(Some Spoilers) With an iron clad grip on the "Windy City" the criminal organization known as "The Syndicate" run by Arnie Valent seemed untouchable until one of it's accountants Nelson Kern got a bit religious and went to the local newspaper the Chicago Telegraph to expose it's criminal operations.
Getting the editor of the newspaper David Healey to agree to publish his story, under an assumed name, Kerns is shot on the street as soon as he leaves the building. With the police as well as the editors of all the city's newspapers agreeing that "The Syndicate" is to be put out of business before it becomes any more entrenched that it already is it's agreed to get Internal Revenue auditor, and WWII combat hero, Barry Amsterdam to do the job for them.
Barry at first is anything but interested in taking on "The Snydicate" but when he's offered $60,000.00, by the city fathers, he's more then willing to stick his neck out. With that $60,000.00 Barry can open up his own accountant agency something he's been dreaming about since he got out of the service.
With the knowledge, that he got from the Chicago PD, of who it was that gunned down Kern, a hit-man named Burke, Barry get's in touch with Valent in an attempt to blackmail him in the fact that Berke works for him. Barry putting on an act that he's disenchanted with his job as an IRS auditor instead ends up getting the very job that the late Nelson Kern had looking after and accounting for all of Valent's, and his syndicate's, holdings and transactions.
The movie moves at a snails pace with Barry Amsterdam trying to get the goods on Valent and his criminal activities but the old timer, the last of Chicago's Al Capone Gang, is just too slick and slippery to get nailed in a Federal tax evasion, like his former boss "Big Al" Capone, rap. Just at one point when Barry thought he had Valent caught red handed at his mothers tenement apartment with the goods, his secret ledgers, Valent burned them moments before the cops, tipped off by Barry, came crashing into the place.
Barry uses the two women in the cast singer Connie Peters and the late Nlson Kern's daughter Joyce to uncover what Kerns had on Valent's by a number of secret rolls of microfilm, containing the contents of the destroyed ledgers, that Kern had made just before he was gunned down.
When Valent realizes that his moll Connie had the microfilm hidden as a life insurance policy for herself instead of destroying them like he told her he completely loses it. Having his henchmen work Connie over to find out where the microfilm is it's Connie's friend, as well as lover, band leader Benny Chico who tells Valent where the rolls of film is; Hidden in a violin case that's being held for him, for safe keeping, at a local pawn shop. Benny had no idea what was in the case until he found out that Connie, who gave it to him, had made as well as kept the very incriminating, for Valent and his syndicate, microfilm.
Despite being both cool calm as well as collective all throughout the movie Arnie Valent loses himself when he realizes that for once he's about to be busted, with none of his flunkies taking the rap for him! Valent overreacts when Barry, who was at the pawn shop with him and his hoods, pulled the rolls of film right out of his hands before, like he did with the ledgers earlier, he could burn them.
Instead of letting his hood chase down Barry and both murder him and get the film back Valent decides to do the job himself. This leaves him open to being both arrested by the police, who were tailing Barry, or ending up getting shot and killed by them. Barry badly wounded, from being shot in the leg by Valent, ends up making it to the Chicago slums where Valent's mother resides and it's there, outside his mom's tenement, that Valent life of crime, as well as "The Syndicate", came to a sudden and violent end.
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