Someone has the audacity to commit a murder in Morry Twych's porno theater, and Morry takes it as a personal affront, hiring Ed Steadman and Mercy Investigations to find out what happened. Meanwhile, Mercy Torcher and her partner Jack Nowan are retained by Joel and Dorothea Rose of Sea Cliff to try to find out who stole their invaluable art collection, get it back, and return it to them. Already stolen once by the Nazis, and finally recovered after great efforts, now it has happened again, right here in San Francisco. The Mercy Investigations crew teams up with Lieutenant "Ant" Antonelli of the Homicide squad in the Tenderloin Precinct, and also with Detective Sergeant Riva Gennaro, San Francisco's only art cop, to try to solve the two capers. Although Steady Ed has dealt with a gem rip-off before, the is the agency's first trip into the increasingly murky and often violent world of art heists and the fences who deal in it.