The Travelers (25 page)

“Do what?”

“Run after him, Will? You could have been killed. You’re not that type of man.”

“Oh no? What type of man is that?”

“The type who does something stupid, something that can get him killed.” She leans on her elbow, stares at him in the low light. Will wonders what she sees.

“Were you really worried about what that guy could steal?”

“I guess not.”

“Then why? Were you worried about what I’d think if you didn’t do something? I hope not.”

Why
did
he do that? What was he trying to protect? Was he worried about his stash of cash, his burner phone, the revelation of his secret life? That’s how people get caught in crime, in extramarital affairs: the freak unrelated accident that exposes everything.

No, he realizes, that wasn’t it, not at all. What he was worried about was his wife.

But now that he thinks about it: was this really a freak unrelated accident?

NEW YORK CITY

Chloe cuts her eyes away, dodging the question.

“
That
bad?”

“Noooo,” Chloe protests, but she doesn’t sound compelling, a trace of up-speak at the end of the drawn-out vowel, inserting a question there, self-asserting her own doubt to her own response.

“Oh my God, Chlo, do you think Will is
cheating
on you?”

It’s a good thing that Allie Somers will never rise to any position of power. Her first instinct, always, is to activate the nuclear warheads.

Chloe had arrived at the same conclusion a lot slower, after months of vague suspicion. So on an evening when Will had mentioned a drinks date but didn’t specify with whom, Chloe decided to find out.

She pulled her hair into a ponytail, tucked her head into a Mets cap, a freebie from some event a few years ago; she’s a Yankees fan. She wore sunglasses under the cap. It’s hard to distinguish anyone wearing glasses and a cap, an effective disguise that also has the benefit of being deniable. There’s no excuse for wearing a wig.

Chloe took the subway into Manhattan. She changed lines unnecessarily. She walked a quarter-mile, then parked herself in the sweltering late-afternoon heat across the street from the
Travelers
building, on the uptown corner of a very busy thoroughfare. Chances were high that Will would exit the building and walk downtown.

He did.

From a safe distance, Chloe followed her husband around a corner, across a crowded side street, traffic at a standstill, drivers honking, futile noise pollution atop the air pollution. She let him get a long lead.

Will was walking strangely. He paused in the middle of a block to tie a shoe that didn’t appear untied. On the next block he raced ahead to catch a traffic light, though he’d been in no rush beforehand. He walked into a news shop and emerged with nothing. He reversed course, backtracking a half-block before turning.

Either he’s going insane, she thought, or he’s trying to determine if he’s being followed. Wow, she thought, that’s strange.

Or maybe not.

Chloe scanned the crowd, trying to memorize hats, hairstyles, dresses, suits. But it was impossible to be thorough: there were hundreds of people on the sidewalk, maybe thousands, rush hour.

Will turned onto another avenue. Chloe continued to scan—a white mop of middle-aged head, a Southern-belle helmet hair, the unmistakable signifiers of red Prada stripes and beige Burberry plaids.

Then suddenly Will was gone. She’d lost him.

Chloe ducked into a cramped convenience store, stood there looking out the window. Nothing.

She took out her phone. Opened an app that was the companion to one she’d secretly installed on Will’s phone, the type of GPS-tracking system that parents use to locate their untrustworthy teenage children. A couple of weeks earlier, she’d confiscated his phone while he was asleep. He hadn’t changed his password recently—it was still their wedding date—which was an encouraging sign. If he was calling or texting or sexting someone who wasn’t her, he’d change his password, right?

She scrolled through his text messages, all of them innocent. Glanced through his emails, found nothing suspicious. She examined all his recent calls—Malcolm and Gabriella, the office line and the barbershop, Dean Fowler, a couple of old college friends whom she didn’t much like, his dad. There were a handful of numbers that weren’t saved as contacts, all of them with 212 and 718 area codes, local. She wrote down these numbers, which the next morning she checked from a pay phone in another neighborhood. They were all restaurants.

Then Will went to Spain, where she couldn’t follow him in any useful way. But now he was here, apparently on this block somewhere, unmoving.

Chloe watched the screen, the blue dot on the map pulsing, immobile.

He began to move again, south along the avenue. She waited a minute for him to cross the street, to establish distance. Then she followed. After two blocks she could see him turn into a building, but she couldn’t see what it was, her eyes darting around to identify landmarks, the no-parking sign, the red sports car, the fire hydrant. A minute later she arrived at it: an Irish bar next to a check-cashing business, payday loans and bulletproof glass, probably a front for a fencing operation, or pills.

Will Rhodes did not belong on this block, in this bar.

Chloe saw a handful of the usual boozers in there, plus a youngish-looking blonde sitting off by herself. That must be her. But Chloe couldn’t get a good look, not without drawing attention.

She continued walking to the corner. Here there was no mass of humanity into which she could disappear. Loitering here, she’d be noticed if someone was watching, and she expected someone was.

Chloe entered a pizza shop, ordered a slice, don’t heat it up please. She used her phone to order a black car, which arrived in two minutes. She jumped into the dark cool backseat.

“Where to, miss?”

“Just turn the corner, then pull up over there. I’ve got to wait for someone.”

They parked across the street from the bar.

“How long’s it gonna be?”

She reached into her wallet, extracted a twenty, handed it across the backseat. “However long it is. How much does this buy me?”

“Ten minutes?”

“Fifteen?”

“Okay. Mind if I step out for a smoke?”

“Sure.” She glanced at the hack license. “Could I ask a favor, Pedro?”

He regarded her skeptically in the rearview, not committing to any favor.

“I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “I think my husband’s cheating on me.”

Pedro raised his eyebrows slightly, probably wondering what type of lunatic had climbed into his Lincoln to park in Hell’s Kitchen. But he had the tact, as well as the profit motive, to remain silent.

“And I think he’s in that bar with her.”

Pedro glanced across the street, snorted. “That’s a sad-ass affair they’re having, if they’re having it in a shithole like that.”

“Aren’t all affairs sad-ass?”

“Never been married, myself. Not a, um,
connoisseur
of monogamy.”

Chloe scrolled through her phone’s photo stream, found a close-up of Will. She leaned forward, showed Pedro the screen. “That’s him.”

“Uh-huh.” He obviously didn’t care for the direction in which their interaction was heading.

“I suspect your lighter is dead, Pedro, and you need to collect a book of matches for your cancer stick. Smoking kills, you know.”

“Yeah, I think I heard something ’bout that.”

“That bar looks like they might have some matches. I’m willing to bet the matchbook will be orange and green. Irish flag.” She extracted another twenty. “You wanna bet?”

Pedro took the twenty, didn’t comment on the wager offer. He cracked the windows, turned off the engine, removed the keys from the ignition.

“What? You think I’m going to steal your car, Pedro? Come on, keep the AC going.”

He turned around to face her. “I don’t know you,” he said. “Crazy chick using me to stalk some dude in a bar.”

“Not some dude. My husband.”

“Sez you. Just ’cause you got a picture some dude on your phone, don’t make it your husband. Nah, lady, I’m not leaving you with my car keys.”

“Come on.”

“In
fact
, you need to give
me
your driver’s license.”

“What?”

“Give. Me. Your. Driver’s.
License
. I need some collateral. Case I’m walking into a trap.”

“A trap? Why would I be trapping you?”

“How should I know? Because you’re a crazy chick.”

She handed over her license.

“This your current address? You live on the Lower East Side?”

She saw no upside to admitting the truth, so she nodded.

“All right then.” He opened the door.

“Hey!” she said. “You know what it is I want you to do?”

“The fuck I look like? A idiot?” He climbed out, cigarette pack in hand, patting the pockets of his cheap black suit as if searching for a lighter. He looked around, pretended to notice the bar. He’s a good actor, for a livery driver. Maybe he really is an actor.

Pedro jogged across the street, pulled the door open, disappeared into the darkness. Chloe watched for a minute, two minutes, longer than necessary to collect matches; she was getting worried.

She looked down at her phone, the surreptitious tracking of her husband’s device. No blue dot. She closed the app and reopened it: still no dot. How was that possible? Only if Will had disconnected his phone from its power source. Why would he do that?

Finally Pedro emerged, stood in the bar’s doorway, lit his cigarette. He smoked casually, in no hurry, checking out the women who walked by. Cigarettes offer a broad range of opportunities to interact with strangers, to get into other people’s business.

Pedro tossed his butt into the gutter, and sauntered across the street. He climbed into the driver’s seat, restarted the car to get the AC flowing.

“What took you so long?”

“I had a shot of Jack.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Well, for starters, your job is to
drive a car
, she thought, but did not say.

“Plus, the drink gave me a chance and a reason to take a piss, so I could walk to the bathroom, so I could see this dude of yours, who’s sitting in the back, with a blonde.”

“She good-looking?”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Do they look like they’re, y’know…?”

“Look to me like they having a fight.”

“How’s that look?”

“Like two people having a fight. I’m guessing you ain’t entirely unfamiliar with that.”

They waited another fifteen minutes, and Chloe handed over another twenty. The bar’s door opened a handful of times, admitting sober people and discharging drunk ones—reverse rehab, dehab—before Will emerged.

“You want I should follow him?”

She looked down at her phone, his blue dot active again, moving again, no doubt headed toward the subway, toward home, toward her. “No. I know where he’s going.”

Chloe could see Pedro nod, okay, if you say so, lady. But he held his tongue again.

It took five more minutes before the woman stepped out, a curious gap. Chloe had more than one unusual app on her phone, and she opened another, a camera with a special lens, a far superior zoom than standard-issue, a higher resolution. She took a burst of photos of this blonde, then another burst, a dozen frames in rapid succession.

“That’s her,” Pedro said. Then he gave Chloe a half-minute of silence—a woman scorned needs a little room—before asking, “Where to?”

“Let’s go to Brooklyn,” she said. “I’m going to visit a friend.” She gave him her address, and sat there in the comfortable leather and air-conditioning in the horrible traffic, considering all the angles of this development, the woman, Will’s secretiveness, his evasive maneuvers, his unbatteried phone.

“So you gonna confront him or what?” Pedro asked, counting the cash in front of the Brooklyn house, a few lights on. Will’s subway had apparently made better time than Pedro’s car, for one-tenth the price.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said, lying to a stranger.

That was Monday night. And “I don’t know” is also what she tells Allison right now, lying again, this time to a friend.

“My God, Chlo: is there someone you think he’s having an affair with?”

Chloe leans on the marble table, fingering her glass of midday wine, enacting the cliché. “Maybe,” she says. She fights back a tear, wipes her eye. And she realizes that she isn’t entirely sure if she’s acting or not.

Allison wraps her legs around Steven’s back, locks her ankles, and pulls him in deeper, feeling a bit like she’s trying to break his back, to kill him in some sexual ninja move, even though what she’s trying to accomplish is simply to make him finish.

“Ohhh,” she pants. She rakes her fingernails across his back, pressing hard enough for him to feel, but not enough to break the skin. She doesn’t know who else he’s bedding—surely she’s not the only one—and she doesn’t particularly want to get him in any trouble. For all she knows he has a girlfriend, a fiancée, a wife.

“Oh God, yeah.”