Elliott Gould plays a chain-smoking wise-cracking private eye - the former is repulsive and the latter makes no sense whatsoever as it alienates him from the police and others. Somehow he's considered a local mob's best lead for getting their money back from a now 'dead' courier that Gould had driven to the border. At the end, it turns out the courier is still alive, and Gould takes care of that - for reasons that again, aren't very obvious or credible.