Mississippi native Alex Ashby is a drop-dead gorgeous 22-year-old male prostitute. He has been a victim all his life, having suffered both physical and sexual abuse at the hands of his father and uncle. Now, he sits in Chicago's Cook County Jail accused of killing two very important people and a pizza delivery boy and is believed only by a black newspaper reporter and Alex's friend, a cocky blond hustler named Tom Pappas. The reporter and Tom scour Chicago's seedy Uptown neighborhood, where many white Southerners have settled, to find "The Night Crawler"--whom they believe to be the real killer--and a 12-year-old hustler believed to be the only survivor of the massacre, who can exonerate Alex. Their odyssey takes the reporter on a harrowing ride through Blood Alley--Chicago's deadliest and most dreaded street--where even angels fear to tread.