Jake Schiff is a prominent Manhattan lawyer. He can't go around whacking people just because he has a problem with them, but when John Gault enters his life he finds himself asking someone to do just that. John G is a subway driver who has cracked up and quit his job when too many people threw themselves in front of his train. He soon becomes a psychotic homeless drug addicted bum who begins to stalk Jake's wife Dana, a hospital psychiatric worker assigned to John G's case. When John G threatens Jake and Dana's teenage son with a knife, Jake snaps and allows Phil, a crazed Italian-American gangster from his old neighbourhood, to go after John G with a baseball bat. A man is killed and suddenly Jake's glittering career and all he has worked so hard to achieve is in ruins when he is arrested for murder.
