it was mid-afternoon, and it's funny, i can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that block. i felt like a million. there was no way in all this world i could have known that murder sometimes can smell like honeysuckle.
the living room was still stuffy from last night's cigars. the windows were closed and the sunshine coming in through the venetian blinds showed up the dust in the air. the furniture was kind of corny and old-fashioned, but it had a comfortable look, as if people really sat in it. on the piano, in couple of fancy frames, were mr. dietrichson and lola, his daughter by his first wife they had a bowl of those little red goldfish on the table behind the davenport, but, to tell you the truth, keyes, i wasn't a whole lot interested in goldfish right then, nor in auto renewals, nor in mr. dietrichson and his daughter lola. i was thinking about that dame upstairs, and the way she had looked at me, and i wanted to see her again, close, without that silly staircase between us.
not at all, mrs. dietrichson.
she liked me. i could feel that. the way you feel when the cards are.
falling right for you, with a nice little pile of blue and yellow chips in the middle of the table. only what i didn't know then was that i wasn't playing her. she was playing me -- with a deck of marked cards -- and the stakes weren't any blue and yellow chips. they were dynamite. i went back to the office that afternoon to see if i had any mail. it was the same afternoon you had that sam gorlopis on the carpet, that truck driver from inglewood, remember, keyes?
i really did, too, you old crab, always yelling your fat head off, always sore at everyone. but behind the cigar ashes on your vest i kind of knew you had a heart as big as a house.  back in my office there was a phone message from mrs. dietrichson about the renewals. she didn't want me to come tomorrow evening. she wanted me to come thursday afternoon at three-thirty instead. i had a lot of stuff lined up for that thursday afternoon, including a trip down to santa monica to see a couple of live prospects about some group insurance. but i kept thinking about phyllis dietrichson and the way that anklet of hers cut into her leg.
so i let her have it, straight between the eyes. she didn't fool me for a minute, not this time. i knew i had hold of a redhot poker and the time to drop it was before it burned my hand off. i stopped at a drive-in for a bottle of beer, the one i had wanted all along, only i wanted it worse now, to get rid of the sour taste of her iced tea, and everything that went with it. i didn't want to go back to the office, so i dropped by a bowling alley at third and western and rolled a few lines to get my mind thinking about something else for a while.
i didn't feel like eating dinner when i left, and i didn't feel like a show, so i drove home, put the car away and went up to my apartment.
it had begun to rain outside and i watched it get dark and didn't even turn on the light. that didn't help me either. i was all twisted up inside, and i was still holding on to that red-hot poker. and right then it came over me that i hadn't walked out on anything at all, that the hook was too strong, that this wasn't the end between her and me. it was only the beginning.
so at eight o'clock the bell would ring and i would know who it was without even having to think, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
she was a nice kid and maybe he was a little better than he sounded. i kind of hoped so for her sake, but right then it gave me a nasty feeling to be thinking about them at all, with that briefcase right behind my head and her father's application in it. besides, i had other problems to work out. there were plans to make, and phyllis had to be in on them.
but we couldn't be seen together any more and i had told her never to call me from her house and never to call me at my office. so we had picked out a big market on los feliz. she was to be there buying stuff every day about eleven o'clock, and i could run into her there. kind of accidentally on purpose.
after that a full week went by and i didn't see her once. i tried to keep my mind off her and off the whole idea. i kept telling myself that maybe those fates they say watch over you had gotten together and broken his leg to give me a way out. then it was the fifteenth of june. you may remember that date, keyes. i do too, only for a very different reason. you came into my office around three in the afternoon.
that was it, keyes, and there was no use kidding myself any more. those fates i was talking about had only been stalling me off. now they had thrown the switch. the gears had meshed. the machinery had started to move and nothing could stop it. the time for thinking had all run out. from here on it was a question of following the time table, move by move, just as we had it rehearsed. i wanted my time all accounted for for the rest of the afternoon and up to the last possible moment in the evening. so i arranged to call on a prospect in pasadena about a public liability bond. when i left the office i put my rate book on the desk as if i had forgotten it. that was part of the alibi.
i got home about seven and drove right into the garage. this was another item to establish my alibi.
up in my apartment i called lou schwartz, one of the salesmen that shared my office. he lived in westwood. that made it a toll call and there'd be a record of it. i told him i had forgotten my rate book and needed some dope on the public liability bond i was figuring. i asked him to call me back. this was another item in my alibi, so that later on i could prove that i had been home.
i changed into a navy blue suit like dietrichson was going to wear. lou schwartz called me back and gave me a lot of figures.
i stuffed a hand towel and a big roll of adhesive tape into my pockets, so i could fake something that looked like a cast on a broken leg.  next i fixed the telephone and the doorbell, so that the cards would fall down if the bells rang. that way i would know there had been a phone call or visitor while i was away. i left the apartment house by the fire stairs and side door. nobody saw me. it was already getting dark. i took the vermont avenue bus to los feliz and walked from there up to the dietrichson house. there was that smell of honeysuckle again, only stronger, now that it was evening.
then i was in the garage. his car was backed in, just the way i told phyllis to have it. it was so still i could hear the ticking of the clock on the dashboard. i kept thinking of the place we had picked out to do it, that dark street on the way to the station, and the three honks on the horn that were to be the signal.  about ten minutes later they came down.
on the way back we went over once more what she was to do at the inquest, if they had one, and about the insurance, when that came up. i was afraid she might go to pieces a little, now that we had done it, but she was perfect. no nerves. not a tear, not even a blink of the eyes.
she dropped me a block from my apartment house.
it was two minutes past eleven as i went up the fire stairs again. nobody saw me this time either.
in the apartment i checked the bells. the cards hadn't moved. no calls. no visitors.
i changed the blue suit. there was one last thing to do. i wanted the garage man to see me again.
that was all there was to it. nothing had slipped, nothing had been overlooked, there was nothing to give us away. and yet, keyes, as i was walking down the street to the drug store, suddenly it came over me that everything would go wrong. it sounds crazy, keyes, but it's true, so help me: i couldn't hear my own footsteps. it was the walk of a dead man.
that evening when i got home my nerves had eased off. i could feel the ground under my feet again, and it looked like easy going from there on it.
so i took her to dinner that evening at a mexican joint down on olvera street where nobody would see us. i wanted to cheer her up.
next day was sunday and we went for a ride down to the beach. she had loosened up a bit and she was even laughing.  i had to make sure she wouldn't tell that stuff about phyllis to anybody else. it was dynamite, whether it was true or not. and i had no chance to talk to phyllis. you were watching her like a hawk, keyes. i couldn't even phone her for fear you had the wires tapped.
monday morning there was a note on my desk that you wanted to see me, keyes. for a minute i wondered if it could be about lola. it was worse. outside your door was the last guy in the world i wanted to see.
yeah. i remembered all right. just as i remembered what you had told me, keyes, about that trolley car ride and how there was no way to get off -- until the end of the line.
zachetti. that's funny. phyllis and zachetti. what was he doing up at her house? i couldn't figure that one out i tried to make sense out of it and got nowhere. but the real brain-twister came the next day. you sprang it on me, keyes, after office hours, when you caught me down in the lobby of the building.
you sure had me worried, keyes. i didn't know if you were playing cat- and-mouse with me, whether you knew all along i was the somebody else. that's what i had to find out, and i thought i knew where to look.
upstairs, the last of the people were just leaving.
i made sure nobody saw me go into your office.
i guess i don't have to tell you what i was going to do at eleven o'clock, keyes. for the first time i saw a way to get clear of the whole mess i was in, and of phyllis, too, all at the same time. yeah, that's what i thought. but what i didn't know was that she was all set for me. that she had outsmarted me again, just like she always had.
she was all set and waiting for me. it could have been something in my voice when i called her up that tipped her off. and it could have been that she had the idea already. and an idea wasn't the only thing she had waiting for me.