Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf (2 page)

“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.

“N
ow 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.