Although Evan Marshall has done time, he is more of a freelance hack and fly-by-night adventurer than a criminal. His life takes yet another detour when he becomes involved with an over-the-top personality named Lawson—not only a playwright, actor, novelist, would-be priest and teacher, but a self-destructive alcoholic, drug addict and part-time mental patient. After surviving an attack by the husband of his pregnant Japanese girlfriend, Marshall mugs an acquaintance and hangs out with his new friend who brawls, tells stories, gets arrested, suspended, spends thousands on drugs and women, and checks in and out of the psychiatric ward. Who better then to devise a half-baked plan with to rob a crack house with a shotgun and cleaver?