Marta, a young politically savvy and well read Italian immigrant works in a local independent bookstore. She is passionate about books and distrustful of computers. Her love of reading has made her a fixture and trusted source of information to bookstore clients. After speaking with her, one of the bookstore regulars, Catherine, offers Marta an opportunity to work for her and make some extra money. Catherine is the proprietor of a small scale investigation agency and quickly takes Marta under her wing and molds her into a top performing asset. Each task assigned to Marta requires more and more trust on her part, until one day Catherine gives her a rather unusual assignment; very dangerous and bordering on covert.

Eddie Huntly, an east coast radio personality, moves to San Francisco to marry Thea, the sister of his best friend Neil, a successful entrepreneur. Shortly before Eddie's arrival, Neil is found murdered in what the police surmise was a simple mugging gone awry. As the sullen Eddie steps in as interim host of his old friend Dean's late-night talk-radio show, he obsessively makes regular visits to the forested spot where Neil's corpse was found. One such visit unleashes a chain of unpredictable events that sends Eddie snooping into the life of a sleepwalking drifter with a mysterious past.

In the mean streets of Vallejo, corrupt probation officer Tomas and his lady of the night Sugar attempt to coerce a recently released convicted murderer into offing a local gangster to steal back ill-gotten gains. However, the newly-freed Rigo wants nothing more than to find his long lost brother and for once in his life have some sense of family... too bad for him... and everyone else.