by Ray Daniel
“Can I come in?”
Sixty-Two
Maria walked into my dark apartment and climbed onto one of my kitchen stools. She looked at Click and Clack.
“They’re sleeping?”
“Yeah.”
She looked around. “It’s dark.”
I flipped on the kitchen lights. They barely pierced the gloom. Maria had been to my apartment before in the context of sleepovers. Those times, the apartment seemed to absorb the happy energy of my preparations. I wiped all the counters, stocked the fridge with fruit and the cabinets with granola bars, my air-blowing popcorn maker taking pride of place on my countertop. Maria had never seen my condo in its mundane state of me just living in it, just eating, just sleeping, just going through my motions. I looked around the apartment through her eyes. What a dreary place.
I pulled out my flip phone.
“Are you calling Auntie Adriana?”
“Yeah, of course. She’s worried sick.”
Maria pouted.
“You don’t want me to call her?”
“No.”
“Too bad.” I dialed.
Adriana answered.
“She’s here,” I said.
“We’ll be right over.”
I flipped the phone shut. “They’re coming over.”
More pouting.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m thirsty.”
I got glasses, filled them with tap water. Gave one to Maria, kept one for myself, stood behind the breakfast nook. Tried again.
“Why did you run away?”
“I didn’t run away,” said Maria. “I came here.”
“Why didn’t you tell Aunt Adriana where you were going?”
“They were fighting.”
“People do that. It’s no reason to scare them.”
Maria drank some water, looked at the sleeping crabs. Tapped on the glass.
“Please don’t tap on the glass,” I said. “It disturbs the animals.”
“Like at the aquarium.”
“Exactly.”
More water drinking.
“They were fighting about me,” said Maria.
“What about you?”
“About whether I could come see you anymore.”
“Of course you can come see me. You didn’t have to run away.”
“Auntie Catherine says you’re dangerous.”
Just another kick in the gut. I was getting used to them.
“I’m not dangerous,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what Auntie Adriana said. She says you’re family.”
“I am family.”
“And Auntie Catherine said that you were just another Rizzo. That you belonged in jail.”
“They had this fight in front of you?”
“I was in my room. But I could hear.”
Great. Just fucking great. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with this. So I punted. “You want to watch Netflix?”
Maria nodded. We moved to the living room, where I threw on the Powerpuff Girls. Maria and I had made a pact to only watch the show with each other. It picked up where we had left off. That nut Professor Utonium had left the girls alone for an afternoon, and hilarity ensued.
“I used to think you were like him,” said Maria, nodding at the flat-screen monitor on my wall.
“Who? Utonium?”
“Uh-huh. You know, because you’re like a scientist.”
“But you don’t anymore?”
“Professor Utonium doesn’t get mad, but you do. So I don’t think you’re the same.”
“If he had to deal with a bunch of hackers, he’d be mad too.”
Maria nodded. “Yeah, he also doesn’t listen sometimes.”
“I listen.” On the screen, the Powerpuff Girls were beating up a goofy monster.
“Yeah, you do sometimes.”
“When don’t I listen?”
She said nothing.
We watched cartoons until the doorbell buzzed. I walked to the door, worked the intercom.
“It’s us,” said Adriana.
I buzzed them up, opened the door to my apartment. Went back into the living room and paused the show.
“I was watching that,” Maria said.
“I know, but your moms are here.”
Maria crossed her arms and sulked on the couch. Adriana and Catherine walked through the open door.
Catherine said, “You should put in a peephole, so you don’t have to leave the door open.”
“And a Happy Unsolicited Advice Day to you too,” I said, leaving the door open.
“Jesus, are we going to start already?” Adriana said. She went to Maria on the couch. “You get over here!”
Maria didn’t move.
“You see what I put up with,” Adriana said to me.
“What we put up with,” said Catherine.
“Yes. Yes,” said Adriana.
“I’m surprised you two came alone,” I said.
“Why?” asked Catherine.
“Seems bold, seeing as how Maria’s been told I’m dangerous and all.”
Catherine looked away. Adriana said to her, “I told you Maria was listening.”
“It’s true.”
“Because you heard it on the Internet, right?” I said. “What are you? A child?”
“You haven’t been able to explain any of it!” Catherine said.
“I don’t have to explain it. It’s lies.”
“Not the videos.”
“The videos show me—”
“Show you beating people up.”
“That’s not a beating.”
“You can’t go around hitting people. You’re a bad influence on Maria.”
“Leave me out of it,” said Maria with preternatural maturity.
“You, young lady, are in big, big trouble,” said Adriana. “What got into you?”
“Your fighting,” I said.
“We’re fighting because of you,” said Adriana.
“Because Catherine says I’m a bad influence?”
“I’m not wrong,” said Catherine. “You’re just as bad as the rest of them.”
“The rest of what?”
“The rest of the Internet trolls.”
“I’m not a troll. I was just minding my own business.”
“You started this whole thing!”
“Peter started it.”
“And what if you had let it go?” Catherine said.
“What?”
“What if you didn’t have to be the big man on the Internet?”
“He would have—”
“He would have gone and picked on somebody else, and Maria would have gotten off with a suspension. But you had to go after him.”
“He deserved it.”
“And what do you think the #TuckerGate people are saying about you?”
I had had enough of this. I stalked over to Maria. “You need to go now.”
Maria remained unmoved. “I don’t want to go!”
Adriana said, “C’mon, honey. We’ve got to go home.”
“No!”
This had an easy solution. I picked Maria up.
“Put me down!” she shrieked.
“Put her down, Tucker,” said Adriana.
“Just put her down,” said Catherine.
I carried the squirming Maria to the open door of my apartment and placed her in the hallway. “It’s time for you to go home.”
Maria looked up at me, eyes narrowed. “I hate you!”
They all left. I closed the door behind them.
“That makes two of us.”
Sixty-Three
Early, way too early
, on the morning of April 19, 1775, a group of wannabe soldiers stood around on the Lexington town green waiting to confront troops, fellow citizens of the British Empire, who had come to take away their guns. The battle, such as it was, went as poorly as encounters between armed troops and angry citizens always go. From the Boston Massacre to Kent State, hair-trigger tension and the slip of a finger have the same result. Five killed at the Boston Massacre, four at Kent State, and eight at Lexington Green.
The difference was that Lexington launched a war. We don’t talk about the Lexington Massacre. Instead we talk about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and how those battles triggered enough rage across the Colonies to drive a revolution, the Revolution, the birth of the United States.
Today, in Boston, we celebrate Patriots’ Day with reenactments (at the same cock-crowing early hour), pancake breakfasts, and the Boston Marathon. At the moment, I was celebrating Patriots’ Day by tapping at my tablet, drinking a cup of coffee, and enjoying a hangover-free brain.
About twenty-five miles west, the elite women marathon runners were starting their race toward Boston. I, on the other hand, was engaged in no such healthy behavior. I was poking through Twitter trying to make sense of Catherine’s comments last night. I wasn’t a troll. Was I?
The picture of Dorothy, Russell, Earl, E, and me continued to make its rounds in the darker corners of the conversation. The picture had been turned into a meme, with One Down Three to Go superimposed over the shot in Impact font. Bets were being made as to who’d be next.
Not surprisingly, Epomis (E), NotAGirl (Dorothy) and Eliza (Russell) had gone to ground, after Eliza had gotten into an all-caps shouting match over whether Tron (Earl) had gotten what he deserved because of his life ruins. The conversation ended with the tweet from my online doppelganger:
@TuckerInB0ston: I guess you’re next, Eliza. #TuckerGate
I’d had enough of Twitter for a lifetime. I turned on the TV, watched as the women ran down Route 135 in Hopkinton. They’d just started. Then, sitting in front of the TV, I checked out the results of my password cracking. The results were acutely disappointing. Worst passwords ever.
Xiong’s password was xiongspassword. The username sarah had opted for the ever popular qwerty1234, and roger had showed his team spirit with GoRedSox! At least he had thrown in some capitals and special characters. These passwords were cute, adorable even. But the password for farli told the whole story: di3hack3rsdi3!!
I flipped open my phone, called Mel.
“Meet me at Xiong’s.”
“Why?”
“Our killer works there.”
I threw on clothes, ran downstairs, debated Uber vs Zipcar. Tried the Uber app; the city was already at peak demand. Patriots’ Day traffic would have the Uber drivers milling about like ants in a smashed colony. Better to drive myself.
A half hour later, I was sitting on the hood of a Zipcar Honda Civic named Zesty in front of Xiong Distribution.
Mel pulled alongside me. “What’s up?”
Mel unlocked the front door. We stopped at the front desk with its crappy PC and I logged into the server as farli using the di3hack3rsdi3!! password. Started poking around, but didn’t have to poke far. A folder of pictures sat on farli’s desktop. The first was a picture of five people in front of my house. A picture without an X over any of us.
Mel said, “The original.”
“Yeah.”
Ten other pictures filled the folder. Pictures of headless bodies: Peter and Earl.
“These are also originals,” said Mel. “These shots aren’t out there.”
One picture was different than the others, a Photoshopped merging of Peter’s head and Earl’s head into a meme with Latin on the bottom.
Dies ultimus.
“Who dies?” I asked.
“It’s Latin,” said Mel. “Dies is ‘the day.’”
“Ultimus?”
“The last day?” she guessed.
“Oh no.”
I jumped into the browser, started to type 4chan.org. The browser had been there before, filling in the URL for me. I hit return. The meme sat at the top of the page. Anonymous comments scrolling down as the 4chan denizens tried to decipher it.
“They’re all targets,” I said.
“You too,” said Mel.
“I’m not worried about me. I know where I am.” I dialed a number on my phone.
Dorothy picked up. “Can you get out of the house today?” I said quickly. “Go see the marathon or something?”
“No,” said Dorothy. “My aunt and I are watching it on TV.”
“Don’t show her 4chan, and don’t let anyone in.”
“What’s on 4chan?”
“I gotta go.” I dialed Russell. “Did you see 4chan?”
“No,” said Russell. “But there’s a new picture on Twitter.”
“Dies ultimus?”
“That’s the one.”
“Stay inside,” I said. “I’ll try to get the four of us to a safe place. Don’t let anyone in.”
“What am I supposed to do inside?”
“Seriously? You have a computer and a ballgame starting at eleven. Figure it out.”
Hung up, called E. It rang. It rang some more. It rang a little bit more and went to a voicemail message that repeated the number back to me.
I texted E: We need to talk.
No answer.
I had a bad feeling.
“C’mon,” I said to Mel. “We’ve got to get to E’s house.”
“Do you think … ?”
I didn’t answer, just moved.
Sixty-Four
Zesty the Zipcar would have to sit in Everett until I got back to it. Mel and I buckled into her car, and she pulled out.
“What’s the address?” asked Mel.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Never been to her house?”
“I didn’t say that.”
We had walked down a street near the Beehive, E’s hand in mine, stopping on the front steps of a brownstone.
“So you have been to her house.”
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t know where it is.”
“It was late.”
“I see … ” said Mel. She looked forward, continued driving. “I’m heading for Boston. Is that at least in the right direction?”
“Seriously?”
“Because, you know, maybe she could live anywhere in New England.”
“We had breakfast.”
“Yeah? Did you call her or nudge her?”
“Nudged her,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Are you jealous?”
“I’m just surprised that you’re a little bit more whorey than I imagined.”
“We ate at the Wholy Grain.” I took Mel’s phone, typed in the address. Looked at the map. “And her house is on Hanson Street.”
“Hanson Street.”
“Across the street from a playground.”
“That’s a start, I guess.”
“Seriously, are you jealous? Why?”
Mel pursed her lips and drove. I flipped open my stupid phone, called Jael. Told her what was happening, where we were going.
“Across the street from a playground?” asked Jael.
“I don’t know the address.”
“I will see you there.”
Hung up with Jael, called Lee. Told him the same thing.
“On Hanson Street,” said Lee.
“Yes.”
“Across the street from a playground.”
“Yes.”
“You are calling to tell me about a potential murder and you don’t have a better address than ‘across the street from a playground.’”
“On Hanson Street!”
&nbs
p; “On Hanson Street.”
“Are you coming or not?”
“Of course,” said Lee. “I have to see this playground on Hanson Street.”
“It’s no joke. She’s going to get killed.”
“I will be there.”
Mel, following the GPS, drove us up onto the Zakim Bridge and down onto Storrow Drive, where traffic ground to a stop.
“I thought this thing was supposed to take us around traffic,” I said.
“It’s all traffic,” said Mel. “It’s Patriots’ Day.”
We inched past the Hatch Shell and the Esplanade. The day had turned on us, a splattering of raindrops hitting the windshield. Somewhere west of Boston the second and third waves of thirty thousand runners were being unleashed upon the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston. Their friends and family were jamming the city now, looking for parking, filling the public transit, finding a spot where they could watch the race. College students were pregaming a day of drunken cheering, cops were adjusting crowd control barriers, the elite runners were getting into their stride, and the great mass of weekend athletes were inching their way toward a starting line in anticipation of their big day.
None of this was helping us get to E’s apartment any faster.
Mel drove, silent.
“Can I use your phone?” I asked.
“Don’t mess up the GPS.”
“I won’t.”
I opened the browser, jumped to 4chan.org/b/. The only thing at the top of the list was a poll asking whether you’re a homo for getting off on a transwoman. Horrible, as usual, but at least it wasn’t a picture of E’s head staring into the camera. Nerves and fascination caused me to scroll down a couple of pages, but I saw only more of the same. E was safe so far.
Mel pulled off of Storrow, navigated Arlington, driving between the Public Garden and the Taj Hotel. We hit every red light, caught no breaks, and watched helplessly as mobs of crowds crossed the street in front of us.
“Doesn’t this have a siren?” I asked.
“Don’t you think I’d be using it?” Mel said.
I blew a sigh. “Maybe I should walk.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Are you mad at me?”
Mel shook her head.
“Because as far as I know, we were never dating.”
“I just expected a little more from you, is all.”
