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Chapter 32<br />
CHRIS TARBELL, FBI<br />
A<br />
question had been plaguing Chris Tarbell all day—in the office, at lunch, and now as he walked<br />
through downtown Manhattan with his coworkers. As the group crossed Broadway and turned right<br />
onto Center Street, he just couldn’t stop himself; he had to ask. “Okay,” he said to the men around him,<br />
“if you had to . . .” But before he could finish, they all began wincing, knowing full well what was<br />
coming. A “would you rather” joke from Tarbell was usually a distasteful, often comical query that<br />
always landed at a moment his colleagues least expected, intentionally catching them completely off<br />
guard. These often-crass jokes could range from the truly unpalatable to the truly bizarre. “Would you<br />
rather: sleep with your mother, or sleep with your father?” “Would you rather: be half your height, or<br />
double your weight?” “Would you rather have an erection for a year or hiccups for the rest of your<br />
life?”<br />
“Where do you come up with this shit, Tarbell?” one of his coworkers asked.<br />
“Come on. If you had to—like, you had no choice,” Tarbell continued, as they kept walking, his<br />
colleagues grimacing as Tarbell harangued them with questions like an older brother tormenting his<br />
younger siblings.<br />
The badgering briefly stopped when the group came upon the Whiskey Tavern, a local dive bar<br />
on Baxter Street, sandwiched between two bail-bond storefronts that looked out on the New York<br />
Police Department.<br />
All the cops and government employees in New York had local watering holes they burrowed<br />
into after work. The FDNY went to Social Bar on Eighth Avenue, the NYPD had Plug Uglies on<br />
Third, and the Cyber Division of the FBI’s New York office lived at the Whiskey Tavern. Special<br />
Agent Chris Tarbell of the FBI and his team of agents frequented the shit-hole dive bar at least five<br />
nights a week.<br />
When they arrived, Meg, the freckled bartender, would greet them with a “Hello, boys,” then let<br />
them know, “The back room is all yours.” The area of the bar she was referring to was always<br />
reserved for the FBI cybercrime crew, and if they arrived unannounced, Meg would evict whoever<br />
was there.<br />
Given that tonight was a special evening, Tarbell asked for a few bottles of champagne,<br />
pronounced “cham-pag-nay.” (By “champagne” he meant Miller High Life—the so-called champagne
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