Detectives Briscoe and Green probe the strangulation of a college coed who moonlighted as a stripper, and while they believe a pair of drug-dealing skinheads committed the murder, they struggle to determine the motive of the strip club owner who paid them for the hit. However, as they work their way up the ladder of complicity, the cops learn that the slaying is keyed to an insider trading scam that forces McCoy to connect a former porn star with a businessman.

The death of an elderly man trying to find who was responsible for the torture killing of his son in Chile in 1973 leads to a former high-ranking Chilean Army officer who is in New York receiving cancer treatments at a Manhattan hospital.