Though crippled by a stroke earlier in the week, moments before his death, Josef recovers miraculously to impart on his son Rudy ten cryptic predictions: among them that his grandchild will be named James—but that everyone will call him Jimmy.

His wife Natalie, a trapeze artist of some renown and born of a good family, is lying in childbirth, says he, and her relatives have virtually disowned her for marrying him.

Jimmy Tock writes the book, a loose autobiography of personal experience, reminisces, and second- or even third-hand accounts of events, transcribing it from a series of tapes on the eve of his fifth and final terrible day.

However, certain experiences stand out starkly, most noticeably blundering into a harrowing, yet almost surreal, bank robbery by a trio of plastique-wielding crazed history buff clowns led by none other than Punchinello Beezo—in which Jimmy gradually realizes he's falling for a comely fellow hostage and a dangerous game of chicken with a severely disturbed stalker on an icy road the night his wife Lorrie, the former fellow hostage is about to deliver their first child (on the second predicted date).

The lunatic will do whatever he must to collect what he believes due him, including numerous facial reconstructive surgeries to assume new identities and escape the grasp of the law.