The Olympic Games are coming to Boston Or are they? When a burial detail to the paupers' grave on Boston's Rinker Island comes up with one extra coffin, Dan Burton is called in to take the case. The murdered man is one Constantine Boustaloudis, a neighborhood activist against the effort of rich and powerful interests to bring the Olympic Games to Boston.
At the same time, Donald Maldonado, cousin of the infamous Icky Ricky Maldonado, tries to create a place for himself in the Boston underworld, taking over his cousin's criminal activities. He jostles with Mickey Barksdale, Burton's childhood friend, for a piece of the illegitimate prospects of the Games coming to town: construction contracts, union connections, and so on. Complicating matters is that Elder Darrow's thieving girlfriend Kathleen Crawford has stolen something of Maldonado's and he wants it back. Badly enough to kill anyone in the way.
Real estate speculators offer to buy the Esposito and turn the block into a velodrome for the proposed Games. Elder is tempted, unsure that he wants to continue in the bar business. The confusion turns the world around Mercy Street into an uproar.