Walker came to Iroquois Heights to meet a very rich old lady. He left with the image of a beauty in boxing gloves etched in his mind - and a roughing-up from the Iroquois Heights police for driving without a license-plate light. Mrs. Rayellen Stutch, the young widow of one of Detroit's most powerful industrialists, had given Walker a little job to do. Wanting to unload part of her enormous inheritance on the illegitimate offspring of her late husband, she needed Walker to find them. And show them the money.
It's a simple case...until Walker discovers the would-be millionaires are the textbook dysfunctional family. The battered wife is on the run, the abusive husband is packing a gun and a little remorse, and the kid is caught in between. Walker knows the right places to look for a missing woman and child, but he couldn't expect what comes next: an act of horrifying violence that leaves a beautiful woman dead and a boy kidnapped.
For Walker, what started as an errand of mercy quickly turns into a dirty little war. With at least some members of the Stutch family lined up on the other side, Walker now must lay siege to the rusty, sprawling fortress that is the Stutch Motors factory. Somewhere in the building the stage is set for a bloody payoff. And trapped in the middle is a private eye who can remember when cars had fins - and a city had a dream.