Since any halfway decent grifter is well versed in the art of deception, Johnny figured there had to be a way around this problem. From the inside, Gondorff had already tried picking up one of the PDO phones and saying, "This is Tom, at the phone company repair center. We're running a test on this line and I need you to try dialing nine, and then zero-zero." The nine would have accessed an outside line, the zero-zero would then have reached a long-distance operator. It didn't work—the person answering the phone at the PDO was already hip to that trick.