Thirty-Two

Some personal problems lend themselves to long walks in the country, heart-to-heart soul barings, or howls at the moon. For everything else, there’s beer.

The Bell in Hand Tavern juts into the corner of Union and Marshall Streets like the prow of a ship. I carried my Sam Adams and Jael’s Lagavulin Scotch to the table at the prow of the building. I sat waiting for Jael, who had gone off to do something. I got bored and opened the Twitter app on my finally charged smartphone.

You can avoid an Internet fight simply by not participating. If you delete the Twitter app and go about your life, you can happily ignore the fact that countless trolls are dragging your name through the mud.

The problem is that you kind of want to know what the countless trolls are saying about you. Hence, I found myself searching for and reading tweets with the #TuckerGate tag. For example:

@PwnSec: Read the papers! @TuckerInBoston comes from a Mafia family. #TuckerGate

@NotAGirl: It’s not the first time a connected guy had the FBI covering for him in Boston. #TuckerGate

Right. Now I was Whitey Bulger.

@PwnSec: It’s time that we had some justice. You’re a dead man, @TuckerInBoston. #TuckerGate.

@CapnMerica: #Doxed! Here is @TuckerInBoston’s address for when the time comes.

And then he printed my Follen Street address again.

The wise thing to do was ignore all this, but I had had enough. I tweeted:

@TuckerInBoston: Hey @CapnMerica, my address is in the phone book, you dipshit. Why don’t you publish yours? #TuckerGate

The effect was like taking a baseball bat to a log full of angry yellow jackets. The creatures swarmed, and it was a tribute to the IT skills of the folks at Twitter that their servers held up. Random trolls took up the tweets:

I’m going to cut out your fucking liver. #TuckerGate

You’re what’s wrong with the world. #TuckerGate

A white man gets away with murder, what a surprise. #TuckerGate

My cell phone rang. Caroline.

“What are you doing?” asked Caroline.

“I’m drinking a beer at the Bell in Hand with Jael. Want to join me?”

“What are you doing on Twitter?”

“Watching the mob.”

“More like tweaking the mob.”

“The mob is harmless.”

“The mob tarred and feathered people right outside that window.”

“Yeah, in the eighteenth century.”

“You’re going to see it in the twenty-first century if you don’t stop tweeting, you idiot.”

“I’ve got a right to tweet.”

“No. You’ve got a right to remain silent, because anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. And that includes tweeting.”

As Caroline continued her harangue, an Asian guy on the street caught my eye and made a motion that seemed to say Stay there. I’ll be right in. I nodded and he set off toward the door.

“ … because I’m not going to lose you to diarrhea of the thumbs,” Caroline said.

“Jesus, could you be more graphic?”

“I’m serious. Stay off Twitter.”

The Asian guy was standing next to me now.

“I’ll stay off. I gotta go.” I broke the connection.

The guy asked, “Mr. Tucker, may we talk?”

“Sure.”

He looked out the window. “This is a nice view,” he said.

I looked out the window. The ghostly smokestacks of the Holocaust Memorial exhaled steam into the afternoon gloom. “If you say so.”

“It certainly lends perspective. It provides the big picture.”

Creepy dude.

“You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Exactly.”

“Then I guess we’re done talking.”

“No,” he said, “we’re not.” Leaning close, the guy snicked open a knife and touched it to my chest.

I backed away. He leaned in closer, hemming me against the window. The knife edged through the fabric of my shirt.

The guy said, “You need to stop your investigation.”

“What investigation?”

“Do not toy with me.”

“You can’t believe everything you read on Twitter.”

The knife slid along my torso, opening a tiny cut. “I’m not talking about Twitter.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about—”

Jael’s voice broke in. “I will put my knife through your kidney.”

She stood behind the guy, who had suddenly developed excellent posture. Still, his knife touched my skin.

He said, “Jael.”

“No names.”

“Of course.”

“Put your knife away,” said Jael. “Experience tells me that you will bleed to death three minutes after I puncture your kidney.”

The guy pulled his knife away, folded it, dropped it into his pants pocket, and raised his hands.

“Yes,” he said. “Three minutes is about right.”

“Get out.”

“Wait!” I said. I pulled out my phone, flipped open the camera app.

The guy started to move. Jael leaned closer, getting out of the picture, but also using her knife to straighten the guy up. I took the picture.

“Now, you can go,” I said.

He said, “I will get your phone.”

“Picture’s already in the cloud. No getting it back now.”

The guy stared hatred at me, turned, and walked out of the bar. Jael’s eyes tracked him until he strode out the door, head high, making no eye contact. She placed a butter knife on the table.

“A butter knife?”

“I improvised.”

“He knows you. How?”

Jael looked around at the bay window jutting into the street corner. “You have an instinct for finding the most insecure location in a room. We could be shot here from three sides.” She picked up her drink and walked into the bar, selecting a table with a good view of the doors. I followed.

“How does that guy know you?”

Jael said, “Now is not the time. #TuckerGate on Twitter is getting worse.”

“Do you know him?”

“You should look at Twitter.”

I opened my app. The vitriol continued its sewer pipe flow. For every fifty tweets calling me a “cocksucking fbifag” or a “fucking snitchtwat,” one promised to “cut off your balls and shove them down your throat,” “feed your liver to the sea gulls,” or “stick your severed head on the Public Garden fence.” At least fifty death threats.

I drank my beer, but I’d given up on the idea that it would bring me any comfort.