Dan Fortune, the iconic private detective who operates out of New York's bohemian Chelsea district, has just taken on a baffling case. It should've been an ordinary business transaction, but Leslie Carter - Fortune's friend and a retired belly dancer - asks for help. It's time for her new husband to pay the lease on a parking garage they own, but her husband can't find anyone to take the money. A mammoth corporation owns the property now, and no one there will see him or talk with him about it. It's 1975, and the country is sliding toward recession. Already on a financial cliff, the Carters will lose everything if they can't hold onto the lease. When Fortune goes out to handle the matter, he finds himself the victim of a strange runaround, too. But his ends in murder. From Manhattan's executive towers to the raucous saloons and bordellos of Hoboken, Fortune is caught up in the lives of men so powerful they can order murder with a nod, and of twisted criminals who openly attack him to stop his probing. There are women, too, some greedy, some gentle, who conceal private nightmares behind smooth smiles. Someone is hiding the secret that has driven an unlikely killer to murder, and no matter what, Fortune intends to uncover him - or her.