“You think that’s the course I’ll 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.”