K. William Hodges—Jerome Robinson

K. William Hodges and Jerome Robinson’s friendship is a crucial counterweight to the solitude surrounding the retired detective: Jerome is the person Hodges misses when he is away, the one he thinks of as a friend, and the person he calls when his instincts warn him that Brady Hartsfield may be watching. The relationship is built from chores and jokes as much as from trust. That everyday intimacy, visible from both men’s perspectives, also makes Jerome a target of Brady’s attention.

Identity and Everyday Foundation

Jerome first appears in this bond as the young man who works for Hodges, but the arrangement quickly exceeds an ordinary employer-and-employee relationship. Hodges misses Jerome’s face around the house and thinks of him as a cool kid. When Jerome’s mother asks whether he still works for him, Hodges answers yes and smiles at the familiar thought of Jerome and his chores. Their routine is comfortable enough to be summarized in a private joke, but companionship is its deeper value: Jerome brings company into a life in which Hodges has become isolated.

That companionship is reciprocal in practical form, though the evidence does not suggest that the two men occupy identical roles. Jerome mows Hodges’s shaggy lawn and puts the mower away in the carport. His note, signed by Jerome, comically adopts exaggerated dialect and offers to take on more chores. Hodges recognizes the performance as a joke, not as a measure of Jerome’s intelligence or character. The contrast is central to his affection: the young man who writes the note in mock speech earns straight As in advanced math, can repair gutters and basic plumbing, fixes Hodges’s frequently troublesome email, speaks French, and can hold forth on the blood symbolism of D. H. Lawrence.

A Friendship Expressed Through Help and Humor

Hodges’s response to the note reveals how much he values Jerome beyond his labor. He shakes his head, but cannot help smiling; then, alone in the house, he repeats Jerome’s name and thinks of their shared joke about chores. He considers Jerome the only person in the neighborhood whom he thinks of as a friend—and, in practice, the only one he needs. The affection is understated rather than sentimental. It lives in the mower returned to the carport, the computer repaired after Hodges’s mismanagement, and the pleasure he takes in Jerome’s presence.

Their joking also makes room for a serious recognition of Jerome’s position in the world. Hodges knows that Jerome’s college-professor father and accountant mother would be aghast at the deliberately absurd note, and he decides not to tell them about it. He understands that Jerome’s joking manner does not erase the “identity challenges” he has described as a gifted Black young man in an upper-middle-class family. The joke belongs to Jerome’s own expression and to the trust between the two men; Hodges does not treat it as permission to dismiss the tensions beneath it.

Trust Under the Threat of Surveillance

The friendship becomes consequential when Hodges realizes that his apparently private distress may not have been private at all. He has handled his father’s .38 in the living room and worries that someone could have watched through binoculars because he never thought to draw the shades. He considers whether Jerome might have seen him. Hodges concludes that Jerome would have been frightened and would have said something if he had witnessed it. The moment reveals how readily Hodges imagines Jerome not merely as an employee passing by, but as a friend attentive to his safety.

Brady Hartsfield, meanwhile, has also noticed that closeness. Driving through Hodges’s neighborhood in a company truck, he sees Jerome mowing the lawn and identifies him as the person who spends time with the retired detective. Brady has watched the pair together over the preceding two months and recognizes that Hodges treats Jerome as a friend as well as a part-time employee. This perception turns an ordinary bond into a security risk: Brady reasons that Jerome can offer Hodges encouragement and emotional support, and decides that the young man bears watching. Their friendship is therefore important not only for what it gives Hodges, but for what it reveals to his adversary.

The Call That Confirms Their Ease

Hodges’s instincts sharpen when he finds the online image associated with Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella. Instead of clicking the site’s invitation to get started, he calls one of the few numbers on speed dial. Jerome’s mother answers, exchanges a little pleasant conversation with him, and then hands the phone to Jerome. Hodges opens with an intentionally terrible imitation of Jerome’s joking dialect, asking whether he is keeping his girlfriends in line and doing well. Jerome replies simply that everything is fine.

The exchange is brief, but its ordinary rhythm carries weight. Hodges does not explain his suspicions in the excerpt; he uses the call to reach someone he trusts while considering whether the site could let Brady look through a window. The joke is a familiar bridge between them, and the call places that private familiarity inside a moment of possible danger. For Hodges, friendship is supposedly overrated, yet he relies on Jerome’s presence, judgment, and capacity to notice when something is wrong. Their bond is one of the few forms of connection he accepts—and precisely because it is real, Brady sees it as something that can be monitored.