The hanging death of an old man in a shabby little apartment in a meager section of the 87th Precinct was nothing much, especially to detectives Carella and Meyer. But this old man's story stood to make some people a lot of money. His story takes Carella, Meyer, Brown, and Weeks on a search through Isola's seedy strip clubs and to the bright lights of the theater district. There they discover an upcoming musical with ties to a mysterious drug and a killer who stays until the last dance.