Tanner's Virgin by Lawrence Block Page A

energetic tarts in Montmartre.”
    â€œFrom his picture,” I said, “one would think it would kill him.”
    â€œAnd so it did,” Léon agreed. “At the critical moment, zut! The little death becomes the great one. Thus did his passport come upon the market, and thus one may rest assured that M. Mornay will not report its loss.”
    My driver said, “If one must die, no way is sweeter.” And, in the car, he said, “I must apologize for Léon. I thought he was a trustworthy man.”
    â€œHe brought the passport.”
    â€œIf he paid more than a thousand francs for that passport then I am the bastard son of Enzo Ferrari and Queen Marie of Rumania. For twenty-five hundred francs one should obtain a U.S. or British passport in good order, not a shabby Belgian thing that requiresfurther attention. One expects that Léon shall make a profit, but this is larcenous.”
    â€œI didn’t think he would come back at all.”
    â€œAh,” said my driver. “But did I not assure you he was a trustworthy man?”
    My barber was also a trustworthy man. He was one of the few White Russians in Paris who didn’t insist he had been a prince before the revolution. He said he had been a barber, and he was a barber still. His craft was only slightly impaired by the tremor which age had put in his fingers. He agreed that it was sensible to doctor me rather than the passport insofar as possible. He shaved me, leaving a moustache to match M. Mornay’s and he showed me how to fill this in with eyebrow pencil so that it did not look as sparse as it was. He dyed my hair black and toyed with the idea of shaving some of it, but we decided that a shaved head rarely looks authentically bald, so instead of subtracting hair from my own head I added hair to the photo of M. Mornay.
    There was not very much else I could do. Good passport artists, with proper tools and years of experience, can perform extraordinary tricks. I know two such men, one in Athens and one in Manhattan, but I didn’t know of anyone in Paris and had no time to find one. It would have been child’s play for such an artist to alter Mornay’s height and weight so that they corresponded to my own. As things stood, I had to rely on the fact that the average immigration officer is far too harried to spend too much time looking at a passport.
    I left Paris late that afternoon. A different colon in the same Citroen drove me to the airport at Orly. I was wearing a medium-priced ready-made suit, and thecut of it showed me why Europeans have their clothes made to measure. Still, it fit my new role better than the applepicker’s work clothes. I had them with me in a small imitation-leather suitcase.
    I flew to Geneva and Zurich. The following morning I went to the Bank Leu in Zurich, where I have a signature-and-number account for money that can’t conveniently accompany me into the States. I checked the balance and found that it stood at fifteen thousand Swiss francs, which is just under thirty-five hundred U.S. dollars.
    I made them check it again, and they came up with the same figure. It was hard to believe that I had given so much money away in so short a time. There are a countless number of very good causes which I support, and it looked as though I had been supporting them even more munificently than I had realized.
    â€œI thought there was more,” I said.
    â€œIf Monsieur desires an accounting—”
    â€œOh, not at all,” I said. “I trust you.” That didn’t sound right, and the manager looked very unhappy. “I mean I must have forgotten to carry,” I said. “When I was subtracting. Something like that.”
    â€œBut of course,” he said, doubtfully.
    â€œI’ll have to get more to put in. As soon as I find Phaedra and get back from—” I realized suddenly that I was running off at the mouth. “—from wherever I’m