O'Brien acts as a middleman between a Presbyterian youth center and a strip bar next door both of whom want the other gone. Then a murder complicates the talks.
A foster father, who is content to keep collecting welfare checks, hires O'Brien to keep seven children with him after an adoption judge takes the youths away from him.
O'Brien wins a boxer in a craps game but is less than thrilled when he finds out the young man is a rotten fighter. Then O'Brien's luck completely runs out after his boxer is arrested for murdering a rival.
No one believes Oliver Maxwell, an amiable but convicted confidence trickster, when he uses a familiar swindle to raise money for the release of a prisoner in a foreign jail. But this time the story is true - or is it?
O'Brien babysits the daughter of a client recently released from prison while he goes to retrieve his long-hidden loot. However, instead of a fortune, the client re-emerges with a murder charge.
Glen Daley Claude Akins arrives from Oklahoma at Port Authority Terminal in New York City. He meets film maker Nick Staphos Alan Alda and agrees to have his life filmed for a week.
O'Brien is blackmailed into helping the Macedonian government negotiate the return of a stolen emblem but which of the thieves claiming they have it is real?
Taking the bench as an interim judge, O'Brien deals with the case of a seaman accused of murdering a co-worker with a longshoreman's hook. Gene Hackman plays the prosecutor in the case.
O'Brien suffers a broken leg in a hit-and-run accident. Writer James Partridge, who was with him at the time of the accident, thinks he was the target because of his work for British Intelligence.
