King Sarcowicz, known to his friends as King Sauerkraut, means well. He even brings in his elderly neighbor's garbage cans when he happens to remember. But King is careless of people. As a partner in Keystone Robotics in Pittsburgh, King has a way of antagonizing staff and customers. He's great with a computer, but give him a human being and he doesn't know where to begin. His life seems to be made up of work and consuming large quantities of beer and eggs.

King is brilliant, however. Nobody would deny that. He's just dreadful with paperwork and deadlines and organization and personal relations. He's not the man to be in charge of a project, especially not a major defense subcontract from MechoTech. He can help design the project, but he should not be top man.

Nobody wants to report to King, not his partner, Dennis Cox, not his two Silicon Valley colleagues Gregory Dillard and Mimi Hargrove. When MechoTech calls them all to New York and puts them together in a six-bedroom apartment, the mood is anything but collegial. Live together under one roof they must, enjoy it they won't.

It's a perfect situation for murder, and when "accidents" begin to happen sergeants Marian Larch and Ivan Malecki of the New York Police Department think they know the answers.

But do they?