Not groundbreaking information, but information none the less.
Every little piece could prove important at some point.
You never knew.
The bar went and stayed empty around midnight, leaving them both to decide to break it down for the night. The meeting came to a close at around twelve-thirty, Vin walking most of the men outside as Max went out of his way to say goodnight to Faith who gave him what he could only call a genuine smile, something she did so rarely that it was almost startling to see when she did. It made her entire face light up.
Vin came back in ten minutes later, walking right over to Faith and sliding a thick envelope across the bar toward her with absolutely no ceremony. And she took it with the same enthusiasm, making him suddenly wonder if she wasn't just a bartender after all.
What could a mob boss be giving her an envelope full of?
Chances were, nothing good.
Daniel sighed, wiping down the bar again even though he had already done so twice and so had Faith.
"You'll show him how to do the spill log and cash out tonight, yeah?" Vin asked and he could see Faith visibly deflate at that. "He doesn't need much more training. It'd be good to get this out of the way. The kitchen is closing down now. You will have quiet to go over it," he finished, patting her hand and moving toward the door. "Goodnight kids," he called, nice Italian father persona seeping through his pores in a way that made Daniel sure that while he was absolutely other things, that was a part of it. No one could fake it that well.
"Mi amor," Rodrigo, the kitchen guy who had an obvious and one-sided crush on Faith called from the side of the bar. "Need a walk home?"
Faith sighed, shaking her head. "Vin just left but not before giving me another hour of work to do. But thanks, Rodrigo. Always looking out for me."
"Happily. Someone should be looking out for you, bella dama."
She gave him a forced smile. "Have a good night, Rodrigo."
"You too. Don't work too hard," he said, giving her a wave, ignoring Daniel completely, and disappearing into the kitchen.
When she didn't immediately move to engage him, instead clicking away at her phone for a long minute, he prompted, "So the spill log..."
She exhaled hard and put her cell away, turning to the back bar and dragging out a big leather-bound book. "The spill log," she started in a tired, eighth- grade teacher kind of way, "where we record drinks we quite literally spill, got returned, or are on the house because of a screw up or because they're friends of Vin. For example, tonight," she said, flipping open to a page somewhere halfway in and starting to write, "no drinks were actually spilled or returned, but we had two Balvenie 40s, seven pours of Johnnie Blue for Anthony, three pours for Vin, then four each for all of his guests," she went on, scribbling fast, remembering each of their drinks and jotting them down.
"Nice memory there, sweetheart."
"And then what you do," she said, completely ignoring him, "is you flip to this glossary I printed out on the back that tells you how much each spill is. Then you add that all up and subtract it from the nightly totals. You do the totals by hitting this button for the count," she went on, going to the register and pushing a button, making a long receipt print out of it. "Then you need to count out the drawer keeping in mind we keep about five-hundred in small bills in it at all times as well as eighty in change. So you subtract the five-eighty from what is in the drawer. You then remove whatever is above that, leaving the five-eighty in, and put it in this sleeve," she said, grabbing a zippered bag from under the register. "Then you take this receipt and write on the bottom the amount of money spilled so when me or Salvatore does the close-out in the morning, we get the total right."
"Why don't you teach me to do the close-out?"
"Because we like to leave it until the morning in case there were any errors the severs or anyone made with the credit cards. It gives us a chance to fix them before we submit it. Besides that, you're new and the totals are a big deal. No offense, but no one trusts you enough for that yet."
That was somewhat offensive, but he wasn't offended. She was right; it was smart business to let the people who knew what they were doing, do it.
"Then you take the computer print out and all the credit card receipts and you put it with this money and then drop it into the lock box in the office. That's about it. So," she said, putting the print out, the spill log, and the drawer in a stack and moving out from behind the bar to one of the tables in the bar area. "Grab that calculator," she advised as she sat down and laid out all the stuff she had compiled.