In a Bucharest terrorized by a serial killer, a chief commissioner from Crime Division takes over the case and develops an obsession with it.

The piano teacher Gavrilescu, a loser at 49, forgets one day the bag of sheet music of one of his students. Turning back and in the hot weather, he can't wait for a streetcar and sets off on foot. He is drawn, to the cool walnut garden where there used to be a brothel called "The Gypsy", which the men talked about pathetically on the tram, pretending that they loathed it.