Lenz kills the Nucks' dog (pp. 578–579)
Mr. Green designed sort of sadistic practical-joke supplies, specializing in the Jolly Jolt Hand Buzzer and Blammo Cigar product-lines, with a sideline in entomological icecubes and artificial dandruff, etc. Demoralizing, sedentary, character-twisting work
Context
Before the catastrophe, the decline — and it's a decline the son inherits as his one clear picture of the man. A New England aerobics star washed up when one leg outgrew the other, Mr. Green is forced into a Waltham novelty concern designing "sadistic practical-joke supplies," pacing the living room nightly in his cauldron-black orthopedic boot with a Falstaff tallboy, muttering, "character-twisting" work souring him by degrees. The theme's damaged-father panel in its economic key: a man deformed by a job that monetizes cruelty as comedy, whose bitterness is loaded, literally, into the joke-products that will later become the murder weapon. Bruce grows up watching the trade twist the father, and the twist is the transmission.