Fast forward to the weekend of July 4th, 1976. It is the year of the Bicentennial, America's 200th birthday. The city is already alive with excitement. Fireworks are popping. Johnny Jump finds himself standing in a lonely hospital room, watching an old lady gasp for breath. Johnny doesn't want to be here. He needs to be in his cab, hustling fares to make the rent on the apartment he shares with the beautiful Catherine Dupree. But Catherine Dupree is gone, off on one of her cloak and dagger missions. The man who dragged Johnny to this unwanted tryst with a dying woman is one Crispus Attucks...

Halloween, 1977. Mayhem always seems to find Johnny Jump, and always when he least expects it. It found him the night he is pushing his hack with the vivacious Catherine Dupreesitting next to him, when he's flagged down by a fare. Mayhem's name was Rose MacMillan. She's young, no more than twenty, and she looks haggard in her torn shirt and scuffed jeans. She is bruised and bleeding. Somebody has obviously roughed her up. Catherine Dupree suggests they take her to the hospital to get her wounds treated. The girl reacts violently, demanding she instead be taken to Covington East, a sprawling...