Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

Such as this visit to the cell of Barry Pierce Lattimore.

“I’m innocent,” Lattimore said. “But it’s gotten to the point where I don’t expect anyone to believe me. There’s so much evidence against me.”

“Circumstantial evidence.”

“Yes, but that’s often enough to hang a man, isn’t it?” Lattimore winced at the thought. “I loved Ginnie. I wanted to marry her. I never even thought of killing her.”

“I believe you.”

“You do?”

Ehrengraf nodded solemnly. “Indeed I do,” he said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I only collect fees when I get results, Mr. Lattimore. If I can’t get you acquitted of all charges, then I won’t take a penny for my trouble.”

“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“My own lawyer thinks I’m crazy to hire you. He had several criminal lawyers he was prepared to recommend. But I know a little about you. I know you get results. And since I am innocent, I feel I want to be represented by someone with a vested interest in getting me free.”

“Of course my fees are high, Mr. Lattimore.”

“Well, there’s a problem. I’m not a rich man.”

“You’re the beneficiary of a hundred-thousand-dollars insurance policy.”

“But I can’t collect that money.”

“You can if you’re found innocent.”

“Oh,” Lattimore said. “Oh.”

“And otherwise you’ll owe me nothing.”

“Then I can’t lose, can I?”

“So it would seem,” Ehrengraf said. “Now shall we begin? It’s quite clear you were framed, Mr. Lattimore. That blazer and those trousers did not find their way to your closet of their own accord. Those shoes did not walk in by themselves. The two letters to Mrs. Gort’s sister, one mailed and one unmailed, must have been part of the scheme. Someone constructed an elaborate frame-up, Mr. Lattimore, with the object of implicating first Mr. Gort and then yourself. Now let’s determine who would have a motive.”

“Gort,” said Lattimore.

“I think not.”

“Who else? He had a reason to kill her. And he hated me, so who would have more reason to—”

“Mr. Lattimore, I’m afraid that’s not a possibility. You see, Mr. Gort was a client of mine.”

“Oh. Yes, I forgot.”

“And I’m personally convinced of his innocence.”

“I see.”

“Just as I’m convinced of yours.”

“I see.”

“Now who else would have a motive? Was Mrs. Gort emotionally involved with anyone else? Did she have another lover? Had she had any other lovers before you came into the picture? And how about Mr. Gort? A former mistress who might have had a grudge against both him and his wife? Hmmm?” Ehrengraf smoothed the ends of his mustache. “Or perhaps, just perhaps, there was an elaborate plot hatched by Mrs. Gort.”

“Ginnie?”

“It’s not impossible. I’m afraid I reject the possibility of suicide. It’s always tempting but in this instance I fear it just won’t wash. But let’s suppose, let’s merely suppose, that Mrs. Gort decided to murder her husband and implicate you.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I’ve no idea. But suppose she did, and suppose she intended to get her husband to drive her car and arranged the dynamite accordingly, and then when she left the house so hurriedly she forgot what she’d done, and of course the moment she turned the key in the ignition it all came back to her in a rather dramatic way.”

“But I can’t believe—”

“Oh, Mr. Lattimore, we believe what it pleases us to believe, don’t you agree? The important thing is to recognize that you are innocent and to act on that recognition.”

“But how can you be absolutely certain of my innocence?”

Martin Ehrengraf permitted himself a smile. “Mr. Lattimore,” he said, “let me tell you about a principle of mine. I call it the Ehrengraf Presumption.”

“Innocence,” said MartinEhrengraf. “There’s the problem in a nutshell.”

“Innocence is a problem?”

The little lawyer glanced around the prison cell, then turned to regard his client. “Precisely,” he said. “If you weren’t innocent you wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, really?” Grantham Beale smiled, and while it was hardly worthy of inclusion in a toothpaste commercial, it was the first smile he’d managed since his conviction on first-degree murder charges just two weeks and four days earlier. “Then you’re saying that innocent men go to prison while guilty men walk free. Is that what you’re saying?”

“It happens that way more than you might care to believe,” Ehrengraf said softly. “But no, it is not what I am saying.”

“Oh?”

“I am not contrasting innocence and guilt, Mr. Beale. I know you are innocent of murder. That is almost beside the point. All clients of Martin Ehrengraf are innocent of the crimes of which they are charged, and this innocence always emerges in due course. Indeed, this is more than a presumption on my part. It is the manner in which I make my living. I set high fees, Mr. Beale, but I collect them only when my innocent clients emerge with their innocence a matter of public record. If my client goes to prison I collect nothing whatsoever, not even whatever expenses I incur on his behalf. So my clients are always innocent, Mr. Beale, just as you are innocent, in the sense that they are not guilty.”

“Then why is my innocence a problem?”

“Ah, your innocence.” Martin Ehrengraf smoothed the ends of his neatly trimmed mustache. His thin lips drew back in a smile, but the smile did not reach his deeply set dark eyes. He was, Grantham Beale noted, a superbly well-dressed little man, almost a dandy. He wore a Dartmouth green blazer with pearl buttons over a cream shirt with a tab collar. His slacks were flannel, modishly cuffed and pleated and the identical color of the shirt. His silk tie was a darker green than his jacket and sported a design in silver and bronze thread below the knot, a lion battling a unicorn. His cuff links matched his pearl blazer buttons. On his aristocratically small feet he wore highly polished seamless cordovan loafers, unadorned with tassels or braid, quite simple and quite elegant. Almost a dandy, Beale thought, but from what he’d heard the man had the skills to carry it off. He wasn’t all front. He was said to get results.

“ Your innocence,” Ehrengraf said again. “Your innocence is not merely the innocence that is the opposite of guilt. It is the innocence that is the opposite of experience. Do you know Blake, Mr. Beale?”

“Blake?”

“William Blake, the poet. You wouldn’t know him personally, of course. He’s been dead for over a century. He wrote two groups of poems early in his career, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Each poem in the one book had a counterpart in the other. ‘Tyger, tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ Perhaps that poem is familiar to you, Mr. Beale.”

“I think I studied it in school.”

“It’s not unlikely. Well, you don’t need a poetry lesson from me, sir, not in these depressing surroundings. Let me move a little more directly to the point. Innocence versus experience, Mr. Beale. You found yourself accused of a murder, sir, and you knew only that you had not committed it. And, being innocent not only of the murder itself but in Blake’s sense of the word, you simply engaged a competent attorney and assumed things would work themselves out in short order. We live in an enlightened democracy, Mr. Beale, and we grow up knowing that courts exist to free the innocent and punish the guilty, that no one gets away with murder.”