Ehrengraf for the Defense (22 page)

“Unconscionable,” Ehrengraf said.

“And now I’m certain to be questioned
further, and very likely to be placed under arrest. My lawyer was
nattering on about how unlikely it was that I’d ever have to spend
a night in jail, and hinting at my pleading guilty to some reduced
charge. That’s not good enough.”

“No.”

“I don’t want to skate on a technicality, my
reputation in ruins. I don’t want to devote a few hundred hours to
community service. How do you suppose they’d have me serve my
community, Mr. Ehrengraf? Would they send me across the street to
pick up litter in the park? Or would they regard a stick with a
sharp bit of metal at its end as far too formidable a weapon to be
placed in my irresponsible hands?”

“These are things you don’t want,” Ehrengraf
said soothingly. “And whyever should you want them? But perhaps you
could tell me what it is that you
do
want.”

“What I want,” said Ravenstock, speaking as a
man who generally got whatever it was that he wanted. “What I want,
sir, is for all of this to go away. And my understanding is that
you are a gentleman who is very good at making things go away.”

Ehrengraf smiled.

* * *

Ehrengraf gazed past the mound of clutter on
his desk at his office door, with its window of frosted glass. What
struck him about the door was that his client had not yet come
through it. It was getting on for half past eleven, which made
Millard Ravenstock almost thirty minutes late.

Ehrengraf fingered the knot in his tie. It
was a perfectly symmetrical knot, neither too large nor too small,
which was as it should be. Whenever he wore this particular tie,
with its navy field upon which a half-inch diagonal stripe of royal
blue was flanked by two narrower stripes, one of gold, the other
vividly green—whenever he put it on, he took considerable pains to
get the knot exactly right.

It was, of course, the tie of the Caedmon
Society; Ehrengraf, not a member of that institution, had purchased
the tie from a shop in Oxford’s Cranham Close. He’d owned it for
some years now, and had been careful to avoid soiling it, extending
its useful life by reserving it for special occasions.

This morning had promised to be such an
occasion. Now, as the minutes ticked away without producing Millard
Ravenstock, he found himself less certain.

* * *

The antique Regulator clock on the wall,
which lost a minute a day, showed the time as 11:42 when Millard
Ravenstock opened the door and stepped into Ehrengraf’s office. The
little lawyer glanced first at the clock and then at his
wristwatch, which read 11:48. Then he looked at his client, who
looked not the least bit apologetic for his late arrival.

“Ah, Ehrengraf,” the man said. “A fine day,
wouldn’t you say?”

You could see Niagara Square from Ehrengraf’s
office window, and a quick look showed that the day was as it had
been earlier—overcast and gloomy, with every likelihood of
rain.

“Glorious,” Ehrengraf agreed.

Without waiting to be asked, Ravenstock
pulled up a chair and settled his bulk into it. “Before I left my
house,” he said, “I went into my den, got out my checkbook, and
wrote two checks. One, you’ll be pleased to know, was for your
fee.” He patted his breast pocket. “I’ve brought it with me.”

Ehrengraf was pleased. But, he noted,
cautiously so. He sensed there was another shoe just waiting to be
dropped.

“The other check is already in the mail. I
made it payable to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association, and I
assure you the sum is a generous one. I have always been a staunch
proponent of the police, Ehrengraf, if only because the role they
play is such a vital one. Without them we’d have the rabble at our
throats, eh?”

Ehrengraf
, thought Ehrengraf. The
Mister
, present throughout their initial meeting, had
evidently been left behind on Nottingham Terrace. Increasingly,
Ehrengraf felt it had been an error to wear that particular tie on
this particular morning.

“Yet I’d given the police insufficient credit
for their insight and their resolve. Walter Bainbridge, a thorough
and diligent policeman and, I might add, a good friend, pressed an
investigation along lines others might have left unexplored. I’ve
been completely exonerated, and it’s largely his doing.”

“Indeed,” said Ehrengraf.

“The police dug up evidence, unearthed facts.
That housewife who was raped and murdered three weeks ago in
Orchard Park. I’m sure you’re familiar with the case. The press
called it the Milf Murder.”

Ehrengraf nodded.

“It took place outside city limits,”
Ravenstock went on, “so it wasn’t their case at all, but they went
through the house and found an unwashed sweatshirt stuffed into a
trashcan in the garage. Nichols School Lacrosse, it said, big as
life. That’s a curious expression isn’t it? Big as life?”

“Curious,” Ehrengraf said.

“Lacrosse seems to be the natural refuge of
the preppy thug,” Ravenstock said. “Can you guess whose DNA soiled
that sweatshirt?”

Ehrengraf could guess, but saw no reason to
do so. Nor did Ravenstock wait for a response.

“Tegrum Bogue’s. He’d been on the team, and
it was beyond question his shirt. He’d raped that young housewife
and snapped her neck when he was through with her. And he had
similar plans for Alicia.”

“Your wife.”

“Yes. I don’t believe you’ve met her.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure.”

The expression that passed over Ravenstock’s
face suggested that it was a pleasure Ehrengraf would have to live
without. “She is a beautiful woman,” he said. “And quite a few
years younger than I. I suppose there are those who would refer to
her as my trophy wife.”

The man paused, waiting for Ehrengraf to
comment, then frowned at the lawyer’s continuing silence. “There
are two ways to celebrate a trophy,” he went on. “One may carry it
around, showing it off at every opportunity. Or one may place it on
a shelf in one’s personal quarters, to be admired and savored in
private.”

“Indeed.”

“Some men require that their taste have the
approbation of others. They lack confidence, Ehrengraf.”

Another pause. Some expression of assent
seemed to be required of him, and Ehrengraf considered several,
ranging from
Right on, dude
to
Most def
.

“Indeed,” he said at length.

“But somehow Alicia caught his interest. He
was one of the mob given to loitering in the park, and sometimes
she’d walk Kossuth there.”

“Kossuth,” Ehrengraf said. “The Gordon
setter?”

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t own a Gordon.
And why would anyone name a Gordon for Louis Kossuth? Our dog is a
Viszla, and a fine and noble animal he is. He must have seen her
walking Kossuth. Or—”

“Or?”

“I had my run-ins with him. In my patrol duty
with the Vigilance Committee, I’d recommended that he and his
fellows stay on their side of the street.”

“In the park, and away from the houses.”

“His response was not at all acquiescent,”
Ravenstock recalled. “After that I made a point of monitoring his
activities, and phoned in the occasional police report. I’d have to
say I made an enemy, Ehrengraf.”

“I doubt you were ever destined to be
friends.”

“No, but I erred in making myself the object
of his hostility. I think that’s what may have put Alicia in his
sights. I think he stalked me, and I think his reconnaissance got
him a good look at Alicia, and of course to see her is to want
her.”

Ehrengraf, struck by the matter-of-fact tone
of that last clause, touched the tips of two fingers to the Caedmon
Society cravat.

“And the police found evidence of his
obsession,” Ravenstock said. “A roll of undeveloped film in his
sock drawer, with photos for which my wife had served as an
unwitting model. Crude fictional sketches, written in Bogue’s
schoolboy hand, some written in the third person, some in the
first. Clumsy mini-stories relating in pornographic detail the
abduction, sexual savaging, and murder of my wife. Pencil drawings
to illustrate them, as ill-fashioned as his prose. The scenarios
varied as his fantasies evolved. Sometimes there was torture,
mutilation, dismemberment. Sometimes I was present, bound and
helpless, forced to witness what was being done to her. And I had
to watch because I couldn’t close my eyes. I didn’t read his filth,
so I can’t recall whether he’d glued my eyelids open or removed
them surgically—”

“Either would be effective.”

“Well,” Ravenstock said, and went on,
explaining that of course the several discoveries the police had
made put paid to any notion that he, Millard Ravenstock, had done
anything untoward, let alone criminal. He had not been charged, so
there were no charges to dismiss, and what was at least as
important was that he had been entirely exonerated in the court of
public opinion.

“So you can see why I felt moved to make a
generous donation to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association,” he
continued. “I feel they earned it. And I’ll find a way to express
my private appreciation to Walter Bainbridge.”

Ehrengraf waited, and refrained from touching
his necktie.

“As for yourself, Ehrengraf, I greatly
appreciate your efforts on my behalf, and have no doubt that they’d
have proved successful had not Fate and the police intervened and
done your job for you. And I’m sure you’ll find this more than
adequate compensation for your good work.”

The check was in an envelope, which
Ravenstock plucked from his inside breast pocket and extended with
a flourish. The envelope was unsealed, and Ehrengraf drew the check
from it and noted its amount, which was about what he’d come to
expect.

“The fee I quoted you—”

“Was lofty,” Ravenstock said, “but would have
been acceptable had the case not resolved itself independent of any
action on your part.”

“I was very specific,” Ehrengraf pointed out.
“I said my work would cost you nothing unless your innocence was
established and all charges dropped. But if that were to come
about, my fee was due and payable in full. You do remember my
saying that, don’t you?”

“But you didn’t
do
anything,
Ehrengraf.”

“You agreed to the arrangement I spelled out,
sir, and—”

“I repeat, you did nothing, or if you did do
anything it had no bearing on the outcome of the matter. The
payment I just gave you is a settlement, and I pay it gladly in
order to put the matter to rest.”

“A settlement,” Ehrengraf said, testing the
word on his tongue.

“And no mere token settlement, either. It’s
hardly an insignificant amount, and my personal attorney hastened
to tell me I’m being overly generous. He says all you’re entitled
to, legally and morally, is a reasonable return on whatever
billable hours you’ve put in, and—”

“Your attorney.”

“One of the region’s top men, I assure
you.”

“I don’t doubt it. Would this be the same
attorney who’d have had you armed with a sharp stick to pick up
litter in Delaware Park? After pleading you guilty to a murder for
which you bore no guilt?”

Even as he marshaled his arguments, Ehrengraf
sensed that they would prove fruitless. The man’s mind, such as it
was, was made up. Nothing would sway him.

* * *

There was a time, Ehrengraf recalled, when he
had longed for a house like Millard Ravenstock’s—on Nottingham
Terrace, or Meadow Road, or Middlesex. Something at once tasteful
and baronial, something with pillars and a center hall, something
that would proclaim to one and all that its owner had
unquestionably come to amount to something.

True success, he had learned, meant one no
longer required its accoutrements. His penthouse apartment at the
Park Lane provided all the space and luxury he could want, and a
better view than any house could offer. The building, immaculately
maintained and impeccably staffed, even had a name that suited him;
it managed to be as resolutely British as Nottingham or Middlesex
without sounding pretentious.

And it was closer to downtown. When time and
good weather permitted, Ehrengraf could walk to and from his
office.

But not today. There was a cold wind blowing
off the lake, and the handicappers in the weather bureau had pegged
rain at even money. The little lawyer had arrived at his office a
few minutes after ten. He made one phone call, and as he rang off
he realized he could have saved himself the trip.

He went downstairs, retrieved his car, and
returned to the Park Lane to await his guest.

* * *

Ehrengraf, opening the door, was careful not
to stare. The woman whom the concierge had announced as a Ms.
Philips was stunning, and Ehrengraf worked to conceal the extent to
which he was stunned. She was taller than Ehrengraf by several
inches, with dark hair that someone very skilled had cut to look as
though she took no trouble with it. She had great big Bambi eyes,
the facial planes of a supermodel, and a full-lipped mouth that
stopped just short of obscenity.

“Ms. Philips,” Ehrengraf said, and motioned
her inside.

“I didn’t want to leave my name at the
desk.”

“I assumed as much. Come in, come in. A
drink? A cup of coffee?”

“Coffee, if it’s no trouble.”

It was no trouble at all; Ehrengraf had made
a fresh pot upon his return, and he filled two cups and brought
them to the living room, where Alicia Ravenstock had chosen the
Sheraton wing chair. Ehrengraf sat opposite her, and they sipped
their coffee and discussed the beans and brewing method before
giving a few minutes’ attention to the weather.

Then she said, “You’re very good to see me
here. I was afraid to come to your office. There are enough people
who know me by sight, and if word got back to him that I went to a
lawyer’s office, or even into a building where lawyers had
offices—”