Using their frequent flier miles Marcy and Jim Morgan have left the icy shores of Lake Erie for the cloudless skies and warm sand of Laguna Beach. The bright sun and gentle wind are suddenly displaced by the anguished screams of their son, Ben, his toes entangled in a mound of kelp and the skeletal remains of what was once a very tall man, a man who now has no feet.

The man was an underboss to an Orange County offshoot of the L.A. mob … over fifty years ago. The sole remaining figure from those days is now in Sicily and he is willing to talk to Detective Tom Deaton of the LBPD. Tom needs to know how and why the dead man was killed and why and how the other principals in the crime family simultaneously disappeared, leaving no trace.

Giancarlo Orsini, the consigliere to the succeeding crime family, intends to tell him and he will do so as they dine on exquisite food and wine in the finest restaurants of Taormina, with the ancient Greek theatre, Mt. Etna, and the Bay of Naxos as backdrop. But why? And why would he introduce Tom to a beautiful young woman who might know and disclose even more? And what is the terrible secret remaining for Tom to discover, something so extreme that even he is tempted to withhold its darkest details?