Herbie Catcher is a small-time nobody who really wants to improve his status in life. He tries to impress those around him, but without success. He's even tried to feed information to Eliot Ness hoping for praise, but he really has nothing to offer. He's a busboy at a posh restaurant run by Max Zenner and he's not very good at it. On the verge of being fired, he claims to have a recently killed employee's book naming names and other activities that have gone on at the restaurant., especially having to do with mobster Martin Rawlings.

Bugs Moran, hiding out since Al Capone eliminated his gang in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, is visited by Eddie O'Gara, a man he thought had been killed by rival gangsters several years previously. Although he never cared for O'Gara in the first place, Moran is intrigued when Eddie lays out a plan to put Moran back in charge of the rackets again. Meanwhile, Elliot Ness is looking for Moran and O'Gara, figuring that both will want revenge on the gangsters who are responsible for their plight and that he can use that to destroy the Chicago syndicates permanently.