The buzzer rang from over by the phone. It was that buzzer from downstairs, said that someone was wantin’ to get in. She wasn’t expecting anyone, so she stayed where she was. Probably someone was down there hittin’ all the buzzers, just lookin’ to get inside.

She shook a Newport out of her pack and lit it. The menthol, it tasted good after you smoked some get-high. Olivia smiled, looking at the face Martin was making on the TV show. The music sounded good, too, coming from the stereo. She looked at the joint resting in the ashtray and considered picking it back up. But she was already trippin’ behind this shit, so she let it lay there where it was.

SUE Tracy had met Quinn over at his apartment on Sligo Avenue, in a boxy brick structure near a small convenience market in Silver Spring. When they spent the night together they did it at his place. More often these days, Sue, who had a one-bedroom off Rockville Pike, seemed to prefer to stay on his side of town.

Silver Spring had beer gardens and restaurants within walking distance of Quinn’s, and live music if you wanted it, and you could leave the house and go to any of those places wearing whatever you had on without thinking twice. The city was starting to take on the concrete sterility of white-bread Bethesda, and it was getting the same upscale chains, and the fake Mexican cantinas, and the grocery store where people could be “seen” eating overpriced sushi in the window booths and overpaying for vegetables in the checkout lines. But Silver Spring hadn’t lost its personality or its mix of working immigrants and blue-collar eccentrics yet. You could still rest your can of Bud on the engine block of your car while you fiddled around under the hood on a sunny day and not get a reproachful look. You could say that you liked women, not just as people but also in bed, and not feel as if you were wearing a swastika band around your arm. If that ever changed, Quinn swore he’d be gone.

Earlier in the evening they’d had dinner at Sue’s favorite place, Vicino, on Quinn’s street. Then they caught a set of Bill Kirchin’s band up at the Blue Iguana on Georgia Avenue. Quinn had suggested it, as the drummer, a guy named Jack who lived in the neighborhood, cooked. They bought a six on the way back to Quinn’s place. They could have walked everywhere, but they took Quinn’s ’69 Chevelle, a 396 with Cregars and Flowmaster pipes. Sue was used to driving her work vehicle, a gray Econoline van, so it was a treat for her to get behind the wheel of something that had some muscle. She especially liked to move the Hurst shifter through its gears.

They were a little high on red wine and beer when they got to his spartan apartment. Sue opened a couple of cold ones while Quinn searched his CDs for something she would like. He was into Springsteen, Steve Earle, and the like, his collection running toward big guitars, male singers, and male concerns. Sue had come up in the fabled eighties D.C. punk movement. Occasionally their tastes converged.

“What do you want to hear?” said Quinn. “Dismember Your Man?”

“It’s the Dismemberment Plan,” said Tracy. “And you don’t own any, so shut up. Why don’t you put on the new Dave Matthews?”

“Cute. You know I don’t get that guy. Music for old people who look like young people. It’s not rock, it’s not jazz. What the fuck is it?”

“I’m kidding.”

“How about some Neil?”

“Neil’s good.”

Quinn dropped Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere into the carousel and let it play. “Cinnamon Girl” came forward as he joined Tracy on the couch. She wore a sky blue button-down stretch shirt out over slate gray pants. Her blond shag-cut hair fell to her shoulders. The shirt was open three buttons down and showed the curves of her breasts, full and riding high. Quinn thinking, This is a sweet night right here.

They drank off some of their beer. Sue removed her Skechers, put her feet up on the table set before the couch, and smoked a cigarette while Quinn told her about his day.

“Anything on Linda Welles?” said Tracy.

Quinn shrugged. “I passed out flyers down at the Metro station in Anacostia.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Her brother, he called the police, right?”

“Sure, but the police don’t get all that mobilized for a missing girl in the city.”

It usually was reported to Youth and Preventive Services and pretty much sat. Most were runaway and not criminal cases. The girls stayed local and moved quadrant to quadrant. So families went to people like Sue for help finding them.

“She could be shacked up with some older boy, has drug money, a nice car,” said Quinn.

“That’s right, she could be,” said Tracy, crushing her cigarette in the ashtray. “But we still need to find her.”

“I will.”

“My hero.”

Quinn put his beer bottle down on the table and slipped his hand under the tail of Tracy’s shirt and around her waist. “I’m larger than life.”

“Don’t be so boastful.”

Quinn kissed her. He unbuttoned her shirt and kissed the tops of her breasts, then pulled one cup of her bra down to kiss her darkish nipple. It hardened at the lick of his tongue, and he felt her stretch like a cat beneath him. Quinn tried to undo her bra but fumbled it.

“You got oven mitts on or something?”

“I need a manual for this thing.”

“It’s a back-loader, Terry.”

“Oh.”

Tracy’s chest was flushed pink and her hair was a beautiful mess. She sat up, undid her bra, and pulled it free. Quinn drew her shirt back off her shoulders.

“Gulp,” said Quinn.

“You look surprised.”

“I always am,” said Quinn. “And thankful, too.”

They undressed quickly, “Cowgirl in the Sand” filling the room. Quinn laughed as her panties flew past his head. They embraced and were down on the pillows and then knocking the pillows off the couch. They were all over each other and she moved him roughly to her center. She was wet there, and Quinn smiled.

“Damn, girl, where’s the fire?”

“You don’t know?”

“What I mean is, why the rush?”

“Quit fucking around.”

Soon he was all the way in her, her back arched to take it, her mouth cool on his, her damp muscled-up thighs flanking his sides. Quinn thinking, This is something God dreamed up, has to be. Something this good, it can’t be an accident.

STRANGE picked up Greco at the office and drove the dog up to the row house on Buchanan Street. Strange had lived here for many years before marrying Janine. He was perfectly content and comfortable at Janine’s place and as certain as any man could be that their marriage was going to last. But he still spent time at his old house. The house was paid for, so there weren’t any issues with money, and he had not considered selling it.

He told Janine that he needed this place to keep his duplicate case files and to work away from his primary office. But there were other reasons for his reluctance to give up the Buchanan residence. It had been his first and only real-estate purchase, and the pride of home ownership was, for him, still strong. And of course he needed to know that there was always some other place he could go to, run to, some would say, when the space between him and Janine and Lionel got too close. He had lived with women briefly, but in those cases there’d always been an exit door. He’d been a bachelor his whole life and he had married in his fifties. This new life, this whole new thing, was going to take some getting used to.

Strange went down to his basement and did three sets of ab crunches, lying on a mat. He then did a dumbbell workout and put in fifteen minutes on the heavy bag with a pair of twelve-ounce gloves, more than enough to break a good sweat. Then he showered, fed Greco, and went on up to the second floor to his office.

He tore the shrink-wrap off a couple of soundtrack CDs he had purchased through the Internet that had just come to this address in the mail today. A Morricone import called Spaghetti Western, which held six tracks from the film A Gun for Ringo, among others, had arrived in the shipment. He slipped the CD into the CPU of his computer and sat down behind his desk. The music came through the Yamaha speakers on his desktop, and he nodded his head. This was exactly what he had hoped it would be. He had been looking for this particular soundtrack for some time.