Buster's got a mean right hook. Or, he did, until he put Ronnie Piccolo's lights out in the fourth round of a fixed boxing match. See, Buster's also got a mean heroin addiction, and he needs the money. Unfortunately for him, his failure to take a dive runs him afoul of a psychotic bookie, his henchman, and a fucking heavy sledgehammer.

Jimmy "Two Tickets To" Paradise knows the sledge well. His career ended a few years back when his weasel of a best friend tried the same scam on the very same bookie. Now he's working in a machine shop, punching the clock, and caring for his pregnant girlfriend. When the same friend shows up on his doorstep, dying of ALS and begging to make amends, Jimmy will take him back to the part of Chicago where the cops take their time and the crooks handle their business with railroad ties.

There's a bag full of money waiting where the streetlights are all shot out, where the windows are all boarded up. And swirling around it like blood in a drain is a rogue's gallery of hammer-wielding killers, fast-talking thieves, and mutilated has-beens, all of them looking for revenge, closure, and the mother of all paydays.