Lawrence Block - The Ehrengraf Experience

“You’d dealt with him before?”

“Maybe a dozen times over the years. I’ve borrowed sums ranging between ten and seventy thousand dollars. I never heard the interest payments called vigorish before, but I always paid them promptly. And no one ever threatened to break my legs. We did business together, Speldron and I. And it always worked out very well for both of us.”

“The prosecution argued that by killing Speldron you erased your debt to him. That’s certainly a motive a jury can understand, Mr. Beale. In a world where men are commonly killed for the price of a bottle of whiskey, fifty thousand dollars does seem enough to kill a man over.”

“But I’d be crazy to kill for that sum. I’m not a pauper. If I was having trouble paying Speldron all I had to do was sell the stamps.”

“And if you had trouble selling them?”

“Then I could have liquidated other merchandise from my stock. I could have mortgaged my home. Why, I could have raised enough on the house to pay off Speldron three times over. That car they found the gun in, that’s an Antonelli Scorpion. The car alone is worth more than I owed Speldron.”

“Indeed,” Martin Ehrengraf said. “But this Walker Murchison. How does he come into the picture?”

“He killed Speldron.”

“How do we know this, Mr. Beale?”

Grantham Beale got to his feet. He’d been sitting on his iron cot, leaving the cell’s one chair for the lawyer. Now he stood up, stretched, and walked to the rear of the cell. For a moment he stood regarding some graffito on the cell wall. Then he turned and looked at Ehrengraf.

“Speldron and Murchison were partners,” he said. “I dealt only with Speldron because Murchison steered clear of unsecured loans. And Murchison had an insurance business in which Speldron did not participate. Their joint ventures included real estate, investments, and other activities where large sums of money moved around quickly with few records kept of exactly what took place.”

“Shady operations,” Ehrengraf said.

“For the most part. Not always illegal, not entirely illegal, but, yes, I like your word. Shady.”

“So they were partners, and it is not unheard of for one to kill one’s partner. To dissolve a partnership by the most direct means available, as it were. But why this partnership? Why should Murchison kill Speldron?”

Beale shrugged. “Money,” he suggested. “With all that cash floating around, you can bet Murchison made out handsomely on Speldron’s death. I’ll bet he put a lot more than fifty thousand unrecorded dollars into his pocket.”

“That’s your only reason for suspecting him?”

Beale shook his head. “The partnership had a secretary,” he said. “Her name’s Felicia. Young, long dark hair, flashing dark eyes, a body like a magazine centerfold, and a face like a Chanel ad. Both of the partners were sleeping with her.”

“Perhaps this was not a source of enmity.”

“But it was. Murchison’s married to her.”

“Ah.”

“But there’s an important reason why I know it was Murchison who killed Speldron.” Beale stepped forward, stood over the seated attorney. “The gun was found in the boot of my car,” he said. “Wrapped in a filthy towel and stuffed in the spare tire well. There were no fingerprints on the gun and it wasn’t registered to me but there it was in my car.”

“The Antonelli Scorpion?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“No matter.”

Beale frowned momentarily, then drew a breath and plunged onward. “It was put there to frame me,” he said.

“So it would seem.”

“It had to be put there by somebody who knew I owed Speldron money. Somebody with inside information. The two of them were partners. I met Murchison any number of times when I went to the office to pay the interest, or vigorish as you called it. Why do they call it that?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Murchison knew I owed money. And Murchison and I never liked each other.”

“Why?”

“We just didn’t get along. The reason’s not important. And there’s more, I’m not just grasping at straws. It was Murchison who suggested I might have killed Speldron. A lot of men owed Speldron money and there were probably several of them who were in much stickier shape financially than I, but Murchison told the police I’d had a loud and bitter argument with Speldron two days before he was killed!”

“And had you?”

“No! Why, I never in my life argued with Speldron.”

“Interesting.” The little lawyer raised his hand to his mustache, smoothing its tips delicately. His nails were manicured, Grantham Beale noted, and was there colorless nail polish on them? No, he observed, there was not. The little man might be something of a dandy but he was evidently not a fop.

“Did you indeed meet with Mr. Speldron on the day in question?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I did. I made the interest payment and we exchanged pleasantries. There was nothing anyone could have mistaken for an argument.”

“Ah.”

“And even if there had been, Murchison wouldn’t have known about it. He wasn’t even in the office.”

“Still more interesting,” Ehrengraf said thoughtfully.

“It certainly is. But how can you possibly prove that he murdered his partner and framed me for it? You can’t trap him into confessing, can you?”

“Murderers do confess.”

“Not Murchison. You could try tracing the gun to him, I suppose, but the police tried to link it to me and found they couldn’t trace it at all. I just don’t see—”

“Mr. Beale.”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Beale. Here, take this chair, I’m sure it’s more comfortable than the edge of the bed. I’ll stand for a moment. Mr. Beale, do you have a dollar?”

“They don’t let us have money here.”

“Then take this. It’s a dollar which I’m lending to you.” The lawyer’s dark eyes glinted. “No interest, Mr. Beale. A personal loan, not a business transaction. Now, sir, please give me the dollar which I’ve just lent to you.”

“Give it to you?”

“That’s right. Thank you. You have retained me, Mr. Beale, to look after your interests. The day you are released from this prison you will owe me a fee of ninety thousand dollars. The fee will be all inclusive. Any expenses will be mine to bear. Should I fail to secure your release you will owe me nothing.”

“But—”

“Is that agreeable, sir?”

“But what are you going to do? Engage detectives? File an appeal? Try to get the case reopened?”

“When a man engages to save your life, Mr. Beale, do you require that he first outline his plans for you?”

“No, but—”

“Ninety thousand dollars. Payable if I succeed. Are the terms agreeable?”

“Yes, but—”

“Mr. Beale, when next we meet you will owe me ninety thousand dollars plus whatever emotional gratitude comes naturally to you. Until then, sir, you owe me one dollar.” The thin lips curled in a shadowy smile. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow,’ Mr. Beale. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell . ‘The cut worm forgives the plow.’ You might think about that, sir, until we meet again.”

The second meeting of Martin Ehrengraf and Grantham Beale took place five weeks and four days later. On this occasion the little lawyer wore a navy two-button suit with a subtle vertical stripe. His shoes were highly polished black wing tips, his shirt a pale blue broadcloth with contrasting white collar and cuffs. His necktie bore a half-inch wide stripe of royal blue flanked by two narrower strips, one gold and the other a rather bright green, all on a navy field.

And this time Ehrengraf’s client was also rather nicely turned out, although his tweed jacket and flannels were hardly a match for the lawyer’s suit. But Beale’s dress was a great improvement over the shapeless gray prison garb he had worn previously, just as his office, a room filled with jumbled books and boxes, a desk covered with books and albums and stamps in and out of glassine envelopes, two worn leather chairs, and a matching sagging sofa — just as all of this comfortable disarray was a vast improvement over the prison cell which had been the site of their earlier meeting.