The Follower Read online

  Praise for Jason Starr and

  The Follower

  “It’s been years since a thriller grabbed me the way Jason Starr’s The Follower did. I really couldn’t stop reading it…The Follower puts Starr up there with some of the greats of psychological suspense.”

  —Joseph Finder,

  bestselling author of Power Play

  “His most crowd-pleasing to date…[Starr] absolutely shines with these characters…A very funny, dark social satire.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The Follower does for dating what Jaws did for swimming.”

  —Ken Bruen,

  Shamus award-winning author of Priest

  “A chilling, thrilling, and addictive tale of romantic love gone terrifyingly wrong. I couldn’t put it down!”

  —Alison Gaylin,

  Edgar-nominated author of Trashed

  “Jason Starr takes the big-city singles scene and turns it inside out. Keen social satire and a deliriously addictive story.”

  —Megan Abbott,

  Edgar-winning author of Queenpin

  “Jason Starr’s got a hip style and an ear for crackling dialogue. And he offers up characters that are so real we’re sure we know them.”

  —Jeffery Deaver,

  bestselling author of The Cold Moon

  “Jason Starr is hypnotically good—if you miss him, you’re missing some of the best new writing there is.”

  —Lee Child,

  bestselling author of Bad Luck and Trouble

  “Jason Starr is the first writer of his generation to convincingly update the modern crime novel by giving it provocative new spins.”

  —Bret Easton Ellis,

  bestselling author of Lunar Park

  “A chilling yet humorous tale of obsession.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Writing as if he is channeling a heavenly collaboration involving James M. Cain, John Cheever, and Lawrence Durrell, Starr explores a ‘relationship’ involving an erstwhile suitor obsessed with a woman who barely regards him as a friend, examining vignettes from the viewpoints of each while infusing every page with a subtle but growing creepiness.”

  —Bookreporter.com (Reviewer Pick 2007)

  “The Follower provides a denouement that is a satisfactory conclusion to the tale, yet that also causes ripples likely to emanate for years to come.”

  —January Magazine

  “Starr’s writing is slick and his plotting is second to none…a compelling and enjoyable read.”

  —The Guardian (London)

  “This was my first experience of Starr’s writing and I found him irresistible. You will not be able to leave this book alone; as soon as you put it down, you find yourself surreptitiously picking it up again to squeeze just one more chapter into your day.”

  —Shots Magazine

  The Follower

  Jason Starr

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE FOLLOWER

  Copyright © 2007 by Jason Starr.

  Excerpt from Panic Attack copyright © 2008 by Jason Starr.

  Cover photograph of:

  Woman © Getty Images / Taxi

  Man © Getty Images / Gallo Images

  Subway © Getty Images / Robert Harding World Imagery

  All rights reserved.

  For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007014167

  ISBN: 0-312-94491-8

  EAN: 978-0-312-94491-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / August 2007

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / December 2008

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Also by Jason Starr

  Lights Out

  Twisted City

  Tough Luck

  Hard Feelings

  Fake ID

  Nothing Personal

  Cold Cellar

  For Sandy and Chynna

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

  —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  PART ONE

  ONE

  Peter Wells had never been turned down for a job. He didn’t have to work very often, thank God, but when he needed work—and he desperately needed the receptionist job at the Metro Sports Club—he always got hired.

  The interviewer, a musclehead named Jimmy, seemed like an asshole from the get-go. He told Peter to wait in his office because he was “in the middle of something.” Meanwhile, Peter watched through the Plexiglas as Jimmy hung out by the front desk with another musclehead, the two of them hitting on practically every girl who passed by.

  Finally, maybe twenty minutes later, Jimmy came into the office and said, “Sorry about that, buddy, it’s been crazy here today,” and sat at his desk.

  “No, problem, man,” Peter said, talking the way Jimmy talked, knowing it was a way to instantly connect with an employer.

  Jimmy squinted at the résumé for several seconds, and then started looking at Peter’s left ear. That was what Peter thought anyway; then he turned and saw what Jimmy was staring at—the skinny dark-haired girl in black bicycle shorts who was bending over doing a hamstring stretch.

  “Gotta love Nikki,” Jimmy said. “Comes here two times a day—uses machines, does cardio, must spend an hour on the StairMaster. Phenomenal body but, honestly, she’s only average at this place. People say the best-looking girls are in the Village and the Meatpacking District, but I’ll take the Upper East Side chicks any day. Watch the advanced step classes sometime. I mean, yeah, you got some girls who need to lose some poundage, but most of them are total babes. They all starve themselves, that’s why. They eat salad and Tasti D-Lite for dinner every night, then come here to work off the calories. But, trust me, these chicks could be eighty-five pounds and you’d still wanna fuck ’em.”

  Peter knew Jimmy would be an absolute nightmare to work for, but keeping the act going he said, “Yeah, she’s hot all right.”

  Jimmy, looking at the résumé again, said, “So let’s see. You worked at Body Image in Santa Monica?”

  “That’s right,” Peter said.

  “How’d that go?”

  “It went well. It went really well. But then they closed down so I had to leave.”

  Actually, Peter had never worked at a health club in Santa Monica. He’d never even been there.

  “And you worked in Mexico?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yeah,” Peter said, “I was traveling a little bit, trying to figure out what to do, you know? I taught ESL.”

  Another lie, although he’d lived in Mexico for a while.

  “At L’Escuela International de Guadalajara?” Jimmy asked.

  “Hablas español?” Peter said.

  “What?” Jimmy waited, then laughed and said, “Just kidding, man. I took it in high school and my dad’s half Puerto Rican, but I can’t talk for shit. But that’s good—you’re bilingual. You should talk to Carlos, trainer works on weekends…So you got any more gym experience?”

  “Sure have,” Peter lied. “In college, I worked in the weight room a couple semesters. Volun
teered.”

  Peter hadn’t gone to college, but he doubted Jimmy would start checking references.

  “Let’s see,” Jimmy said. “BA in English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Looks like you’ve been all over, huh? Where’d you grow up?”

  “Massachusetts.”

  “Boston?”

  ‘Lenox.”

  “Oh, that’s why I didn’t hear a Bahston accent.” Jimmy laughed. “So you say you want to be a trainer, huh?”

  “That’s my goal,” Peter said, although he didn’t care what he did at the gym. He was planning to work there for a couple of weeks, tops, but he knew he had to show ambition.

  “Well, this is a good place to work when you’re going for your license,” Jimmy said. “We’re flexible if you wanna go to school, take classes, whatever. We don’t give benefits for part-time, but a lot of people who work here start part-time and work their way up to full. But all I’ve got for you right now is a part-time desk job. You make sure people scan their cards when they come in, hand out towels, answer the phones…”

  “That sounds good to me,” Peter said.

  “It only pays nine-fifty an hour.”

  “Money doesn’t matter.”

  Jimmy looked up, surprised. Peter wished he could take that back.

  “I mean, it matters,” Peter said. “Of course it matters. I just mean I want to work here to get some more health club experience under my belt so I can become a trainer someday. So it doesn’t really matter what I make right now.”

  “I got ya, I got ya,” Jimmy said. “Well, it looks like you’ve got the credentials and you’re a good guy—if you want the job it’s yours, man.”

  “I definitely want it.”

  “Great. I can only give you part-time—morning shift, six to noon—and you gotta work weekends. I can get you extra hours here and there, but I can’t get you benefits and I’m gonna have to ten ninety-nine you.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “You can work out whenever you want and I’ll introduce you to the trainers—Scott, Mike, Carlos, Jenny. Man, wait till you see Jenny.”

  Trying not to roll his eyes, Peter said, “A babe, huh?”

  “Fucking smoking,” Jimmy said. “When can you start?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow works. Welcome aboard, my man.”

  Jimmy and Peter shook hands.

  As they left the office and headed along the corridor toward the front of the gym, Jimmy said, “So where do you live?”

  “Right around the corner,” Peter said, “with my girlfriend.”

  “Yeah?” Jimmy said.

  “Yeah, maybe you know her. Katie. Katie Porter?”

  “She’s tall, blond, nice shape?”

  “Actually she has light brown hair and she’s about five three. But, yeah, she has a nice shape.”

  “Nah, I’m confusing her,” Jimmy said, “but if she works out here, I’m sure I’ve seen her around. But that’s cool—that’s real cool. You got a girlfriend belongs to the gym, you’re living close by. So how’d you guys meet?”

  “We grew up together.”

  “High school sweethearts, huh?”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  The musclehead Jimmy had been hanging out with before was walking by in the other direction.

  “Hey, Mike,” Jimmy said to the guy. “This is Peter Wells. He’s gonna be working at the front desk and he wants to be a trainer.”

  “Great,” Mike said and shook Peter’s hand with a very firm grip. “See you around, man.”

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  Peter and Jimmy stopped near the entrance to the gym.

  “I gotta hit the weights, man,” Jimmy said. “When you come in tomorrow you can find me in the office and we’ll take care of the paperwork and all that bullshit then. Sound cool?”

  “Sounds cool.”

  “Hey, and you gotta introduce me to your girlfriend sometime.”

  “I definitely will.”

  Jimmy went back toward the locker room.

  Peter was proud of himself. He’d hung in there, said all the right things, and he’d gotten the job. It was only a first step, but so far everything was going according to plan.

  As he zipped his windbreaker, he scanned the main level of the gym. Dozens of overworked-looking twenty somethings were listening to iPods or watching TV while they worked out on the StairMasters and treadmills. Peter hadn’t seen Katie when he arrived for the interview, and he didn’t see her now, either. He exited the health club and headed downtown along Third Avenue, walking fast with his hands in his pockets.

  TWO

  Andy Barnett was looking at the monitor on his PC, at the little digital clock in the lower-right-hand corner. He had plenty of work to do—a new monthly sales survey for one of the companies he followed was due tomorrow—but it was 4:22, and after four in the afternoon Andy could never deal with work. He wished he could go online—check out his fantasy football team or IM his friends—but the bank’s system people monitored everything employees did on the Net, and this dude, Justin, who’d worked two cubicles down, had been fired two weeks ago for surfing on company time. So whenever Andy didn’t feel like working, he couldn’t do anything but zone out, staring at the monitor with an intense, focused expression, as if he were trying to solve some complicated problem, in case his boss or somebody else in management happened to pass by.

  At 4:26, Andy’s phone rang. He recognized his friend Scott’s number on the caller ID. He picked up and said in a low voice, “Dude, what’s up?”

  “Chilling,” Scott said. “Waiting to get the hell outta here.”

  “Me, too, bro. Me, too. What’s going on later?”

  “Some guys at work are gonna check out the happy hour at McAleer’s.”

  “McAleer’s blew last week, dude.”

  “Yeah, but it should be pretty cool tonight. My buddy Dave knows a girl there and she’s bringing friends.”

  “Cute?”

  “One’s a babe, two’re borderline, the others I don’t know. But, hey, if the talent’s lame, we can just hit Firehouse. Dave says there was a ton of tuna there last week.”

  “I don’t know, dude,” Andy said. “Maybe we should stay east. I mean, I can only stay out till like seven, seven-thirty tonight anyway.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re seeing that chick again?”

  “Yeah, we’re gonna go out to dinner.”

  “Dude,” Scott said. “What’s this, like the third time in two weeks?”

  It was actually their fourth date.

  “She’s really cool,” Andy said.

  “Bro, how many times I gotta tell ya? You can’t stick around, begging for it like a dog. If it doesn’t happen on the second date, you gotta bail.”

  “What makes you think I didn’t get any yet?”

  “You? If you got some I would’ve heard about it the next morning. Hell, you would’ve jumped out of bed and called me in the middle of the night—Dude, I just fucked this girl. Really, I did.”

  Scott was laughing.

  Andy said, “Look who’s talking. When was the last time you had a girlfriend, freakin’ sophomore year?”

  “Yeah, but I got laid last weekend. I’m tellin’ ya, dude—you keep it up with this chick, pretty soon she’s gonna wanna take you ring shopping.”

  Drew Frasier, one of the senior analysts, passed Andy’s cubicle.

  “I better go,” Andy said to Scott, nearly whispering, “before I get busted.”

  “So what’s the deal tonight? You coming out with us or not?”

  “I told you, I can meet up if we stay east.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Scott said. “You want me to meet you for a drink at some lame East Side bar and blow off my friends and the hot, fuckable babes at McAleer’s so you can take off at seven o’clock for a date with your future fiancée?”

  Andy, used to taking crap from Scott, was shaking his head, smiling.

  “C
ome on, man, blow her off,” Scott went on. “You’ll probably hook up with one of the chicks at McAleer’s. Then, later, we’re gonna hit this party on Broadway in the sixties. Cornell dudes are throwing it. It’s supposed to be hot and you’re guaranteed to hook up or at least get some numbers.”

  “Sorry, bro, can’t make it tonight,” Andy said. “But I’ll definitely meet up with you guys tomorrow to watch the game.”

  “Yeah, if you’re not engaged by then.”

  “Later, dude.”

  Andy clicked off and resumed staring intently at the clock on the monitor. At four fifty-nine, he starting putting on his suit jacket. At five, he was leaving his cubicle, heading toward the elevators.

  Walking along Park Avenue toward the subway stop on Fifty-first and Lex, Andy checked out every good-looking girl he passed. He couldn’t help it. He was a twenty-three-year-old single guy in Manhattan, and as far as he was concerned there were only two types of people in the world—hot girls and everybody else.

  As Andy approached the crowded entrance to the subway, he zeroed in on a really cute chick with straight brown hair in black pants and a black suit jacket. The clothes were loose, but it looked like she had a nice body—thin anyway, which was all that really mattered. There were about five people between them as they headed down the stairs, but he kept watching her as the crowd moved toward the turnstiles. She swiped her MetroCard and went down the steps toward the jam-packed platform. He followed her as she wove through the crowd toward the end of the platform where it was slightly less crowded. When she stopped, Andy stopped, right next to her.

  Every time Andy rode the subway, he would automatically zero in on the cutest girl on the platform and stand as close to her as possible. Then he would try to get into a conversation, or at least make a lot of eye contact, and then when the train came he would make sure they got on the same car. If things went well, he’d keep the small talk going, hopefully say a couple of clever, witty things to make her laugh—getting a girl to laugh was key—and then ask for her number. He’d gotten a few numbers on the subway, and even went out with this one girl a few times and wound up getting laid. But most of the time, he struck out. The big problem was that a lot of girls were paranoid as hell on the subway and wouldn’t talk to guys, even though if they saw the same guys at a bar or a club they’d gladly talk to them then, because that was more socially acceptable.