- Harry is attending a seaside jazz club when he hears a trumpeter playing in tune outside. Suddenly the trumpeter falls into the water - pushed in by a hit man unnoticed by anyone else. Harry, thinking the trumpeter passed out from being drunk, takes him to his beach house to sober up, and the next morning leaves to buy groceries. When Harry returns he finds a bottle of scotch broken and his car gone, stolen by the trumpeter. He also finds a young singer, Ruthie Daniels, waiting for him; Ruthie knows who the trumpeter is - her father, Arthur "Art Sully" Daniels. Daniels went to prison in 1963 for stabbing to death a mobster named Reisman and is now on parole; Daniels was gypped by his record company, led by Sid Hacktel, out of royalties, and is being pursued. Harry smokes out the hit man seeking Daniels and identifies him as Manny "Smitty" Schmicht, a former bouncer for one of Hacktel's nightclubs - and who is left-handed. When Sid Hacktel is found shot to death, Harry's car with Daniel's hat and trumpet are found abandoned in the driveway, but Harry recognizes it to be a setup since he had the hat and horn at his house that morning. Lt. Trench is stuck, since the only hard evidence he has is against Daniels even though he recognizes Daniels is being set up, since Hacktel's company is under FBI investigation for pirating recordings of jazz concerts and festivals, and an FBI agent involved in the investigation was found stabbed to death six weeks earlier. But both Harry and Trench encounter more than they bargained for when a family friend of the Daniels' is found stabbed to death and Ruthie Daniels is taken hostage by Smitty.—Michael Daly
- Harry is settling in Santa Monica as his San Diego beach house is being torn down. At a pier-side club near his new beach house he listens to jazz music, unaware that outside is Arthur Sullivan "Art Sully" Daniels, a famed jazz trumpeter who joins in on the music on his instrument.
When Harry and a friend of his, Ziggy, hear someone fall into the ocean they rush out and find Sully. Harry dredges him out and to his beach house thinking him drunk, unaware another man - hit man Manny "Bridges" i.e. Manny Schmidt - pushed him in to drown. The next morning Sully awakens and Harry tells him what happened. Harry goes out to get groceries and to pay Clarence, his mechanic, for recent work on his car, but while he's gone Schmidt arrives to kill Sully. Sully instead strikes him with a scotch bottle then drives off in Harry's car.
Harry arrives later and is greeted by well known singer Ruthie Daniels. Art Sully is her dad and he'd been in prison for twelve years for the stabbing murder of Gus Reisman, a club owner under the employ of record producer "Silvery Sid" Hacktel. Ruthie wants Harry to find her dad.
Harry first goes to the club of jazz entrepreneur Chuck Henny to find out what he can about Sully. After getting information Harry next goes to "Single Wing" Reilly, owner of a hock shop where Sully kept his trumpet, unaware Sully has seen Harry and wrongly thinks he's working for Hacktel and his lawyer-henchman Clint Kaplan, this despite Henny's protestations.
After getting information from Reilly and from Lt. Trench Harry buses to Hacktel's corporate office, where Silvery Sid and Clint Kaplan, who'd been Sully's lawyer, offer help to Harry to find Sully. After Harry leaves the two suspect Harry is working for either Ruthie or the FBI and they send Schmidt to follow him - but Harry is too clever to let himself be tailed realizing Hacktel is suspiciously anxious to find Sully.
Sully meanwhile sees Ruthie after a performance and she cannot convince her father to turn himself in. Ruthie is even more disconsolate when she tells Harry that Sully took a gun she keeps in her purse, a light-caliber weapon. After Trench drops by to see Harry the next morning Harry realizes Schmidt is up the hill waiting for him. Ziggy then arrives with Sully's trumpet having fished it out of the water. With the trumpet in his house Harry borrows a car from his airline stewardess neighbor Betsy and drives to a tunnel - and confronts Schmidt who is bested after trying to stab Harry - with his left hand.
After chasing off Schmidt Harry returns to Trench's office where he identifies Schmidt; the knife artist was employed by the Hacktel chain as a bouncer and Harry now suspects it was Schmidt who murdered Reisman and framed Sully for it.
Things then escalate when word comes in that Hacktel has been shot to death. Making it worse Sully matches the assailant's description and Harry's car is there. But Sully's trumpet and hat are inside and Harry had them earlier, recognizing Schmidt planted them. Trench recognizes it's a frame job and explains the FBI is investigating Hacktel for music piracy and that an agent was knifed to death six weeks earlier.
Harry thus is now racing the clock. He phones Ruthie but her housemaid says she left in a hurry after receiving a call from a man named Chuck; Harry then finds Chuck Henny stabbed to death and Ruthie's purse there. He then recognizes this is the work of Clint Kaplan, an expert on police procedure who is pirating music on his own and has shut up Hacktel permanently.
Harry confronts Kaplan and the man agrees to give back Ruthie plus $10,000 to Harry in exchange for Sully. He phones Schmidt to confirm Ruthie is still alive but she only can say her dad was "high as a hock, really winging it" and babbling like some sick uncle when she last saw him.
But this is enough for Harry, and he arranges a meet where he'll exchange Sully for Ruthie, with the monetary price for himself to increase to $20,000.
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