Five years after ex-cop Nick Sasso left San Francisco in disgrace, he has made a new start in New York as the proprietor of a popular restaurant. But his complacent life is shattered when his dying father asks him to come back to the West Coast to discover why his brother Joe is "borrowing" money from the family business. A reluctant Nick returns only to find his brother murdered during a clandestine meeting with his lawyer, Sonny Culp. Nick and unlikely ally Billie Fox, the cynical ex-wife of Joe's lawyer, search for the killer as well as the reasons behind the deaths.