Justin Moore, a young Catholic priest, witnesses a crime he believes he might have prevented if he had intervened to assist the victim. The incident destroys his faith in himself and undermines his mental health. He takes a leave of absence and moves into a rundown studio apartment on the edge of downtown San Diego, where he lives a reclusive lifestyle without a computer, telephone, or anything that connects him to the outside world. He spends most of his time in the loneliness of that apartment reading and pondering his life’s mission.

One day he spots a note advertising a part-time position as a driver for a wheelchair-bound resident of the same apartment. He answers the ad and is introduced to a mysterious elderly gentleman who identifies himself as an “accountant for an international business firm”. He tells Justin to call him A. C., an abbreviation for accountant, and he refuses to divulge anything more about himself or his business activities.

Justin soon questions whether his elderly employer might be involved in drug trafficking and other illegal activities under the guise of corporate respectability. As Justin becomes increasingly obsessive about his new employer, he speculates that A. C., who is an enigmatic and elusive character, might have an even more mysterious past.

When Justin plunges deeper into the abyss of doubt and confusion concerning his life and that of A. C.'s, his emotional crisis and obsessive state of mind worsen. Those self-doubts and suspicions about his enigmatic employer build as he struggles to learn A. C.’s real motives for coming to “America’s finest city”.