Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf Read Free Page B

clothing Martin Ehrengraf wore was good indeed. The man was well turned out. His suit, a bronze sharkskin number with a nipped-in waist, was clearly not off the rack. His brown wing-tip shoes had been polished to a high gloss. His tie, a rich teak in hue with an unobtrusive below-the-knot design, bore the reasonably discreet trademark of a genuine countess. And his hair had received the attention of a good barber while his neatly trimmed mustache served as a focal point for a face otherwise devoid of any single dominating feature. The overall impression thus created was one of a man who could announce a six-figure fee and make you feel that such a sum was altogether fitting and proper.
    “I’m reasonably well off,” Gort said.
    “I know. It’s a commendable quality in clients.”
    “And I’d certainly be glad to pay one hundred thousand dollars for my freedom. On the other hand, if you don’t get me off then I don’t owe you a dime. Is that right?”
    “Quite right.”
    Gort considered again, nodded again. “Then I’ve got no reservations,” he said. “But—”
    “Yes?”
    Alvin Gort’s eyes measured the lawyer. Gort was accustomed to making rapid decisions. He made one now.
    “You might have reservations,” he said. “There’s one problem.”
    “Oh?”
    “I did it,” Gort said. “I killed her.”
     
    “I can see how you would think that,” Martin Ehrengraf said. “The weight of circumstantial evidence piled up against you. Long-suppressed unconscious resentment of your wife, perhaps even a hidden desire to see her dead. All manner of guilt feelings stored up since early childhood. Plus, of course, the natural idea that things do not happen without a good reason for their occurrence. You are in prison, charged with murder; therefore it stands to reason that you did something to deserve all this, that you did in fact murder your wife.”
    “But I did,” Gort said.
    “Nonsense. Palpable nonsense.”
    “But I was there,” Gort said. “I’m not making this up. For God’s sake, man, I’m not a psychiatric basket case. Unless you’re thinking about an insanity defense? I suppose I could go along with that, scream out hysterically in the middle of the night, strip naked and sit gibbering in the corner of my cell. I can’t say I’d enjoy it but I’d go along with it if you think that’s the answer. But—”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Ehrengraf said, wrinkling his nose with distaste. “I mean to get you acquitted, Mr. Gort. Not committed to an asylum.”
    “I don’t understand,” Gort said. He frowned, looked around craftily. “You think the place is bugged,” he whispered. “That’s it, eh?”
    “You can use your normal tone of voice. No, they don’t employ hidden microphones in this jail. It’s not only illegal but against policy as well.”
    “Then I don’t understand. Look, I’m the guy who fastened the dynamite under the hood of Ginnie’s Pontiac. I hooked up a cable to the starter. I set things up so that she would be blown into the next world. Now how do you propose to—”
    “Mr. Gort.” Ehrengraf held up a hand like a stop sign. “Please, Mr. Gort.”
    Alvin Gort subsided.
    “Mr. Gort,” Ehrengraf continued, “I defend the innocent and leave it to more clever men than myself to employ trickery in the cause of the guilty. And I find this very easy to do because all my clients are innocent. There is, you know, a legal principle involved.”
    “A legal principle?”
    “The presumption of innocence.”
    “The presumption of—? Oh, you mean a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
    “A tenet of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence,” Ehrengraf said. “The French presume guilt until innocence is proven. And the totalitarian countries, of course, presume guilt and do not allow innocence to be proved, taking it for granted that their police would not dream of wasting their time arresting the innocent in the first place. But I refer, Mr. Gort, to something more