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“No,” said a deep quiet voice from the rear seat. He felt the cold kiss of steel on his neck. “Company,” the voice continued, and something inside him shriveled to dust. “Don’t turn around, brother, just relax. Miss Smith, your part is completed. Leave the ignition key in the lock and walk home. The car will be thoroughly cleaned and you’ll find it in front of your apartment in the morning.”

“Thank you,” she said, and let herself out the driver’s door and shut it gently but firmly behind her.

He was alone now in the sudden darkness with the voice of the unseen. Alone, and knowing in the pit of his soul that if he was lucky, if it all was a myth, in a minute or less than a minute, after the sudden awful pain, he would feel nothing, nothing, ever again.

“Are you allowed to tell me why?” he asked.

“The last one,” the unseen told him. “You missed connections and didn’t do the job. You were sent on this one to be the recipient, not the agent. You weren’t forgiven.”

“My God, that wasn’t my fault!” he almost screamed. “I couldn’t help—”

“Not forgiven,” the voice repeated solemnly.

As the fingers of the unseen one in the back seat squeezed tight around his neck, and the pain and blackness closed in, he tried desperately to remember the words of the Act of Contrition.

The Ehrengraf Obligation

by Lawrence Block[7]

A new Ehrengraf story by Lawrence Block

Martin H. Ehrengraf, the criminal lawyer (and we do mean criminal lawyer), was not particularly choosy about his clients. He didn’t have to be. Every single Ehrengraf client was innocent — that was the invariable presumption. But there was one kind of client Ehrengraf would move heaven and earth to defend — a poet, especially a penniless poet. Penniless? Does that strike you as odd for Ehrengraf? Well, no. The fee, you understand, was never a problem with Ehrengraf — he saw to that...

William Telliford gave his head a tentative scratch, in part because it itched, in part out of puzzlement. It itched because he had been unable to wash his lank brown hair during the four days he’d thus far spent in jail. He was puzzled because this dapper little man before him was proposing to get him out of jail.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “The court appointed an attorney for me. A younger man — I think he said his name was Trabner. You’re not associated with him or anything, are you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Your name is—”

“Martin Ehrengraf.”

“Well, I appreciate your coming to see me, Mr. Ehrengraf, but I’ve already got a lawyer, this Mr. Trabner, and—”

“Are you satisfied with Mr. Trabner?”

Telliford lowered his eyes, focusing his gaze on the little lawyer’s shoes, a pair of highly polished black wing tips. “I suppose he’s all right,” he said slowly.

“But?”

“But he doesn’t believe I’m innocent. I mean, he seems to take it for granted I’m guilty and the best thing I can do is plead guilty to manslaughter or something. He’s talking in terms of making some kind of deal with the District Attorney, like it’s a foregone conclusion that I have to go to prison and the only question is for how long.”

“Then you’ve answered my question,” Ehrengraf said, a smile flickering on his thin lips. “You’re unsatisfied with your lawyer. The court has appointed him. It remains for you to disappoint him, as it were, and to engage me in his stead. You have the right to do this, you know.”

“But I don’t have the money. Trabner was going to defend me for free, which is about as much as I can afford. I don’t know what kind of fees you charge for something like this but I’ll bet they’re substantial. That suit of yours didn’t come from the Salvation Army.”

Ehrengraf beamed. His suit, charcoal-gray flannel with a nipped-in waist, had been made for him by a most exclusive tailor. His shirt was pink, with a button-down collar. His vest was a tattersall check, red and black on a cream background, and his tie showed half-inch stripes of red and charcoal-gray. “My fees are on the high side,” he said. “To undertake your defense I would ordinarily set a fee of eighty thousand dollars.”

“Eighty dollars would strain my budget,” William Telliford said. “Eighty thousand — well, it might take me ten years to earn that much.”

“But I propose to defend you free of charge, sir.”

William Telliford stared, not least because he could not recall the last time anyone had called him sir. He was, it must be said, a rather unprepossessing young man, tending to slouch and sprawl. His jeans needed patching at the knees. His plaid flannel shirt needed washing and ironing. His chukka boots needed soles and heels, and his socks needed to be replaced altogether.

“But—”

“But why?”

Telliford nodded.

“Because you are a poet,” said Martin Ehrengraf.

“Poets,” said Ehrengraf, “are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe.”

“That’s beautiful,” Robin Littlefield said. She didn’t know just what to make of this little man but he was certainly impressive. “Could you say that again? I want to remember it.”

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe. But don’t credit me with the observation. Shelley said it first.”

“Is she your wife?”

The lawyer’s deeply set dark eyes narrowed perceptibly. “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” he said gently. “Born 1792, died 1822. The poet.”

“Oh.”

“So your young man is one of the world’s unacknowledged legislators. Or you might prefer the lines Arthur O’Shaughnessy wrote. ‘We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.’ You know the poem?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I like the second stanza,” said Ehrengraf, and tilted his head to one side and quoted it:

“ ‘With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world’s great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire’s glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song’s measure Can trample an empire down.’ ”

“You have a wonderful way of speaking. But I, uh, I don’t really know much about poetry.”

“You reserve your enthusiasm for Mr. Telliford’s poems, no doubt.”

“Well, I like it when Bill reads them to me. I like the way they sound, but I’ll have to admit I don’t always know what he’s getting at.”

Ehrengraf beamed and spread his hands. “But they sound good, don’t they? Miss Littlefield, dare we require more of a poem than that it please our ears? I don’t read much modern poetry, Miss Littlefield. I prefer the bards of an earlier and more innocent age. Their verses are often simpler, but I don’t pretend to understand any number of my favorite poems. Half the time I don’t know just what Blake’s getting at, Miss Littlefield, but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying his work. That sonnet of your young man’s, that poem about riding a train across Kansas and looking at the moon. I’m sure you remember it.”

“Sort of.”

“He writes of the moon ‘stroking desperate tides in the liquid land.’ That’s a lovely line, Miss Littlefield, and who cares whether the poem itself is fully comprehensible? Who’d raise such a niggling point? William Telliford is a poet and I’m under an obligation to defend him. I’m certain he couldn’t have murdered that woman.”

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© 1979 by Lawrence Block.