“I was thinking ‘nowhere,’ but you get the point.” The expression on his face darkened again. I could tell he was thinking about work.

“I’m really sorry about your job,” I told him.

“I was just fired from a company whose biggest contribution to civilization is a urinal strainer,” he said. “That’s nothing to feel sorry about.” He smiled as he thought about it, then shook his head. “Although sometimes I wonder if ‘the Man Upstairs’ is working me over for something I did.”

The Man Upstairs, I thought, and something began to trouble me. Because I knew a man upstairs, too.

“Uh . . . Dad. What reason did they give for firing you?”

“It was the weirdest thing. They gave me this story about someone making a massive investment in our product development, but only if they fired me.”

I suddenly felt my skin begin to pull tight, like shrink-wrap on the Night Butcher’s steaks.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Why would anyone do that?”

Someone gave a ton of money . . . but only if my dad was fired. There was only one person I knew twisted enough to do something like that. Someone who had made a threat to get my dad fired once before.

When I got to Crawley’s place, the old man didn’t seem surprised to see me. That was my first clue that my suspicions were right on target.

“I need someone to walk my dogs,” he said as he opened the door.

“I couldn’t care less,” I told him. “You got my dad fired, didn’t you, you twisted old—”

“Careful, Mr. Bonano. I don’t take kindly to crude insults.”

I paced away from him, my fists clenched. Controlling your temper isn’t easy when you really don’t want to control it. If I blew a gasket now, though, I knew it could be a whole lot worse. This guy could end up punishing my whole family for the things I did.

“You’re a monster,” I told him. “My father worked nine years for that company, and now what is he going to do?”

He calmly returned to his place on the living-room sofa. “Why is that my problem?”

I felt like charging at him, but instead let loose a scream of pure rage that got all the dogs barking. And when the dogs quieted down, Crawley said, “Perhaps I can offer him some menial position.” He gave me the nastiest of smirks. “Floor scrubber . . . janitor . . . dog walker.”

I was about to tell him exactly what he could do with his menial position, but then he said, “Of course there is that new restaurant I recently acquired . . .” He looked off, scratching his temple like this was something that just occurred to him, when clearly it wasn’t.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve decided one restaurant isn’t enough, so I bought a second one a few miles away. An Italian place.”