Free Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf by Lawrence Block

to receive it in this instance because of the disposition of the case. The argument may be raised that I didn’t really perform any actions on your behalf, that charges were simply dropped.”
    “You mean you’ll get gypped out of your fee? That’s a hell of a note, Mr. Ehrengraf.”
    “Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Ehrengraf. “It’s not important in the overall scheme of things.”
     
    E hrengraf, his blue pinstripe suit setting off his Caedmon Society striped necktie, sipped daintily at a Calvados. It was Indian Summer this afternoon, far too balmy for hot apple pie with cheddar cheese. He was eating instead a piece of cold apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream, and had discovered that Calvados went every bit as nicely with that dish.
    Across from him, Hudson Cutliffe sat with a plate of lamb stew. When Cutliffe had ordered the dish, Ehrengraf had refrained from commenting on the barbarity of slaughtering lambs and stewing them. He had decided to ignore the contents of Cutliffe’s plate. Whatever he’d ordered, Ehrengraf intended that the man eat crow today.
    “You,” said Cutliffe, “are the most astonishingly fortunate lawyer who ever passed the bar.”
    “‘Dame Fortune is a fickle gypsy, And always blind, and often tipsy,’” Ehrengraf quoted. “Winthrop Mackworth Praed, born eighteen-oh-two, died eighteen thirty-nine. But you don’t care for poetry, do you? Perhaps you’d prefer the elder Pliny’s observation upon the eruption of Vesuvius. He said that Fortune favors the brave.”
    “A cliché, isn’t it?”
    “Perhaps it was rather less a cliché when Pliny said it,” Ehrengraf said gently. “But that’s beside the point. My client was innocent, just as I told you—”
    “How on earth could you have known it?”
    “I didn’t have to know it. I presumed it, Mr. Cutliffe, as I always presume my clients to be innocent, and as in time they are invariably proven to be. And, because you were so incautious as to insist upon a wager—”
    “Insist!”
    “It was indeed your suggestion,” Ehrengraf said. “
I
did not seek
you
out, Mr. Cutliffe.
I
did not seat myself unbidden at
your
table.”
    “You came to this restaurant,” Cutliffe said darkly. “You deliberately baited me, goaded me. You—”
    “Oh, come now,” Ehrengraf said. “You make me sound like what priests would call an occasion of sin or lawyers an attractive nuisance. I came here for apple pie with cheese, Mr. Cutliffe, and you proposed a wager. Now my client has been released and all charges dropped, and I believe you owe me money.”
    “It’s not as if you got him off. Fate got him off.”
    Ehrengraf rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, Mr. Cutliffe,” he said. “I’ve had clients take that stance, you know, and they change their minds in the end. My agreement with them has always been that my fee is due and payable upon their release, whether the case comes to court or not, whether or not I have played any evident part in their salvation. I specified precisely those terms when we arranged our little wager.”
    “Of course gambling debts are not legally collectible in this state.”
    “Of course they are not, Mr. Cutliffe. Yours is purely a debt of honor, an attribute which you may or may not be said to possess in accordance with your willingness to write out a check. But I trust you are an honorable man, Mr. Cutliffe.”
    Their eyes met. After a long moment Cutliffe drew a checkbook from his pocket. “I feel I’ve been manipulated in some devious fashion,” he said, “but at the same time I can’t gloss over the fact that I owe you money.” He opened the checkbook, uncapped a pen, and filled out the check quickly, signing it with a flourish. Ehrengraf smiled narrowly, placing the check in his own wallet without noting the amount. It was, let it be said, an impressive amount.
    “An astonishing case,” Cutliffe said, “even if you yourself had the smallest of parts in it. This morning’s news was the