An hour went by like so much traffic outside my office window. Several cars. A few trucks. A USMP motorcycle. They were all going slowly. People went in and out of the post office on the other side of the street. There was nothing very quick about what was happening in there, either. Anyone who had ever waited for a letter in Munich knew that in spades. The cabbie at the cabstand out front was having an even slower time of it than I was. But unlike me he could at least risk going to the kiosk for some cigarettes and an evening newspaper. I knew that if I did that I’d miss her call. After a while I decided to make the phone ring. I put on my jacket and walked out of the door, left it open, and headed for the washroom. When I got to the washroom door, I paused for several seconds and only imagined myself doing what I would have done in there; and then the telephone started to ring. It’s an old detective’s trick, only for some reason you never see it in the movies.
–From Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novel, The One From The Other