The Same Mistake Twice

by Albert Tucher

  They tightened their grip. They seemed to enjoy hurting her.

  “We have to take her somewhere,” Rebecca said. “Too much coming and going here.”

  Diana decided that she didn’t want to go anywhere with them.

  “Good plan,” she said. “I’ll be sure to leave hairs and stuff in your car for the cops to find.”

  “Shut up,” said the ex-client.

  Rebecca didn’t waste words. She studied Diana, until a nasty smile appeared on her face.

  “You’re absolutely right. That’s why we’ll use someplace the cops won’t look for you.”

  Oh, Diana thought.

  Rebecca meant the place where the cops had just finished searching for bodies. The hiding place wouldn’t work unless Diana became another body. She had a sudden mental picture of herself as an anonymous skeleton ten years from now.

  An engine roared, and a car lurched and bounced into view. The Nissan Maxima looked familiar. The car blocked the BMW as the BMW had blocked Diana’s Taurus. Tracy Grogan climbed out of the driver’s seat. Rebecca strode toward her.

  “Get back in the car and go.”

  “I’m through taking orders from you people.”

  Tracy walked straight toward her mother-in-law.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing you need to know,” said Rebecca.

  “Oh no, you don’t. Not this time. This feels exactly like ten years ago. I was already around back then, remember? I do. I remember phones ringing late at night, conversations stopping when I come into the room. I also remember these two…pals of yours. Something bad happened then, and it’s not going to happen again.”

  “And what do you plan to do about it?”

  Tracy turned to Diana.

  “Who are you really?”

  “I really am a personal trainer. Just not full time.”

  “Believe it or not, I figured that out.”

  “I’m an escort. A prostitute, if you insist.”

  “Dexter is in such deep trouble.”

  “More than you know,” said Diana.

  “Is my husband, what do you call it, a client?”

  “No, it’s worse than that. It goes back to that other time you mentioned. With the phone calls and secrets. I think they killed somebody.”

  “As I was saying,” said Rebecca to Tracy, “this is way over your head. Why don’t you just run along?”

  “So you can kill her too? No.”

  “Why do you care about a whore?”

  “I don’t. But you’re not going to ruin the rest of my life.”

  “Last chance.”

  “Or what? You’ll kill me too?”

  Tracy’s words sounded brave, but her chin quivered. She clenched her teeth to stop the telltale movement. “We’re going to go to Gary. He’ll want to know about this. And he’ll know what to do.”

  Diana started to object. But then she realized that any way out of this situation was better than staying here.

  Tracy gestured toward her.

  “Come on.”

  Diana didn’t need to be told twice. She pulled free of the two men and walked away from them. She took Tracy’s arm to hustle her toward the Maxima. Tracy shook herself loose.

  “I’m not exactly thrilled with you, either.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Tracy turned to Rebecca.

  “I’ll take…Diana in my car. You can follow us to Gary’s.”

  Rebecca took a moment too long to consider her options, and then Diana had reached the relative safety of Tracy’s car. She pulled on the passenger door and blessed the automotive gods when it opened. If she had to wait for Tracy to unlock it, Rebecca might decide to act.

  Diana waited until the Maxima was on the solid blacktop of Route 206 before speaking.

  “You might not be crazy about me, but I’m your biggest fan.”

  “Don’t talk.”

  Diana didn’t mind letting Tracy feel in charge. If the young woman hadn’t decided to follow her mother-in-law and find out what was going on, Diana might be dead already.

  They bounced along the dirt driveway to Route 206. Tracy settled down to cruising speed.

  “Your plumber was very capable, by the way. Not much of a conversationalist, but look where that got me with you.”

  By now Diana knew enough to say nothing.

  Years earlier she had gone to the Rennert house in northern Driscoll several times for instructions and payment. Each time she saw the place, its modesty surprised her. She had heard that Mafia men also cultivated this kind of low profile.

  She also recognized the man who met the car in the driveway. She had seen him regularly ten years earlier, but she had never learned his name. He ushered Diana and Tracy into the house. He opened the door to the first room on the left, and pointed Diana inside.

  The room had been designed for waiting in minimal comfort. It had wooden ladder-back chairs along three walls, a table with a vase of fake flowers in the center, and bland landscape paintings on the walls. Diana took a chair that faced the door.

  Several times she heard voices. They must have been pretty loud to penetrate the soundproofed door. Someone was not happy. As long she wasn’t the someone, she could live with it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Trust her to go underground, Tillotson thought.

  He had decided to handle his own problems instead of letting Jadlowsky bail him out, and Diana’s hooker’s radar had beaten him again. Somehow she knew he was looking for her. He didn’t think she would be at her usual places of business, because they were too easy to check.

  But then he remembered something she had told him years earlier. When she had a decision to make, she talked it over with her grandmother.

  Tillotson recalled the expression on her face, as she dared him to laugh at the idea of discussing things with a woman who had advanced dementia. He had known enough to nod as if it made perfect sense. And now he realized that maybe it did. It made at least as much sense as consulting his wife in the middle of an all-out divorce war.

  Diana had decisions to make now. She knew her business was at risk, no matter what kind of assurances he gave her. He was a realist about prostitutes and the niche they filled, but not every cop shared his view. If other cops got involved in this case, information about her business might get around, no matter how much he tried to control it.

  The nursing home was called Brentwood Manor, and it was a hole. Tillotson winced when he considered how much of the money that Diana earned must go to her grandmother’s barely adequate care. And there was no one but Diana to supplement Mrs. Petroski’s pension and Social Security. Diana’s mother and father were out of the picture, and that was one thing Tillotson had never felt free to ask about.

  He felt like an intruder, and it didn’t help that the staff obviously loved Diana. When he asked about her, faces closed, and answers got vague.

  No, we haven’t seen her. No, we don’t know when she’ll be here again.

  Some of the staff had been customers of his in the past. Others had no official history with the police, but they still knew a cop when they saw one. They were so eager to get rid of him that he thought he’d better check Mrs. Petroski’s room in case Diana was there right now.

  The reception reluctantly gave him the room number and a grudging nod in the right direction. Tillotson started down the hall, but as he walked, his cell phone rang.

  “I’m at the emergency,” said his wife. “I need you here. Now. Whatever your excuse is this time, I’m not interested.”

  He snapped the phone shut and stopped walking. After a moment, he turned and retraced his steps through the main entrance to his car in the parking lot.

  If his wife wasn’t exaggerating, he needed to go. He just wished he didn’t feel so relieved at letting Diana off the hook again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Diana waited more than an hour before the same man came to get her.

  Rennert had decorated and furnis
hed his study to suit his own tastes, not to impress. Everything was dark wood and leather, but unlike a lot of similar rooms she had seen, the place didn’t soak up the light. She wondered how he had managed the trick. As a topic, it beat wondering what he had in mind for her.

  Gary Rennert looked up from his desk chair and pointed at one of the guest chairs across from him.

  She decided to take the initiative. It probably didn’t happen to him often, and it might earn her an advantage.

  “I want Rebecca here. Whatever she told you, it’s a lie.”

  “I know.”

  She hadn’t expected that, and it killed her momentum. They sat looking at each other, until he broke the silence.

  “Take a good look,” Gary Rennert said. “This is me without all the answers.”

  It occurred to her that he looked older than she remembered. In fact, he wasn’t far from looking old, period. A lot of people had been waiting years for Gary Rennert to lose a step. He had probably planned an exit strategy, but he might not realize how close the time for it had come.

  Was there a Mrs. Rennert? For the first time in ten years Diana realized that she didn’t know. Before today, Gary Rennert had never seemed to have any human weaknesses.

  “In fact, I just learned some things that I should have known for years.”

  “Your son and his friend killed James Zakrewsky.”

  “I have been known to get rough now and then.” He smiled briefly. “At least, that’s the rumor. But one thing I never do is break a deal. And now I find that I’ve done exactly that, thanks to those two.”

  He shook his head slowly, which was his version of rage.

  “You don’t have children. At the moment I can’t say I recommend it.”

  “Kids can make smart people stupid,” she said. “I know that much. What was the deal you made with James?”

  “He sat in this room, right where you are now. I apologized for my son’s actions, and I offered to make things right. I gave him a substantial check and asked him to make use of it someplace else.”

  “He agreed?”

  “Certainly. He didn’t have much choice.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t mean that. I didn’t threaten him, but I did offer him a chance to make a fresh start. It was the first opportunity like that he ever had.”

  Rennert brooded for a moment.

  “I liked him. Life dealt him a bad hand, but he played it without whining.”

  “Did you meet his girlfriend?”

  “No, but he said he would take her with him. He was looking forward to it.”

  Diana winced. Few people had so little in life that a vicious beating came as an opportunity.

  “Didn’t he have any family?”

  “He told me his mother died when he was very young, and his father crawled into the bottle. I don’t even know whether the father was dead or alive. It didn’t make much difference. That boy was on his own.”

  James was coming into focus. Diana understood why he had kept such a low profile in high school. Attracting attention might have landed him in foster care, where teenage boys didn’t thrive.

  “So why didn’t Dexter and Don let well enough alone?”

  “I don’t know. They still deny they killed him, which annoys me a great deal.”

  “It occurs to me that I know too much now.”

  The Queen of Blurt, Diana thought. Talk about giving him ideas.

  But Gary Rennert was way ahead of her.

  “A little vacation would help Rebecca right about now,” said Gary. “I have taken steps to make that happen. And I think you could use a vacation too.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “You can now. There’s a hundred thousand in it for you—fifty up front, and another fifty one year from today. You can come back then, or if you like where you set up shop, you can stay there. All you need to do is stay quiet about what you know. It’s not as if you can change anything now. Believe me, if I could make things right, I would.”

  She thought about it for a while.

  “I guess I can be bought.”

  “Everybody has a price. There’s no shame in that. ”

  He picked up the phone on his desk and spoke into it without dialing. He hung up.

  “Give me your car keys.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.

  “Relax. I’ll have someone deliver your car.”

  Ten minutes later the same man came in and handed Rennert a slip of paper. The man took her car keys from the blotter. Rennert reached across the desk and handed her the check. It bore a vaguely corporate name and a post office box address. She couldn’t read the signature.

  “That can’t be traced back to me,” said Rennert. “I’ll have someone drive you home. You leave first thing in the morning.”

  “What happens to Tracy?”

  “Not a thing. She’s not family, but at the moment that makes her look pretty good.”

  “Okay. One thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  He looked disappointed with her, as if she should have known that her bargaining position was weak.

  “I have to see my grandmother.”

  “That’s fair.”

  Diana nodded and stood. She wanted to make a cutting remark, but nothing came to mind. She had given away her moral authority. After a moment she turned and left the room.

  The same man was waiting for her.

  “This way,” he said.

  She saw no one on the way to the front door. In the driveway a Lincoln Town Car sat ready. He handed her into the back seat, circled around to the driver’s door, and climbed in. She could barely hear the engine start.

  The nursing home lay to the north of Driscoll among some of the last working farms in northern New Jersey. The two-lane county road crossed narrow bridges and curved to avoid phantom obstacles from the area’s rural past. Rennert’s driver handled the road well, seldom touching the brake pedal. He parked in front of the main building and left the car to open her door for her.

  “I’ll wait.”

  She nodded. It felt oddly familiar to have a driver, even though she had never worked for an escort agency.

  Visiting hours were almost over, but the staff never enforced them with her. Diana nodded or waved to several nurses and orderlies.

  Grandmom was already in bed. Diana kissed her forehead and smoothed a stray lock of white hair back where it belonged. She could tell that this would be a day for simply being there. Grandmom wasn’t up to conversation.

  Diana studied her grandmother’s face. The strong cheekbones, the stronger nose, the slightly Asian cast of Grandmom’s eyes, all told Diana what she herself would look like fifty years from now.

  She took Grandmom’s hand, which responded with a memory of its old strength. Diana held on for almost an hour. When an orderly came to give her a discreet signal, she knew what she had decided to do.

  Rennert would call it breaking a deal, but who was he to condemn an old woman to life alone in this place?

  Better than most people in Sussex County, Diana knew the consequences of defying Gary Rennert. Several of her clients had tried it, and they had disappeared.

  That didn’t mean they were dead. It meant that no one would buy a stick of gum from them, or sell them one, either. There had been nothing left for them to do but learn from experience and start over somewhere else. Diana had no doubt that Rennert could get clients to stop seeing her and the police to crack down. She didn’t know how she would survive, but she would have to try.

  But right now she needed a ride home.

  “See you soon,” she told her grandmother.

  In the hall a nurse named Jason Tuggle saw her and beckoned.

  “There was a cop here just now, asking for you.”

  Maybe she was entitled to only so many breaks in this life, but this was a good time to burn one.

  “I know who you mean. What happened to him?”

  “No
t sure. He was headed for the room, and we were out of excuses to stop him. But then he got a call on his cell. Just turned around and left.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The driver handed her into the car again. She could get used to that. He drove to her house without needing directions.

  “Good thing I won’t be around for a while,” she said as he parked in front of her house.

  Her car was already there. Rennert didn’t fool around.

  The driver didn’t react, but she went on anyway to see if she could annoy him. “The neighbors have been wondering about me for a while, I think, but they never saw me get dropped off before.”

  She might as well have said nothing. He helped her out of the car again. As soon as she had the front door of her house open, he drove off.

  Diana pushed the door shut behind her and stood completely still. Something was off, and after a moment she knew what it was. Light from the kitchen spilled onto the floor in front of her. She remembered flipping the switch off.

  And thousands of hours in hundreds of hotel rooms had taught her the difference between the neutral quiet of an empty space and the pregnant possibility of an occupied room.

  She had a direct line of sight into the kitchen, but all she could see was the sink and the window over it. Outside the frame there was room for a baseball team to hide.

  Diana heard nothing as she covered the distance to her kitchen. Her own home had become hostile ground. Someone would pay for that.

  And the time for demanding payment was now. She paused to prepare herself and then darted through the doorway. Just as quickly she stopped, and her sneaker soles skidded on the kitchen linoleum.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Surprised you, didn’t we?”

  Anne-Marie Kuhlbacher occupied one of the four chairs at the kitchen table. She looked as if she owned the house, and maybe the neighborhood as well. Diagonally across from her sat Rebecca Grogan. Diana wondered whether she could handle both women.

  But another look told her she wouldn’t have to. Someone had already given Rebecca a bad day. She had a bruise growing under her right eye, and her upper lip was puffy. She sat hunched over in a way that Diana had seen before. The older woman must have taken some shots to her ribs.