Best Reason Not to Cheat on Your Spouse

Private Eyes

If lust and boredom are good reasons to have an affair, then Gerard Gardner and Jerry Palace are good reasons not to. Gardner owns Gardner Investigative Services, Palace runs Check A Mate, and they are private detectives specializing in matrimonial investigations. Both men have seen their share of cheating hearts and have insights on many aspects on infidelity. For example:

Best Hotel for an Affair: Gerard Gardner says that cautious Manhattanites usually jump out of the city and go to motels in Queens or Greenpoint. Jerry Palace says adulterers are everywhere: "I may go to the Plaza, and then I'll go to seedy places too. It depends who it is and how much money they have to spend. In fact, there's one hotel down in Florida, it's like a cheater's paradise. The Fontainebleau, it's a real high-end hotel. They're very careful about how they give information out as to what's going on around that place."

Best Way to Not Get Caught: Gardner's advice is simple: "Don't do it. I'm gonna find you, I'm gonna find her and I'm gonna disparage you in the most humiliating way." Palace's advice is more nuanced: "Don't do it is the best thing, but if you're so inclined, you're better off going to see the ladies of the evening. If it's once a month, if it's very scattered, and she's a madam or something like that, it's gonna be hard to catch a guy like that. I don't know if women have those same services available to them, but I'm sure it's out there."

Best Time to Catch a Cheating Spouse: According to Palace, "Either a birthday, Valentine's Day or some kind of anniversary. Actually Valentine's Day is the best, because the guy's probably gonna see his wife and his girlfriend at the same time. Maybe in different parts of the dining room. It's candy."

Best Reason to Break Up: Gardner and Palace are in agreement here. Infidelity. "Why get married in the first place?" says Palace. "I think when you get married you take a vow, and if you don't live by that vow it's not gonna work out." Gardner concurs. "It's the best reason to break up, and I think it's one of the only reasons to break up. Because you're going against what you pledged to each other. And as far as fixing it, that's a very deep wound to mend."

?

Gerard Gardner is a burly man with a gentle, thoughtful manner underneath a thick Brooklyn accent. In the morning he phoned me from his Lexus; in the evening he showed up driving a black Mercedes convertible. He ordered Dewar's and water, and opened with what has to be the Best New York Press-Related Story of Adultery:

"One of my clients saw his wife's voicemail number in the back of New York Press. You know, in the swing articles. So he called me out of the Yellow Pages looking for a private eye to see what's going on. I got a cellphone with a 201 number and I made up a couple of business cards like I was some kind of stocks and bonds guy. I called the ad in the Press and set up an appointment. She says it's $150 for a half hour and $200 for an hour. Erotic massage.

"See, my client was suspicious because his wife all of a sudden had a brand new Range Rover. And there was this fancy mink coat that cost thousands of dollars and all of a sudden she had that. He suspected there was something with this girlfriend she was hanging out with. He knew that the girlfriend was in the business in Asia?they came from Asia?and he thought maybe the girlfriend recruited his wife into this call girl-type business. I didn't ask my client why, if he's a married man, he's reading, you know, the fuck ads.

"So then we set up. I called her voicemail number and she called back and we arranged to meet at a motel on 14th St. that is known for hookers and drugs. I had one of my operatives outside in the car videotaping her walking in before I got there. Then he videoed me walking in. And then she and I were talking about how much and all that. She wanted to give me an erotic massage and I told her I wanted to set up a bachelor party with a bunch of guys. We wanted to find out if her friend was part of it. So I said, yeah, we need another girl and she said she could do that. I ended up getting a little massage from her and then I talked to the client's lawyer and gave a detailed statement. Because my guy was a pretty good businessman, and this gave him a negotiating tool with the child custody and things like that."

Gardner is the son of a cop. He took the police exam when he was 18 but he never worked as a policeman. Instead he became a photographer. "Not professional, but it was a hobby that got out of hand." He started freelancing for investigative agencies, and eight years ago he opened his own firm. He says his clients are an even mix of men and women. He works off a $5000 retainer and charges $125 an hour, per man.

I asked him if he'd ever taken on a case only to discover there was nothing going on. He answered with his Best Examples of Paranoid Partners:

"Throughout my career, twice. One lady thought her husband, an old retired cop, was cheating on her because he was taking off in the afternoons. I found out he was going to the VFW hall and hanging out at the pier fishing, just like he said. The other guy was more recently. He thought his wife was cheating because she would come home an hour, two hours late from the city. I followed her once or twice and found out she was having lunch with friends and shopping, things like that. This client, his problem was cocaine paranoia. I figured it out because he works in midtown and he was going up to the Metro North station up in Harlem. When I met him the second or third time I could see he was symptomatic of somebody with cocaine psychosis."

Gardner said that such cases are rare, and he tries to avoid them. For the most part marital infidelity is easy to spot. He listed a few Best Symptoms of a Cheating Spouse:

"No interest sexually with the spouse at home. Usually the person that's cheating has a new image: a new car, they're working out, new clothes. Then there's all the communication things: two cellphones, the cellphone bill doesn't come to the house anymore, it goes to the office. Then, you know, late nights at work, late business dinners, unexplained business days away."

Gardner's sympathy for his clients seems genuine. When I asked him what happens when he presents his evidence, there was a slight sadness in his voice.

"You know, I'm also a counselor to a certain point. When I first got into the business I thought I'd be giving these people evidence and they'd start breaking down and things like that. It's really not the case. My typical reaction when I hand them the evidence is 'I knew it, I knew it.'"

?

Jerry Palace sees the same reactions. "Most people know what's going on. By the time they call us they have a very good idea and we're telling them what they already know. They just want their sanity confirmed."

Palace is an ex-detective who's been a private investigator since 1987, and, having been divorced himself, he says he understands the difficulties his clients face.

"I never walk away from these people when I give them something. I always tell them, 'Listen, I've been there. If you need help with anything, call me up. You want to meet for a cup of coffee, sit down and b.s., that's fine.' I take it that way because I've been through the same thing."

Palace says that the tools of the trade are video, hidden video and photography. That's what he presents to his clients. I asked him if he had ever run up against people who refused to believe what they saw. He told me about a long day he once spent following around a cheating husband. It was the girlfriend's birthday and the husband took her out to lunch. He bought her flowers and then they went to a club downtown for a few hours.

"Anyway, at this point I call the wife and she meets us and comes into the surveillance van. I explained to her what's been happening all day and that the husband is in the club. So then he comes out of the club and he throws his girlfriend up against the wall. The wife's in the car with us watching now. He throws the girlfriend up against the wall and he must have put his tongue halfway down her throat. I said to the wife, 'Look at that!'"

The wife's response wins Best Expression of Denial. She looked at her husband frenching the girlfriend, and then she turned to Palace and said: "Well, it is her birthday."