Few seem to notice or even care when fifty-seven-year-old Steadfast Haynes, a veteran CIA hired hand, dies quietly — even discreetly — in a $185-a-day Hay-Adams Hotel room commanding a fine view of the White House. But official indifference turns quickly into panic when it’s discovered that Haynes’ estranged son, a Los Angeles homicide detective turned actor, has been offered $100,000 for all rights to his father’s memoirs — sight unseen-by an anonymous bidder. Realizing that someone wants to bury the memoirs as deeply as possible, the thirty-two-year-old Granville Haynes seeks guidance from McCorkle and Padillo, the owners of Mac’s Place, a Washington bar and grill that some regard as an undesignated landmark and others as a notorious nest of intrigue. Accompanied at times by McCorkle and Padillo, and frequently by McCorkle’s stunning young daughter Erika, the enigmatic Granville Haynes moves out of the twilight of Mac’s Place and into a dark Washington labyrinth of deceit, treachery, and murder.