H. Hunter Mahoy, a top-notch tax consultant in Miami, accidentally records a conversation between clients, Cuban businessmen, discussing their involvement in the death of a US Senator three years earlier. Mahoy takes the recording to the FBI bureau chief in Miami who seems uninterested in the old case. On the way back to his car, Hunter gets mugged. Then his office gets ransacked. He mails a letter to an old flame, Morgan Lindsey, a Washington Herald reporter, knowing full well she will investigate further. 

Several days later, while soaring high over the Everglades in a...