Lawrence Block: The Ehrengraf Defense

It did seem reasonable, even if the explanation was the slightest bit hazy. Perhaps the little man dabbled in bribery, perhaps he knew the right strings to pull but could scarcely disclose them after the fact. Well, it hardly mattered. All that mattered was Clark’s freedom, Clark’s good name.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I understand. When Clark is released you’ll be paid in full.”

“Very good.”

She frowned. “In the meantime you’ll want a retainer, won’t you? An advance of some sort?”

“You have a dollar?” She looked in her purse, drew out a dollar bill. “Give it to me, Mrs. Culhane. Very good, very good. An advance of one dollar against a fee of seventy-five thousand dollars. And I assure you, my dear Mrs. Culhane, that should this case not resolve itself in unqualified success I shall even return this dollar to you.” The smile, and this time there was a twinkle in the eyes. “But that will not happen, Mrs. Culhane, because I do not intend to fail.”

It was a little more than a month later when Dorothy Culhane made her second visit to Martin Ehrengraf’s office. This time the little lawyer’s suit was a navy blue pinstripe, his necktie maroon with a subdued below-the-knot design. His starched white shirt might have been the same one she had seen on her earlier visit. The shoes, black wing tips, were as highly polished as the other pair he’d been wearing.

His expression was changed slightly. There was something that might have been sorrow in the deep-set eyes, a look that suggested a continuing disappointment with human nature.

“It would seem quite clear,” Ehrengraf said now. “Your son has been released. All charges have been dropped. He is a free man, free even to the extent that no shadow of suspicion hangs over him in the public mind.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Culhane said, “and that’s wonderful, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Of course it’s terrible about the girls, I hate to think that Clark’s happiness and my own happiness stem from their tragedy, or I suppose it’s tragedies, isn’t it, but all the same I feel—”

“Mrs. Culhane.”

She bit off her words, let her eyes meet his.

“Mrs. Culhane, it’s quite cut and dried, is it not? You owe me seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“But—”

“We discussed this, Mrs. Culhane. I’m sure you recall our discussion. We went over the matter at length. Upon the successful resolution of this matter you were to pay me my fee, seventy-five thousand dollars. Less, of course, the sum of one dollar already paid over to me as a retainer.”

“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.”