Ehrengraf for the Defense Read Free Page A

to
believe. I have my fee. You have your son. The police have another
line of inquiry to pursue altogether. It would seem we’ve all come
out of this well, wouldn’t you say? Put your mind at rest, Mrs.
Culhane, dear Mrs. Culhane. There’s the elevator down the hall on
your left. If you ever need my services you know where I am and how
to reach me. And perhaps recommend me to your friends. But
discreetly, dear lady. Discreetly. Discretion is everything in
matters of this sort.”
    Mrs. Culhane walked very carefully down the
hall to the elevator and rang the bell and waited. And she did not
look back. Not once.
     
    The End

The Ehrengraf Presumption

     
    “ Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a
prey,
    Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”
    — Oliver Goldsmith
     
    “Now let me get this straight,” Alvin Gort
said. “You actually accept criminal cases on a contingency basis.
Even homicide cases?”
    “Especially homicide cases.”
    “If your client is acquitted he pays your
fee. If he’s found guilty, then your efforts on his behalf cost him
nothing whatsoever. Except expenses, I assume.”
    “That’s very true,” Martin Ehrengraf said.
The little lawyer supplied a smile which blossomed briefly on his
thin lips while leaving his eyes quite uninvolved. “Shall I explain
in detail?”
    “By all means.”
    “To take your last point first, I pay my own
expenses and furnish no accounting of them to my client. My fees
are thus all-inclusive. By the same token, should a client of mine
be convicted he would owe me nothing. I would absorb such expenses
as I might incur acting on his behalf.”
    “That’s remarkable.”
    “It’s surely unusual, if not unique. Now the
rest of what you’ve said is essentially true. It’s not uncommon for
attorneys to take on negligence cases on a contingency basis,
participating handsomely in the settlement when they win, sharing
their clients’ losses when they do not. The principle has always
made eminent good sense to me. Why shouldn’t a client give
substantial value for value received? Why should he be simply
charged for service, whether or not the service does him any good?
When I pay out money, Mr. Gort, I like to get what I pay for. And I
don’t mind paying for what I get.”
    “It certainly makes sense to me,” Alvin Gort
said. He dug a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, scratched
a match, drew smoke into his lungs. This was his first experience
in a jail cell and he’d been quite surprised to learn that he was
allowed to have matches on his person, to wear his own clothes
rather than prison garb, to keep money in his pocket and a watch on
his wrist.
    No doubt all this would change if and when he
were convicted of murdering his wife. Then he’d be in an actual
prison and the rules would most likely be more severe. Here they
had taken his belt as a precaution against suicide, and they would
have taken the laces from his shoes had he not been wearing loafers
at the time of his arrest. But it could have been worse.
    And unless Ehrengraf pulled off a small
miracle, it would be worse.
    “Sometimes my clients never see the inside of
a courtroom,” Ehrengraf was saying now. “I’m always happiest when I
can save them not merely from prison but from going to trial in the
first place. So you should understand that whether or not I collect
my fee hinges on your fate, on the disposition of your case—and not
on how much work I put in or how much time it takes me to liberate
you. In other words, from the moment you retain me I have an
interest in your future, and the moment you are released and all
charges dropped, my fee becomes due and payable in full.”
    “And your fee will be—?”
    “One hundred thousand dollars,” Ehrengraf
said crisply.
    Alvin Gort considered the sum, then nodded
thoughtfully. It was not difficult to believe that the diminutive
attorney commanded and received large fees. Alvin Gort recognized
good clothing when he saw it, and the