Who says crime doesn't pay? The mob will pay Jimmy Corona anything to stay away. But, then again, so would most people. His agent brushes off Jimmy's latest book proposal: detailing the conspiracy between Lee Harvey Oswald and Marylin Monroe to assassinate JFK. His girlfriend gives him his walking papers in the midst of wild sex when he can't give her one good reason to stay. Actually he's too exhausted to speak. And to top it all off, he's suffering from writer's block. So what's a poor guy to do? Join the mob?
Joey Breaker is a fast-talking, ambitious, workaholic agent representing actors, screenwriters, and comedians for the New York firm of Morgan Creative. He is callous and intolerant, but when he unexpectedly falls in love, he begins to see that he has been missing much of what is important in life. His demeanor mellows and he learns to be more tolerant of others. Suddenly, he is faced with a difficult choice when his girlfriend graduates from nursing school and returns to Jamaica.
A gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with the fact that their daughter is illegitimately pregnant.