When he's not driving his taxi, Cooper MacLeish, a Vietnam vet, kills time at the local pool hall. A man with a violent past and a nowhere future, Coop's life is irrevocably shattered when he agrees to shelter a teenage runaway whose mother, Vivian, has died in mysterious circumstances. In his search to find out how Vivian died, Coop asks questions powerful people would prefer unanswered. His curiosity brings him up against a sadistic killer identified only by the teardrop tattooed on his cheek. To take on Teardrop on the mean streets of Chicago, Coop must summon the skills learnt in Vietnam.