High in his outrageous apartment over a brewery, a stock market genius plots four simultaneous bank robberies at one intersection. The police receive four alarms and ignore them thinking it has to be an error. The genius codes his plans with palindromes to hide them. In 1923, the abrasive dry laws only add more confusion to an already addled, overworked police department riven with the politically ambitious and inept criminal investigation department. Consequently, the solution of the crimes falls to a retired forensics cop, who is now a Chinese restaurant chef, and his protege, who has family problems of his own with the dry laws. The robbers' escape seems inconceivable plus they have hostages. Only one thing is for sure: They aren't stopping for anything."