Bought it fully outfitted and opened up on Pine Street. I was at that location for almost a year, and I saw that if I stayed, I’d be bankrupt in another year. There were too many other quick-bite joints in the neighborhood, some good, some not so good, all of em with their regulars. I was like a kid fresh out of law school who hangs out his shingle in a town that already has a dozen well-established shysters. Also, in those days Al’s Famous Fatburger sold for two-fifty. Even back in 1990 two and a half was the best I could do.”

“Then how in hell do you sell it for less than half that now? Unless it really is cat.”

He snorted, a sound that produced a phlegmy echo of itself deep in his chest. “Buddy, what I sell is a hundred percent pure American beef, the best in the world. Do I know what people say? Sure. I shrug it off. What else can you do? Stop people from talking? You might as well try to stop the wind from blowing.”

I ran a finger across my throat. Al smiled.

“Yeah, gettin off on one of those sidetracks, I know, but at least this one’s part of the story.

“I could have kept beating my head against the wall on Pine Street, but Yvonne Templeton didn’t raise any fools. ‘Better to run away and fight again some other day,’ she used to tell us kids. I took the last of my capital, wheedled the bank into loaning me another five grand — don’t ask me how — and moved here to The Falls. Business still hasn’t been great, not with the economy the way it is and not with all that stupid talk about Al’s Catburgers or Dogburgers or Skunkburgers or whatever tickles people’s fancy, but it turns out I’m no longer tied to the economy the way other people are. And it’s all because of what’s behind that pantry door. It wasn’t there when I was set up in Auburn, I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles ten feet high. It only showed up here.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked at me steadily from his watery, newly old eyes. “Talking’s done for now. You need to find out for yourself. Go on, open it.”