Shamus Khan, a sociologist at Columbia University, is analyzing the orchestra's subscriber lists to create a database mapping New York's elites in the seats of the concert hall.
The shamus is Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose search for his ex-girl-friend's killer leads him into a romance with a femme fatale (Nora Zehetner) and an ambiguous friendship with The Pin (Lukas Haas), a local drug-lord who reads Tolkien and lives with his mother.