Tanner's Virgin by Lawrence Block

and a pair of ankle-length cordovan boots with steel-reinforced toes. I gave them the terry cloth robe inreturn and left Howard’s card in the pocket just in case they wanted to send it back to him.
    It was nice to be wearing underwear again.
    Under an apple tree in a neighboring orchard I stretched out on my back and let the world calm down. It was a clear and warm day, and gradually the heat baked the chill out of me. I had come as close as I ever would to an old boyhood dream of swimming the English Channel. I was alive, I was dry, and I was almost warm. I had clothes on my back and boots on my feet and nine hundred dollars around my waist.
    So much for assets. I didn’t even want to think about the other side of the ledger. I just wanted to get back to the States.
    Yeah.
    Well, what the hell else could I do? I couldn’t fly to Kabul as planned, because those clowns who were planning to overthrow the government of Afghanistan would welcome me with open guns. I couldn’t fly anywhere because I didn’t have a passport. If the police picked me up, they would send me to England, and the English would put a rope around my neck. And—
    Phaedra, I told myself. Sweet innocent Phaedra Harrow. Or Debbie Horowitz, as you prefer. Think about Phaedra.
    Oh, the hell with her. I did what I could, and—
    But I had killed a man on her account, hadn’t I? Not that it had done her worlds of good, because the poor kid was chained up in some sort of Afghan whorehouse getting raped twenty or thirty times a day, and—
    Good, I thought wickedly. She deserves it.
    I sat up, clambered to my feet. I can’t take too muchcredit for the decision to press onward. I’d like to attribute it entirely to concern for Phaedra and strength of moral fiber, but I’ve got to admit that there was more to it than that. Because, after all, it couldn’t be too much harder for me to get to Afghanistan than back to New York. Either way I didn’t have a passport. Either way I was wanted by the British for murder, and the U.S. would be more likely to extradite me. Either way I was in all kinds of trouble, and it’s no great trick to be a hero when it doesn’t cost you anything.
    I hitchhiked to Paris. Everyone has friends in Paris, and I have some particularly useful ones. A family of Algerian colons fed me and wined me, and a friend of theirs drove me through town in a dented Citroen to the home of his old OAS comrade who lived in the attic of a decrepit tenement off the Boulevard Raspail in Montparnasse. The old comrade was in no shape to win a beauty contest—he’d lost a hand and most of his face when some plastique went off ahead of schedule. But he took five of my hundred-dollar bills and disappeared into the night, and when he’d been gone almost three hours I looked accusingly at the Citroen’s driver.
    â€œIt is said by all that Léon is a trustworthy man,” he said.
    I said nothing.
    â€œAnd yet five hundred U.S. is a great sum of money. Twenty-five hundred francs, is it not?”
    I admitted that it was.
    â€œOne should not leave one’s lambs in the care of too hungry a dog.”
    I agreed that one probably shouldn’t.
    â€œSo we shall wait,” my driver said, “and we shall see.”
    Léon was back before sunrise with a Belgian passport in the name of Paul Mornay. M. Mornay was fifty-three years old, stood five feet five inches tall, and weighed 214 pounds. They didn’t even come right out and say this, either. It was all in centimeters and kilograms and such and I had to work it out in order to see just how far apart were M. Mornay and I. His picture was as far off the mark as his vital statistics. He had a round face and a baldish head and a cute little moustache, and he looked more like Porky Pig than Evan Tanner.
    â€œIt is genuine,” Léon said.
    â€œAnd M. Mornay?”
    â€œM. Mornay has taken to bed one of the most