That first day I couldn't give a hoot in hell about a thief. I was looking for a cigar smoker and there you were.
S1 E15Unfinished Business
May God forgive me for letting a devil help me build a temple.
And what if your devil quits? What are you gonna do?
You're a sanctimonious hypocrite of a Bible-spouting blackmailer and I've given you your last chance to be fair!
And I guess this, all this looks kinda bad, huh? This big house and this party goin' on, everything?
No sir. No sir, it's kinda refreshing. You see, in my line of work, homicide, somebody is always, well, dead. That's the only way to put it. I mean they don't even call us in unless that's what it is, somebody dead. So naturally I see a lot of grief.
Now why would anybody want to kill me?
Mr. Brown, I don't know. But you are a celebrity and there are a lot of crackpots in the world and there's just no accounting for people's reactions. I mean sometimes I even wonder about my wife. Not that she's a crackpot.
I noticed that the arrangement was changed.
You've got a good ear for music.
Well, you know I'm Italian.
Where did you first learn how to fly?
Lieutenant, I thought you knew my whole life history by now.
Oh no, no. Uh, you know, people think we got all kinds of records on microfilms, all we gotta do is push a button and, uh...
Well, don't you?
[pause] Yes, we do. But not everything.
Say, that's delicious. I never tasted chili like that before.
That's a special recipe made out of squirrel meat. That's good, isn't it?
Um, yeah. That explains it.
You know something, Lieutenant? I could use a man like you on my team. It's really nothing but detective work.
Oh no, thank you very much. You fellas, you have to fly.
Sure. We're all pilots.
Oh no, not for me, thank you very much. I wouldn't qualify for that.
Why? We'd teach you.
I appreciate it, sir. But, uh, my ears pop in an elevator. As a matter of fact, I don't even like being this tall.
Well, still be an awful lot of mountain to search for anything hidden or buried, a lot of mountain. Who could find it?
The guy who hid it.
Aren't you afraid, being up here alone with a killer?
No sir. No sir, I had a feeling that, sooner or later... Sooner or later, you would've confessed even if I hadn't caught you.
Yeah, you're right, Lieutenant, I would've. 'Cause it was getting to me and I'm glad it's over.
Listen... Any man who can sing like that can't be all bad.
Haven't you ever heard of future shock? The world's going to hell with itself. Believe me, Columbo. Times have changed.
Yeah. Maybe.
Commissioner Halperin says he found those jewels under your mattress.
That's crazy.
You're a liar!
Hey, I don't even live here!
What?!?
I can verify that, sir. He doesn't live here. I live here.
Commissioner, I believe you killed your wife. And I believe you either killed Janice Caldwell or you're covering up for it.
You just lost your badge, my friend.
You must have a lot of those, sir.
What?
Gut feelings.
What are you talking about?
Well, you had a gut feeling last night.
I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean, last night?
When you asked for me to report to the Caldwell house.
Yes.
I found out you asked for me when you first called in.
I did.
What I mean, sir, is that the burglar had never harmed anybody before. Yet from your bedroom window when you called in, you asked for me. I was just trying to figure out how you knew the woman was already dead.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Columbo pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


