The first book in the Derek Strange and Terry Quinn series, 2001

What Derek Strange was worried about, looking at Jimmy Simmons sitting there, spilling over a chair on the other side of his desk, was that Simmons was going to pick some of Strange's personal shit up off the desktop in front of him and start winging it across the room. Either that or get to bawling like a damn baby. Strange didn't know which thing he wanted to happen less. He had some items on that desk that meant a lot to him: gifts women had given him over the years, tokens of gratitude from clients, and a couple of Redskins souvenirs from back in the 1960s. But watching a man cry, that was one thing he could not take.

'Tell me again, Derek.' Simmons's lip was trembling, and pools of tears were threatening to break from the corners of his bloodshot eyes. 'Tell me again what that motherfucker looked like, man.'

'It's all in the report,' said Strange.

'I'm gonna kill him, see? And right after that, I'm gonna kill his ass again.'

'You're talkin' no sense, Jimmy.'

'Fifteen years of marriage and my woman's just now decided to go and start taking some other man's dick? You're gonna tell me now about sense? God damn!'

Jimmy Simmons struck his fist to the desktop, next to a plaster football player with a spring-mounted head. The player, a white dude originally whose face Janine's son, Lionel, had turned dark brown with paint, wore the old gold trousers and burgundy jersey from back in the day, and he carried a football cradled in one arm. The head jiggled, and the Redskins toy tilted on its base. Strange reached over, grabbed the player, and righted it before it could tip over.