'Well, I don't usually read the News on Sundays.'
'Got your hands full with the Times, I suppose.'
'Full of ink, generally.'
'Isn't that something? You'd think they could print the damned newspaper so it doesn't come off on your hands.'
' 'If they can put a man on the moon…' '
'You said it. Can you believe there's a newsstand in Grand Central sells disposable white Pliofilm gloves
to wear while you read the damn thing?' He drew a breath. 'Matt, I'm avoiding the point, and my guess is you already know what the point is.'
I had a pretty good idea. 'I suppose he got another of those letters.
From Will.'
'From Will, yes. And the subject of that letter?'
'It would have to be one of your clients,' I said, 'but I wouldn't want to try to guess which one.'
'Because they're all such estimable men?'
'I just wouldn't have a clue,' I said. 'I haven't followed your cases that closely, except for the couple I've worked on. And I don't know how Will's mind works, anyway.'
'Oh, it's an interesting mind. I would say it works very well, certainly well enough for the purpose at hand.' He paused, and I knew what he was going to say an instant before he said it. 'He wasn't writing about one of my clients. He was writing about me.'
'What did he say?'
'Oh, lots of things,' he said. 'I could read it to you.'
'You've got the letter?'
'A copy of it. McGraw faxed it to me. He called me first, before he called the cops, and he faxed me a copy of the letter. That was actually damned considerate of him. I shouldn't have called him a jerk.'
'You didn't.'
'When I first brought his name up, I said—'
'You called him an idiot.'
'You're right at that. Well, I don't suppose he's either one, or if he is he's a considerate specimen of the breed. You asked what Will said.
'An Open Letter to Adrian Whitfield.' Let's see. 'You have devoted your life to keeping guilty men out of prison.' Well, he's wrong about that.
They're all innocent until proven guilty, and whenever guilt was proved to the satisfaction of a jury, they went to prison. And stayed there, unless I could get a reversal on appeal. In another sense, of course, he's quite correct. Most of the men and women I've represented did what they were accused of doing, and I guess that's enough to make them guilty in the eyes of Will.'
'What's his beef with you, exactly? Doesn't he think the accused are entitled to a defense?'
'Well, I don't want to read you the whole thing,' he said, 'and his position's hard to state with precision, but you could say he takes exception to the fact that I'm good at what I do.'
'That's all?'
'If's funny,' he said. 'He doesn't even mention Richie Vollmer, and that's what got him started.'
'That's right, you were Vollmer's attorney.'
'I was indeed, and I got my share of hate mail when he managed to dodge the wheels of Justice, but there's nothing in here about my role in getting him off. Let's what he says. He says I put the police on trial, which is hardly unique on my part. Our mutual friend Gruliow does that all the time. It's often the best strategy with a minority defendant. He also says I put the victim on trial. I think he's talking about Naomi Tarloff.'
'Probably.'
'It might surprise you to know I've had some second thoughts about that case. But that's neither here nor there. I defended the Ellsworth boy the best I knew how, and even so I didn't get him off. The jury convicted the little son of a bitch. He's upstate serving fifteen-to-twenty-five, but that's nothing to the sentence our friend Will has imposed. He says he's going to kill me.'
I said, 'I assume McGraw went straight to the cops.'
'With the briefest pause to ring me up and then fax me the thing.
As a matter of fact he made a Xerox copy and faxed that. He didn't want to screw up any physical evidence by running the original through his fax machine. Then he called the cops, and then I heard from them. I had two detectives over here for an hour, and I can call them idiots without regard to the possibility that they're friends of yours. Did I have any enemies? Were there clients who were bitter about my efforts on their behalf? For Christ's sake, the only embittered clients I've got are the ones behind bars, where nobody has to worry about them, least of all myself.'
'They have to ask.'
'I suppose so,' he said, 'but isn't it fairly obvious that this isn't a guy with a personal motive? He's already killed four people, and he nailed the first one because Marty McGraw told him to. I don't know what earned me a place on his shit list, but it's not because he thought I charged him too much for keeping him out of jail.'
