The Redemption Lie

by Amanda J. Clay

  Nina nodded and accepted his hand back up to her feet.

  Chapter 16

  The room was cold, dank. The overhead light went off in a spasm, creating a dreamlike state. Her head pounded, and the sounds echoed in the dark chamber. She could hear water dripping, a pencil tapping, the clock marking by slowly. Tick, tick, tick. Every second closer to your demise. She could feel that negative energy radiating around, she squirmed in her chair, she wanted to run. Because that's what she was good at, running. She wanted to hide and never face the day again.

  Her head still throbbed from her encounter, but it had lulled to a dull ache. The doctor had cleared her, citing no serious injuries. She was ordered to get some rest and sleep off the shock.

  The DEA, however, didn’t feel the need to give her any downtime.

  Nina sat in the uncomfortable chair, feeling like a child who'd been proved wrong by her parents. See, we told you so! You never listen to mommy and daddy.

  She met Beck's eyes, which were a combination of anger, and pained concern. She'd rather him just be angry than concerned. She didn't know how to process people's worry.

  She didn’t even want to look at Beck. Partly because she was angry she was sitting in this room answering questions when all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and remain there for the next month. And partly because she had this guilty feeling like she had let him down. Like he’d called her bluff on her own ability to protect herself.

  The veins in Beck’s neck visibly pulsed. Rage coursed through his expression, down his arms, through his forearms into his palpitating fist. Was that rage directed at her for her stupidity or toward her would-be kidnapper. Nina shifted uncomfortably, not knowing what to say. There was something about meaningful rage that set her on edge. The visceral reaction of a woman who's been beaten and attacked.

  “Are you going to say anything or just give me the evil eye for the next six hours?” Nina said.

  “I told you to be careful,” Beck said, his voice tight, the threat of an outburst on the edge of his tongue.

  Nina chuckled. “Are you kidding me right now? I'm assaulted outside a restaurant bathroom and I need to be more careful? You're unbelievable.”

  “You’re not taking any of this seriously,” Beck said.

  “What, I'm supposed to just stay locked up in my room all the time? Never leave the house, carry around a big stick?”

  Beck raked his hand through his hair and groaned.

  “You sure you didn't recognize the guy?” Beck said

  “I know he was with the organization, but I didn't recognize his face.”

  “How do you know then? Just a hunch?”

  “He had a tattoo. The right tattoo. They all have it.”

  “Can you draw it?”

  “I don’t need to.” Nina sighed and rotated her arm outward, revealing the crest on her inner left bicep, the artful brushstrokes of an intricate phoenix.

  Beck stared at it hard, unmoving. He met her eyes. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s from an Estonian crest. From the family.”

  “Are you ready to start listening to me now?” Beck said, his tone almost a growl. Nina couldn’t decide if she was turned on by it or frightened.

  “You don’t know it’s connected,” Nina said.

  “Cut this bullshit!” Beck slammed his hands down on the table.

  Nina flinched but forced herself not to jump.

  “What is it they want from you, Nina? What are you not telling us?” Beck said.

  Nina’s gaze flicked to Martinez who said quietly and stoically across from her. His hands were folded over his broad chest and his ebony eyes studied every move she made.

  Nina tried to keep her shoulders up. She shrugged. “I don’t know. How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t know?! They’re probably just trying to scare me.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably because I’m working with you dumb shits! They’re not stupid.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Martinez piped in, even-keeled.

  Nina bit her lip to keep the vitriol inside.

  “What did you expect? Did you think that they wouldn’t come after me if I started talking to you? I’ve had a target on my back ever since you walked through my door, Graham,” Nina said. She was shaking, chilled, nauseous.

  She breathed and went on. “You think you’re the first cops I’ve dealt with? You’re all the same. You tell sweet little lies, you flirt, you say all the right things to get someone to cooperate with you. You don't care what kind of danger you put people in. Tell me, how many women and children have you put in the line of fire in your efforts to put away the big bad drug dealers?”

  Beck’s jaw clenched, his eyes hardened. Nina had struck a chord. But she was angry enough to play right up the scale.

  “We do what we have to do to keep this country safe from drugs,” Beck said.

  Nina laughed. “Right, safe. You sound like a fucking PSA. How’s that working out for you? Winning the war?”

  Beck leaned forward and slammed his hands on the table. “You know, it’s not like we don’t know that innocent people get caught in the crossfire of this thing. But that’s the thing about war, isn’t’ it? Civilian casualties. I know that some people are in the wrong place, wrong time, whose circumstances led them to live a little bit left of the law. But it doesn't mean we stop fighting.”

  Nina met Beck's eyes. There was something warm there, something beyond what his angry expression and words were saying. Beck cared about this case, beyond just a career move or doing his job. He had an emotional investment in this outcome.

  Nina had seen the depths of how this industry ripped through communities, destroying young lives. Getting young girls so hooked that their only option was to turn to the streets for more. She'd seen families turn on each other, sons rob their own mothers to pay for a fix.

  “I want to help,” Nina said. “I'm trying to cooperate here. I want to be on your side. But you have to believe me that I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what they want. Relentlessly badgering me isn't going to change that.”

  Beck leaned back and ran his hands through his dark hair. The clear brightness in his eyes had relented to wariness. The weight of his stress hung on his sallow skin. This was getting to him and if Nina had to guess, more so than the average case.

  “Have you looked at any of the things I told you?” Nina asked.

  Beck nodded. “Yes, following up on your leads.”

  “Maybe it's best if I just get out of town or something. I’m too high profile. It would probably look better for you guys if I leave. It will dispel suspicion about my cooperation.”

  “You can’t leave,” Martinez said.

  “Excuse me? You can't keep me here.”

  “Technically we can. You're part of an ongoing operation. It's fully within our rights to ask you to stay within the county. But we can get you protection.”

  “Absolutely fucking not! How many times do I have to tell you that?

  “We could force it on you, you know,” Beck said.

  Nina snorted. “And how exactly are you going to do that?”

  “Put a detail on you. You can't stop the police from following you everywhere you go,” Beck said.

  “I think there is a law against that. It’s called harassment.”

  She saw the vein in Beck's head start to pulse.

  “You know what, Nina? You're not the only one that matters here. I want to protect you, I respect you. But we have to do what's right for everybody else too. We can't just bend the rules, bend over backward just because you ask us to. You think your little charms can get anyone to do exactly what you want them to do, but they don't work on me.”

  Nina blinked innocently. “My little charms?”

  Martinez and Beck both laughed and exchanged glances.

  Beck said, “I'm guessing you’ve had this down to a science since you were 12. The tilt of the head, the slight pucker of the lips, the flicker
of the irises. Tell me, can you do that on command?”

  Nina met his gaze directly and forced her irises to expand. She watched as his did in turn.

  “Only as well as you can,” she said.

  

  Beck’s head throbbed as he read over case files, looked at pictures of dead bodies abandoned in the streets. He had to remind himself that they were doing good things here, that the work mattered. It was so easy to forget that. After enough frustrated failure, after enough unsolved cases, after another death of a young innocent kid, it was easy to forget they were making a difference at all. But every life saved, was a victory.

  “She’s going to be a huge pile of trouble,” Martinez said.

  Beck looked up. “She already is.”

  “Now that’s a woman who plays with her food.”

  Beck tried to laugh but the muscles were exhausted. “She’s tough.”

  “She’s dangerous.”

  “A little girl have you shaking your boots, then?” Beck said, smirking.

  Martinez smiled thinly. “Though she be but little…”

  “…She is fierce. She just had to do what she had to do to survive. Dangerous world she was in.”

  “Nobody asked her to get involved in that world.”

  “You know it's not black and white.”

  Martinez nodded curtly. He rubbed his hand over the few days growth on his chin.

  “Be careful there, Beck. That girl’s more cat than woman. Feral, cunning, patient. She’ll curl up next to you when she wants something but turn on you just as quickly.”

  “You seem like you have personal experience on the matter,” Beck said.

  “I worked the original case. I watched her in action. Don't let her redemption story fool you. It's a lie.”

  Chapter 17

  The buzz of the slot machines and the raucous laughter of people fooling themselves into thinking they were one step ahead of the house echoed in the background. The scent of the overly perfumed, the disillusioned dreamers, filled his nostrils. The place smelled like an expensive whore—glitz and Chanel covering up dirty sin.

  Luther lamented the way that the area was going. There used to be a certain rustic elegance to the Lake. Quiet money, tasteful, relaxed. Willing to spend without the fuss. Wealthy college kids eager to plop down any asking price for a bag of blow. But the glory days were gone. The stakes had gotten higher, but conversely so had the profit. He supposed he shouldn’t complain. The easy days had made him weak.

  People might have thought Luther was broken, but he thought he was just forged in the fires of adversity. Growing up behind the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia, he was built of tougher stock than these weak Americans—soft, malleable, shattered by the slightest mishaps in a day. Weak creatures who got upset when their double-soy lattes didn't come out just right. People easily upset by traffic, when their Internet went out, when their neighbor's dog barked too loudly. Luther did not get upset by these things. These things did not matter, these things were trivial. These things did not scrape out one’s soul. Luther had seen the things that deteriorate a soul—poverty, starvation, abuse, torture. All the rest was of no consequence.

  He'd seen enough weakness in the world to know this is why he rose to the top so quickly. If the neighbor’s dog is barking too loudly, you get rid of it. You don't sit in your living room gritting your teeth, baring it, complaining.

  His mother had been weak. A pathetic thing, cowering to his father. His father had been weak. Just because he had fists of steel that he liked to show off to any weak creature within the vicinity, it didn't make him strong. Luther knew that, even as a young boy. Every time he took a punch from his otec, every time he watched máma take one, her falling to the floor in a puddle of tears. Every time she failed to protect him, Luther filed it away. He waited patiently. Grew strong. Not just physically, but mentally. And he prepared. And then one day, when his father came after him, he eliminated the threat.

  When he found his mother beaten within an inch of her life, something in him could no longer abide her weakness. He wrapped his hands around her throat and finished the job.

  Neither his father or the police had ever questioned his father’s guilt in killing his wife.

  And that's what he did now, he eliminated threats that stood in his way. Any other way to live was pointless.

  But Luther would never be the victim of anything again. And that was why he struggled so much with Nina. He hated the way Nina victimized him. And he wasn't going to let it stand. He wasn't going to let her, no matter how much he loved her, put him in his place.

  People like to think in black-and-white terms. But Luther did not believe in black and white. He did not believe in good and evil, or even right and wrong necessarily. Morality is fleeting and subjective, easily bent to various versions of truth as needed. Who was to say which version was correct? Morality was like religion. Not everyone could be right. Not everyone could be wrong. It's all subjective to our paradigm. Who's to really say which God is real, whether or not there's a hell. Whether or not they all just turned into worm food in the end. If there was an afterlife, Luther envisioned it would be more like hell than heaven anyway, so he didn’t give it much credence.

  Luther sipped his Macallan State Reserve and studied the man in front of him. Dark beady eyes, smug face. Bulbous crooked nose. Luther had always had a certain disdain for the man, but he couldn't argue his business sense.

  Aaron Feinstein was expensive but still had a certain gaudy cheapness to him. Feinstein had spent too much time hanging around with Mexicans and Italians in Luther’s opinion. Too much emphasis on gold in his wardrobe choices. Loud gaudy rings, too much grease in his thick hair. He was like a caricature of himself, trying to live up to the fucking clichéd New York Jew.

  Luther adjusted his Tom Ford tie and sat up a little straighter. He just didn't understand what people like Feinstein seemed to want to advertise with their dress, hey I'm a gangster. I launder money. I know nefarious people.

  But he was a solid businessman and his books were clean. He had the respect and ear of the Cartel. That was all Luther really cared about.

  “Luther,” Feinstein said, his words tangled up in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Good to have you back in the game. You look tan. Mexico?”

  “Estonia. I was never out of the game. I was just sitting low until things calmed down. Horatio and I have been working on a few things.”

  “Six years is a long time to sit out. But hey, who am I to judge, yeah? The money kept coming in so I got no complaints.”

  “That’s a first for you. Complaining is your favorite pastime.”

  “Is it a crime that I expect things to live up to a certain standard.?” Feinstein lifted his glass to his lips, his gold Rolex glinting in the honey glow of the custom lighting.

  “Better make room in the vault, Feinstein. Your cut’s about to get a whole lot bigger,” Luther said.

  Feinstein raised his bushy black eyebrows with interest.

  “I’m all ears, Kavka. What's the new deal then? The thing I’ve been hearing about?”

  Luther sipped his whiskey and took a collecting breath.

  “We finally opened up some lines of communication that of been previously closed to us. Looks like our distribution is going to be expanded three times over.”

  “Care to share more details?” Feinstein said.

  “In conjunction with the new pipeline we’ve been working on, we finally have the statewide network working. Hundreds of doctors and pharmacists here in the states willing to play ball.”

  “Well hey, now. That is good news. And when is this set to go into effect?”

  “Should have the new pipeline up and running within the month. Have a few minor roadblocks through Pasadena, but my guys are working on it.”

  “Who’da thought the Mexicans would come in handy after all?”

  “You know, you can be crudely bigoted at times, Feinstein.”

  “Luther, my friend, I
despise all of humanity equally. We’re all dregs with a dreadful knack for self-destruction.”

  “On this matter we find agreement,” Luther said.

  “Well then, that's cause for celebration then.” Feinstein pressed the buzzer on his desk phone and a female voice answered. “Bring us a bottle of the Macallan No 6. Bucket of ice too.”

  Feinstein looked to Luther apologetically. “I know you're not supposed to drink the expensive stuff on the rocks, I just can't abide by warm liquor.”

  Luther splayed his hands. “I concede to the house rules.”

  A moment later a buxom young woman in a slinky black dress and towering black stilettos stepped in carrying a tray with an ice bucket, two fresh glasses, and the 750ml bottle of the $3,000 whiskey. Her platinum hair was wound up in bouffant Grecian curls on her head, looking painfully heavy. She wore so much makeup, it was hard to tell if she had any natural beauty at all. She’d put a lot of money into looking cheaply bought.

  “Anything else, Mr. Feinstein?” She said in a sickly-sweet baby voice.

  “That's all, Diamond,” Feinstein said, patting the girl’s ass lightly.

  Diamond nodded obediently and left, her sharp heels tattooing the marble floor.

  “Diamond?” Luther said. He had no patience for cheap women with no spine.

  “Oh you know none of these girls go by their real names. Her real name is likely Jennifer,” Feinstein said.

  Feinstein poured them both fresh drinks and clinked.

  “Nothing better than a fine whiskey,” Feinstein said.

  “I prefer vodka.”

  Feinstein shrugged. He then got that look on his face when he was about to shift the tide toward more serious matters.

  “What is it?” Luther said.

  “I was hesitant to bring this up, my friend, but I feel it must be said. There've been some rumors floating around.”

  “Just fucking say what you mean. You know I find ambiguity distasteful” Luther said.

  “Rumors about your girl. Rumors she's been talking again.”

  Luther’s grip tightened around the low-ball glass. He cracked his neck.