Plot
Aging private detective Harry Ross, an ex-cop, is working on a case to return 17-year-old Mel Ames to her home. He tracks down Mel and her sleazy boyfriend, Jeff Willis, at a motel. During a struggle with the reluctant runaway, Harry's gun is discharged, striking him in the upper thigh.
Two years go by. Ross is living in southern California in the guest quarters of Mel's wealthy parents, Jack and Catherine Ames. They are former film industry bigwigs, now in the twilight of their years. Jack is dying of cancer, and he and Ross pass time playing cards.
One day, Jack asks a favor of Harry—to deliver a package. It turns out to be the first development in a series of twists and turns in a 20-year-old case involving the disappearance of Catherine's ex-husband.
A man named Ivar is murdered at the proposed meeting place where Harry was to bring the package. Harry is detained by police, including a close friend, Lt. Verna Hollander. At the police station, he runs into another old pal and colleague, now retired, Raymond Hope.
Verna and Raymond are both sympathetic because they have heard rumors that Harry was shot two years ago not in the thigh but between the legs. He assures them that it is not true.
Harry has a developing interest in Catherine and ends up in bed with her one night. He also is blackmailed by a parole officer he calls Mucho, after she describes herself as "Mucho Hair, Mucho Tits," and by Mel's old boyfriend, Jeff, now an ex-con.
A dying Jack Ames feels betrayed that Harry has had a fling with his wife. Harry, meanwhile, is forced to face the reality that his friends have been deceitful and manipulative of him.
Raymond Hope tries to persuade Harry to get away from it all, but Harry has figured it out that Hope has been on-the-take and a conspirator in the 20-year-old murder of Catherine's first husband. A showdown ensues in Raymond's glass-walled hillside home.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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