A missing football player becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a woman whose body is discovered floating in the East River.

The detectives are skeptical when a former street activist turned shock jock with a history of staging phony muggings to gain publicity for his causes appears to be the subject of an attempt on his life after publicly assailing a mobster, but they begin to believe his story after they discover that the married jock was involved with the mobster's mistress.