This is vintage Westlake and a bitter satire of government.All of Westlake's characters have runs of bad luck and Franci (not Frank, thank you) Meehan is no exception.
Meehan is a non-violent career criminal who has just been incarcerated at the Manhattan Correctional Center awaiting sentencing on a federal charge (how was he to know the truck he was hijacking was carrying registered mail in addition to computer parts). He is approached by Jeffords, obviously a lawyer, who makes him a strange proposition. Jeffords whisks Meehan off to the Outer Banks in a corporate jet. The U.S. president's campaign committee needs a burglary performed, and they've learned a lesson from Watergate: If you need a successful burglary, hire a professional burglar. Amateurs, they are, they pick one in prison. They want Meehan to steal a very incriminating videotape from a supporter of the opposing party. All charges will be dropped if he can pull it off.
Meehan is no fool, however, hates to work with amateurs - that would violate one of the "ten-thousand rules" - and he works his own little sting in the midst of the large one. He enlists his own crew to lift the video from the estate of a wacko millionaire all the while trying to protect himself from incompetent but malicious forces (rent-a-thugs from the rival campaign and some errant Middle-Eastern types) who want the video for their own purposes.
In this humorous crime caper, Westlake is at his cynical and impudent best.
