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

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 with an appropriate riposte.
    But how was one to deal with a nasty madman? A helpless, pathetic