 In January 1969 Harlan Garrison and Walter Scherer led a gang on a liquor store heist that resulted in a firefight with police. Harry Orwell was shot and his partner killed. Garrison and Scherer were never caught, and Garrison went into the Army and spent two years in Vietnam. Now out of the service, Garrison wants to hire Harry Orwell, now a private detective forced to retire from the force due to his 1969 injury. Garrison has been threatened by his former partner and his girlfriend, who are running a drug operation, and Garrison promises to pay for an operation to remove a bullet lodged in Harry s back. Orwell takes the unusual assignment and the result is an encounter with underworld gunmen, a crash course in the actual production of heroin from a police chemist, and a raid and firefight in a warehouse that leaves Harry blinded and Garrison and Scherer dead. But is Scherer really dead?