From: The Law Offices of PERRY MASONTo:...

From: The Law Offices of PERRY MASON

To: The Beverly Hills Bar Assn.

Dear Sirs:

Mr. Mason regrets that he must decline your invitation to be the keynote speaker at the Citizens Law School you are sponsoring from 7 to 9 p.m. on Mondays, Oct. 11 through Nov. 15, at the Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd., West Los Angeles. Fee: $30. Registration: (310) 553-6644.

Flattering though it is for Mr. Mason to be called “the greatest American lawyer of this or any other generation,” he currently has a problem with public appearances. Since the recent death of Raymond Burr, who played him for so many years on television, Mr. Mason is in corpus absentia, so to speak. Disembodied. A mere wisp of the ozone.

He still exists, of course, in a literary sense--in print and in people’s imaginations. He’s still collecting his retainers and, you’ll be happy to know, paying his Bar Assn. dues.

But until Mr. Burr is replaced by some other actor, Mr. Mason can’t mount a rostrum and answer the public’s questions about taxes, divorce, estate planning, visitation rights, consumer fraud, alternatives to litigation,

injury or discrimination at work, the future of health care, etc., etc.

Surely you have already assembled enough legal experts to do the job: Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, KABC consumer affairs reporter Henry Alfaro, attorneys, judges and members of President Clinton’s health task force.

Besides, Mr. Mason’s speech, if he gave one, would be very short. His legal philosophy can be boiled down to two points, which, if I’ve heard him expound once, I’ve heard him a thousand times:

1. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Maybe 99.99%. If you’re Soka University and own land in the Santa Monica Mountains, the parks people can huff and puff all they want and still not blow you out. On the other hand, if you’re in possession of a kilo of cocaine when the police catch you, even Mr. Mason would have to break a sweat to get you acquitted.

2. Pick your opponents carefully--i.e., Hamilton Burger.

To tell the truth, even Mr. Burger’s ineptitude isn’t reason enough to explain Mr. Mason’s unbeaten record in court. I won’t say they’ve had something going on under the table, but Mr. Burger sent four kids through Harvard Law and skis every winter in Gstaad, and how he could do this on a prosecutor’s salary I leave it to you to imagine.

I’m sorry if this sounds demeaning to your profession. But Perry Mason, contrary to his public image, is a cheapskate and a rat, and after all this time I don’t care who knows it.

He’s a cheapskate because he’s still paying me $26.50 a week, the same as he paid me in 1932, when Erle Stanley Gardner created us. On that budget, I’m still supposed to dress nicely. And I still fetch him coffee.

He’s a rat because he led me to understand that he’d ask me to marry him one of these decades, and he never did.

So there.

You don’t like it? Sue me.

Sincerely, Della Street