Nightclub owner Shrimp Martin has been shot, and Hitchcock Sewell already knows who-done-it. It's his friend, Lucy Taylor, who went directly to Hitch's funeral home and placed the smoking gun on his desk.

As it happens, Shrimp survives the gunshot wound, but he doesn't survive the knife that is plunged into his heart as he lies in his hospital bed. The police would like to question Lucy Taylor. But she has slipped away from Hitch's custody, hooked up with Hitch's ex-wife Julia, and the two have disappeared.

Matters get more complicated when Shrimp's younger brother, also a friend of Lucy's, turns up dead. Is Lucy on a rampage? Is Julia somehow involved? As Hitch begins to nose about, he is joined by a private eye named Pete, who is in the full bloom of a mid-life crisis. A felonious painter, a Miles Davis wannabe, an Ida Lupino look-alike, the Great White Hope of Baltimore professional basketball, and one very angry dance instructor are just some of the characters Hitch and Pete encounter in this tale of greed, obsession, and misplaced loyalties.