An older middle-aged tow truck owner and operator named Dwight is at the bar he frequents, the Silver Dollar. He sees an elegant and beautiful young woman, Jamie, come in. Jamie sits next to him and buys him a drink. He's astonished she would flirt with him. She reminds him how he saved her one night when he was called to the scene of a drunk driving accident. A group of drunk men had rear ended her and blamed her; they overpowered the cop and were chasing her. Dwight beat them up.

Jamie says she knows who Dwight "really is" and Dwight realizes she thinks he's a member of the Petrov family, who he worked for for a few years, who used a tow-truck business as a front for large-scale crime.

The two go to Jamie's apartment, where Jamie tells Dwight she wants him to beat up her brothers. They have each been left a third of their parents' vineyard, but her brothers want to sideline her.

Jamie and Dwight have a relationship that slowly intensifies. Jamie moves in with Dwight. Dwight's friend, a sociology professor named "Doc" who wrote a book on the Silver Dollar is jealous and tells Dwight Jamie is out of his league. She takes him to see her brothers and says she'll pay someone in his family to kill them. Dwight says he has no association with the Petrov family, though secretly he's been paying the family members from a stash of money Mr. Petrov left with him when they get out of jail.

Jamie disappears. Then, one day when Dwight is in the Silver Dollar with Doc, police arrest him for the attempted murder of her two brothers. His business card was found at the crime scene. Doc's brother-in-law, a lawyer, proves there isn't enough evidence against Jamie and he has an alibi.

Jamie moves to Chile and Dwight sometimes thinks of going to find her there. Doc says he's lucky to have made it out of that mess.