Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 3, February 1974

“I’d stall. They’d claim they were paying plenty and they ought to get a dividend. I’d point out that that wasn’t in the agreement, and then you’d come in. You always saved me. I could rely on you.”

“But didn’t they try to date you afterwards?”

“I never mix business with pleasure,” she said.

“I know, and I guess I’m business.”

“You were business.”

“The good old times,” he said, sighing. “I don’t suppose you dropped in the hope of getting more work, did you?”

“Oh, no. I just wanted to see you and reminisce.”

“You mean check back on some of our clients, and get money out of them?”

“No, no! Although it would be easy, wouldn’t it?”

“All the things we know, between the two of us! All the secrets and confidences. Clients telling the real reasons why they wanted their divorces. They had something on their wives, or their wives on them. Criminal acts. Embezzlement, larceny. Unnatural sex practises. Somehow they had a compulsion to talk.”

“Did you keep files?”

“Sure, but in code.”

“Are you glad they passed the law? Do you believe in it?”

“I believe that the right people should get together, and that when you make a mistake you should admit it.”

She let out a nervous peal of laughter, then broke it off. “Please, I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”

“You could never try to hurt me,” he said. “Not you.”

She gazed at him with a fixed, sorrowing expression. “Well,” she said finally, getting up. “I just wanted to drop in. I guess I won’t see you again, will I?”

When he didn’t answer, she repeated her words.

“Will I?” she said.

He frowned and he seemed to be searching his mind for something important that eluded him. Then abruptly his face brightened up.

“Marcia,” he said, grasping her by the shoulders and staring down intently. “Are you married?”

“Of course. And you?”

“No, not yet. But—”

He relaxed and they both smiled, very slowly and at the same time. Although neither of them spoke, the old habit of understanding each other told them they both had the same thought. One more divorce job, but strictly personal, and they could do it in the old-fashioned way.

Now.