The scam enters phase one.
It is late 1987, and Gene Hanson is dying, or so he claims. He tells co-workers that he has AIDS and doesn’t have much time to live. But this is just part of the scam. Hanson was depriving himself of sleep and losing weight in order to appear sick.
With their accountant on a company-paid, European trip and Hawkins in Hawaii on vacation, Hanson loots the company coffers and vanishes. When Hawkins and the accountant return, it appears they have been victims of a massive theft.
Meanwhile, the first attempt to find a corpse to be the “dead” Hanson fails when their accomplice, Dr. Richard Boggs of Glendale, California, botches a murder attempt with a stun gun. The company attorney is threatening to bring in the FBI to locate Hanson, so Hawkins comes up with a plan to retrieve the stolen money.
