When his wife leaves him, a young French actor, François Combe, moves to New York to work for a television company. One evening, he meets an attractive young woman, Kay Larsi, in a bar.
A fifteen-year-old boy wants to buy a gun from an adult racketeer named Priest, in order to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem.
A loose fictitious of Charlie Parker's last years and a portrait of the jazz scene in 1960's New York. A black jazz musician bent on self destruction forms an odd friendship with a white college professor full of feeling sorry for himself.
