A pair of cops hunt the killer of the most beautiful hooker on Chicago's North Side On a blistering Chicago afternoon, the Cubs are winning and Abe Lieberman is waiting to meet a prostitute. This mild-mannered old police detective still has a few tricks up his sleeves-and one of them is named Estralda Valdez. One of the city's loveliest women of the night, she is Lieberman's most prized confidential informant, and she needs help with a psychotic john....

When his nephew is killed by a mugger, Lieberman will do anything to bring his family justice In a posh part of Chicago's North Side, two Trinidadian men look for someone to jump. Waiting outside an apartment building, they see a couple shivering in the cold as they make their way to their car. The Trinidadians draw guns, demand money-and quickly go too far. Shots ring out, and the muggers run. Behind them, the man is dead, and his pregnant wife lays...

Somewhere in Israel Near the Jordan Border, 1973: On a desert road outside a small Israeli town, two Muslim families ride home in a battered van. The children joke and play. The adults argue about money, and Ali Mohammed drives nervously. The night is dark. Suddenly, the windshield of the van shatters. Conversation ceases abruptly as an automatic weapon peppers the careening vehicle, which turns on its side and skids noisily along the road. A lone...

Detective Abe Lieberman works to discover a common link between a baseball player whose career has been cut short by tragedy, a religious fanatic who employs unorthodox conversion methods, and a murdered single mother.