Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 13, Mid-December 1994

The way the place was laid out, you walked in and you were in a sort of lobby, a dark-timbered anteroom where they lined the customers up butt to bumper on busy nights, the room crazy with road signs and battered antique gas pumps, and dozens of license plates nailed to the walls. This scrap metal placed strategically around to set the mood of the dump, which the owner — Zeke referred to him as “the Big Guy” — called the Gas Station. It was a gas station, all right, George thought. To the left as you came in, double doors led to the club proper, where Station customers could eat a steak, play the VLT machines, and get gassed up. And maybe if they were lucky they could arrange to have their oil changed. On the right a single open archway, with a chain stretched across it to keep the lowlife out, protected a staircase that led to the second floor, which was where the manager’s office was located.

Which was the room Zeke was trying to get to. The room where they counted the money.

Heading out that night, at the wheel of Ma’s Dodge, Zeke laid on a pep talk, the guy really strung out, twitchy after arguing with George about Ma all day, and out of cigarettes, which was why he was chewing plug tobacco and telling them he felt like a major league pitcher with the bases loaded. Major league. Man. You had to laugh. Every few minutes down went his window and a jet of brown saliva shot out into the night. Zeke the major leaguer with a dribble down his chin, going:

“No point in us feelin’ guilty about this. The way to look at it is we’ll be teachin’ this guy a lesson. The guy we’re gonna hit, the Big Guy, the guy owns the place, I heard he’s one a the worst creeps ever sleazed out of a sewer, know that I’m sayin’? A bum, know what I mean? A scumbag. A real—”

“You sound like you’re talkin’ about yourself,” Ma said.

Down went Zeke’s window, and a brown jet shot out.

“Ma, don’t start, okay? All I’m tryin’ to do—”

“Sounds just like you. You an’ your brother George, here. Creep, bum, weasel...”

“Ma, listen—”

“No. You listen. You go ahead and set this whole thing up, nobody comes to me an’ asks for my opinion, do they? No. An’ I got more brain power in my left leg than the both of you got in your two skulls put together. I’m sittin’ on more.”

“We hadda hurry an’ work out the details, Ma.”

“Tell me about it. You couldn’t even pick a decent time of day, for the love of Pete. The right night, for cryin’ in the sink. It’s my anniversary, for the love of all that’s holy, can’t you weasels remember nothing? You know I always celebrate the fourteenth of the month, the one an’ only high point in my entire life, the day your dad ran off.” She settled back in the seat with a sigh, carried away with it now. “How it happened, we’d just ordered our deep-fried onion loaf in the lunchroom back of the Brooks Hotel, an’ he said, ‘ ’Scuse me, I gotta go take a whiz,’ he said — he was polite that way — an’ he went, an’ he never came back. I never seen him again. I hadda eat the whole onion loaf all by myself. And I got stuck with the bill...”

She could go on for hours. Thank God for Zeke. He shoved a stick in her spokes.

“It hadda be tonight, Ma, tonight’s when the loaners bring in their accounts. See, they slip in an’ out all evening, droppin’ off money, takin’ back their floats, an’ headin’ on out for another go round. An’ the reason we’re goin’ in late, just before the club downstairs closes up, is because by then all the loaners have come an’ gone, an’ their money’ll be all counted an’ collected in a night deposit bag up there in the office. That’s how they do it. A guy used to work there told me. What the Big Guy does, he slips the loansharking dough in with the nightclub receipts, an’ then he’s covered. Nobody suspects nothing.”

“You must be kidding,” Ma sneered. “If you two dopes could figure it out, the whole damn city must know what the big goon does up there.”

“You know, an’ we know, a few other people, that’s not the whole city.”

“The whole city,” Ma said. “The nuts in the booby hatch know. The stiffs in the morgue. You’d be the last to find out.”

“Ma—”

“Think you’re so smart.”

“Ma, listen—”

“Coupla goddamn Frankensteins.”

“You mean Einsteins, Ma,” George put in.

“Look, I guess I know a Einstein from a Frankenstein, you weasel. When I look at you.”

Ma rambled on. In addition to her annoying monologue, George had to listen to Zeke’s angry mutterings in the dark of the car, but he felt no pity for his brother. Zeke ought to know better. Getting into this with Ma was plain crazy. Psychology 101. Argue with Ma, then book yourself in for a bleeding ulcer treatment.

“Gettin’ back to it,” Zeke said finally, “right after we get in the door, me and George gotta start up the stairs — an’ we gotta be ready with the stockings, to pull them over our heads. Upstairs is off limits except to staff, so anybody spots us up there, they’re gonna know we ain’t come to read the meter, an’ we sure as hell don’t wanna be recognized.”