 Carl Dawes has been in prison for murder, but has been paroled and he goes to see his former girlfriend Sara Webber. Dawes and Webber played confidence games, cheating business types out of their money, but Sara has gone straight. When Carl asks about a suitcase they had kept, Sara tells him it is still at the San Diego apartment of her friend Kate Roberti, which drives Carl into a rage, as he claims the suitcase contains $300,000 from a Syndicate courier he killed years earlier. He smacks Sara, then stabs a bystander who tries to stop him, and flees. Sara is reluctant to implicate Carl, but Lt. Trench tells Sara to hire Harry Orwell else he ll have to arrest her for aiding a fleeing criminal. She hires Harry to find her suitcase in San Diego, but when Harry meets Kate he learns she gave the suitcase to another friend in LA. Harry drives to LA but find Kate s friend dead in her apartment, the suitcase hidden; Harry is also unaware that Granville Coleman and Roy Garvey, two Mob hit men, have assaulted Kate to learn the whereabouts of this same suitcase. When Harry and Trench have Sara search the suitcase, she finds nothing but old clothes and a stack of stamped letters. She nonetheless agrees to stay at Harry s beach house for awhile, but the next day she and Harry are taken at gunpoint by Carl, who tells Harry to get the suitcase from the police and return it to him else he ll kill Sara outside the city. Harry gets the suitcase but when he finds Carl Dawes, the man is dead, shot by Coleman and Garvey. Sara finally tells Harry who owns the suitcase and Harry must reluctantly take Garvey to a millionaire in San Diego while Coleman holds Sara hostage.