THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FOUR

TOMMY MALONE WALKS THROUGH the frigid darkness, returning to Hemingway's Pub on foot, not a terrible walk from the hotel where he's staying, toting a bag over his shoulder. The parking lot is empty at two in the morning and well shoveled from the snowfall, but he watches out for the possibility of ice.

At the back entrance, he types six numbers into the alarm pad, the same six numbers his "eye" device captured the early morning manager typing into the pad the last few mornings. Sure enough, the thick metal door pops open, allowing Tommy inside.

Tommy figures he has until five in the morning — three hours from now — before anyone shows up at this place. That's been the routine over the last several days of his surveillance, at least; you never really know.

He keeps his flashlight low to the floor, just enough to allow him to navigate through the supply room and the kitchen, which smells strongly of disinfectant, until he reaches the back office. This is where he will know for sure.

The door is locked but not, thank God, with a code. Just a straightforward single-cylinder deadbolt lock. In his business, you learn how to get past these things pretty quickly.

And he does. Less than two minutes with the tension tool and jiggler, and he's inside David's office. He risks flipping on a light, figuring that an interior room, with the door closed, won't emit any light outside the restaurant to any patrol officer or lookie-loo who might be driving by.

David's office is military-level neat, with three stacks of paper on the desk, shelves filled with folders labeled clearly. He notes a bit of dust on the desk, which tells him that whoever is charged with cleaning up the restaurant isn't allowed in this office.

"Only you're allowed in here," Tommy whispers. "Isn't that right, David?"

He needs the receipts — the receipts from the last three nights, taken from the cash registers between the hours of 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., when Tommy was here watching. He finds the folder for the receipts from this week and looks them over. For each day, there are three stacks of receipts.

Three stacks. But there are only two cash registers.

Maybe the third stack is for credit card receipts? But no, Tommy finds as he leafs through the receipts for yesterday. The credit card slips are included along with the cash receipts.

What's this third stack?

That's when he sees it. Hell, it's sitting right there in front of him, right next to the computer: a third cash register. A cash register inside David's office?

He smiles. His job just got much easier.

He doesn't bother with the dining-room register — he didn't pay attention to food, only to drinks. He riffles through the bar receipts, doing math on his phone's calculator, counting all the beverages purchased at the bar yesterday between the hours of 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. He does the count quickly once, then repeats it. Each time, he gets the same number: 127 drinks of various kinds were purchased during that three-hour window and rung up at the bar.

That sounds right. Tommy, watching from the booth yesterday, had a count of 124. He was off by a handful, which he figured might happen no matter how careful he tried to be.

Wait. He realizes he didn't count his own drinks, dumbass, in the calculation. He had three bourbons. So the count of 127 beverages matches exactly.

Leaving aside the receipts from the dining room, that leaves the mysterious third stack, from the cash register so close to Tommy right now that he could reach out and touch it. He riffles through the stack quickly, counting the number of drinks purchased according to these receipts. He does it once, then again, and because his two counts are different, he counts a third time, more slowly and meticulously. Finally, he's sure of the number.

Fifty-eight. The receipts from the mysterious third register record fifty-eight additional drinks purchased between 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. yesterday. Drinks, of course, that were never actually purchased.

And every one, every single one of these phantom drink purchases — every single damn one of them — was rung up as a cash purchase. Of course they were.

Tommy sits back in his chair. "I fucking knew it," he whispers.

He pulls the receipts for the two days before yesterday from the three-ring binder and repeats the process, comparing them to the counts he made while watching from his booth in the bar. And the results aren't much different.

Three days ago, David's mysterious third cash register showed sixty-two additional purchases of booze — again, all in cash. Two days ago, the inflated number was fifty-one additional drinks. And yes, all in cash.

Sixty-two, fifty-one, fifty-eight — David's mixing the numbers up from day to day, keeping it relatively level, because he's not an idiot. That would be the smart play. Keep a nice, fairly steady total from day to day of fake purchases. Nothing that would jump out to a bank looking at your daily deposits.

And this is just for the sale of drinks — alcohol and mixers that have long shelf lives. Imagine what David could do with the food, some of which inevitably goes bad before it gets used and has to be tossed. Every item of food the pub throws out David could pretend was sold and consumed and ring up a cash transaction for it.

Tommy closes the binder and puts it back where he found it. He takes a deep breath and releases it.

To review: David Bowers is the town hero, an internet sensation, after diving into a river to save a drowning man.

He's a local business owner who has operated a popular restaurant for more than a decade.

He's left-handed. He doesn't drink.

And he's one hell of a money launderer.