Lozini waited, impatient, while Walters fumbled at the envelope, finally opening it and taking out a sheet of notepaper that had to be unfolded twice. Then, panting a bit, Walters said, “At the New York Room they took nine hundred in cash, and approximately three thousand in credit-card slips. At the brewery, between seven and nine thousand dollars in checks, and approximately four hundred in cash. And at the parking garage, three hundred seventy-four dollars in cash.”
Lozini added it up as Walters talked. “Almost fourteen thousand he cost us,” he said.
“Not exactly,” Walters said. “The cash is gone, obviously, and so are the credit-card slips. Most of the checks stolen from the brewery can be replaced, though, once previous payments by the customers have been aligned with the current record of deliveries. There’ll be some inevitable loss there, but we should make about an eighty-percent recovery.”
“Losing about a thousand,” Lozini said. “And costing how much to do the paperwork to get the rest back?”
“I haven’t attempted to work that out,” Walters said.
“Don’t,” Lozini told him. “What’s the situation with employees?”
“The only employees at the nightclub,” Walters said, “to become aware of the robbery when it was in progress were Frankie here and a waitress named Angela Dawson. Frankie assures me Miss Dawson will be no trouble.”
Lozini looked at Faran. “That right?”
“She’s a friend of mine,” Faran said. He still looked green and pasty, and when he talked he sounded as though somebody was slowly strangling him. “It’s okay, Mr. Lozini, I talked to her and she’s taken care of.”
Lozini nodded, and turned back to Walters. “What about the rest?”
“At the brewery,” Walters said, consulting his sheet of paper again, “the only employee inconvenienced was the night watchman, Donald Snyder. He was locked in a bathroom and—”
Lozini, frowning, said, “What was that name?”
“Donald Snyder.”
“Why do I know that?”
Deadpan, phlegmatic, Walters said, “He was also the night watchman at Fun Island when there was that trouble two years ago.”
Lozini permitted himself a thin smile. “He’s running a streak,” he said. “What happened to him?”
“He’s the one who reported the robbery,” Walters said, “after he got himself out of the bathroom. His description of the general build of the one thief he saw up close suggests it wasn’t the one called Parker but the other one. There was apparently, by the way, an attempt made to send a message through Snyder to you.””A message?”
“As he did with Frankie,” Walters said.
Lozini frowned at Faran. “What message?”
Faran licked his lips and adjusted himself again in the chair. “He said to tell you what he was taking was interest on the debt, and didn’t count against the principal.”
“He did, huh.” Grunting, Lozini looked again at Walters. “Same with the night watchman?”
“He didn’t get to give the message,” Walters said, “since Snyder had apparently never heard of you. He can’t remember the name of the thief used, except that he’s sure it began L-o.”
Ted Shevelly and Harold Calesian both grinned slightly. “Anonymity,” Shevelly said. “What do you think of that?”
“It’s about time,” Lozini said. Anonymity was what he wanted, though he’d had damn little of it the last ten years or so. There was always something or other in the newspapers, all hedged around with words like “alleged” and “putative” so a lawsuit could never be launched to put a stop to it, and it was hell on the family. Newspaper people had no sense of decency. Fortunately, Lozini’s six children were all daughters, all now grown and married and with other last names, but there was still his wife, and other relatives scattered around the state.
Walters was saying, “Snyder seems none the worse for his experience. After the last time, when some of our own people roughed him up a bit, he was given the job at the brewery.”
There was a comic-opera touch here that Lozini didn’t like. He wanted to get past it, get on to other things. “What do we do for him this time?” he said.
Walters shrugged. “A few weeks off with pay. He hasn’t the slightest idea what’s going on, or even that anything is going on. He’s your true innocent bystander.”
“We oughta put a plaque on him,” Lozini said. “Anybody else?”
“One man at the garage,” Walters said. “He got hit on the head, apparently by Parker. His name is Anthony Scoppo, and he was released from the hospital this morning.”
“He one of ours?”
Walters pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. He kept himself as ignorant as possible of the actual work Lozini’s people did.
Lozini looked over at Shevelly. “Anthony Scoppo. Ours?”
“I think I remember the name,” Shevelly said. “He drove a car for us a couple of times, but he gets too nervous. We haven’t used him for anything for a while.”
To Walters again, Lozini said, “Another message to me?”
“No, Parker didn’t mention you at all. Apparently he assumed you’d understand without his saying anything, since that was the third operation of the night.”
