Fenn Cooper is a journalist in trouble. His boss has given him one last chance to write a riveting story or lose his job. He decides to write about the eccentric people who work at a travelling circus in Ithaca, New York, where silent movies where once made. There he meets Zena, a "little person" fortune teller with uncanny abilities, and her friend Holey John, a Vietnam vet whose act is piercing his flesh for five bucks a pop, as penitence for what he imagines he did in Nam.

Marvin Brinks, a Hollywood exec for a big-time movie production company, also finds himself

in trouble when he stumbles upon a one-hundred-year old contract his company inherited from a long forgotten silent movie company that was based in Ithaca. Wording in the contract would trigger an audit, and an audit would expose him for embezzling millions of dollars from the company. When he realizes that several copies of the contract are missing, he hires an assassin to find the contracts and kill any heirs.

As Fenn begins to write his story, he uncovers a connection between the long-forgotten contracts and a series of recent unsolved murders. What's more, he realizes that Zena and Holey John could be the killer's next victims. As these players converge in Ithaca, a deadly game of car and mouse ensues. Will Fenn uncover Marvin Brinks secrets and stop the murders before Zena and Holey John become the killer's next victim?