The Match

Chapter Thirty-Eight

At two in the morning, Wilde’s phone rang.

He was awake, staring at the ceiling of Laila’s bedroom, thinking about her and what they’d said tonight and realizing that they had talked more about their relationship in those three earlier minutes than they had in the previous decade.

With his fast reflexes, Wilde picked up the phone in mid-ring, throwing his feet onto the ground and rolling to a sit. The call was from Rola.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“I’m fine. Why are you whispering? Oh, wait, you’re not alone, are you?”

He rose and started toward the bathroom. “You really are an ace detective.”

“I’m in Vegas,” she said. “Daniel Carter isn’t home. The house is empty. No one has seen him and his wife lately. But I have a theory.”

“I’m listening.”

“The FBI agent who questioned you about your father. You said his name was George Kissell.”

“Yes.”

“Did he show you his badge?”

“No.”

“That’s because he’s not an FBI agent.”

“The other agent, Betz. She showed her ID.”

“Right. But I looked into Kissell. Here’s the kicker. George Kissell is not a fed. He’s a US marshal.”

Wilde froze.

“Yeah, I know. I’m out of here first thing in the morning. But that’s not why I called you at two a.m. I mean, that could have waited for the morning.”

“What, then?”

“The bug you planted? You were right. She just arrived at a hotel.”

“Which one?”

“The Mandarin Oriental in the Time Warner building.”

Wilde said nothing.

“Why would she be going to a hotel at two in the morning?” Rola asked.

“We both know,” Wilde said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to head over there now.”

The Mandarin Oriental is an Asian-fusion five-star high-rise luxury hotel on Columbus Circle. The hotel runs from the thirty-fifth to the fifty-fourth floor, so that all rooms have an enviable view of Manhattan. It is also, as Wilde found out, very expensive. To get past the various security apparatus, he’d booked the cheapest room available, which went for a thousand dollars per night when you added in whatever bizarre taxes and surcharges hotels seem to stick on your bill.

Wilde checked in at the lobby on the thirty-fifth floor. He had requested a room on the forty-third floor because that was where she was staying and thus his card key would give him elevator access. His request was accepted and at almost four in the morning, Wilde politely turned down the receptionist’s offer to personally escort Wilde to his room. He headed up in the elevator, found the right door, and knocked.

Wilde put his finger over the peephole, so no one could look out.

A male voice said, “Who is it?”

“Room service.”

“I didn’t order anything.”

“Free champagne. Compliments of the manager.”

“At this hour?”

“I messed up,” Wilde said. “I was supposed to bring it up hours ago. Please don’t tell. I’ll get fired.”

“Just leave it outside the door.”

He debated faking that and waiting for them to open the door, but he didn’t want to risk that they’d wait until morning. “I can’t do that.”

“Go away then.”

“I could go away,” Wilde said. “I could go away and call the press and tell them to camp outside this door. Or you can take your chances with me.”

A few seconds later, the door was opened by a big man in a terry cloth robe. His chest was waxed.

Wilde said, “Hello, Big Bobbo.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Wilde. Can I come in? I’d like to talk to your companion.”

“What companion? I’m alone.”

“No, you’re not.”

Big Bobbo narrowed his eyes. “Are you calling Big Bobbo a liar?”

“Did you really just refer to yourself in the third person?”

Big Bobbo scowled. Then he reached out to poke Wilde in the chest. Wilde grabbed the finger and swept the leg. Big Bobbo went down. Wilde stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Standing in the far corner, wearing a matching terry-cloth Mandarin Oriental bathrobe, was Jenn Cassidy.

“Get out,” Jenn shouted, tightening her robe. “Leave us alone.”

“I don’t think so,” Wilde said.

Big Bobbo jumped back up off the floor in an almost comical fashion. “What the hell, bro? That was a cheap shot.”

“What do you want?” Jenn asked.

“Yeah,” Big Bobbo repeated. “What do you want? Wait, who is this guy?”

“He’s a relative of Peter’s.”

Big Bobbo gave Wilde a sympathetic look. “Ah, bro, for real? Sorry, man. I liked the dude.”

“It’s none of your business who I spend my time with,” Jenn said.

“That’s true,” Wilde said.

“I’m allowed a life.”

“Also true.”

“So get out,” she said.

Big Bobbo stuck out his chest. “Hey, bro, you heard the lady.”

Wilde ignored Bobbo and kept his gaze on Jenn. “I don’t care who you date or about reality TV or your likes or your followers or any of that. But I need to know the truth.”

“What truth?” Jenn asked. “Peter and I are over. I’m with Bob now.”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “We’re in love.”

“Wait,” Jenn said, “how did you find me?”

Wilde wasn’t about to tell her that when they were in her apartment earlier that day, he dropped one of Rola’s tracking devices into her purse. It was that simple. Wilde had suspected this; something about Jenn’s whole demeanor, about the whole story with her sister and the podcast and the photographs, had not felt right to him.

“Look, bro,” Big Bobbo said, “I don’t want any trouble, okay? Jenn and I, we’re in love. We’ve been in love for a long time—”

“Bob.”

“No, hon, let me just get this out, okay?” He turned to Wilde. “You care about Petey Boy. Cool, I get that. But he went too far.”

“Went too far how?”

Jenn said, “Bob.”

“You heard the podcast,” Big Bobbo continued. “You saw the photos.”

Wilde couldn’t believe it. He shook his head and looked at Jenn. “Big Bobbo doesn’t know?”

“Doesn’t know what?” Bobbo said. “Oh, about Marnie lying? I heard about that today, and it sucks. Totally get that. But Petey Boy still did a lot wrong — those pics of him getting all nasty with other chicks and whatnot.”

“Bob,” Wilde said, still reeling from the fact that he didn’t get it, “she made it all up.”

“I know. Marnie—”

“Not Marnie,” Wilde said. He turned and faced Jenn.

Big Bobbo looked confused. “What?”

“He’s lying,” Jenn said.

There was no reason to interrogate Jenn or ask pointed questions or try to trap her. There was no reason to let her continue to lie or watch her shed tears or whatever tactic she was going to use. Wilde just plowed full steam ahead. “Your popularity was plummeting. Yours and Peter’s. You two had a great run. You were a lovable couple, and that was fun for a while, but really, you two had milked that for all you could. Bobbo, how long has she been stepping out on Peter with you?”

Big Bobbo glanced at Jenn.

“From the beginning?” Wilde asked. “Let’s not pretend you only started up recently. But that doesn’t matter.” He turned back to her. “You and Peter tried to keep the viewers’ attention. A baby might have helped, but you guys had trouble conceiving. Your social media engagements went way down. You got demoted down from the big penthouse to the smaller apartment — and you’d be kicked out of that soon. So at some point, you realized that staying with Peter would mean the death of your career.”

“If that’s all true,” Jenn said, putting her hands on her hips, “why wouldn’t I just break up with him?”

Wilde sighed. “Are we really going to play it that way? Okay, fine. If you broke up with Peter, the perceived nicest man in the world, you’d be the bad guy. You couldn’t have that. But once you were the one wronged — pretty much the minute your sister went on the podcast — the fans flocked to social media to defend you and villainize Peter. Suddenly your social media engagements soared. You were bigger than ever. You set it all up, Jenn. You hired Henry McAndrews. You, of course, took the compromising photographs of Peter. Who else? It couldn’t have been hard. You just hid a camera. You cut yourself out of the photographs. You were even smart enough to not do it in your own bedroom — someone might notice the background. But here you messed up a little. The EXIF data showed two of the photos were taken in Scottsdale. It wasn’t hard to check. You and Peter were in Scottsdale on those dates. I’ll be able to get someone to match up the background with your hotel room that night. There will be more proof. You paid Henry McAndrews via a law firm, but now he’s been murdered, the cops will demand to know who his clients were.”

Big Bobbo looked at her. “Babe?”

“Shut up, Bob,” Jenn said. “This is all nonsense.”

“We both know it’s not. We both know it is all going to fall apart. I’m a little surprised though. I figured you” — Wilde turned to Big Bobbo — “were in on it. But of course, she couldn’t trust you. Or anyone. Not even Marnie.” He looked back at Jenn. “You knew Marnie would do anything for fame — she’s just like you that way. So you set up Marnie’s ambush with that producer. The woman who told Marnie the story about Peter roofying her — was she a producer too? Doesn’t matter. But I do wonder why you didn’t just ask Marnie to cooperate in your scheme. That part surprised me. But maybe even Marnie wouldn’t have gone that far. Maybe you worried that if Marnie knew the truth, you were more vulnerable. I don’t know. But tell me: When Peter swore up and down to you that he was innocent, what did you really say?”

Jenn smiled now. There was still denial, but there was also something akin to relief. “I told him I didn’t believe him. I told him to get out.”

Wilde nodded.

“And you’re right for the most part,” Jenn continued. “Peter and I had become boring TV. I thought about just breaking up with him, but like you said, how would I come across? I thought about asking him to manufacture a way to have us split up, but I couldn’t think of a way, and Peter’s game was to play it straight.”

Big Bobbo said, “Babe?”

She sighed. “No, I didn’t tell you, Bob. I didn’t tell Marnie. Because neither of you are good enough actors to pull it off. This is a game, Wilde. Survivor, The Bachelor, Big Brother, Love Is a Battlefield — they are contests and entertainment. That’s all. I used to watch Survivor and some pathetic contestant would get tricked and voted off and he would be throwing a hissy fit about betrayal, but of course, that’s the whole game, isn’t it? Someone has to come out on top. Someone gets the fame and the riches. Our life — Peter’s, mine, heck Bob’s — it’s a game.”

She moved closer to Big Bobbo and put her hand in his. “I wanted Bob from Day One on that show. Do you know what the producers told me?” Big Bobbo puffed out his chest. “They told me to keep both of them for now, but in the end, I had to pick Peter.”

“So you never loved him? It was all a scam?”

“Not a scam,” she said. “Our whole life is playacting. It’s not a question of what’s real and what’s fake — there are no lines, no distinctions. Before I was on Battlefield, I was a filing secretary at a small law office. Do you know how boring that was? We all want to be famous. That’s everyone’s goal, if they’re honest. Even the most pissant social media account wants more likes and followers. Should I just let myself go back to that mundane life without a fight? No way. Survivor, Bachelor, Love Is a Battlefield. They’re contests with winners and losers. In this case, I won. Peter lost. That’s how it works. It was him or me, and guess what? It ended up being me. And what did I really do to him, huh? He wasn’t thrown in jail. He wasn’t being investigated or arrested. He just lost some fans — so what? He knew that the allegations against him weren’t true. Shouldn’t that have been enough? Anonymous losers online said mean things about him — big deal. Take yourself off social media if you can’t handle that. Meet another girl. Live a simpler life. Peter could have chosen that, right?”

Big Bobbo just stood there.

Wilde said, “That’s a hell of a rationalization.”

“It’s pure truth.”

“Peter’s sister thinks he committed suicide.”

“And if that’s true, that’s terrible. But you can’t blame me. Every week someone gets heartbroken on those shows. If one of them ends their life, is that another contestant’s fault? Look, I didn’t expect the hatred to get that out of control, but a healthy person doesn’t commit suicide over mean tweets.”

Wilde was awestruck by the passion in her self-justification. “In Peter’s case, it may have been more than mean tweets.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe Peter was genuinely in love. Maybe the woman he loved wouldn’t believe him when he denied roofying her sister. Or maybe, a few months later, he realized the truth — that his beloved wife had set him up. Did you ever love him?”

“That’s beside the point,” she said. “When you watch two people fall in love during a movie, does it matter if they’re in love off-screen?”

“You weren’t in a movie.”

“Yeah, we are. Jenn Cassidy from Waynesville, Ohio, doesn’t live in Manhattan’s most expensive apartment building. She doesn’t get invited to the Met Gala or hobnob with the rich and famous or endorse luxury brands or dine at the trendiest restaurants. People don’t care where she’s seen or what she’s wearing. We in reality have chosen to make our life a movie. How do you not get that?”

Wilde was tired of listening to her. “Where is Peter?” he asked.

“I don’t have a clue.”