Synopsis for
Kansas City Confidential (1952) More at IMDbPro »

Joe Rolfe (John Payne) is an every-day Joe delivering flowers to the local businesses in Kansas City. When disgruntled cop Timothy Foster (Preston S. Foster) cases a local payroll delivery van for a holdup he takes into account the schedule of Rolfe and his deliveries as he plans his getaway. Foster contacts three crooks to help with the crime while keeping his own identity secret he blackmails them with past crimes and a guarantee of a $300 thousand-dollar payout for each. Pulling in Peter Harris (Jack Elam), Boyd Kane (Neville Brand), and Tony Romano (Lee Van Cleef), Foster pulls off a robbery of a bank next to one of Rolfe's deliveries and then by using a duplicate flower van points the police to Rolfe who is arrested and brutally interrogated by the police. Eventually cleared Rolfe is determined to clear his name and sets out to find the crew that set him up. He tracks Harris to a gambling joint in Mexico and takes on his identity and travels to a resort town in Tijuana to confront the rest of the crooks. Once there he meets Foster's daughter Helen (Coleen Gray) who has come to surprise her father. Rolfe and Helen develop an immediate attraction for each other and Foster attempts to keep them apart, as he plans to frame Rolfe for the bank job. As the time for splitting up the money draws near Kane and Tony discover Rolfe's true identity and a dangerous confrontation with Foster appears inevitable.