Two bookies are separately ambushed and murdered by unseen killers. In a bus terminal, a young man is approached by Goodkat, who tells the story of Max and the Kansas City Shuffle: two decades earlier, Max borrowed money from the mob to bet on a fixed horse race after eavesdropping the conversations between mob members, only for the horse to die mid-race. To set an example to make sure nobody else would try to bet on a fixed race, the mob killed Max, his wife and his young son Henry. Goodkat describes the "Kansas City Shuffle", a misleading double bluff, then tricks and kills the young man, taking the body in a truck.
