Thirteen-year-old Ernest Chin lives and works at a sleazy hourly-rate motel on a strip of desolate suburban bi-way. Misunderstood by his family and blindly careening into puberty, Ernest befriends Sam Kim, a self-destructive yet charismatic Korean man who has checked in. Sam teaches the fatherless boy all the rites of manhood.
Two high school girls wander off during a class trip to the White House and meet President Richard Nixon. They become the official dog walkers for Nixon's dog Checkers, and become his secret advisors during the Watergate scandal.
In Manhattan, a bike messenger picks up an envelope that attracts the interest of a dirty cop, who pursues the cyclist throughout the city.
A woman grieving over the death of her fiance gets a mysterious phone call from him.
Sister Tse is brought to New York by a Snakehead, a human smuggler. Although she is indebted to the crime family responsible for her transport, her survival instincts help her gain favor with the matriarch, and she rises quickly in the ranks. Soon Tse must reconcile her success with her real reason for coming to America—to find the child that was taken from her. In the end, Sister Tse must draw on the strength she found in transforming her victimhood into power.