Jack Liffey's new girlfriend, Gloria Martinez, a police sergeant of Paiute-Latino heritage, talks him into looking into the disappearance of her beautiful 18-year-old niece, Luisa, from a tiny reservation in the Owens Valley.

To escape abuse, the girl had threatened to run away to L.A.'s porn industry, and in fact does become caught up in the phone sex business, then hostessing, and finally the trashy business of videotaping the homeless engaged in wildly dangerous stunts. Luisa is fought over by a motley band of lowlifes and would-be rescuers, including the Jamaican Trevor "Terror" Pennycooke, whom Jack knows from an earlier case. The hunt for Luisa comes together in the Malibu Hills, where a bumbling army of suitors and rescuers touch off a gun battle and dangerous firestorm that sweeps Jack and everyone else ahead of it down the Malibu Hills toward the ocean.