Ehrengraf for the Defense (2 page)

“But—”

“Even if I did nothing. Even if the district
attorney elected to drop charges before you’d even departed from
these premises. That, I believe, was the example I gave at the
time.”

“Yes.”

“And you agreed to those terms.”

“Yes, but—”

“But what, Mrs. Culhane?”

She took a deep breath, set herself bravely.
“Three girls,” she said. “Strangled, all of them, just like Althea
Patton. All of them the same physical type, slender blondes with
high foreheads and prominent front teeth, two of them here in town
and one across the river in Montclair, and around each of their
throats—”

“A necktie.”

“The same necktie.”

“A necktie of the Caedmon Society of Oxford
University.”

“Yes.” She drew another breath. “So it was
obvious that there’s a maniac at large,” she went on, “and the last
killing was in Montclair, so maybe he’s leaving the area, and my
God, I hope so, it’s terrifying, the idea of a man just killing
girls at random because they remind him of his mother—”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what somebody was saying on
television last night. A psychiatrist. It was just a theory.”

“Yes,” Ehrengraf said. “Theories are
interesting, aren’t they? Speculation, guesswork, hypotheses, all
very interesting.”

“But the point is—”

“Yes?”

“I know what we agreed, Mr. Ehrengraf. I know
all that. But on the other hand you made one visit to Clark in
prison, that was just one brief visit, and then as far as I can see
you did nothing at all, and just because the madman happened to
strike again and killed the other girls in exactly the same manner
and even used the same tie, well, you have to admit that
seventy-five thousand dollars sounds like quite a windfall for
you.”

“A windfall.”

“So I was discussing this with my own
attorney—he’s not a criminal lawyer, he handles my personal
affairs—and he suggested that you might accept a reduced fee as way
of settlement.”

“He suggested this, eh?”

She avoided the man’s eyes. “Yes, he did
suggest it, and I must say it seems reasonable to me. Of course I
would be glad to reimburse you for any expenses you incurred,
although I can’t honestly say that you could have run up much in
the way of expenses, and he suggested that I might give you a fee
on top of that of five thousand dollars, but I am grateful, Mr.
Ehrengraf, and I’d be willing to make that
ten
thousand
dollars, and you have to admit that’s not a trifle, don’t you? I
have money, I’m comfortably set up financially, but no one can
afford to pay out seventy-five thousand dollars for nothing at all,
and—”

“Human beings,” Ehrengraf said, and closed
his eyes. “And the rich are the worst of all,” he added, opening
his eyes, fixing them upon Dorothy Culhane. “It is an unfortunate
fact of life that only the rich can afford to pay high fees. Thus I
must make my living acting on their behalf. The poor, they do not
agree to an arrangement when they are desperate and go back on
their word when they are in more reassuring circumstances.”

“It’s not so much that I’d go back on my
word,” Mrs. Culhane said. “It’s just that—”

“Mrs. Culhane.”

“Yes?”

“I am going to tell you something which I
doubt will have any effect upon you, but at least I shall have
tried. The best thing you could do, right at this moment, would be
to take out your checkbook and write out a check to me for payment
in full. You will probably not do this, and you will ultimately
regret it.”

“Is that... are you threatening me?”

A flicker of a smile. “Certainly not. I have
given you not a threat but a prediction. You see, if you do not pay
my fee, what I shall do is tell you something else which will lead
you to pay me my fee after all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No,” Martin Ehrengraf said. “No, I don’t
suppose you do. Mrs. Culhane, you spoke of expenses. You doubted I
could have incurred significant expenses on your son’s behalf.
There are many things I could say, Mrs. Culhane, but I think it
might be best for me to confine myself to a brisk accounting of a
small portion of my expenses.”

“I don’t—”

“Please, my dear lady. Expenses. If I were
listing my expenses, dear lady, I would begin by jotting down my
train fare to New York City. Then taxi fare to Kennedy Airport,
which comes to twenty dollars with tip and bridge tolls, and isn’t
that exorbitant?”

“Mr. Ehrengraf—”

“Please. Then airfare to London and back. I
always fly first class, it’s an indulgence, but since I pay my own
expenses out of my own pocket I feel I have the right to indulge
myself. Next a rental car hired from Heathrow Airport and driven to
Oxford and back. The price of gasoline is high enough over here,
Mrs. Culhane, but in England they call it petrol and charge the
earth for it.”

She stared at him. His hands were folded atop
his disorderly desk and he went on talking in the calmest possible
tone of voice and she felt her jaw dropping but could not seem to
raise it back into place.

“In Oxford I had to visit five gentlemen’s
clothiers, Mrs. Culhane. One shop had no Caedmon Society cravats in
stock at the moment. I purchased one necktie from each of the other
shops. I felt it really wouldn’t do to buy more than one tie in any
one shop. A man prefers not to call attention to himself
unnecessarily. The Caedmon Society necktie, Mrs. Culhane, is not
unattractive. A navy blue field with a half-inch stripe of royal
blue and two narrower flanking stripes, one of gold and the other
of a rather bright green. I don’t care for regimental stripes
myself, Mrs. Culhane, preferring as I do a more subdued style in
neckwear, but the Caedmon tie is a handsome one all the same.”

“My God.”

“There were other expenses, Mrs. Culhane, but
as I pay them myself I don’t honestly think there’s any need for me
to recount them to you, do you?”

“My God. Dear God in heaven.”

“Indeed. It would have been better all
around, as I said a few moments ago, had you decided to pay my fee
without hearing what you’ve just heard. Ignorance in this case
would have been, if not bliss, at least a good deal closer to bliss
than what you’re undoubtedly feeling at the moment.”

“Clark didn’t kill that girl.”

“Of course he didn’t, Mrs. Culhane. Of course
he didn’t. I’m sure some rotter stole his tie and framed him. But
that would have been an enormous chore to prove and all a lawyer
could have done was persuade a jury that there was room for doubt,
and poor Clark would have had a cloud over him all the days of his
life. Of course you and I know he’s innocent—”

“He
is
innocent,” she said. “He
is
.”

“Of course he is, Mrs. Culhane. The killer
was a homicidal maniac striking down young women who reminded him
of his mother. Or his sister, or God knows whom. You’ll want to get
out your checkbook, Mrs. Culhane, but don’t try to write the check
just yet. Your hands are trembling. Just sit there, that’s the
ticket, and I’ll get you a glass of water. Everything’s perfectly
fine, Mrs. Culhane. That’s what you must remember. Everything’s
perfectly fine and everything will continue to be fine. Here you
are, a couple of ounces of water in a paper cup, just drink it
down, there you are, there you are.”

And when it was time to write out the check
her hand did not shake a bit. Pay to the order of Martin H.
Ehrengraf, seventy-five thousand dollars, signed Dorothy Rodgers
Culhane. Signed with a ball-point pen, no need to blot it, and
handed across the desk to the impeccably dressed little man.

“Yes, thank you, thank you very much, my dear
lady. And here is your dollar, the retainer you gave me. Go ahead
and take it, please.”

She took the dollar.

“Very good. And you probably won’t want to
repeat this conversation to anyone. What would be the point?”

“No. No, I won’t say anything.”

“Of course not.”

“Four neckties.”

He looked at her, raised his eyebrows a
fraction of an inch.

“You said you bought four of the neckties.
There were—there were three girls killed.”

“Indeed there were.”

“What happened to the fourth necktie?”

“Why, it must be in my bureau drawer, don’t
you suppose? And perhaps they’re all there, Mrs. Culhane. Perhaps
all four neckties are in my bureau drawer, still in their original
wrappings, and purchasing them was just a waste of time and money
on my part. Perhaps that homicidal maniac had neckties of his own
and the four in my drawer are just an interesting souvenir and a
reminder of what might have been.”

“Oh.”

“And perhaps I’ve just told you a story out
of the whole cloth, an interesting turn of phrase since we are
speaking of silk neckties. Perhaps I never flew to London at all,
never motored to Oxford, never purchased a single necktie of the
Caedmon Society. Perhaps that was just something I trumped up on
the spur of the moment to coax a fee out of you.”

“But—”

“Ah, my dear lady,” said Ehrengraf, moving to
the side of her chair, taking her arm, helping her out of the
chair, turning her, steering her toward the door. “We would do
well, Mrs. Culhane, to believe that which it most pleases us to
believe. I have my fee. You have your son. The police have another
line of inquiry to pursue altogether. It would seem we’ve all come
out of this well, wouldn’t you say? Put your mind at rest, Mrs.
Culhane, dear Mrs. Culhane. There’s the elevator down the hall on
your left. If you ever need my services you know where I am and how
to reach me. And perhaps recommend me to your friends. But
discreetly, dear lady. Discreetly. Discretion is everything in
matters of this sort.”

Mrs. Culhane walked very carefully down the
hall to the elevator and rang the bell and waited. And she did not
look back. Not once.

The End

“
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a
prey,

Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”

—
Oliver Goldsmith

“Now let me get this straight,” Alvin Gort
said. “You actually accept criminal cases on a contingency basis.
Even homicide cases?”

“Especially homicide cases.”

“If your client is acquitted he pays your
fee. If he’s found guilty, then your efforts on his behalf cost him
nothing whatsoever. Except expenses, I assume.”

“That’s very true,” Martin Ehrengraf said.
The little lawyer supplied a smile which blossomed briefly on his
thin lips while leaving his eyes quite uninvolved. “Shall I explain
in detail?”

“By all means.”

“To take your last point first, I pay my own
expenses and furnish no accounting of them to my client. My fees
are thus all-inclusive. By the same token, should a client of mine
be convicted he would owe me nothing. I would absorb such expenses
as I might incur acting on his behalf.”

“That’s remarkable.”

“It’s surely unusual, if not unique. Now the
rest of what you’ve said is essentially true. It’s not uncommon for
attorneys to take on negligence cases on a contingency basis,
participating handsomely in the settlement when they win, sharing
their clients’ losses when they do not. The principle has always
made eminent good sense to me. Why shouldn’t a client give
substantial value for value received? Why should he be simply
charged for service, whether or not the service does him any good?
When I pay out money, Mr. Gort, I like to get what I pay for. And I
don’t mind paying for what I get.”

“It certainly makes sense to me,” Alvin Gort
said. He dug a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, scratched
a match, drew smoke into his lungs. This was his first experience
in a jail cell and he’d been quite surprised to learn that he was
allowed to have matches on his person, to wear his own clothes
rather than prison garb, to keep money in his pocket and a watch on
his wrist.

No doubt all this would change if and when he
were convicted of murdering his wife. Then he’d be in an actual
prison and the rules would most likely be more severe. Here they
had taken his belt as a precaution against suicide, and they would
have taken the laces from his shoes had he not been wearing loafers
at the time of his arrest. But it could have been worse.

And unless Ehrengraf pulled off a small
miracle, it would be worse.

“Sometimes my clients never see the inside of
a courtroom,” Ehrengraf was saying now. “I’m always happiest when I
can save them not merely from prison but from going to trial in the
first place. So you should understand that whether or not I collect
my fee hinges on your fate, on the disposition of your case—and not
on how much work I put in or how much time it takes me to liberate
you. In other words, from the moment you retain me I have an
interest in your future, and the moment you are released and all
charges dropped, my fee becomes due and payable in full.”

“And your fee will be—?”

“One hundred thousand dollars,” Ehrengraf
said crisply.

Alvin Gort considered the sum, then nodded
thoughtfully. It was not difficult to believe that the diminutive
attorney commanded and received large fees. Alvin Gort recognized
good clothing when he saw it, and the clothing Martin Ehrengraf
wore was good indeed. The man was well turned out. His suit, a
bronze sharkskin number with a nipped-in waist, was clearly not off
the rack. His brown wing-tip shoes had been polished to a high
gloss. His tie, a rich teak in hue with an unobtrusive
below-the-knot design, bore the reasonably discreet trademark of a
genuine countess. And his hair had received the attention of a good
barber while his neatly trimmed mustache served as a focal point
for a face otherwise devoid of any single dominating feature. The
overall impression thus created was one of a man who could announce
a six-figure fee and make you feel that such a sum was altogether
fitting and proper.