William Riskin, a long-ago detective reduced to sweeping up at OTB and more or less waiting to die, comes across the obituary of his ex-partner, Jean Goldblum, a one-time war hero and concentration camp survivor. Goldblum had become a morally bankrupt detective who could spot guilt at 50 paces, and then put a price tag on it. Left in his old age to picking up runaways and trying to sell them back to their parents, Goldblum suddenly got the biggest case of his life, and just before his death, he gave his neighbor a mysterious list of names for safekeeping. Driven by a kind of loyalty to Goldblum's memory, William decides to finish the case. He methodically discovers that the names on the list have all disappeared. They were all elderly retirees who had told neighbors and landlords that they were moving to Florida, but never got there.Following a long, dangerous trail of clues, William discovers that the biggest case of Jean's life went back to the distant past, to World War II, and to a little known war criminal named Dr. Petoit. He had promised sanctuary to hundreds of fleeing Jews in occupied France, but led them to death in his own home with the help of a willing accomplice-Jean Goldblum. William learns that the guilt ridden Goldblum had accidentally stumbled across Dr. Petoit, now elderly, but still practicing medicine in Queens. In a final gruesome discovery, William comes face to face with evil and writes an epitaph he can finally be proud of.