"I'm dying as fast as I can," Gaby Maoret tells private investigator Nick Polo. "But it's not fast enough for them." Them are the two brothers of Gaucho Carmichael, Gaby's former lover, who disappeared seven years ago, shortly after granting Gaby a lifetime estate contract on a Telegraph Hill mansion in San Francisco, worth millions. Gaby has been living there, rent free, for all those years. She's a noted artist, 75 years old, cancer ridden, but with a strong lust for life. She claims that the brothers, who will inherit the house when she dies, have been making threats on her life. Polo agrees to help her, and soon finds himself involved in an old murder case, a missing 5-million-dollar painting, an arson investigation and in conflict with a Mexican drug cartel enforcer. In order to help Gaby, Polo needs the assistance of his octogenarian sidekick, Mrs. Damonte, a self-described strega, a witch who can see into the future, and his Uncle Dominick, a bookie with connections to the gambling mobs in Las Vegas. And then he's faced with the most perplexing problem of his career-does he tell the cops what he knows?