One ex-Marine architect. Death threats, a 350-lb Haitian opera singer, dying girl, crazed ex-nun, mysterious Ukrainian contractor, gangs, actors, illegal immigrants, cops. Five murders. Architect Seraphy Pelligrini finds an abandoned drapery workshop west of Western Avenue, but before she can move in, she discovers a few problems: the workshop's on the border between the Duques and the Lobos, death threats appear on her garage, her windows are broken and sprayed with gunfire, a dead body is dumped on her doorstep and crazy Sister Ann next door cons her into nursing a teenager dying of AIDS. Soon there are more bodies, a prelude to all-out gang war. Seraphy must find her way among those who've gravitated to this old neighborhood on the verge of change--the alcoholics, actors, illegal immigrants, artists, Yuppies, cops, working people and gang-bangers--to find the killer and stop the violence.