Shortly after being assigned to work together, Muldoon and Halloran are called to the lavish New York Coliseum, where two young thugs who've just shot a policeman during a robbery have taken two sporting-goods clerks as hostages.

Muldoon and Halloran board the Staten Island Ferry to persuade an old friend to retire. When a gang holds up an armoured car carrying bank deposits, the gang's leader shoots a fireman in the engine room, where the two policemen are held at gunpoint.

An elderly friend of Muldoon's ekes out his living by retrieving coins dropped through subway gratings. After having saved enough to adopt an eight-year-old orphan, he's turned down because he has no permanent residence.

After witnessing a gangland murder, a man is so shocked that he is committed to a mental hospital. When he's murdered to ensure that he won't testify in the case, Halloran is admitted to the hospital as a patient to find the murderer.

When a detective friend of Muldoon's is killed on duty, his partner reports that he was shot while running away. Not believing his friend to be a coward, Muldoon gets the partner assigned to him during a stakeout designed to trap the killers,.