Hawley looked confused. "The Park? Let's see it."
Norman gave him the report, then leaned back in his chair, savagely puffing at his cigar.
Hawley looked up. "I can't see anything wrong with this."
"You can't?" Norman said sarcastically. "You think I don't know the Park never grossed more than three thousand a week since it was built?
I'm not a dope altogether."
"The gross on the report is correct, Bernie.
Our auditors check it every week."
Bernie scowled at him. "What about those employee bonuses? Twenty-four hundred dollars in the last two months!
You think I'm crazy?
I never O.K.'d anything like that."
"Sure you did, Bernie," Hawley replied. "That's the twenty-five-per cent manager's bonus we set up to help us over the slump after Christmas."
"But we set the top gross for the theaters as a quota," Norman snapped. "We figured out it would cost us next to nothing. What figure did we use for the Park?"
"Three thousand."
Bernie looked down at the report.
"It's a trick," he said. "Taubman's been stealing us blind. If he wasn't, how come all of a sudden he's grossing forty-two hundred?"
"Taubman isn't managing the theater now. He's been out with appendicitis since right after Christmas."
"His signature's on the report."
"That's just a rubber stamp. All the managers have them."
"So who's managing the theater?" Norman asked. "Who's the wise guy beating us out of three hundred a week?"
Hawley looked uncomfortable.
"We were in a spot, Bernie.
Taubman caught us at a bad time; we didn't have anybody else to send in."
"So stop beating around the bush and tell me already," Norman snapped.
"Your nephew, David Woolf," the treasurer said reluctantly.
Norman clapped his hand to his head dramatically.
"Oy!
I might have known."
"There wasn't anything else we could do." Hawley reached for a cigarette nervously. "But the kid did a good job, Bernie.
He made tie-ins with all the neighborhood stores, pulled in some give-aways and he swamps the neighborhood with heralds twice a week.
He even started what he calls family night, for Monday and Tuesday, the slow nights.
A whole family gets in for seventy-five cents. And it's working.
His candy and popcorn sales are four times what they were."
"So what's the extra business costing us?"
Again the treasurer looked uncomfortable.
"It added a little to operating expenses but we figure it's worth it."
"So?" Norman said. "Exactly how much?"
Hawley picked up the report. He cleared his throat.
"Somewhere between eight and eight fifty a week."
"Somewhere between eight and eight fifty a week," Bernie repeated sarcastically.
He got to his feet and glared at the treasurer. "A bunch of shmucks I got working for me," he shouted suddenly.
"The whole increase does nothing for us. But for him it's fine.
Three hundred a week extra he puts in his pocket."
He turned and stormed over to the window and looked out.
The cold air came in through the open frame. Angrily he slammed down the window.
The weather was miserable here, not warm and sunny like it was in California.
"I wouldn't say that," Hawley said. "When you figure the over-all, including the concession sales, we're netting a hundred and fifty a week more."
Norman turned around.
"Nine hundred a week of our money he spends to make himself three hundred.
We should maybe give him a vote of thanks that he lets us keep the hundred and fifty?"
His voice rose to a shrill shriek.