Dennis Meechum (Brian Dennehy) is a cop who has supplemented his meager policeman's salary by writing a succession of lurid crime novels, including one based on an episode from his own life. But his imagination fails him after his wife's tragic, premature death from cancer. Lonely, burned-out, and unable to write, Meechum is shaken from his doldrums by his "chance" meeting with a former hit man named Cleve (James Woods). Cleve drags the writer around the country presenting him with details and evidence of an outlandish national murder spree orchestrated by a wealthy man considered to be a pillar of Los Angeles society. It is Meechum's job to put it all down in a book and make his informer the hero of the expose, but he soon realizes that he and the mysterious Cleve share a past -- and, worse yet, that the hit man has by no means given up his murderous ways. A crackling suspense thriller with a plot like a Pachinko machine.