I was just sitting down to add up the accounts. Not that there was much to add. If there wasn't an account soon, all that stuff in the square files would be going into the round one, and it wouldn't matter about the bills and the rent.

I took the paper out of the box on my desk marked "in", examined it for a while, and replaced it, this time into the bottom box in the stack, marked "to nethermost hell, there to dwell."

I heard the sound of booted feet outside, and looked up to see, and alternately not see, someone passing close to the window. In a blind alley like this one, that could mean exactly one thing: business. Or that somebody was mistaken about the address. Two things, then.

The door banged open, and the specter that appeared explained the flashing. She wore a dress of black and white stripes, horizontal as befitted her somewhat ample figure. As she'd walked outside the window, she was invisible when the black stripes showed between the blinds, but appeared briefly when the white ones did. It was enough to drive a man to distraction, if he were not already easily distractible.

She sat down, arranged her hair, and her dress, and her person, in my only chair, other than the one I occupied, and sighed.

"I have a problem," she said.

A bit quicker than I should have, I replied, "I fix problems."

"I hope you can fix mine," she said. "Seems I married the wrong guy."

An unhappy woman is easy enough to spot. This one--shall we introduce ourselves? "I'm Mel," I told her, "Mel Zadok."

"Jacobs," she replied, "Syd Jacobs."

This one, as I was saying, rooted herself to the spot, in my chair, not unlike a snowman melting in the springtime.

"What can I do for you?" I asked her, knowing what she could do for me: pay my rent.

"Well, I think I married the wrong man," she sighed. Now most people, when they sigh, it's just letting off a little steam. Miss Jacobs, when she sighed, well, you'd think the Hindenburg had crashed, only without all that fire.

"And you want me to..."

"Get me out of it. Fix it, somehow." She rolled her eyes at me. I picked them up and rolled them back.

"Let me guess. He was quite the looker, back in the day. And you, the lookee. And the other way around. No eyes for anybody else. Love, marriage, baby carriage, in some order, and then..."

"And then." she said. Full stop. "He's still the pretty boy, if you know what I mean. With family ambitions. And, aside from keeping me barefoot and in a family way, he's got no use for, how shall I say, large women?"

"And so he waits til things flatten out, comes around for another visit, and it starts all over again."

"Pretty much," she said. "I love the girls, don't get me wrong. It's just," and she let out that sigh again. This time the Graf Zeppelin. "I mean, wow. Rafe is soooo cuuuute."

"Lemme see what I can do." I pushed a card across the table, named a price.

"Mel K. Zadok. We make time for you," she read. And then unhooked one earring. It was a dangly kind of a chandelier, crusted with diamonds. I was sure Jimmy the Weasel could turn it into a couple month's rent on my office.

"I'll see what I can do. Can I call you in a day or two?"

"Nope," she said. "I'll drop by."

So I did the usual sniffing around. Cleaned my automatic. Cleaned the one-shot camera I'd used when I did a little crime photography for the Trib. Cleaned out my desk drawers, in case I didn't come back. Wouldn't do for Mr. Big to get ahold of all my small change.

Did my share of following people, mostly her old man, who certainly answered the description of "pretty boy". Lee Lebanon was much smaller than his wife, and, judging from where his eye strayed when walking down the street, was into pretty boys himself.

I followed him downtown, watched him check into a flop house hotel, found out his room number. All standard detective work. Let him get good and comfortable. When the bang-bang started, I kicked in the door, with camera blazing, only to find him asleep, alone, with his mouth open. The heater was doing a passable imitation of a headboard thumping on the wall; it even got the rhythm right.

"What the fuck?" he said sleepily.

"Sorry, Lee," I said. "Perhaps I should say, what the not fuck?"

"Sorry? That's it? Do I know you?" He began groping under his pillow.

I've survived to this ripe old age by not hanging around to see what people are groping for under their pillows. So I ran down the stairs and took off. That '47 Chevy could fly. I don't even know of Lee had a car or not. But if he did, I lost him in the dust and the trash under the Ell.

Since I was at a dead end for the time being I went to see Jimmy with the chandelier tassel. Compared to the kind of stuff I usually ask him to fence for me, this would be a snap, I figured.

"Where'd you get this?" he asked, suddenly acting like we didn't have more than twenty years of history between us.

"A client. What's the deal, Jimmy? Can you move it or what?"

"Where's the other one?" Still with the cold shoulder.

"On her other ear, Jimbo. Since when did you care if the rocks matched? In my situation I don't usually get to choose from the whole ensemble."

"Only when I've seen a piece before, and know where it went to."

"It's nice that this has sentimental value for you, Jimmy. I'm happy for you, I really am. But it seems to me you're making this too complex."

"I'm not the one making it complex," Jimmy said. "It's Rafe who's going to make things real complex for you if he finds out about this."

"Who?"

"You never heard of Rafe Lebanon?"

"Any relation to Lee Lebanon?"

"You're kidding," said Jimmy, and the look in his eyes went from mild suspicion to something worse: pity. "You'd better sit down."

Jim's place of business is even less hospitable than mine. Like me, he claims this setup is temporary, until he can find a better place that's more like what he's looking for. The both of us have been saying this for going on two decades. The point is, there isn't anywhere to sit down, except for the rickety wooden chair that seems molded to Jimmy's body, behind his desk full of papers. One time, years ago, he had wing chair in the corner -- what he called an antique. It lasted for a day or two before getting covered with the kind of bric-a-brac that flowed through Jimmy's office. Then it disappeared altogether.

"Thanks, I'll stand," I said, straightening my collar and then leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

Then he laid it all out for me. The brothers Lebanon. Sydney Jacobs, the girl from the next town over, the vision of beauty at age sixteen. The engagement between Rafe, the younger twin, and Syd. The earrings serving to seal the promise in lieu of the more traditional diamond solitaire, she meant that much to him, and him to her.

"So I'm wondering," Jimmy concluded, "how you might have ended up with this particular item, since it seems very unlikely to me that Ms. Jacobs would give it up."

It was a fair question, and it definitely wasn't something I was prepared to answer. "I think I'll have to ask our unhappy bride," I said, feeling sick to my stomach. If there's anything I hate more than questioning my own clients, it's questioning them about their method of payment.

"Rafe's been, well, out of circulation for a while, if you take my meaning. But he's back now, and he'd be gunning for Lee, I'm betting," said Jimmy.

"Oh?" I hate cases that involve Hatfields, McCoys, and guns.

"Do I hafta spell it out for you? Syd, engaged to Rafe. Marries Lee. Because Rafe went missing, presumably with his best man and twin brother's help, on his wedding day."

...

So Syd sat on the other side of my desk, keeping her appointment, giving me the eye. I had nothing, and she knew it. She was hoping, well, they all hope, sitting there. It's like I'm a temporary hope dealer, a whole hope opera of them.

She batted her eyes at me.

I caught them neatly; shagged 'em like flies, and returned them to her.

"So what's this about your wedding day?" I asked her.

"Well, yeah, I guess I should have told you."

"Hard time, the two brothers gunning for each other, yeah, it's the kind of thing I should have known, before I go kicking in the door of Lee's motel room."

"You did that? He'll get suspicious!" She turned white as the stripes on that silly dress she'd worn the first time I'd seen her. "There's no telling what he might do if he's suspicious."

"So tell me about this wedding. Must have been quite a ride."

"You could say that," Syd said. "Got to the hotel after, and hey, I'm like, you're not Rafe. And he's all, No, no I'm not. Self-satisfied, like."

"So what did he do with Rafe?"

"Cashed in our honeymoon tickets for a one way trip to a Turkish jail, it turned out. Unidentified white powders are not taken lightly in certain parts of the world."

I whistled. "He knows how to get rid of the competition. For a while. I hear he's back."

"He's back, yeah. And he's gonna kill everybody."

...

It's an interesting desk. Picked it up for a favor from Jimmy the Weasel. I hoped he'd want it back again.

There's a bottle holder inside the file drawer; clearly a retrofit. And a place for the rolodex cards, so you can flip through them, or just fidget with them, while you're talking to a client.

There's not enough space underneath for a secretary in the secretary's position; I had a client who wanted to try it once, and got bruises on her head for her trouble.

So I was sitting there one evening, rearranging the bills, hoping that somehow, if I added them up in a different order, I'd get a smaller sum, one I could cover with that one, unpaired, chandelier of an earring I'd gotten from Syd Jacobs. But there's some kind of a law, after all, and, except for mistakes, I always got the same answer.

But speaking of Syd Jacobs, in she came. This time, rather thinner than when I'd last seen her, and maybe even somewhat younger. Still favoring the horizontal stripes, which, given my venetian blinds, still produced a kind of a defect in the vertical hold of the universe.

"Hi," I said, inviting her in, waving in the general direction of the only other chair in the office.

She took a seat. She managed to struggle out of her sandals, and I could see from the way she squirmed that she was playing at toesies with some of the more interesting holes on her side of the desk. My own toes began to fidget inside my shoes at the thought.

"So I understand you do investigations," she said.

"That's what the sign says, yeah."

"You're Mr. Zadok?"

"In person. Call me Mel."

"I'm Syd Jacobs. It's about my husband."

"Rafe." I was hoping that the little do-over that Lee had presumably arranged had worked to Syd's advantage. Lord knows I couldn't do anything for her.

"No, Lee. Rafe's his brother. You know these guys?"

"Bad guess on my part. Continue."

"Well, it seemed the thing to do at the time; it was love at first sight; he's so cute, he's so, good to me? He's so..."

"Good in the sack," I suggested. "We talking about Lee? or Rafe? I get them mixed up."

"Well, yeah. Everybody does. Except their lovers. Which would be why the business of getting married to the wrong brother could happen."

She looked up at me, flashing those green eyes. Which she closed, to show me her eyelids, likewise green. A green eyeshade kind of a green shade.

"So what's in it for me?" I asked, hoping it was the month's rent.

She took an envelope out of her bag, tossed it on the desk. I could hear gold chains rattling around inside. The other earring. Or some other earring, at least; it looked genuine to me, but I'm no jeweler.

...

"You got the mate," said Jimmy. "Very good. Worth probably three times as much as a matched pair. Except it still belongs to Rafe Lebanon."

"Got it from his unhappy bride."

"I know, Syd Jacobs. It's a damn shame, but I'm not putting my butt on the line when Rafe's involved. The Big House changes a man."

"I've heard. Turkish jail."

"Turkish? Nah. Just Leavenworth."

"Might arguably belong to her husband, though; Lee."

"It's not an argument you're going to win," said Jimmy. That's why they call him the Weasel, I guess.

"But Lee seems to know somebody who knows somebody who can arrange a little do-over."

"You just figured that out." Jimmy shook his head. "I am in the wrong business," he said to himself.

...

Back to the shuffling of bills I couldn't pay. And to wondering if maybe there was a third earring where the last two had come from.

And there was. The idea of offering one of her engagement earrings in payment, to dump the wrong brother, seems to survive all the hocus-pocus and the reruns.

I felt a little bad, taking her jewelry, not fixing anything much. Just making Lee go back to the machine, again and again.

...

She rolled her eyes at me. Snake eyes. This time with a smile. And yet another earring.

"I have the most amazing feeling of deja vu," she said.

Funny, I didn't say, me too. I smiled.

"But Rafe says I have you to thank for the fact that we've had a happy marriage all these years."

"I'm not sure what I did, exactly, but you're welcome."

"Well, Lee damn near managed a switcheroo on my wedding day. Fortunately, I scratched up Rafe's neck pretty well, doing that one last pre-marital, um, encounter, and I saw Lee before he put on his tie."

"Glad it finally worked out for you."

"Isn't love amazing?"