Seventeen years ago in Atlantic City - a city of casinos and nightclubs - on the night of the Mardi Gras carnival, Stuart Greene, a law-abiding citizen, husband and father, disappeared...Detective Jack Broome, who was assigned to the case, was never able to find Greene and understand what happened to him. Years pass before Broom manages to establish: on the night of the carnival, several more people disappeared without a trace. Those who disappeared, it would seem, had absolutely nothing in common - they were all of different ages, had different professions and stood at different levels of social stairs. And suddenly the detective gets a clue: he learns that all the missing people were once considered regulars of the same nightclub...