Woodrow Cain arrives in New York City from a small North Carolina town having left behind a wife (who'd abandoned him), a daughter, and a career as a police officer marred by questions about his possible complicity in his partner's murder. A job in the NYPD gives him what he hopes will be a new beginning, and it's on the job that he meets a man called Danzinger. Dressed like a "strange old mystic," Danzinger nonetheless has the manners of a man of means and education and speaks five languages. And he can help Cain identify the body just found floating in the Hudson River. But who exactly is Danzinger?