Baroni

Is the death of middle-aged housewife Evelyn Hawley, who crashed through her kitchen window and fell five floors during an argument with her husband, Edward, murder? Old-fashioned Detective Lou Baroni thinks so, but his flashy young partner, Steve Perry, and the head of homicide, Lieutenant Tate, have already labeled it "death by misadventure". Off the record Baroni begins investigating Hawley, a shy, retiring man, henpecked to the bone. He's so obviously not a murderer that Baroni begins to see his sergeant's stripes go glimmering.Though his superiors order him to give up on Hawley, Baroni persists in tailing the little man, collecting as a close friend along the way a lively young actress who saw Mrs. Hawley fall. Outraged at Baroni's stubborness, Tate moves to oust him from the force only to find that Baroni's plodding thoroughness on more celebrated cases has uncovered the trail of the city's underworld kingpin and that there are more ways to a happy retirement for an old cop than this world dreams of.