Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf

by Lawrence Block

Beale stared.

  “You should have told me that was why you and Murchison didn’t get along,” Ehrengraf said gently. “I was forced to discover it for myself. No matter. More to the point, one should not share a pillow with a woman who has so little regard for one as to frame one for murder. Mrs. Murchison—”

  “Felicia framed me?”

  “Of course, Mr. Beale. Mrs. Murchison had nothing against you. It was sufficient that she had nothing for you. She murdered Mr. Speldron, you see, for reasons which need hardly concern us. Then having done so she needed someone to be cast as the murderer.

  “Her husband could hardly have told the police about your purported argument with Speldron. He wasn’t around at the time. He didn’t know the two of you had met, and if he went out on a limb and told them, and then you had an alibi for the time in question, why, he’d wind up looking silly, wouldn’t he? But Mrs. Murchison knew you’d met with Speldron, and she told her husband the two of you argued, and so he told the police in perfectly good faith what she had told him, and then they went and found the murder gun in your very own Antonelli Scorpion. A stunning automobile, incidentally, and it’s to your credit to own such a vehicle, Mr. Beale.”

  “Felicia killed Speldron.”

  “Yes.”

  “And framed me.”

  “Yes.”

  “But—why did you frame Murchison?”

  “Did you expect me to try to convince the powers that be that she did it? And had pangs of conscience and left a letter with a lawyer? Women don’t leave letters with lawyers, Mr. Beale, any more than they have consciences. One must deal with the materials at hand.”

  “But—”

  “And the woman is young, with long dark hair, flashing dark eyes, a body like a magazine centerfold, and a face like a Chanel ad. She’s also an excellent typist and most cooperative in any number of ways which we needn’t discuss at the moment. Mr. Beale, would you like me to get you a glass of water?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be all right, Mr. Beale. I’m sure you will. Mr. Beale, I’m going to make a suggestion. I think you should seriously consider marrying and settling down. I think you’d be much happier that way. You’re an innocent, Mr. Beale, and you’ve had the Ehrengraf Experience now, and it’s rendered you considerably more experienced than you were, but your innocence is not the sort to be readily vanquished. Give the widow Murchison and all her tribe a wide berth, Mr. Beale. They’re not for you. Find yourself an old-fashioned girl and lead a proper old-fashioned life. Buy and sell stamps. Cultivate a garden. Raise terriers. The West Highland White might be a good breed for you but that’s your decision, certainly. Mr. Beale? Are you sure you won’t have a glass of water?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Quite. I’ll leave you with another thought of Blake’s, Mr. Beale. ‘Lilies that fester smell worse than weeds.’ That’s also from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, another of what he calls Proverbs of Hell, and perhaps someday you’ll be able to interpret it for me. I never quite know for sure what Blake’s getting at, Mr. Beale, but his things do have a nice sound to them, don’t they? Innocence and experience, Mr. Beale. That’s the ticket, isn’t it? Innocence and experience.”

  THE EHRENGRAF

  Appointment

  * * *

  “Dame Fortune is a fickle gypsy,

  And always blind, and often tipsy.”

  —William Mackworth Praed

  Martin Ehrengraf was walking jauntily down the courthouse steps when a taller and bulkier man caught up with him. “Glorious day,” the man said. “Simply a glorious day.”

  Ehrengraf nodded. It was indeed a glorious day, the sort of autumn afternoon that made men recall football weekends. Ehrengraf had just been thinking that he’d like a piece of hot apple pie with a slab of sharp cheddar on it. He rarely thought about apple pie and almost never wanted cheese on it, but it was that sort of day.

  “I’m Cutliffe,” the man said. “Hudson Cutliffe, of Marquardt, Stoner, and Cutliffe.”

  “Ehrengraf,” said Ehrengraf.

  “Yes, I know. Oh, believe me, I know.” Cutliffe gave what he doubtless considered a hearty chuckle. “Imagine running into Martin Ehrengraf himself, standing in line for an IDC appointment just like everybody else.”

  “Every man is entitled to a proper defense,” Ehrengraf said stiffly. “It’s a guaranteed right in a free society.”

  “Yes, to be sure, but—”

  “Indigent defendants have attorneys appointed by the court. Our system here calls for attorneys to make themselves available at specified intervals for such appointments, rather than entrust such cases to a public defender.”

  “I quite understand,” Cutliffe said. “Why, I was just appointed to an IDC case myself, some luckless chap who stole a satchel full of meat from a supermarket. Choice cuts, too—lamb chops, filet mignon. You just about have to steal them these days, don’t you?”

  Ehrengraf, a recent convert to vegetarianism, offered a thin-lipped smile and thought about pie and cheese.

  “But Martin Ehrengraf himself,” Cutliffe went on. “One no more thinks of you in this context than one imagines a glamorous Hollywood actress going to the bathroom. Martin Ehrengraf, the dapper and debonair lawyer who hardly ever appears in court. The man who only collects a fee if he wins. Is that really true, by the way? You actually take murder cases on a contingency basis?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Extraordinary. I don’t see how you can possibly afford to operate that way.”

  “It’s quite simple,” Ehrengraf said.

  “Oh?”

  His smile was fuller than before. “I always win,” he said. “It’s simplicity itself.”

  “And yet you rarely appear in court.”

  “Sometimes one can work more effectively behind the scenes.”

  “And when your client wins his freedom—”

  “I’m paid in full,” Ehrengraf said.

  “Your fees are high, I understand.”

  “Exceedingly high.”

  “And your clients almost always get off.”

  “They’re always innocent,” Ehrengraf said. “That does help.”

  Hudson Cutliffe laughed richly, as if to suggest that the idea of bringing guilt and innocence into a discussion of legal procedures was amusing. “Well, this will be a switch for you,” he said at length. “You were assigned the Protter case, weren’t you?”

  “Mr. Protter is my client, yes.”

  “Hardly a typical Ehrengraf case, is it? Man gets drunk, beats his wife to death, passes out, and sleeps it off, then wakes up and sees what he’s done and calls the police. Bit of luck for you, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh?”

  “Won’t take up too much of your time. You’ll plead him guilty to manslaughter, get a reduced sentence on grounds of his previous clean record, and then Protter’ll do a year or two in prison while you go about your business.”

  “You think that’s the course to pursue, Mr. Cutliffe?”

  “It’s what anyone would do.”

  “Almost anyone,” said Ehrengraf.

  “And there’s no reason to make work for yourself, is there?” Cutliffe winked. “These IDC cases—I don’t know why they pay us at all, as small as the fees are. A hundred and seventy-five dollars isn’t much of an all-inclusive fee for a legal defense, is it? Wouldn’t you say your average fee runs a bit higher than that?”

  “Quite a bit higher.”

  “But there are compensations. It’s the same hundred and seventy-five dollars whether you plead your client or stand trial, let alone win. A far cry from your usual system, eh, Ehrengraf? You don’t have to win to get paid.”

  “I do,” Ehrengraf said.

  “How’s that?”

  “If I lose the case, I’ll donate the fee to charity.”

  “If you lose? But you’ll plead him to manslaughter, won’t you?”

  “Certainly not.”

 
“Then what will you do?”

  “I’ll plead him innocent.”

  “Innocent?”

  “Of course. The man never killed anyone.”

  “But—” Cutliffe inclined his head, dropped his voice. “You know the man? You have some special information about the case?”

  “I’ve never met him and know only what I’ve read in the newspapers.”

  “Then how can you say he’s innocent?”

  “He’s my client.”

  “So?”

  “I do not represent the guilty,” Ehrengraf said. “My clients are innocent, Mr. Cutliffe, and Arnold Protter is a client of mine, and I intend to earn my fee as his attorney, however inadequate that fee may be. I did not seek appointment, Mr. Cutliffe, but that appointment is a sacred trust, sir, and I shall justify that trust. Good day, Mr. Cutliffe.”

  “They said they’d get me a lawyer and it wouldn’t cost me nothing,” Arnold Protter said. “I guess you’re it, huh?”

  “Indeed,” said Ehrengraf. He glanced around the sordid little jail cell, then cast an eye on his new client. Arnold Protter was a thickset round-shouldered man in his late thirties with the ample belly of a beer drinker and the red nose of a whiskey drinker. His pudgy face recalled the Pillsbury Dough Boy. His hands, too, were pudgy, and he held them out in front of his red nose and studied them in wonder.

  “These were the hands that did it,” he said.

  “Nonsense.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Perhaps you’d better tell me what happened,” Ehrengraf suggested. “The night your wife was killed.”

  “It’s hard to remember,” Protter said.

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “What it was, it was an ordinary kind of a night. Me and Gretch had a beer or two during the afternoon, just passing time while we watched television. Then we ordered up a pizza and had a couple more with it, and then we settled in for the evening and started hitting the boilermakers. You know, a shot and a beer. First thing you know, we’re having this argument.”

  “About what?”

  Protter got up, paced, glared again at his hands. He lumbered about, Ehrengraf thought, like a caged bear. His chino pants were ragged at the cuffs and his plaid shirt was a tartan no Highlander would recognize. Ehrengraf, in contrast, sparkled in the drab cell like a diamond on a dustheap. His suit was a herringbone tweed the color of a well-smoked briar pipe, and beneath it he wore a suede doeskin vest over a cream broadcloth shirt with French cuffs and a tab collar. His cufflinks were simple gold hexagons, his tie a wool knit in the same brown as his suit. His shoes were shell cordovan loafers, quite simple and elegant and polished to a high sheen.

  “The argument,” Ehrengraf prompted.

  “Oh, I don’t know how it got started,” Protter said. “One thing led to another, and pretty soon she’s making a federal case over me and this woman who lives one flight down from us.”

  “What woman?”

  “Her name’s Agnes Mullane. Gretchen’s giving me the business that me and Agnes got something going.”

  “And were you having an affair with Agnes Mullane?”

  “Naw, ’course not. Maybe me and Agnes’d pass the time of day on the staircase, and maybe I had some thoughts on the subject, but nothing ever came of it. But she started in on the subject, Gretch did, and to get a little of my own back I started ragging her about this guy lives one flight up from us.”

  “And his name is—”

  “Gates, Harry Gates.”

  “You thought your wife was having an affair with Gates?”

  Protter shook his head. “Naw, ’course not. But he’s an artist, Gates is, and I was accusing her of posing for him, you know. Naked. No clothes on.”

  “Nude.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And did your wife pose for Mr. Gates?”

  “You kidding? You never met Gretchen, did you?”

  Ehrengraf shook his head.

  “Well, Gretch was all right, and the both of us was used to each other, if you know what I mean, but you wouldn’t figure her for somebody who woulda been Miss America if she coulda found her way to Atlantic City. And Gates, what would he need with a model?”

  “You said he was an artist.”

  “He says he’s an artist,” Protter said, “but you couldn’t prove it by me. What he paints don’t look like nothing. I went up there one time on account of his radio’s cooking at full blast, you know, and I want to ask him to put a lid on it, and he’s up on top of this stepladder dribbling paint on a canvas that he’s got spread out all over the floor. All different colors of paint, and he’s just throwing them down at the canvas like a little kid making a mess.”

  “Then he’s an abstract expressionist,” Ehrengraf said.

  “Naw, he’s a painter. I mean, people buy these pictures of his. Not enough to make him rich or he wouldn’t be living in the same dump with me and Gretch, but he makes a living at it. Enough to keep him in beer and pizza and all, but what would he need with a model? Only reason he’d want Gretchen up there is to hold the ladder steady.”

  “An abstract expressionist,” said Ehrengraf. “That’s very interesting. He lives directly above you, Mr. Protter?”

  “Right upstairs, yeah. That’s why we could hear his radio clear as a bell.”

  “Was it playing the night you and your wife drank the boilermakers?”

  “We drank boilermakers lots of the time,” Protter said, puzzled. “Oh, you mean the night I killed her.”

  “The night she died.”

  “Same thing, ain’t it?”

  “Not at all,” said Ehrengraf. “But let it go. Was Mr. Gates playing his radio that night?”

  Protter scratched his head. “Hard to remember,” he said. “One night’s like another, know what I mean? Yeah, the radio was going that night. I remember now. He was playing country music on it. Usually he plays that rock and roll, and that stuff gives me a headache, but this time it was country music. Country music, it sort of soothes my nerves.” He frowned. “But I never played it on my own radio.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Gretch hated it. Couldn’t stand it, said the singers all sounded like dogs that ate poisoned meat and was dying of it. Gretch didn’t like any music much. What she liked was the television, and then we’d have Gates with his rock and roll at top volume, and sometimes you’d hear a little country music coming upstairs from Agnes’s radio. She liked country music, but she never played it very loud. With the windows open on a hot day you’d hear it, but otherwise no. Of course what you hear most with the windows open is the Puerto Ricans on the street with their transistor radios.”

  Protter went on at some length about Puerto Ricans and transistor radios. When he paused for breath, Ehrengraf straightened up and smiled with his lips. “A pleasure,” he said. “Mr. Protter, I believe in your innocence.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve been the victim of an elaborate and diabolical frame-up, sir. But you’re in good hands now. Maintain your silence and put your faith in me. Is there anything you need to make your stay here more comfortable?”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “Well, you won’t be here for long. I’ll see to that. Perhaps I can arrange for a radio for you. You could listen to country music.”

  “Be real nice,” Protter said. “Soothing is what it is. It soothes my nerves.”

  An hour after his interview with his client, Ehrengraf was seated on a scarred wooden bench at a similarly distressed oaken table. The restaurant in which he was dining ran to college pennants and German beer steins suspended from the exposed dark wood beams. Ehrengraf was eating hot apple pie topped with sharp cheddar, and at the side of his plate was a small glass of neat Calvados.

  The little lawyer was just preparing to take his first sip of the tangy apple brandy when a familiar voice sounded beside him.

  “Ehrengraf,” Hudson Cutliffe boomed out. “Fancy finding you here. Twice in one day, eh?”

/>   Ehrengraf looked up, smiled. “Excellent pie here,” he said.

  “Come here all the time,” Cutliffe said. “My home away from home. Never seen you here before, I don’t think.”

  “My first time.”

  “Pie with cheese. If I ate that I’d put on ten pounds.” Unbidden, the hefty attorney drew back the bench opposite Ehrengraf and seated himself. When a waiter appeared, Cutliffe ordered a slice of prime rib and a spinach salad.

  “Watching my weight,” he said. “Protein, that’s the ticket. Got to cut down on the nasty old carbs. Well, Ehrengraf, I suppose you’ve seen your wife-murderer now, haven’t you? Or are you still maintaining he’s no murderer at all?”

  “Protter’s an innocent man.”

  Cutliffe chuckled. “Commendable attitude, I’m sure, but why don’t you save it for the courtroom? The odd juryman may be impressed by that line of country. I’m not, myself. I’ve always found facts more convincing than attitudes.”

  “Indeed,” said Ehrengraf. “Personally, I’ve always noticed the shadow as much as the substance. I suspect it’s a difference of temperament, Mr. Cutliffe. I don’t suppose you’re much of a fan of poetry, are you?”

  “Poetry? You mean rhymes and verses and all that?”

  “More or less.”

  “Schoolboy stuff, eh? Boy stood on the burning deck, that the sort of thing you mean? Had a bellyful of that in school.” He smiled suddenly. “Unless you’re talking about limericks. I like the odd limerick now and then, I must say. Are you much of a hand for limericks?”

  “Not really,” said Ehrengraf.

  Cutliffe delivered four limericks while Ehrengraf sat with a pained expression on his face. The first concerned a mathematician named Paul, the second a young harlot named Dinah, the third a man from Fort Ord, and the fourth an old woman from Truk.

  “It’s interesting,” Ehrengraf said at length. “On the surface there’s no similarity whatsoever between the limerick and abstract expressionist painting. They’re not at all alike. And yet they are.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “It’s not important,” Ehrengraf said. The waiter appeared, setting a plateful of rare beef in front of Cutliffe, who at once reached for his knife and fork. Ehrengraf looked at the meat. “You’re going to eat that,” he said.