Lawrence Block

The Ehrengraf Riposte

“Let Ross, house of Ross, rejoice with Obadiah, and the rankle-dankle fish with hands.”

— Christopher Smart

Martin Ehrengraf placed his hands on the top of his exceedingly cluttered desk and looked across it. He was seated, while the man at whom he gazed was standing, and indeed looked incapable of remaining still, let alone seating himself on a chair. He was a large man, tall and quite stout, balding, florid of face, with a hawk’s-bill nose and a jutting chin. His hair, combed straight back, was a rich and glossy dark-brown; his bushy eyebrows were salted with gray. His suit, while of a particular shade of blue that Ehrengraf would never have chosen for himself, was well tailored and expensive. It was logical to assume that the man within the suit was abundantly supplied with money, an assumption the little lawyer liked to be able to make about all his prospective clients.

Now he said, “Won’t you take a seat, Mr. Crowe? You’ll be more comfortable.”

“I’d rather stand,” Ethan Crowe said. “I’m too much on edge to sit still.”

“Hmmm. There’s something I’ve learned in my practice, Mr. Crowe, and that’s the great advantage in acting as if. When I’m to defend a client who gives every indication of guilt, I act as if he were indeed innocent. And you know, Mr. Crowe, it’s astonishing how often the client does in fact prove to be innocent, often to his own surprise.”

Martin Ehrengraf flashed a smile that showed on his lips without altering the expression in his eyes. “All of which is all-important to me, since I collect a fee only if my client is judged to be innocent. Otherwise I go unpaid. Acting as if, Mr. Crowe, is uncannily helpful, and you might help us both by sitting in that chair and acting as if you were at peace with the world.”

Ehrengraf paused, and when Crowe had seated himself he said, “You say you’ve been charged with murder. But homicide is not usually a bailable offense, so how does it happen that you are here in my office instead of locked in a cell?”

“I haven’t been charged with murder.”

“But you said—”

“I said I wanted you to defend me against a homicide charge. But I haven’t been charged yet.”

“I see. Whom have you killed? Let me amend that. Whom are you supposed to have killed?”

“No one.”

“Oh?”

Ethan Crowe thrust his head forward. “I’ll be charged with the murder of Terence Reginald Mayhew,” he said, pronouncing the name with a full measure of loathing. “But I haven’t been charged yet because the rancid scut’s not dead yet because I haven’t killed him yet.”

“Mr. Mayhew is alive.”

‘Yes.”

“But you intend to kill him.”

Crowe chose his words carefully. “I expect to be charged with his murder,” he said at length.

“And you want to arrange your defense in advance.”

“Yes.”

“You show commendable foresight,” Ehrengraf said admiringly. He got to his feet and stepped out from behind his desk. He was a muted symphony of brown. His jacket was a brown Harris tweed in a herringbone weave, his slacks were cocoa flannel, his shirt a buttery tan silk, his tie a perfect match for the slacks with a below-the-knot design of fleur-de-lis in silver thread. Ehrengraf hadn’t been quite certain about the tie when he bought it but had since decided it was quite all right. On his small feet he wore highly polished seamless tan loafers, unadorned with braids or tassels.

“Foresight,” he repeated. “An unusual quality in a client, Mr. Crowe, and I can only wish that I met with it more frequently.” He put the tips of his fingers together and narrowed his eyes. “Just what is it you wish from me?”

“Your efforts on my behalf, of course.”

“Indeed. Why do you want to kill Mr. Mayhew?”

“Because he’s driving me crazy.”

“How?”

“He’s playing tricks on me.”

“Tricks? What sort of tricks?”

“Childish tricks,” Ethan Crowe said, and averted his eyes. “He makes phone calls. He orders things. Last week he called different florists and sent out hundreds of orders of flowers to different women all over the city. He’s managed to get hold of my credit card numbers, and he placed all these orders in my name and billed them to me. I was able to stop some of the orders, but by the time I got wind of what he’d done, most of them had already gone out.”

“Surely you won’t have to pay.”

“It may be easier to pay than to go through the process of avoiding payment. I don’t know. But that’s just one example. Another time ambulances and limousines kept coming to my house. One after the other. And taxicabs, and I don’t know what else. These vehicles kept arriving from various sources and I kept having to send them away.”

“I see.”

“And he fills out coupons and orders things C.O.D. for me. I have to cancel the orders and return the products. He’s had me join book clubs and record clubs, he’s subscribed me to every sort of magazine, he’s put me on every sort of mailing list. Did you know, for example, that there’s an outfit called the International Society for the Preservation of Wild Mustangs and Burros?”

“It so happens I’m a member.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s a worthwhile organization,” Crowe said, “but the point is I’m not interested in wild mustangs and burros, or even tame ones, but Mayhew made me a member and pledged a hundred dollars on my behalf, or maybe it was a thousand dollars, I can’t remember.”

“The exact amount isn’t important at the moment, Mr. Crowe.”

“He’s driving me crazy!”

“So it would seem. But to kill a man because of some practical jokes—”

“There’s no end to them. He started doing this almost two years ago. At first it was completely maddening because I had no idea what was happening or who was doing this to me. From time to time he’ll slack off and I’ll think he’s had his fun and has decided to leave me alone. Then he’ll start up again.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“I can’t. He laughs like the lunatic he is and hangs up on me.”

“Have you confronted him?”

“I can’t. He lives in an apartment downtown on Chippewa Street. He doesn’t let visitors in and never seems to leave the place.”

“And you’ve tried the police?”

“They can’t seem to do anything. He just lies to them, denies all responsibility, tells them it must be someone else. A very nice policeman told me the only sensible thing I can do is wait him out. He’ll get tired, he assured me, the man’s madness will run its course. He’ll decide he’s had his revenge.”

“And you tried to do that?”

“For a while. When it didn’t work, I engaged a private detective. He obtained evidence of activities, evidence that will stand up in court. But attorney convinced me not to press charges.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“The man’s a cripple.”

“Your attorney?”

“Certainly not. Mayhew’s a cripple, he’s confined to a wheelchair. I suppose that’s why he never leaves his squalid little apartment. But my attorney said I could only charge him with malicious mischief, which is not the most serious crime in the book and which sounds rather less serious than it is because it has the connotation of a child’s impish prank—”

“Yes.”

“—and there we’d be in court, myself a large man in good physical condition and Mayhew a sniveling cripple in a wheelchair, and he’d get everyone’s sympathy and undoubtedly be exonerated of all charges while I’d come off as a bully and a laughingstock. I couldn’t make charges stand up in criminal court, and if I sued him I’d probably lose. And even if I won, what could I possibly collect? The man doesn’t have anything to start with.”

Ehrengraf nodded thoughtfully. “He blames you for crippling him?”

“I can’t imagine why. I had never even heard of him before he started tormenting me, but who knows what a madman might think? He doesn’t seem to want anything from me. I’ve called him up, asked him what he wanted, and he laughs and hangs up on me.”

“And so you’ve decided to kill him.”

“I haven’t said that.”

Ehrengraf sighed. “We’re not in court, Mr. Crowe, so that sort of technicality’s not important between us. You’ve implied you intend to kill him.”

“Perhaps.”

“At any rate, that’s the inference I’ve drawn. I can certainly understand your feelings, but isn’t the remedy you propose an extreme one? The cure seems worse than the disease. To expose yourself to a murder trial—”

“But your clients rarely go to trial.”

Crowe hazarded a smile. It looked out of place on his large red face, and after a moment it withdrew. “I’m familiar with your methods, Mr. Ehrengraf,” he said. “Your clients rarely go to trial. You hardly ever show up in a courtroom. You take a case and then something curious happens. The evidence changes, or new evidence is discovered, or someone else confesses, or the murder turns out to be an accident, after all, or — well, something always happens.”

“Truth will out,’’ Ehrengraf said.

“Truth or fiction, something happens. Now here I am, plagued by a maniac, and I’ve engaged you to undertake my defense whenever it should become necessary, and it seems to me that by so doing I may bring things to the point where it won’t become necessary.”

Ehrengraf looked at him. A man who would select a suit of that particular shade, he thought, was either color blind or capable of anything.

“Of course I don’t know what might happen,” Ethan Crowe went on. “Just as hypothesis, Terence might die. Of course, if that happened I wouldn’t have any reason to murder him, and so I wouldn’t come to trial. But that’s just an example. It’s certainly not my business to tell you your business, is it?”

“Certainly not,” said Martin Ehrengraf.

While Terence Reginald Mayhew’s four-room apartment on Chippewa Street was scarcely luxurious, it was by no means the squalid pesthole Ehrengraf had been led to expect. The block, to be sure, was not far removed from slum status. The building itself had certainly seen better days. But the Mayhew apartment itself, occupying the fourth-floor front and looking northward over a group of two-story frame houses, was cozy and comfortable.

The little lawyer followed Mayhew’s wheelchair down a short hallway and into a book-lined study. A log of wax and compressed sawdust burned in the fireplace. A clock ticked on the mantel. Mayhew turned his wheelchair around, eyed his visitor from head to toe, and made a brisk clucking sound with his tongue. “So you’re his lawyer,” he said. “Not the poor boob who called me a couple of months ago, though. That one kept coming up with threats and I couldn’t help laughing at him. He must have turned purple. When you laugh in a man’s face after he’s made legal threats, he generally turns purple. That’s been my experience. What’s your name again?”

“Ehrengraf. Martin H. Ehrengraf.”

“What’s the H. stand for?”

“Harrod.”

“Like the king in the Bible?”

“Like the London department store.” Ehrengraf’s middle name was not Harrod, or Herod either, for that matter. He simply found untruths useful now and then, particularly in response to impertinence.

“Martin Harrod Ehrengraf,” said Terence Reginald “Well, you’re quite the dandy, aren’t you? Sorry the place isn’t spiffier but the cleaning woman only comes in once a week and she’s not due until the day after Not that she’s any great shakes with a dustcloth. Lazy slattern, in my opinion. You want to sit down?”

“No.”

“Probably scared to crease your pants.”

Ehrengraf was a navy suit, a pale-blue velvet vest, a blue shirt, a knit tie, and a pair of cordovan loafers. Mayhew was wearing a disgraceful terrycloth robe and tatty bedroom slippers. He had a scrawny body, a volleyball-shaped head, big guileless blue eyes, and red straw for hair. He was not so much ugly as bizarre; he looked like a cartoonist’s invention. Ehrengraf couldn’t guess old he was — thirty? forty? fifty? — but it didn’t matter. The man was years from dying of old age.

“Well, aren’t you going to threaten me?”

“No,” Ehrengraf said.

“No threats? No hint of bodily harm? No pending lawsuits? No criminal prosecution?”

“Nothing of the sort.”

“Well, you’re an improvement on your predecessor,” Mayhew said. “That’s something. Why’d you come here, then? Not to see how the rich folks live. You slumming?”

“No.”

“Because it may be a rundown neighborhood, but it’s a good apartment. They’d get me out if they could. Rent control — I’ve been here for ages and my rent’s a pittance. Never find anything like this for what I can afford to pay. I get checks every month, you see. Disability. Small trust fund. Doesn’t add up to much, but I get by. Have the cleaning woman in once a week, pay the rent, eat decent food. Watch the TV, read my books and magazines, play my chess games by mail. Neighborhood’s gone down but I don’t live in the neighborhood. I live in the apartment. All I get of the neighborhood is seeing it from my window, and if it’s not fancy that’s all right with me. I’m a cripple, I’m confined to these four rooms, so what do I care what the neighborhood’s like? If I was blind I wouldn’t care what color the walls were painted, would I? The more they take away from you, why, the less vulnerable you are.”

That last was an interesting thought and Ehrengraf might have pursued it, but he had other things to pursue. “My client,” he said. “Ethan Crowe.”

“That warthog.”

“You dislike him?”

“Stupid question, Mr. Lawyer. Of course I dislike him. I wouldn’t keep putting the wind up him if I thought the world of him, would I now?”

“You blame him for—”

“For me being a cripple? He didn’t do that to me. God did.” The volleyball head bounced against the back of the wheelchair, the wide slash of mouth opened and a cackle of laughter spilled out. “God did it! I was born this way, you chowderhead. Ethan Crowe had nothing to do with it.”

“Then—”

“I just hate the man,” Mayhew said. “Who needs a reason? I saw a preacher on Sunday-morning television; he stared right into the camera every minute with those great big eyes, said no one has cause to hate his fellow man. At first it made me want to retch, but I thought about it, and I’ll be an anthropoid ape if he’s not right. No one has cause to hate his fellow man because no one needs cause to hate his fellow man. It’s natural. And it comes natural for me to hate Ethan Crowe.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“I don’t have to meet him.”

“You just—”

“I just hate him,” Mayhew said, grinning fiercely, “and I love hating him, and I have heaps of fun hating him, and all I have to do is pick up that phone and make him pay and pay and pay for it.”

“Pay for what?”

“For everything. For being Ethan Crowe. For the outstanding war debt. For the loaves and the fishes.” The head bounced back and the insane laugh was repeated. “For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too. For Tippecanee and Tyler Three.”

“You don’t have very much money,” Ehrengraf said. “A disability pension, a small income.”

“I have enough. I don’t eat much and I don’t eat fancy. You probably spend more on clothes than I spend on everything put together.”

Ehrengraf didn’t doubt that for a moment. “My client might supplement that income of yours,” he said thoughtfully.

“You think I’m a blackmailer?”

“I think you might profit by circumstances, Mr. Mayhew.”

“Fie on it, sir. I’d have no truck with blackmail. The Mayhews have been whitemailers for generations.”

The conversation continued, but not for long. It became quite clear to the diminutive attorney that his was a limited arsenal. He could neither threaten nor bribe to any purpose. Any number of things might happen to Mayhew, some of them fatal, but such action seemed wildly disproportionate. This housebound wretch, this malevolent cripple, had simply not done enough to warrant such a response. When a child thumbed his nose at you, you were not supposed to dash its brains out against the curb. An action ought to bring about a suitable reaction. A thrust should be countered an appropriate riposte.

But how was one to deal with a nasty madman? A helpless, pathetic madman?

Ehrengraf, who was fond of poetry, sought his memory for an illuminating phrase. Thoughts of madmen recalled Christopher Smart, an eighteenth-century who was periodically confined to Bedlam where he wrote a long poem that was largely comprehensible only to himself and God.

Quoting Smart, Ehrengraf said, “‘Let Ross, house of Ross, rejoice with Obadiah, and the rankle-dankle fish with hands.’”

Terence Reginald Mayhew nodded. “Now that,” he said, “is the first sensible thing you’ve said since you walked in here.”

A dozen days later, while Martin Ehrengraf was enjoying a sonnet of Thomas Hood’s, his telephone rang. He took it up, said hello, and heard himself called an unconscionable swine.

“Ah,” he said. “Mr. Mayhew.”

“You are a man with no heart. I’m a poor housebound cripple, Mr. Ehrengraf—”

“Indeed.”

“—and you’ve taken my life away. Do you have any notion what I had to go through to make this phone call?”

“I have a fair idea.”

“Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through?”

“A fair idea of that as well,” Ehrengraf said. “Here’s a pretty coincidence. Just as you called, I was reading this poem of Thomas Hood’s — do you know him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A sonnet called Silence. I’ll just read you the sestet:

“Don’t you think that’s marvelously evocative of what you’ve been going through, Mr. Mayhew?”

“You’re a terrible man.”

“Indeed. And you should never forget it.”

“I won’t.”

“It could all happen again. In fact, it could happen over and over.”

“What do I have to do?”

“You have to leave my client strictly alone.”

“I was having so much fun.”

“Don’t whine, Mr. Mayhew. You can’t play your nasty little tricks on Mr. Crowe. But there’s a whole world of other victims out there just waiting for your attentions.”

“You mean—”

“I’m sure I’ve said nothing that wouldn’t have occurred to you in good time, sir. On the other hand, you never know what some other victim might do. He might even find his way to my office, and you know full well what the consequences of that would be. Indeed, you know that you can’t know. So perhaps what you ought to do is grow up, Mr. Mayhew, and wrap the tattered scraps of your life around your wretched body, and make the best of it.”

“I don’t—”

“Think of Thomas Hood, sir. Think of the true silence.”

“I can’t—”

“Think of Ross, house of Ross, and the rankle-dankle fish with hands.”

“I’m not—”

“And think of Mr. Crowe while you’re at it. I suggest you call him, sir. Apologize to him. Assure him that his troubles are over.”

“I don’t want to call him.”

“Make the call,” Ehrengraf said, his voice smooth as steel. “Or your troubles, Mr. Mayhew, are just beginning.”

“The most remarkable thing,” Ethan Crowe said. “I had a call from that troll Mayhew. At first I didn’t believe it was he. I didn’t recognize his voice. He sounded so frightened, so unsure of himself.”

“Indeed.”

“He assured me I’d have no further trouble from him. No more limousines or taxis, no more flowers, none of his idiotic little pranks. He apologized profusely for all the trouble he’d caused me in the past and assured me it would never happen again. It’s hard to know whether to take the word of a madman, but I think he meant what he said.”

“I’m certain he did.”

They were once again in Martin Ehrengraf’s office, and as usual the lawyer’s desk was as cluttered as his person was immaculate. He was wearing the navy suit again, as it happened, but he had left the light-blue vest at home. His tie bore a half-inch diagonal stripe of royal blue flanked by two narrower stripes, one of gold and the other of a rather bright green, all on a navy field. Crowe was wearing a three-piece suit, expensive and beautifully tailored but in a rather morose shade of brown. Ehrengraf had decided charitably to regard the man as color blind and let it go at that.

“What did you do, Ehrengraf?”

The little lawyer looked off into the middle distance. “I suppose I can tell you,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “I took his life away from him.”

“That’s what I thought you would do. Take his life, I mean. But he was certainly alive when I spoke to him.”

“You misunderstand me. Mr. Crowe, your antagonist was a housebound cripple who had adjusted to his mean little life of isolation. He had an income sufficient to his meager needs. And I went around his house shutting things down.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I speak metaphorically, of course. Well, there’s no reason I can’t tell you what I did in plain English. First of all, I went to the post office. I filled out a change-of-address card, signed it in his name, and filed it. From that moment on, all his mail was efficiently forwarded to the General Delivery window in Greeley, Colorado, where it’s to be held until called for, which may take rather a long time.”

“Good heavens.”

“I notified the electric company that Mr. Mayhew had vacated the premises and ordered them to cut off service forthwith. I told the telephone company the same thing, so when he picked up the phone to complain about the lights being out I’m afraid he had a hard time getting a dial tone. I sent a notarized letter to the landlord — over Mr. Mayhew’s signature, of course — announcing that he was moving and demanding that his lease be canceled. I got in touch with his cleaning woman and informed her that her services would no longer be required. I could go on, Mr. Crowe, but I believe you get the idea. I took his life away and shut it down and he didn’t like it.”

“Good grief.”

“His only remaining contact with the world was what he saw through his windows, and that was nothing attractive. Nevertheless, I was going to have his windows painted black from the outside — I was in the process of making final arrangements. A chap was going to suspend a scaffold as if to wash the windows but he would have painted them instead. I saw it as a neat coup de grace, but Mayhew made that last touch unnecessary throwing in the sponge. That’s a mixed metaphor, from coup de grace to throwing in the sponge, but I hope you’ll pardon it.”

“You did to him what he’d done to me. Hoist him on his own petard.”

“Let’s say I hoisted him on a similar petard. He plagued you by introducing an infinity of unwanted elements into your life. But I reduced his life to the four rooms he lived in and even threatened his ability to retain those very rooms. That drove the lesson home to him in a way I doubt he’ll ever forget.”

“Simple and brilliant,” Crowe said. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d have saved yourself fifty thousand dollars.”

Crowe gasped. ‘‘Fifty thousand—”

“Dollars. My fee.”

“But that’s an outrage. All you did was write some letters and make some phone calls.”

“All I did, sir, was everything you asked me to do. I saved you from answering to a murder charge.”

“I wouldn’t have murdered him.”

“Nonsense,” Ehrengraf snapped. “You tried to murder him. You thought engaging me would have precisely that effect. Had I wrung the wretch’s neck you’d pay my fee without a whimper, but because I accomplished the desired result with style and grace instead of brute force you now resist paying me. It would be an immense act of folly, Mr. Crowe, if you were to do anything other than pay my fee in full at once.”

‘You don’t think the amount is out of line?”

“I don’t keep my fees in a line, Mr. Crowe.” Ehrengraf’s hand went to the knot of his tie. It was the official necktie of the Caedmon Society of Oxford University. Ehrengraf had not attended Oxford and did not belong to the Caedmon Society any more than he belonged to the International Society for the Preservation of Wild Mustangs and Burros, but it was a tie he habitually wore on celebratory occasions. “I set my fees according to an intuitive process,” he went on, “and they are never negotiable. Fifty thousand dollars, sir. Not a penny more, not a penny less. Ah, Mr. Crowe, Mr. Crowe — do you know why Mayhew chose to torment you?”

“I suppose he feels I’ve harmed him.”

“And have you?”

“No, but—”

“Supposition is blunder’s handmaiden, Mr. Crowe. Mayhew made your life miserable because he hated you. I don’t know why he hated you. I don’t believe Mayhew himself knows why he hated you. I think he selected you at random. He needed someone to hate and you were convenient. Ah, Mr. Crowe—” Ehrengraf smiled with his lips “—consider how much damage was done to you by an insane cripple with no actual reason to do you harm. And then consider, sir, how much more harm could be done you by someone infinitely more ruthless and resourceful than Terence Reginald Mayhew, someone who is neither a lunatic nor a cripple, someone who is supplied with fifty thousand excellent reasons to wish you ill.”

Crowe stared. “That’s a threat,” he said slowly.

“I fear you’ve confused a threat and a caution, Mr. Crowe, though I warrant the distinction’s a thin one. Are you fond of poetry, sir?”

“No.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s no criticism, sir. Some people have poetry in their souls and others do not. It’s predetermined, I suspect, like color blindness. I could recommend Thomas Hood, sir, or Christopher Smart, but would you read them? Or profit by them? Fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Crowe, and a check will do nicely.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Certainly not.”

“And I won’t be intimidated.”

“Indeed you won’t,” Ehrengraf agreed. “But do you recall our initial interview, Mr. Crowe? I submit that you would do well to act as if — as if you were afraid of me, as if you were intimidated.”

Ethan Crowe sat quite still for several seconds. A variety of expressions played over his generally unexpressive face. At length he drew a checkbook from the breast pocket of his morosely brown jacket and uncapped a silver fountain pen.

“Payable to?”

“Martin H. Ehrengraf.”

The pen scratched away. Then, idly, “What’s the H. stand for?”

“Herod.”

“The store in England?”

“The king,” said Ehrengraf. “The king in the Bible.”