Plot

Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.

Drifter Richard Bone is temporarily living with his friends, married couple Alex and Mo Cutter, in Santa Barbara, while working for their mutual friend, George Swanson, as a salesman at his boat dealership. Rich and Mo may have ended up together if Rich had stuck around at the time, something that Mo can't help but think about now in Alex long having dropped out of life the result of his experience in Vietnam, which included losing an eye, an arm and a leg, he largely turning to the bottle to cope. Only when he is brought in as a suspect does Rich comes to the realization that what he saw off in the distance one rainy night in a back alley was the disposal of a dead body, the victim seventeen year old Vicky Duran. Spotting him in a crowd, Rich is "certain" that who he saw dump the body is one of Santa Barbara's most upstanding citizens, oil baron J.J. Cord. What Rich and Alex discover about Cord and his movements that evening fit with him being the perpetrator. Bringing in Vicky's sister, Val Duran, who wants justice for Vicky, Alex comes up with a scheme to expose Cord as the murderer, that scheme - sending Cord a blackmail letter, he responding to such with the requested moneys proving he the murderer - which requires Rich's cooperation as the front man. While this plot seems to have brought Alex back to life, it may be the impetus for forever changing the relationships between Rich, Alex and Mo.—Huggo

Richard Bone is an aimless playboy yin to Alex Cutter's hardcore Vietnam veteran yang and Mo is Alex's cynical wife. All three drink and exist in a modest house in a Santa Barbara neighborhood in the '70s, until one rainy night in an alley, where Bone steers his foreign convertible when the engine dies, and half-sees a man depositing a woman's body in a trash can. Alex takes Bone and Mo to a parade hours after Bone is grilled by detectives. "That's him," a weary Bone tells Cutter, when oil magnate JJ Cord rides by on a white horse, and this is where the story takes off. Cutter enlists the victim's sister and goes on a single-minded plan to extract vengeance.

Alex Cutter (Heard) came back from war minus an eye, a leg, and an arm and mad as hell. He lacks direction, drinks too much, and abuses his wife (Eichhorn). One night his friend Richard Bone (Bridges) witnesses someone dumping something in an alley; it turns out to be the body of a young girl. When Cutter hears about it, he embarks on a crusade to expose the killer, enlisting the help of the murdered girl's sister. Bone reluctantly joins them. Are they right or are they in search of their white whale?—Anonymous