Gangster Pepe Lusara arrives in Los Angeles and leases as his center of operations a deserted mansion in Laurel Canyon. He hires some local hoodlums, planning to rob the Hollywood Sports Arena, and romances Miss Sutherland, the arena's lonely, middle-aged cashier, into assisting him. Following the successful robbery and a wild chase, Lusara kills his accomplices, steals acids from a chemical warehouse, fills a bathtub with a solution of acid, dumps the bodies into the tub, and flees to Rio assuming he has killed off everyone who might incriminate him. He returns to Hollywood, broke and with a new plan in mind, but Miss Sutherland traps and kills him.