Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 6. Whole No. 283, June 1967

Choice of Evils by Robert Ladner, Jr.

This is the 306th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine... a “first story” with an interesting background — and a solid example of how a new writer transmutes first-hand observation and experience into contemporary fiction.

The author, Robert Ladner, Jr., was 21 when he wrote “Choice of Evils,” and a senior at Gettysburg College, majoring in Sociology (significant!) and Anthropology. He has traveled and worked in more than half the states of the Union, “employed in capacities ranging from newspaper reporter to photographer to commercial artist to detective’s assistant and from horticulturist to ditch digger.” He based his “first story” on what he learned while wording his way through his junior year as a mechanic and “gas jockey.”

Mr. Ladner described his aspirations in an interesting way: “When I was a fid in North Philadelphia I used to sit for hours in the local barber shop and read magazines. One day I ran across a cartoon depicting structural steel workers eating lunch about two or three miles above the street, and mixed in among the peanut-butter-and-jelly and bologna sandwiches was one character whose lunch pail folded out into a complete white-linen seven-course meal complete with candelabra. One of his buddies pointed, saying. ‘Now there’s a real Renaissance man!’

“The cartoon haunts me yet. I am aiming for the Ministry, not structural steel, but the originality, the verve, the vitality of the ‘Renaissance man’ nags along the back of my mind, goading me toward that same brand of constructively unconventional thought and action.”

We’ll hear more from Mr. Robert Ladner, Jr. — you can bet on it!

Paul tugged the baseball cap over his gray crew-cut, then jammed his hands deep into his overall pockets, pulling his neck in against the cold draft of air that accompanied Clete’s disgusted entrance into the gas-station office.

“Would you believe?” said Clete. “Cadillac a block long and all it wanted was a buck’s worth of regular.”

The additional sagging of Paul’s body as he leaned against the counter top was his only comment. Clete crossed over to the cash register and rang up the sale, digging the green stamps out of his pocket and tossing them on the counter. He settled his lanky frame on the window sill and glanced at his watch.

“Slow,” he said.

Paul nodded absently.

Outside a woman in a red Corvair turned sharply at the traffic light and headed in toward the west island. Clete swung his feet to the floor as she hit the first alarm cord, then relaxed as she hit the second, third, and fourth, racing past the gas islands and back into the street on the other side of the intersection. Clete lifted his feet back on the window sill and stared out the window.

“Looks like rain,” he said hopefully. Rain meant a waiver of the necessity of washing windshields.

“Mmph.” To Paul rain meant fewer customers and another Wednesday night chalking up more figures in the red column of his logbook. “Dammit,” he said wearily, “if it isn’t one thing it’s another. Business is bad enough without rain making it worse.”

“Maybe it won’t rain,” Clete said diplomatically.

“Weatherman said tonight would be clear.”

The first drops began to splatter on the enameled tops of the gas pumps — big drops, fat globules of water, then smaller drops hissing on the macadam station surface and splashing on the signboards, darkening the cement island runways.

“Better get your bike in,” said Paul.

Clete nodded and moved to the garage door, yanking upward on the frayed rope, bringing the shuddering portcullis off the ground and overhead. He stepped outside, head bowed against the rain, and wheeled the bicycle inside.

“Seat’s wet,” he observed.

“Close the door,” Paul snapped. “You want you should bankrupt me?” Grinning, Clete reached up and grabbed the rope, bringing the door rumbling down, slowing it with a last-minute reverse tug on the rope.

A blue Mercury sped up to the traffic light, tires chirping as the driver downshifted to brake the car. The motor snarled when the light changed, sending the car slewing around the corner, accelerating in a squeal of tires and a haze of exhaust.

“Damn kids.” Paul fished in his pocket for a cigarette, lit one, then flipped the match in the general direction of the wastebasket. “They’ll drive me right out of business.”

“Punks?”

“Yeah, most of them. Lawler, Gates, Bradley — hell, they all’ve been in jail one time or another. Johnny Turk’s brother’s gonna keep the cops hopping for a year. Trouble is, I tried to give the kids a break, you know, give ’em a place to work on their cars and all. But no, that wasn’t enough. They stole my tools, loused up my oil, used the bays for their carburetor-switching parties, got the police all hot and bothered. Drove half my good customers away. Won’t hardly nobody come around here to buy gas any more.”

“January’s a slow month anyway,” Clete said sympathetically.

“Yeah, but this slow?” Paul jabbed a finger at the register. “Less than a hundred bucks since we opened this morning. Hell, operating expenses eat up twice the profit in that. Costs fifty-five dollars to run this place every day, and that’s gotta come out of the profits. We don’t make more’n a nickel on the gallon, that’s fifteen cents on the dollar. So we made maybe fifteen dollars today, and spent fifty-five. That means so far forty bucks in the hole. With luck, by the time we close tonight, it might be only twenty-five or thirty. But that’s all pure loss.”

Clete thought for a minute, feeling vaguely guilty about the dollar-fifty an hour he was getting. “Can’t you get out?”

“Can’t until at least May. Blasted franchise contract says I have to stay in business for a full year, barring fire or theft. If the place gets burned, or we get hit, then I can get out. But not until.”

The rain continued, now a drone against the pavement, running down the faces of the mercury-vapor lamps, turning spilled gasoline into rainbows on the concrete.

The blue Mercury was back, this time with an Impala. The two cars jockeyed for position at the light, the Impala jerking as the driver rode the clutch. The driver revved it up, then raced the engine until it cut out, tickling the accelerator up to maintain his confidence. The light changed and both cars jackrabbited across the intersection. Clete watched them until they were out of sight.

The alarm bell rang. Clete pushed himself off the window sill, caught the green stamps that Paul tossed to him, then barged out the door.

“Dollar’s worth of regular,” he figured, looking at the beat-up Chevy.

“Dollar’s worth of regular,” the woman said from behind the wheel. “And check the oil and the tires. And the spare in the back.”

Clete grimaced, then sloshed the gas into the tank, tripping the cutoff valve with his little finger just as the meter reached the $1.00 mark. He replaced the nozzle, then grabbed a paper towel for the dipstick, glaring as the woman banged out the contents of the car’s ashtray, depositing a pile of ashes and filter butts onto the sopping pavement.

Paul was laughing when he came in.

“What’s so funny?” Clete asked.

“Oh, the look on your face when she emptied her ashtray on the apron. How much did she want?”

“Dollar’s worth. What else?”

“Figures. You meet the damnedest people in this business.”

The rain kept up its wordless comment, a monotonous tattoo on the office roof. A police car — Silver-glade’s one and only — swished by the station. Clete reached into his pocket and took out a stick of gum, carefully wadding up the paper before putting the gum in his mouth.

“What’ll you do if you go out of business?”

“Oh, maybe go back into electrical contracting.” Paul reached into his pocket, produced a handkerchief, and blew his nose loudly. “Hell, I was doing line work in Germany during the war, got lots of experience, and I had a pretty good job here in town, too, but I wanted to start my own place. Needed a bigger challenge, I thought.”

“You got one.”

“Yeah, but not the kind I bargained for. I wanted to find a new way to run a business, not a new way to go bankrupt.”

“Think you can hold out until summer?”

“Summer’s not what I’m worried about. I already had my summer. Thing is, from now on is my slowest period, and I didn’t do that good during the rush last year. Just about made two, three hundred dollars profit over costs, and that’s eaten up already, and four months to go yet.”

It was slow, even for a rainy Wednesday, although the rain had slacked off to a gentle misting.

“Clete, think you can close up by yourself tonight if I left, say, at ten?”

“Sure, no sweat,” Clete replied. “If things get too hectic, I’ll give you a call.”

Paul glanced at his watch. It was 9:30.

The alarm bell rang — the blue Mercury again.

“I’ll get it.” Clete pushed off the sill and tucked his head in against the mist as he stepped outside.

The car was crammed full of the black-leather-jacket set, a flying box car oozing wisecracks.

“Fill ’er up, little man,” said the leader behind the wheel. “And check the oil and the tires and the battery — the works.”

“Yeah, and none of this ‘quart low’ jazz. Make sure you ram the stick all the way in.” This came from a half-toothless grin and a long shock of red hair.

“Out,” the leader commanded.

The four doors of the sedan flew open and the occupants emerged, some slouching, some stretching with exaggerated sensuality, some preferring the half-sleepy heavy-lidded expression of Cool. The mist had stopped now, so that the only-reminder was a damp heaviness in the night air.

Clete snapped open the fender cover and reached in to unscrew the gas cap. “Regular or high test?” he asked mildly, depositing the cap on top of the pump and reaching into his pocket for another stick of gum.

“High test, little man, and take your time. Check everything.”

Clete nodded and deliberately unwrapped the gum, wadding the silver foil wrapper before flipping it into the trash can on the island. He unhooked the gas nozzle, nudged the switch with the filler pipe, and bent over the tank.

Paul looked up, glaring, as the six youths entered the office.

“What do you want?” The words sounded weak, somehow. The red-haired lieutenant leaned against the candy machine and lit a cigarette with a kitchen match, flicking it alight with a studied casualness that changed to surprise when the flame scorched his thumb. The leader snickered, a staccato sound from a narrow face, then dug into his pocket for a crumpled dollar bill.

“Change, Pop.”

Paul surveyed the crew. They were silent now; the only sound was an ominous breathing.

Six to one.

“What do you need the change for?” Paul asked, aware how inane the question was, how much it betrayed his nervousness.

“Stow it, Pop, just give with the change. We don’t want to cause any trouble.” The remark from Red Hair brought a ripple of laughter from the group, stifled almost at once by a glare from the leader.

Paul glanced outside to where Clete had opened the hood and was carefully inserting the dipstick.

No help there, Paul muttered to himself. He sighed and reached into his pocket for the key, jammed it into the register and cranked it open. The reflection of a sudden movement in the glass of the windows was his only warning before the sand-filled sock hit the back of his head solidly.

Clete glanced into the office as his boss crumpled over the cash register. His eyes narrowed, measuring the odds — six to one. He replaced the dipstick and closed the hood. He would have to outthink them.

“The money — get the money,” the leader ordered, lugging Paul behind the counter, stuffing him into the knee-space of the desk. Red Hair moved to the cash register, scooped out handfuls of bills and coins, jamming them into his pockets.

“Over in front of the window,” he reminded the others who moved numbly, effectively blocking view from the outside. They waited, lounging, as Clete finished his work on the car and turned back toward the office; then they moved out, a tight group, intercepting Clete on his way in.

“How much?” the leader demanded of Clete.

“Five for gas, plus a buck-fifty for oil and a quart of antifreeze. Six fifty altogether.” Clete was calm; his jaw moved slowly around his wad of gum. The leader peeled two bills from the roll in his pocket, then dug deeper for the change. Red Hair got behind the wheel, the leader beside him, as the others piled in the rear of the car.

“Stamps?” Clete asked nonchalantly.

“Naw, keep ’em yourself,” the leader snickered as the car spun out of the station.

Clete stood there a moment, the license-plate number fixing itself in his mind; then he turned and headed into the office.

Paul was gingerly disengaging himself from the knee-hole of the desk when Clete entered.

“You okay?” Clete asked.

“Yeah,” Paul grunted. He slowly hauled himself up, then staggered to a chair and half collapsed onto it. “I’m gonna have a goose egg the size of a grapefruit tomorrow,” he predicted. He ran his fingers along the back of his head, wincing as he touched the sore spot.

“That did it,” he groaned. “First the business goes sour. Then the town punks steal my tools. Then the bad weather sets in. Now this.” He looked up at Clete. “You recognize any of them?”

Clete shook his head. “All from out of town, I’d say.”

Paul nodded, then grinned wryly. “I’d better check the cash register.”

Clete glanced at his watch. “We ought to call the police first. They should be stopped in about five minutes, and I want them close to the center of town before they find out their car is blitzed.”

Paul squinted at him. “Before they find out what and have time to repair it.”

“That I blitzed their car.”

“Man, you don’t know enough about cars to blitz their wagon in the time it took them to hit this joint.”

“No, maybe not in theory. But in practice, yes.” Clete picked up the phone book.

Paul regarded his helper curiously, then shrugged and moved to the cash register, flipping the cover off the “Total” column and checking the figure on the invoice slip. “Hundred and fifty-two dollars and eighty cents,” he recited.

“Minus six fifty for the stuff they bought here,” Clete amended, “That comes to a hundred and forty-six dollars and thirty cents.” Paul nodded as Clete shoved a dime into the pay phone and began to dial.

“Hundred and forty-six,” Paul mused. “Minus twenty-two bucks profit, that leaves hundred and twenty-four.”

Clete paused in his dialing. “So?”

“So I actually lose only a hundred and twenty-four bucks. At the rate I’ve been losing money already, this is the same as staying in business for three or four days.”

“I repeat, so?”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. “My franchise gets broken as a result of a night robbery — an unsolved night robbery.”

Clete took his finger out of the dial. “You mean, an unsolved robbery is cheaper than a solved one?”

Paul buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know, Clete. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper for my business, that’s for sure.”

“There’s something wrong about letting six punks get away with a hundred and forty-six bucks.”

“Yeah, but one way I lose a hundred and twenty-four and the other way I lose maybe ten times that amount. Sure, there’s something wrong about letting cheap punks get away with a robbery, but there’s something wrong when a man is starving to death and going bankrupt to maintain a business he can’t get out of. Hell, Clete, I’m not asking you to say the robbery never occurred — just shift the facts around a little.”

“Like how?”

“Well, like it happened in the middle of the night — a break-in instead of a hold-up. Maybe they busted a side window to get in.” Paul paused to think. “But you said you gimmicked their car?”

Clete nodded, replaced the phone on the hook, and scooped his dime from the return slot. “Yeah, I plugged the vent in the gas cap with some chewing gum. I figured the car’d go for maybe five, ten minutes before the vacuum kept the gas from coming into the carburetor.” He glanced at his watch. “I figure about now.”

Paul grinned. “You figured wrong. Most old cars, yeah, that would’ve done it. But that model Mercury’s got an extra vent in the gas pipe, to keep gas from backing up and over the fender in the summertime when it expands from the heat. Sorry, Clete, but they’re good for a lot of miles before their vacuum locks the gas line.”

Clete smiled, a wry smile that was more grimace than grin. “Then it wouldn’t make any difference when we called the cops, would it?”

Paul shook his head. “You know Nickie Nightstick. He couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag.”

“So now what?” asked Clete. Paul did not answer, but walked over to the tool bench and picked up a towel. Clete watched him as he stepped outside, crossed over to a window in the lube bay, and smashed his hand through a pane of glass near the sash lock.

“That’s the way they got in,” Paul explained, returning to the office. “Since you closed up after I left, I couldn’t take the day’s receipts with me. You left it in a paper bag in the back room, and they found it and stole it. They knew where to look, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Paul nodded, satisfied. “Guess I’ll be going home, then. Call me up if it gets busy — right?”

“Right.”

Paul opened a desk drawer and removed a card file. “Might as well work on some of my back bills,” he said. “Y’know, Cletus, it’s surprising how many dishonest people you find in a town like Silverglade. Kinda makes you wonder.”