A defense attorney who had just acquitted a cop-killer is gunned down outside a Manhattan restaurant. The detectives start with police officers in the precinct of the injured officer, then to his brother, before they are led to a white supremacist who is part of a national network. McCoy is faced with the unlikely prospect that the defendant's attorney, his friend of 20 years and a friend of the slain lawyer, played a part in the murder of a Florida district attorney following the defendant's arrest. McCoy is able to make a deal that preserves the integrity of his adversary, but not without a cost.

The smoldering corpse of an Asian girl found outside the Chinese consul general's apartment leads the detectives to believe she had immolated herself to make a political statement. When forensics shows that she had been murdered beforehand, they find themselves in the middle of a religious conflict, with the consul general their prime suspect and his attorney an old friend of DA Branch.