wise up, gorlopis. you're not kidding anybody with that line of bull. you're in a jam and you know it.
sez you. all you're gonna get is the cops.
come in, walter. this is sam gorlopis from inglewood.
yeah, he just planted his big foot on the starter and the whole thing blazed up in his face.
and didn't even singe his eyebrows.
you got a wife, gorlopis?
you got kids?
what you got for dinner tonight?
how do you make your meat loaf, gorlopis?
how much garlic?
okay, gorlopis. now listen here. let's say you just came up here to tell me how to make meat loaf. that's all, understand? because if you came up here to claim on that truck, i'd have to turn you over to the law, gorlopis, and they'd put you in jail. no wife. no kids --
and no meat loaf, gorlopis!
no? look, gorlopis. every month hundreds of claims come to this desk. some of them are phonies, and i know which ones. how do i know, gorlopis? because my little man tells me.
the little man in here.
every time one of those phonies comes along he ties knots in my stomach. and yours was one of them, gorlopis. that's how i knew your claim was crooked. so what did i do? i sent a tow car out to your garage this afternoon and they jacked up that burned-out truck of yours. and what did they find, gorlopis? they found what was left of a pile of shavings.
the ones you soaked with kerosene and dropped a match on.
that's one way of putting it.
sign this and you'll feel fine.
right there. it's a waiver on your claim.
now you're an honest man again.
goodbye, gorlopis.
what's the matter, gorlopis? don't you know how to open the door? just put your hand on the knob, turn it to the right, pull it toward you --
that's the boy. now the same thing from the outside.
what kind of an outfit is this anyway? are we an insurance company, or a bunch of dimwitted amateurs, writing a policy on a mugg like that?
i know you did, walter. i'm not beefing at you. it's the company. the way they do things. the way they don't do things. the way they'll write anything just to get it down on the sales sheet. and i'm the guy that has to sit here up to my neck in phony claims so they won't throw more money out of the window than they take in at the door.
i get darn sick of picking up after a gang of fast-talking salesmen dumb enough to sell life insurance to a guy that sleeps in the same bed with four rattlesnakes. i've had twenty- six years of that, walter, and i --
that's enough from you, walter. get out of here before i throw my desk at you.
i just came from norton's office. the semi-annual sales records are out. you're high man, walter. that's twice in a row. congratulations.
how would you like a fifty dollar cut in salary?
i'm serious, walter. i've been talking to norton. there's too much stuff piling up on my desk. too much pressure on my nerves. i spend half the night walking up and down in my bed. i've got to have an assistant. i thought that you --
because i've got a crazy idea you might be good at the job.
yeah. a peddler, a glad-hander, a back-slapper. you're too good to be a salesman.
phooey. all you guys do is ring door- bells and dish out a smooth line of monkey talk. what's bothering you is that fifty buck cut, isn't it?
look, walter. the job i'm talking about takes brains and integrity. it takes more guts than there is in fifty salesman. it's the hottest job in the business.
a desk job. is that all you can see in it? just a hard chair to park your pants on from nine to five. just a pile of papers to shuffle around, and five sharp pencils and a scratch pad to make figures on, with maybe a little doodling on the side. that's not the way i see it, walter. to me a claims man is a surgeon, and that desk is an operating table, and those pencils are scalpels and bone chisels. and those papers are not just forms and statistics and claims for compensation. they're alive, they're packed with drama, with twisted hopes and crooked dreams. a claims man, walter, is a doctor and a blood-hound and a cop and a judge and a jury and a father confessor, all in one.
who? okay, hold the line.
and you want to tell me you're not interested. you don't want to work with your brains. all you want to work with is your finger on a door- bell. for a few bucks more a week. there's a dame on your phone.
i'll wait. only tell margie not to take all day.
what's the matter? the dames chasing you again? or still? or is it none of my business?
margie! i bet she drinks from the bottle. why don't you settle down and get married, walter?
i almost did, once. a long time ago.
we even had the church all picked out, the dame and i. she had a white satin dress with flounces on it. and i was on my way to the jewelry store to buy the ring. then suddenly that little man in here started working on me.
and the stuff that came out. she'd been dyeing her hair ever since she was sixteen. and there was a manic- depressive in her family, on her mother's side. and she already had one husband, a professional pool player in baltimore. and as for her brother --
all right, i'm going. what am i to say to norton? how about that job i want you for?
fair enough. just get this: i picked you for the job, not because i think you're so darn smart, but because i thought maybe you were a shade less dumb than the rest of the outfit. i guess i was all wet. you're not smarter, walter. you're just a little taller.
come on, walter. the big boss wants to see us.
must be.
the guy's dead, we had him insured and it's going to cost us money. that's always wrong.
autopsy report. no heart failure, no apoplexy, no predisposing medical cause of any kind. he died of a broken neck.
they had it this morning. his wife and daughter made the identification. the train people and some passengers told how he went through to the observation car.  it was all over in forty-five minutes. verdict, accidental death.
that he got tangled up in his crutches and fell off the train. they're satisfied. it's not their dough.
sorry, mr. norton. i didn't know this was formal.
i just talked to this jackson long distance. up in medford, oregon.
the last guy that saw dietrichson alive. they were out on the observation platform together talking. dietrichson wanted a cigar and jackson went to get dietrichson's cigar case for him. when he came back to the observation platform, no dietrichson. jackson didn't think anything was wrong until a wire caught up with the train at santa barbara. they had found dietrichson's body on the tracks near burbank.
not much. dietrichson's secretary says she didn't know anything about the policy. there is a daughter, but all she remembers is neff talking to her father about accident insurance at their house one night.
there's no sense in pushing neff around. he's got the best sales record in the office. are your salesmen supposed to know that the customer is going to fall off a train?
i don't get it.
no opinion at all.
nope. not even a hunch.
you know you know what?
me? you've got the ball. let's see you run with it.
how do you do.
his name was jackson. probably still is.
nice going, mr. norton. you sure carried that ball.
only you fumbled on the goal line. then you heaved an illegal forward pass and got thrown for a forty-yard loss. now you can't pick yourself up because you haven't got a leg to stand on.
can we? mr. norton, the first thing that hit me was that suicide angle. only i dropped it in the wastepaper basket just three seconds later. you ought to take a look at the statistics on suicide sometime. you might learn a little something about the insurance business.
yeah. in the front office. come on, you never read an actuarial table in your life. i've got ten volumes on suicide alone. suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. suicide, how committed: by poisons, by fire-arms, by drowning, by leaps. suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under wheels of trains, under wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. but mr. norton, of all the cases on record there's not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. and do you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? fifteen miles an hour. now how could anybody jump off a slow moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? no soap, mr. norton. we're sunk, and we're going to pay through the nose, and you know it. may i have this?
come on, walter.
next time i'll rent a tuxedo.
that broken leg. the guy broke his leg.
talking about dietrichson. he had accident insurance, didn't he? then he broke his leg, didn't he?
and he didn't put in a claim. why didn't he put in a claim? why?
walter. there's something wrong. i ate dinner two hours ago. it stuck half way.
the little man is acting up again. because there's something wrong with that dietrichson case.
oh maybe he just didn't know he was insured.
no. that couldn't be it. you delivered the policy to him personally, didn't you, walter? and you got his check.
got any bicarbonate of soda?
listen, walter. i've been living with this little man for twenty-six years. he's never failed me yet. there's got to be something wrong.
no. not suicide. but not accident either.
look. a man takes out an accident policy that is worth a hundred thousand dollars if he is killed on a train. then, two weeks later, he is killed on a train. and not in a train accident, mind you, but falling off some silly observation car. do you know what the mathematical probability of that is, walter? one out of i don't know how many billions. and add to that the broken leg. it just can't be the way it looks, walter. something has been worked on us.
don't you have any peppermint or anything?
maybe i like to make things easy for myself. but i always tend to suspect the beneficiary.
yeah. that wide-eyed dame that didn't know anything about anything.
i know she wasn't, walter. i don't claim to know how it was worked, or who worked it, but i know that it was worked.
i've got to get to a drug store. it feels like a hunk of concrete inside me.
good night, walter.
see you at the office in the morning.
but i'd like to move in on her right now, tonight, if it wasn't for norton and his stripe-pants ideas about company policy. i'd have the cops after her so quick her head would spin. they'd put her through the wringer, and, brother, what they would squeeze out.
not too much. twenty-six years experience, all the percentage there is, and this lump of concrete in my stomach.
no bicarbonate of soda.
come in. come in, walter. i want to ask you something. after all the years we've known each other, do you mind if i make a rather blunt statement?
about me. walter, i'm a very great man. this dietrichson business. it's murder, and murders don't come any neater. as fancy a piece of homicide as anybody ever ran into. smart and tricky and almost perfect, but --
but, i think papa has it all figured out, figured out and wrapped up in tissue paper with pink ribbons on it.
you know what? that guy dietrichson was never on the train.
no, he wasn't, walter. look, you can't be sure of killing a man by throwing him off a train that's going fifteen miles an hour. the only way you can be sure is to kill him first and then throw his body on the tracks. that would mean either killing him on the train, or -- and this is where it really gets fancy -- you kill him somewhere else and put him on the tracks. two possibilities, and i personally buy the second.
look, it was like this. they killed the guy -- the wife and somebody else -- and then the somebody else took the crutches and went on the train as dietrichson, and then the somebody else jumped off, and then they put the body on the tracks where the train had passed. an impersonation, see. and a cinch to work. because it was night, very few people were about, they had the crutches to stare at, and they never really looked at the man at all.
is it? i tell you it fits together like a watch. and now let's see what we have in the way of proof. the only guy that really got a good look at this supposed dietrichson is sitting right outside my office. i took the trouble to bring him down here from oregon. let's see what he has to say.
come in, mr. jackson.
two for a quarter.
never mind the cigar, jackson. did you study those photographs? what do you say?
well? did you make up your mind?
well you're not in medford now. i'm in a hurry. let's have it.
yes.
what do you mean no?
will you swear to that?
thank you.
there you are, walter. there's your proof.
oh, mr. jackson, this is mr. neff, one of our salesmen.
mr. jackson, how would you describe the man you saw on that observation platform?
dietrichson was about fifty, wasn't he, walter?
that's fine, jackson. now you understand this matter is strictly confidential. we may need you again down here in los angeles, if the case comes to court.
get me lubin, in the cashier's office.
all right, mr. jackson. suppose you go down to the cashier's office -- room twenty-seven on the eleventh floor. they'll take care of your expense account and your ticket for the train tonight.
okay, mr. jackson. just don't put her on the expense account.
there it is, walter. it's beginning to come apart at the seams already. a murder's never perfect. it always comes apart sooner or later. and when two people are involved it's usually sooner. we know the dietrichson dame is in it, and somebody else. pretty soon we're going to know who that somebody else is. he'll show. he's got to show. sometime, somewhere, they've got to meet. their emotions are all kicked up. whether it's love or hate doesn't matter. they can't keep away from each other. they think it's twice as safe because there are two of them. but it's not twice as safe. it's ten times twice as dangerous. they've committed a murder and that's not like taking a trolley ride together where each one can get off at a different stop. they're stuck with each other. they've got to ride all the way to the end of the line. and it's a one-way trip, and the last stop is the cemetery.
she put in her claim and i'm going to throw it right back at her. have you got one of those?
let her sue us if she dares. i'll be ready for her -- and that somebody else. they'll be digging their own graves.
hang onto your hat, walter.
nothing much. the dietrichson case just busted wide open.
the guy showed. that's how.
yeah. the guy that did it with her.
she's filed suit against us, and it's okay by me. when we get into that courtroom i'll tear them apart, both of them. come on -- i'll buy you a martini.
with two olives.
margie. i still bet she drinks from the bottle.
i don't like them. they always explode in my pockets. so long, walter.
the janitor did. seems you leaked a little blood on the way in here.
so i gather.
long enough.
you can't figure them all, walter.
you're all washed up, walter.
walter, i'm going to call a doctor.
something like that, walter.
give me one good reason.
you're not going anywhere, walter.
you haven't got a chance.
you'll never make the border.
you'll never even make the elevator.
how you doing, walter?
they're on the way.
closer than that, walter.
they're on the way.
closer than that, walter.