This article: Taxi driver Joe Lourik gets into an argument with a finance company over payments owed on his new cab. Believing that he has been cheated, Joe reclaims his payments but is arrested for robbery. Escaping with a pair of handcuffs still attached, he jumps on a passing freight train where he meets a tramp who tells him to see Patian, a thief and a fence in San Diego, who can also remove his handcuffs. After meeting Patian, it is agreed that he will remove the cuffs on the condition that Joe drive the getaway car for a bank robbery. After the robbery, Patian sends Joe north to a boarding house in Sacramento to wait for his share of the take, but the boarding house owner informs Joe that Patian isn't good for the money. 
Desperate for bus fare to return to San Diego to get his money from Patian, Joe considers robbing the cash register of the empty storefront of a downtown Sacramento flower shop. Once in the store, clerk Laura Benson emerges from the backroom before Joe can rob the register. Joe falls in love immediately and decides to go straight. With his winnings from a crap game, Joe buys a garage in Amesville and settles down, however, within a year, the police are on his trail. Joe then travels to San Diego to demand his money from Patian, but Patian's thugs force Joe to rob a post office. Desperate, and afraid that he will be caught if he returns home, Joe disappears.
Some time later, Joe sees a picture of his newborn baby in the newspaper and meets with Laura, who pleads with Joe to give himself up and serve his time so that he can continue his new life. Hearing footsteps, Joe flees from the police who have followed Laura, and Laura is arrested and jailed as an accomplice. contains an answer for the question: What city if Joe in where he is desperate for bus fare?, what is it ?


Sacramento