Frankie Bono is an orphan who has learned to make a profitable living as a contract killer. Traveling from Cleveland to New York during the Christmas season, he is charged with taking out mid-level Harlem numbers and drug kingpin Troiano. Stalking his prey as he goes about his daily routine, Bono is distracted by an unexpected encounter with a childhood friend whose sister sees him as a lonely man, not the barely human shell he has become. Acutely aware of his own mortality, Bono sees everything as a facade, the pretty Christmas lights mere glitzy decorations covering the festering rot of existence, and his own personal hell.