Ed Fitzgerald was a good cop who did everything by the book. Discovering a burglary in progress and attempting to apprehend the criminals, he is injured on the job by one of the burglars and becomes not only the victim of the crime but of the court system when he wounds one of the teen criminals. As a result, he loses the sight in one eye, his job and his savings. Ed takes a job with an armored car company and plans the perfect crime. He steals millions and makes a successful getaway. When later caught, he is virtually penniless. He refuses to utter a word in court and is sentenced to twenty years in prison where he dies during a riot. Art Booker, a prison guard, is the only man he trusts because he has not probed, as other prisoners and prison administrators have done, about the whereabouts of the money. As he is dying, Ed gives Art clues to the location of the missing millions. Their whispered conversation is overheard and the chase is on from New England to Florida to the Cayman Islands.