The closing of a small shipbuilder in New England places stresses on the people involved.

A fledgling actress is lured to a remote mansion for a screen-test, soon discovering she is actually a prisoner in the middle of a blackmail plot.

Heart problems force Boston cop Pally LaMarr to retire; he's in a funk and his wife Charlotte sends him packing. At Charlotte's insistence, Pally's half-brother Ray pays Pally a visit and suggests he buy a race horse to cheer up. Ray's always playing the angles, and he's got his eye on a horse that's cheap because it's been misdiagnosed. Ray knows the horse is a champion. Before they can win some money, a local mob boss, Frank Finnigan, sees the horse and steals it as payment for the gambling debt of Tony, a local jockey and single parent. Can Pally and Ray get the horse back, get Tony out of hock, and win some moola? What about Charlotte: can Pally let his heart take the lead?

A professional assassin, having just "cleaned up" a botched "job," is pressured into another new assignment by his boss. He is beginning to find himself off-balanced and self-questioning about his chosen career, when he is thrown into complete turmoil by the unusual nature of this latest "hit." A prominant woman has accumulated a massive amount of bad debt from shady characters and threatened them with police exposure, yet seems resigned to her fate when informed of a contract on her life. In fact, she even seems to look forward to her own demise. Why? As the killer tries to understand and resolve the situation, he begins to feel emotions long suppressed, perhaps, that he didn't even know he possessed. Before he can straighten out this upside-down, backwards, and inverted, crazy situation, his boss turns up the heat. Having his driver around, who is an old friend but unreliable and twitchy, nonetheless, does little to settle his jangly nerves. Finally, an impasse is reached with dire consequences for all....