Tanner’s Virgin

Lawrence Block

Ta

The sixth book in the Evan Ta

Chapter 1

At 2:30 one fine October afternoon I ripped the telephone out of the wall. Mi

I looked at her. Mi

“I think I shall go to the park,” she said carefully. “With Mikey.”

“Mikey is in school.”

“He stayed home today, Evan. It is a Jewish holiday.”

Mikey, né Miguel, belonged to no church in particular and was thus free to become an ex-officio member of whatever religious group was staying home from school on any given day. I said something caustic about Mikey and the many paths to divine enlightenment. Mi

“Good afternoon,” she said in Lithuanian. “I forgive you for the intemperance of your mood, and trust you will be better suited to discourse upon my return.”

She ducked out the door before I could chuck a shoe at her. Mi

So I sighed heavily, and Mi

It took perhaps ten minutes to rewire the telephone, just a fraction of the time the little black monster had already cost me that day. It had been ringing intermittently since five in the morning. Since I do not sleep, friends and enemies feel free to call me at all hours, and this was one of those days when they had been doing precisely that.

I was devoting the day to working on a thesis on color symbolism in the nature poems of William Wordsworth, and if you think that sounds slightly dull you don’t know the half of it. It was not at all the sort of thesis topic I would have selected, but for unknowable reasons it was precisely the sort of thesis topic Karen Dietrich had selected. Miss Dietrich was a school-teacher in Suffolk County who would receive a raise in pay if she earned a master’s degree. I in turn would receive $1000 for furnishing Miss Dietrich with an acceptable thesis, said thesis to run approximately twenty thousand words, making my words worth a nickel apiece, color symbolism notwithstanding.

Anyway, I had to finish the damned thing, and the phone kept ringing. For a while I gave Mi

Until ultimately I ripped the damn thing out of the wall and Mi

It was one of the major mistakes of my life.

For almost an hour the phone remained stoically silent. I probed Wordsworth and pounded my typewriter while the silent phone lulled me into a false sense of security. Then it rang and I answered it and a voice I did not recognize said, “Mr. Ta

I said, “Yes.”

“You don’t know me, Mr. Ta

“Oh.”

“But I have to talk to you.”

“Oh.”

“My name is Miriam Horowitz.”

“How do you do, Miss Horowitz.”

“It’s Mrs. Horowitz. Mrs. Benjamin Horowitz.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Horowitz.”

“He’s dead.”

“Pardon me?”

“Benjamin, he should rest in peace. I am a widow.”

“I’m very worry.”

“Oh, it’ll be eight years in February. What am I saying? Nine years. Nine years in February. Never sick a day, a hard worker, a good husband, he comes home tired from the office, like a candle he drops dead. It was his heart.”

I changed ears so that Mrs. Horowitz could talk into the other one. She had fallen silent. I decided she needed prompting. “I’m Evan Ta

“I know.”

“You called me, Mrs. Horowitz. I don’t want to, uh, be brusque with you, uh, but-”

“I’m calling you about my daughter.”

I’m calling you about my daughter. There are bachelors in their middle thirties who can hear those words without erupting in panic, but they generally wear pink silk shorts and subscribe to physical culture magazines. I felt a well nigh irresistible urge to hang up the phone.

“My daughter Deborah. She’s in trouble.”

My daughter Deborah. She’s in trouble.

I hung up the phone.

Deborah Horowitz is pregnant, I thought. Deborah Horowitz is pregnant, and her idiot of a mother has decided that Evan Michael Ta

I stood up and began pacing the floor. Now how in God’s name, I wondered, had Deborah Horowitz managed to get pregnant? Why didn’t she take her pills? What was the matter with her? And-

Wait a minute.

I didn’t know anyone named Deborah Horowitz.

The phone rang. I picked it up, and Mrs. Horowitz’s voice was saying something about our having been disco

“You’re Evan Ta

“Yes, but-”

“ West 107th Street? Manhattan?”

“Yes, but-”

“You know her. And you have to help me, I’m a widow, I’m all alone in the world, I have nowhere to turn. You-”

“But-”

“You know her. Maybe you don’t know her by her real name. Young girls, they always get fancy ideas about names. I remember when I was sixteen all of a sudden Miriam was no good, I had to call myself Mimi. Hah!”

“Your daughter-”

“Phaedra, she calls herself now.”

I said slowly, softly, “Phaedra Harrow.”

“See? You know her.”

“Phaedra Harrow.”

“The ideas they get. Both names, from Deborah to Phaedra and from Horowitz to-”

“Mrs. Horowitz,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Horowitz, I think you’ve made a mistake.” I took a deep breath. “If Phaedra – if Deborah, that is, if she’s, uh, pregnant, well, I think it’s impossible.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, if that’s the case, I think you’d better start looking for a very bright star in the East. Because-”

“Who said anything about pregnant?”

“You did.”

“In trouble, I said.”

“Oh.” I thought for a moment. “So you did.”

“Her name wasn’t good enough for her, she had to change it. Her country wasn’t good enough for her, she had to go overseas. God knows what she gets mixed up in. I always get letters, and then the letters stop, and then I get this one postcard. Mr. Ta