When the body of a city building inspector is discovered stuffed inside an unplugged icebox behind an abandoned café on Commerce Street, no one's calling it accidental. But what looks like a mob hit doesn't sit right with Detective Oto Gage.

The dead man, Philip Greenwald, was clean on paper—no debts, no gambling habit, no enemies. But when Gage starts poking around, he finds a tangled paper trail of forged permits, shell construction companies, and real estate deals approved on buildings that don't exist.

With the internal affairs office breathing down his neck, a rookie partner he doesn't trust, and a heat wave cooking tempers across the city, Oto Gage has to solve the case before the whole thing goes cold—or someone else turns up in an icebox.