Vinnie's a bookie, happily married, running his operation for 30 years out of his bar in Brooklyn. Times change, the boys up the chain want a bigger profit, so Vinnie's expendable He's assigned a hotheaded kid, Tony, the nephew of a local mobster. Vinnie's told to school the lad, use him for collections, and teach him some sense. What Vinnie doesn't know is that once Tony learns the ropes, Vinnie will be out. Tensions mount when Tony goes around Vinnie's paternalistic ways, takes a bet from an unemployed alcoholic, and demands that the loser's wife pay the vig in trade. Is there any way out for Vinnie - with or without his good name?

Stephen Glass is a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic and a freelance feature writer for publications such as Rolling Stone, Harper's and George. By the mid-90s, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington, but a bizarre chain of events - chronicled in Buzz Bissinger's September 1998 Vanity Fair article - suddenly stopped his career in its tracks.

Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.