During Chinese New Year celebrations, a car crashes into a street full of revelers. After the Chinese woman behind the wheel flees the scene with a little girl, leaving behind her shoe, a tourist discovers a dead body in the trunk. Tracking the case to the nearby nightclub The Paper Dragon, run by Burke's old friend (of ""very mixed"" Chinese and Irish extraction), Burke tries to discover if the club's dancer is the killer or the next victim. A local drunk ventriloquist, the dead man's wife, and a shifty promoter round out the suspects.