As crime lords from across the country gather in Atlantic City for a sit-down in 1929, a fisherman hooks a severed human arm in the ocean and police discover that it belongs to the missing local rackets boss, ACE CHAMBERS. The apparent gangland murder, however, soon becomes a personal morality tale of race and revenge. Among the suspects fingered by the police is WILSON SHAY, a land developer and man-about-town transplanted from South Carolina. Young Negro RUBEN PIERCE, who works as a dishwasher and moonlights pushing rolling-chairs on the Boardwalk, seems to know something that the police don't. He has the courage to act on his knowledge, but his pregnant wife MARIAN is fearful of the outcome. Chanteuse ABIGAIL MOSS, who divides her affections between Shay and Chambers, also may be hiding something. Haunted by his family heritage and the horrors of the World War, Shay stays a step ahead of the police until he must come clean with the tenacious Ruben, as their drama plays out at the vintage seashore by turns threatening and beautiful.
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