She slowed her pace and glanced to each side. Then she heard it louder behind her.

  “Nina!”

  Nina slowed and glanced behind her and saw none other than Special Agent Beck Graham gaining on her trail.

  “Fuck,” she muttered. This guy does not quit.

  “I don't have anything to say to you,” Nina called behind her.

  She heard the footsteps gaining on her as he grew closer. She picked up her pace. He was gaining on her regardless, his physical prowess living up to his aesthetics. She forced her legs to move faster until she was in a full-on sprint, 5k style. She heard his footsteps patter loudly behind her and she actually started to laugh. So, he wanted to race? Fine, she’d play. She kept pushing and pushing until her lungs burned and her legs burned, and the summer breeze whipped through her hair and stung her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks from the wind, but she just laughed. She loved the feeling of a full sprint.

  “Nina!” Beck called again, this time his voice hoarse and winded. Now she was in full on laughter mode, she didn't know why; something about this entire thing was just comical and ridiculous.

  She saw the sharp corner coming up ahead and prepared her legs to go in and out of the turn as if she were a racecar driver. She went to turn left and then she felt the fingers on her arm. She jerked back and fell into Graham. They both tumbled to the ground. She hit the hard dirt with a thud, slamming her elbow into a rock.

  “What the fuck dude?” Nina said pushing herself up on her elbows. She examined a small scrape on her arm. “Resolving to forceful measures?” She picked the small particles of dirt from the scrape.

  “Oh my God, I'm so sorry,” Beck said. “Did I hurt you? That was a total accident. You just kept running!”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I know. That was sort of my point. I didn't want to be caught.”

  Nina folded her knees up and leaned back on her arms. She tilted her head and examined Graham. He was sweaty, in running shorts and a sweaty black DEA tee shirt that clung to a chiseled torso and broad shoulders. Popeye biceps peaked out, proudly showcasing tribal ink. Beck’s eyes squinted against the bright mid-morning summer sun. She could smell his musk and deodorant on the air.

  “What are you doing, anyway?” Nina said.

  “I was out for a run. And I lucked out and happened to see you. I thought maybe we could continue our conversation.”

  Nina snorted a laugh. “You guys are unreal.”

  Graham bounced his head back and forth as though considering it. “Unreal, or maybe just persistent. Some women find that a desirable quality.”

  “You’re not going to change my mind. I already told you I'm not talking. I don't have anything to tell you anyway. You're wasting your time. Find another snitch.”

  Beck smirked. “Still speaking in gangster terms.”

  Nina rolled her eyes and started to push up from the ground. “I’m leaving. Goodbye.”

  “I think you have a lot left to say,” Beck said, standing.

  “Go away.”

  “All I’m asking is for you to help the good guys, Nina.”

  Nina snorted. “Good guys. Every villain is the good guy in his own tale. You have no idea what you’re asking of me.”

  “Be reasonable,” Beck said.

  “Be reasonable? Reasonable like put my sanity and safety on the line for somebody else's job? No thank you. Enjoy your day, Agent Graham. Nothing better than a Tahoe Summer day. Take advantage.” Nina turned to go.

  Beck grabbed her arm. Nina tensed, then ripped her arm out of his grip. The flicker of apology flashed across his eyes and then he regained his composure.

  “Don't you want to help us stop this ring, make a difference? What you know could help us stop this thing right in its tracks.” Beck said.

  “I am making a difference. I make a difference in a way that actually matters, stanching the wound at the site. You're just putting a Band-Aid on it.”

  “And what you're doing is a great thing. But don't you want to help attack this from all angles? This isn't just a matter of teaching people to read, this is an entrenched societal problem. These people are a plague, deep-rooted into our soil, festering beneath the surface, just waiting for someone to come by and roll around in it. It tears families, communities apart.”

  Nina laughed and wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. “And they will tear me apart if I help you. Literally.”

  Her body began to quiver as the fear that lived deep within her manifested into anger.

  She felt Beck’s eyes boring into her, trying to persuade her with a look. She tried not to meet his gaze, but she couldn't help but want to stare into those eyes. Steely gray, like the onset of a summer's storm. They shifted color in the light. His complexion was youthful, she was right about him being young. But upon closer examination there was a certain hardness there, the look of someone who has seen things they can never unsee. A crinkle in the eyes and around the mouth. Sharpness in the jaw. A certain depth to his eyes that reflected dark memories. She wondered about his past then. Who was Agent Graham? Where did he come from? Where was he going?

  She suddenly realized he'd said something and she been lost in thought.

  “What's that?” She said.

  Graham laughed, clearly noticing her drift to la-la land.

  “I said maybe we could go somewhere for a cup coffee? Let me try to change your mind. And if you really don’t want to hear it, you can tell me about Tahoe Village. I’m here for a while either way so I wouldn’t mind some insight.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and cocked out her hip. “You really don't quit, do you?”

  “Nope. That's why they put me on your case. They said you'd be a tough nut to crack.”

  “Yeah, something tells me the words weren't as kitschy as that.”

  “Quite possibly. One bitter bitch might've been a phrase tossed around,” Beck said.

  Nina snorted a laugh at that. “Yeah, that sounds more like it.”

  “Look, Nina, I’ll level with you. This case matters a lot to me. It's important to my career. But more than that, I care about it. If I wanted to just fight run-of-the-mill bad guys I could have been a cop. But stopping this epidemic matters to me on a personal level. I’m sure you can understand that. So with that said, I’m not going to give up here.”

  Nina's eyeballs burned. Of course she understood. She'd like to set fire to the entire industry.

  “Fine, one cup of coffee.” She held up a finger aggressively. “Just one.”

  She took off running toward the Robin’s Nest Café.

  

  They settled into a small table on the patio with a Lake view.

  They each ordered a cappuccino and settled in on the defensive.

  “Alright,” Nina started. “I can usually put down a cappuccino in about 10 minutes. So that's how long you've got.”

  Beck folded his arms over his broad chest, popping his biceps. Did he do that on command? Nina bit her lip. Warmth pooled inside her. When was the last time she’d felt this pull? Luther… She blinked away his image and focused on the one in front of her.

  Beck sipped his coffee and began. “Okay, so the market has recently been flooded by a new product. Pharma grade, looks legit. But not American. Likely Mexican, possibly El Salvadorian. The Estonians have been sweeping the stuff through the past couple of years. New kids on the block. We think we’ve narrowed down the key players but as you know, we need something to bring them all in on that’s going to stick. The thing we can't figure out though is how their running such large loads up here undetected. And we've busted all known entities, we put in checkpoints up the usual routes, and nothing. Everything is clean. To top that off, we don't know how they’re laundering the money.”

  “So really, you don’t know much of anything,” Nina said. She took
an exceptionally large gulp of her cappuccino.

  Beck looked at her with a little snicker.

  “What?” Nina snapped.

  “You've got a little foam on your nose,” he said.

  Nina’s cheeks burned as she quickly took a napkin to her nose.

  “So basically, what you're telling me, you know absolutely jack shit about this organization. So when you tell me that you're close to busting up the ring, you're actually completely stuck.”

  Beck laughed. “Yeah I guess so.”

  “And you want me to do your job for you by telling you everything you need to know.”

  “That would be super helpful, thanks.”

  Nina laughed. She took a breath and composed herself. She looked out at the lake, the tranquil day. Young families scampered about the water, eager to get out on the boat, to drink cold beer in the sunshine and let their daily lives float away. How desperately Nina wanted to feel the same thing. But when she looked at the young eager faces, all she saw were victims. Potential clients. Would she ever start seeing people in a different light?

  “I don't know. I don't know how they're getting the drugs up from Mexico and I don't know where the money's going.”

  “Now, I'd love to believe you, Nina, but you were able to basically tell us the exact same thing when we busted up Luther’s ring six years ago.”

  “Well, that was six years ago. I'm completely out of the game now. Not sure if you noticed, but I went to jail for three years. Whatever the old organization had going is gone. I've been out and clean from everything. I have a probation officer, check with her.”

  “I’m not doubting that, Nina.”

  “And Luther’s dead. My connection to the organization died with him in that shootout.”

  “Come on, they didn't try to pull you back in?”

  She shrugged and avoided eye contact. “Sure they might have reached out, but I told them it was too risky while I was on parole. That it put everybody at risk. And they bought it. After a while, they just lost interest in me.”

  Nina squirmed slightly in her seat and felt the thin film of perspiration coat her palms.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  Nina shifted her shoulders. “And why is that?”

  “Seems to me you were a key part of the organization before,” Beck said.

  Nina laughed it off.

  “You’re greatly overestimating my contribution. I was a nobody. A gangster’s girlfriend who got a couple years’ time for some bullshit crimes. End of story.” She took another sip of her cappuccino, trying to hide the truth from her voice.

  “So you're saying you can’t help us?” Beck said.

  “Yeah that's what I'm saying. Sorry you wasted your time, but I’m not the person that you think I am. I'm sure there are plenty of other kingpin girlfriends you can go after that will prove much more fruitful.”

  “Not ones that are already on our side.”

  Nina snickered. “That's where you're wrong, Graham. I'm not on your side. I'm on no one’s side of this thing. If one positive thing came out of this whole nightmare, it was that lesson. Don't take any side but your own.”

  “Seems like a selfish way to live.”

  “It seems like a way to live that keeps you alive. Noble causes are great, agent, but they usually get you killed.”

  “And what if it’s not for a noble cause? Does your desire for self-preservation extend to keeping yourself out of prison?”

  Nina’s stomach tightened. Her throat was suddenly arid. “What are you talking about?”

  Beck shrugged. “Just hypothetically speaking, what if the DEA had some information about past crimes that could get you in a bit of trouble. Would that persuade you?”

  Nina finished off her cappuccino, pressed her palms to the table and calmly stood. She wasn’t going to bite.

  “I assume you're buying this,” she said with a tilted smile.

  Graham returned the gesture. Under normal circumstances she’d want to eat that smile. She always had liked the tall dark thunderstorms of men.

  “Look Graham, I know you're just trying to do your job and I don't blame you for it. I think most of you guys are doing a good thing. And believe me that I mean this with the best of intentions, but I need you to kinda fuck off, ok? I'm not helping you with this, there's nothing you can say that’s going to sweet talk me into it. I wish you the best of luck wholeheartedly, I really do.”

  Beck looked at her as though she’d challenged him to a duel.

  Nina grabbed her bag and started to walk away.

  “You might change your mind,” Beck said to her back.

  Nina hesitated but didn’t turn around. “Have a nice life, Agent Graham.”

  Chapter 6

  The morning always came too soon when Beck was buried in a tough case. The nights were restless—too long and short all at once—and he always woke fitful and lethargic. Sometimes he thought it might be better if he didn’t even bother to sleep. Coffee worked just as well.

  He forced himself up, recharged with pod coffee and pulled on his suit. He hopped on his Harley, cruising down to the rinky-dink Tahoe Village Police Department before the sun had broken through the lazy night. The purple fan of a new dawn stretched across the mountain sky. The moon slowly faded as subtle streaks of purple and gray were beginning to scratch their way to the surface, fighting for their place, finally relenting to a splash of vibrant orange and pink.

  Lake Tahoe, what Mark Twain called the “fairest picture the whole world affords.” Beck was hard pressed to disagree with his assessment.

  The station was ghostly this early as the skeleton night crew readied to retire.

  “Morning Agent Graham,” the night receptionist greeted, her smile warm but her expression heavy with the weight of weariness.

  “Morning, Beth.”

  “Just made a fresh pot of coffee,” Beth said.

  Beck forced a sleepy smile. “You’re a lifesaver. Thanks.”

  He grabbed a cup and settled into his temporary desk. Like most cases he worked, they were guests of the local law enforcement.

  He flicked on his computer and started combing through his morning list of articles to read.

  In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets is continuously derailed. In an exclusive interview, former DEA Special Agent Ron Fitzpatrick tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread -- aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.

  Beck read the article and snorted. The government would have you believe that terrorism was their biggest threat. Illegal immigration bringing in the drugs and crime. But it's not like they came in and dumped drugs from the sky like a raining piñata. If it wasn't for the American operations, they have no one to sell them to. Homegrown organizations were the deadliest threat to their streets. And the opioid crisis? It was nothing like trying to deal with crack in the ghettos. This thing infected everything from poor rural white kids to rich housewives. In Beck’s opinion, it was big Pharma solving everyone’s problems with a pill. It was insurance unwilling to cover therapeutic alternatives and natural solutions for holistic health because that didn't pay big kickbacks.

  Beck wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, but he also wasn't living under a rock. Capitalism was the bedrock of their society, and money and special interests with big pockets would always win. The big pharmaceutical companies didn't care if a few impressionable kids went down in the fight. The big corporations didn't care whether or not people in poor rural communities were dying from their products. Beck was starting to think that nobody really cared. He was starting to think that battling the crisis was just lip service to keep people happy. Nobody cared if kids like Jack
got caught in the crossfire.

  He sighed. When did he become such a cynic?

  He pushed back from the computer and thought about Nina’s role in all this. She downplayed it, but he’d read the files. He knew exactly who she was and what she was capable of. Nina Sullivan, a.k.a., The Cat. Alluring. Persuasive. Dangerous. Plenty of people had been afraid of her. Plenty of people had found it far too convenient that she’d been caught and sent away. It ruined her street cred.

  Dangerous. That was a descriptor he believed. There was something about her that warned him not to get too close. Captivating, entrancing—a blue aura like the hottest part of the flame. Despite what you know of it, you still long to touch it. She set his entire existence on edge.

  And yet, he still wanted to get closer, still wanted to run his fingers through the flame.

  You’ll like it, I promise.

  Beck shook it off. Nina Sullivan was a predator, instinctively feral and unpredictable. He needed to keep his emotional distance. Anyone who had been in Luther Kavka’s confidence could never be trusted. And this case was too important to fuck it up.

  He needed to figure out a way to make her cooperate. The last thing he wanted to do was force the hand of a terrified person, but sometimes that's what they had to do in this job. Nina was an asset, not a victim. He didn't have the time or luxury of playing nice all the time. There were bigger things at stake here than Nina’s sensibilities. And the sooner he cracked this case, the sooner he’d get that promotion. He would force Nina’s hand one way or another. Too much was riding on this case not to.

  But unlike jaded OG’s like his Chief Adviser Martinez, he didn’t think of Nina as another dumb criminal that they could bully or belittle into cooperating. Like so many, criminals or not, they were human beings, complex and psychologically deep. People did the things that they did for their own motivations. It didn’t mean that Beck agreed with all of them—sometimes it was survival but other times it was just because people were downright bad—but it still meant that you had to understand their motivations. If they didn’t understand, then they were never going to convince them to do anything. Even a criminal wants to be respected.