***SPOILERS*** New York City private investigator Mike Hammer, Stacy Keach, gets involved with Tony street name "The Cable Man" Cable, Ray Liotta, after he put Cable and his fellow gang members "The Stones" to flight in rescuing his loyal secretary Velda, played by Lindsay Bloom, who was by refusing to give into their sexual advances brutally attacked and beaten by them. Now with a score to settle in being made to look bad by Hammer Tony and his boys plan to do a number on him in not only working him over put putting him behind bars! This takes place when there's a gang meeting in Washingtoqn Square Park in Greenwich Village with all the New York Street gangs like in the movie "The Warriors" present. Just when The Stones gang president Krager, Keith Diamond, was about to give the key-note speech he was gunned down by his second in command Cable and in the confusion it was Hammer, who's stolen gun "Besty" was found to be the murder weapon, who was framed for Krager's murder!
We soon find out that all this was all sinisterly orchestrated by the mysterious Mister Moses,???, who in his all white outfit with fake snow white wig and beard looked like a combination of Kentucky Fried Chicken man Colonial Sanders and the Man from Glad. It's Mister Moses who wanted together with the not too bright "Cable Man" Tony Cable to start a city wide gang war to exterminate the very gangs, including Cable's Stones, involved in it. This was Mister Moses' master plan to rid the city of gang violence and later, if it succeeds, when he reviled himself to the pubic use it to get himself elected Mayor of New York City or "The Big Apple" and bring in his boys, from organized crime, to run it!
Hammer now an on the lamb or run and fugitive from the law tries to get the truth behind Krager's murder from the gangs themselves to exonerate himself of it. It's with the help of the all girl gang "The Amazons" that Hammer after a wild chase scene in the Dumbo section of Brookly, with the "Cable Man's" Stones street gang hot on on his tail, finally not only finds out that it was the very civic minder Mister Moses who was behind all this gang violence but who just, this comes as no surprise to no one watching, his true identity really is! In a dramatic chase in the New York City subway system Hammer corners the fleeing Mister Moses but before he can apprehend him he's, in getting his foot caught, stuck between the rails with a subway car striking him and turning Mister Moser into 150 pounds of raw chopped or ground meat!