Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(30)

Of course this is police business and K. William Hodges is no longer a policeman. By pursuing it he is skating well beyond the bounds of what is legal and he knows it—for one thing, he is withholding evidence—but he has no intention of stopping just yet. The cocky arrogance of the freako’s letter has pissed him off. But, he admits, it’s pissed him off in a good way. It’s given him a sense of purpose, and after the last few months, that seems like a pretty terrific thing.

If I do happen to make a little progress, I’ll turn the whole thing over to Pete.

He’s not looking in the rearview mirror as this thought crosses his mind, but if he had been, he would have seen his eyes flick momentarily up and to the left.

4

Hodges parks his Toyota in the sheltering overhang to the left of his house that serves as his garage, and pauses to admire his freshly cut lawn before going to the door. There he finds a note sticking out of the mail slot. His first thought is Mr. Mercedes, but such a thing would be bold even for that guy.

It’s from Jerome. His neat printing contrasts wildly with the bullshit jive of the message.

Dear Massa Hodges,

I has mowed yo grass and put de mower back in yo cah-pote. I hopes you didn’t run over it, suh! If you has any mo chos for dis heah black boy, hit me on mah honker. I be happy to talk to you if I is not on de job wit one of my hos. As you know dey needs a lot of work and sometimes some tunin up on em, as dey can be uppity, especially dem high yallers! I is always heah fo you, suh!

Jerome

Hodges shakes his head wearily but can’t help smiling. His hired kid gets straight As in advanced math, he can replace fallen gutters, he fixes Hodges’s email when it goes blooey (as it frequently does, mostly due to his own mismanagement), he can do basic plumbing, he can speak French pretty well, and if you ask what he’s reading, he’s apt to bore you for half an hour with the blood symbolism of D. H. Lawrence. He doesn’t want to be white, but being a gifted black male in an upper-middle-class family has presented him with what he calls “identity challenges.” He says this in a joking way, but Hodges does not believe he’s joking. Not really.

Jerome’s college professor dad and CPA mom—both humor-challenged, in Hodges’s opinion—would no doubt be aghast at this communication. They might even feel their son in need of psychological counseling. But they won’t find out from Hodges.

“Jerome, Jerome, Jerome,” he says, letting himself in. Jerome and his chos fo hos. Jerome who can’t decide, at least not yet, on which Ivy League college he wants to attend; that any of the big boys will accept him is a foregone conclusion. He’s the only person in the neighborhood whom Hodges thinks of as a friend, and really, the only one he needs. Hodges believes friendship is overrated, and in this way, if in no other, he is like Brady Hartsfield.

He has made it in time for most of the evening news, but decides against it. There is only so much Gulf oil-spill and Tea Party politics he can take. He turns on his computer instead, launches Firefox, and plugs Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella into the search field. There are only six results, a very small catch in the vast fishy sea of the Internet, and only one that matches the phrase exactly. Hodges clicks on it and a picture appears.

Under a sky filled with threatening clouds is a country hillside. Animated rain—a simple repeating loop, he judges—is pouring down in silvery streams. But the two people seated beneath a large blue umbrella, a young man and a young woman, are safe and dry. They are not kissing, but their heads are close together. They appear to be in deep conversation.

Below the picture, there’s a brief description of the Blue Umbrella’s raison d’être.

Unlike sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella is a chat site where old friends can meet and new friends can get to know one another in TOTAL GUARENTEED ANONYMITY. No pictures, no  p**n , no 140-character Tweets, just GOOD OLD-FASHIONED CONVERSATION.

Below this is a button marked GET STARTED NOW! Hodges mouses his cursor onto it, then hesitates. About six months ago, Jerome had to delete his email address and give him a new one, because everyone in Hodges’s address book had gotten a message saying he was stranded in New York, someone had stolen his wallet with all his credit cards inside, and he needed money to get home. Would the email recipient please send fifty dollars—more if he or she could afford it—to a Mail Boxes Etc. in Tribeca. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I get this mess straightened out,” the message concluded.

Hodges was deeply embarrassed because the begging request had gone out to his ex, his brother in Toledo, and better than four dozen cops he’d worked with over the years. Also his daughter. He had expected his phone—both landline and cell—to ring like crazy for the next forty-eight hours or so, but very few people called, and only Alison seemed actually concerned. This didn’t surprise him. Allie, a Gloomy Gus by nature, has been expecting her father to lose his shit ever since he turned fifty-five.

Hodges had called on Jerome for help, and Jerome explained he had been a victim of phishing.

“Mostly the people who phish your address just want to sell Viagra or knockoff jewelry, but I’ve seen this kind before, too. It happened to my Environmental Studies teacher, and he ended up paying people back almost a thousand bucks. Of course, that was in the old days, before people wised up—”

“Old days meaning exactly when, Jerome?”