It's 12:43 am, and New York City is gripped by a mini-crime wave. At the rundown Alexandria Hotel, a hit man (Byron Keith Minns) tries to kill a dirty cop (Adam Baldwin) only to find himself in the middle of a police stakeout; suddenly, half a dozen guns are blazing. Elsewhere, sleek therapist Karen Winterman (Elizabeth Mitchell) is stood up by her junkie boyfriend, Brian Jacobs (Christian Camargo), who's got a date with the needle. Worried, she goes to his apartment and finds him dead from a hot shot. Meanwhile, NYPD detective Billy Brennan (William Baldwin) gets a middle-of-the-night call from his boss (Richard Portnow): Billy's old partner, Vinnie Krallos, is the dirty cop at the Alexandria and he's asking for Billy. He's wounded and holding an undercover policewoman hostage; the stakeout the hit man walked into was set up to ensnare Vinnie, who's up to his eyeballs in drugs and kickbacks. The man who ties these stories together is minor mafioso Sal Pescatore (Jon Seda), a volatile cocaine dealer know as "Sally Fish" to his wide circle of acquaintances. Vinnie dies of his wounds — though not before pointing a finger at Sally — and Billy vows to get the arrogant wiseguy. The fact that Billy is the lead investigator on the Brian Jacobs case puts him in an excellent position to pursue his vendetta; Brian is found dead in Sally's apartment, so the investigation will lead Billy right to the man he wants. The complication is Karen: Though Billy is initially put off by the seamy facts of her affair with Brian — she's a parole-board therapist and Brian was her patient — he comes to realize that one lapse of judgement has placed her in terrible danger. And, of course, he likes her. Veteran screenwriter and sometime director Heywood Gould tells this fairly conventional story of cops and criminals paddling around in the same dirty water (based on his own 1988 novel), through a complicated series of flashbacks, glossing it up with noirish lighting and a mournful jazz soundtrack. Familiar, but entertaining. --Maitland McDonagh
