Where is Tony when he learns that Brink's is anything but a fortress?
Small-time Boston crook Tony Pino tries to make a name for himself. He and his five associates pull off a robbery whenever they can. Tony and his gang easily rob over $100,000 in cash from a Brink's armored car, after which Tony disguises himself as a sparkplug salesman to get an inside look at Brink's large and so-called "impregnable fortress" headquarters in the city's North End, a company renowned for unbreachable security as a private "bank" throughout the East Coast.
Once inside, Tony realizes that Brink's is anything but a fortress and that employees treat the money "like garbage." Still wary of Brink's public image, Tony breaks in one night after casing the building. He finds that only two doors in the building are locked, and one is easily bypassed by leaping a gate. The only thing locked in the building is the vault.
Tony also realizes that despite what Brink's claims, there is only a 10-cent alarm in the vault room itself, almost impossible to set off. It appears that Brink's had relied so much on its reputation that it had not even bothered locking the doors. Pino begins to plan a robbery, using the rooftop of a neighboring building as a watch tower.
Tony and his dim brother-in-law Vinnie put together a motley gang of thieves. They include the debonair Jazz Maffie and a slightly deranged Iwo Jima veteran, Specs O'Keefe, who proposes to blow open the Brink's safe with a bazooka. Over the crew's objections, Pino also invites the arrogant fence Joe McGinnis to be in on the job.
Brink's large and so-called "impregnable fortress" headquarters