Vincent Lubeck, Lawrence Tierney, is an habitual criminal from childhood who has just been released on parole thanks to the pleas of his mother, Mrs. Lubeck, Lisa Golm. He finds work at his brother Johnny’s gas station and immediately starts skating along the edge of respectability. He seduces Rosa, his brother’s fiancée, Allene Roberts, who hopes to reform him but is pulled into his relentless pursuit of trouble, a push-and-pull that underscores how hard it is to be good in a bad world.
Vincent’s curiosity pivots toward the armored car that regularly stops at the bank across the street. He also catches the eye of Eileen, Marjorie Riordan, a sharp, independent secretary at the bank. After the police detective who arrested him before warns that Eileen might be out of his league, Vincent’s interest deepens not just as flirtation but as calculated leverage. He senses there’s more to the bank’s inner workings than a casual glance, and he begins to press Eileen for information. She finds him intriguing, though she remains wary of his charm, and his plan to pull off a major heist starts to take shape: he recruits men he knows from prison, drawing on what he learned from a former cellmate who once outlined the blueprint for a perfect robbery.
Rosa, increasingly cast aside as Vincent pursues bigger thrills, pleads with him to marry her. He refuses, and she leaps from a rooftop to her death. The autopsy reveals she was pregnant, a truth her death casts a shadow over and which Vincent’s mother learns, deepening the family tragedy.
With a plan in motion, Vincent orchestrates a fake funeral procession to slip past a police blockade. The crew pockets a substantial haul, but the score fractures the moment they’re on their feet: the other heisters turn on Vincent’s domineering leadership. His arrogance blinds him to the changing loyalties and to the warning signs, and he becomes the only member of the gang the police believe they can pin down because of his gas-station ties, allowing the others to vanish with the money and head off to rob again another day.
Desperate and with nothing left, Vincent seeks out Eileen, only to be met with a pistol and a blunt demand to leave—she fears he’ll drag her into the aftermath. His mother’s deathbed curse lingers in the air, a reminder of the price of meddling in his fate. Johnny, now aware of Rosa’s fate and Vincent’s trajectory, drives him to a local dump and keeps him alive only at gunpoint, but he cannot pull the trigger. The police, who have tracked their movements, close in and finish what the criminals started, ending Vincent’s reckless ascent with a fatal confrontation at the dump, while the others slip away with the money, their plan ultimately a success in the escape but a ruinous one for everyone left behind.
