1989. The undercover Los Angeles police team of Sam Williams and Jenny Luck witness a "righteous kill" by a fellow officer in Chinatown - a kill with problems they need to hide to protect the innocent. Then, overseas, the massacre in China at Tien An Men Square hits home in the U.S.A. when a dissident refugee lands in L. A. and stirs up trouble on Sam and Jenny's patch. Still, he's on the right side of things and the two undercover cops need to protect him. The problem is, he's stirred up enough trouble to bring in a former Italian Red Brigade terrorist turned loose by the Soviets and now freelancing for the CIA, hired to bring the dissident back to China to avoid an international incident. Add to that a Hong Kong martial arts thug visiting Chinatown for a little extortion racket, plus a drug-sniffing police dog with an addiction, and L. A.'s warm-weather winter offers Sam Williams, Jenny Luck and everyone in Chinatown a very special, comic, violent and tragic Happy New Year.