The Followed Man Read Online Free

on his
own—that is, without his expenses paid—in over ten years.
    He had never been able to
discover what Gentleman thought of itself. It was certainly an
interesting magazine, though occasional­ly its yen for
sophistication led it into positions beyond wit, such as a cover
photograph showing George Washington before and after a transsexual
operation. Its rather desperate contemporaneity could seem collegiate
at one moment, academic the next; but there was no other magazine
quite like Gentleman, and it did have no rigid ideological
position. He had been saddened to hear that because of escalating
postal rates it was having a hard time staying alive.
    At the fifth floor he emerged
from the elevator into a plushly tasteful elongated cubicle presided
over by a receptionist, a wom­an of about thirty whose hair was a
natural brown and whose eyes were neither enlarged by mascara nor
lidded with the reptile green he'd almost gotten used to in this
city. She had the look of intelligence, that dangerous connection.
Smiling as if she meant it, she called and found that Mr. Troup would
see him, then guided him, saying, "It's around a lot of
corners—I'll show you," to Mar­tin Troup's large
office. Luke had visited here only a few times over the years, and
new partitions and display boards were every­where, so he had
needed a guide.
    Martin Troup rose from the piles
of clippings, illustrations, manuscript pages and odd notebooks and
folders that were heaped across his desk. He was a big man, a former
athlete who hadn't allowed his paunch to do what it probably wanted
to do to the belly of the crisp white shirt he wore. He was a type
Luke thought of as redneck jock intellectual—Vanderbilt, or the
Uni­versity of the South, the University of Virginia or Chapel
Hill or some such place having turned him toward classical knowledge,
though not away from brawls, pool hustling or too much bour­bon—at
least not in his youth. Now he was in his late forties, a shrewd
gentleman with the threat of violence, perhaps playful, perhaps not,
just discernible behind his southern easiness.
    "Luke," he said,
holding out his big hand, "how are you?"
    "Fine," Luke said.
    Martin turned to a small man
with a blond beard, mod haircut and slinky, neo-hippie clothes. "I
want you to meet the photogra­pher," Martin said. "Robin
Flash, Luke Carr."
    "Hiya," Robin Flash
said, and they shook hands. Robin Flash's flared plaid pants, of a
glistening synthetic material, seemed molded to his wiry little
thighs as if with sweat or use, as though, Luke thought irrationally,
he had been ballroom dancing all night with several older women, none
of whom he knew by name. There was something gleaming and unfresh and
urgent about the little face and sharp blue eyes. All around his feet
were the leather boxes and straps of his profession.
    "He's the best there is,"
Martin said. "I wanted the best writer and the best photographer
for this job, and now I've got 'em both. Oh, hey, you met Annie
before, right?"
    A thin dark girl with the mild,
hardly unattractive wounds of an ancient acne, and the deep, luminous
eyes that seem to go with that disease, had appeared in the doorway.
    "Yes, we've met," she
said. "When you did the piece on Attica, Mr. Carr."
    "A long time ago,"
Luke said.
    "Hey, Luke," Martin
said. "You want to do another piece on At­tica?"
    "You didn't like what I
said about Oswald last time," Luke said. Martin had wanted to
cast Russell Oswald, the Commissioner of the Department of
Correction, as a sort of hero, a man in the mid­dle, but after
Luke had spent a day in Albany with the man, his own reaction had
been more complicated than that. In fact his study of prisons,
prisoners and their keepers had led him to be­lieve the situation
hadn't the slightest hope of amelioration from any quarter.
    Martin laughed and hit Luke on
the shoulder with his fist, hard—something they had once
instinctively done to each other. Now Martin dropped his arm and
looked