Duffy Deeter is a side character in the novel. As a lawyer, Deeter is a man who enjoys proving his masculinity. He likes pain, and enjoys rough sex and violence. His mistress, Susan, enjoys his dark company, and the two seem primed for violence throughout the novel. Throughout the novel, it is Deeter who seems to egg Joe Lon and Willard to even greater depths of violence than what they originally intend. Deeter's character plays the role of the nudge the boys need to push them over the edge of their violent tendencies, as they compete with one another to prove their masculinity.