Original Airdate: January 30, 1976
Written by: Walter Dallenbach
Directed by: Lawrence Doheny
Hoodlums push their way into a woman’s apartment. The woman (Suzanne Charny) orders them out. They ignore her and start breaking up the décor, for starters.
Jim is taking Beth (Gretchen Corbett) out to dinner at a place of her choosing. She wants him to talk to the owner, who’s a client of hers, which he isn’t keen to do. To make a long story short, his partner has been stealing the business out from under his nose and he’s deep in debt from trying to get it back. After their meal, the owner Joseph “Joey Blue Eyes” DiMinna (Michael Ansara) comes to their table to state his case. He makes a big deal out of Jim being an ex-con and the two of them don’t hit it off.
Joey takes off soon afterwards anyway. The woman from the first scene is his daughter Paulette, and she’s been beaten up by Sweet Tooth London (Eddie Fontaine) a loan shark Joey borrowed from. Joey lashes out at Sweet Tooth’s men and warns them not to touch Paulette again.
After Beth bails Joey out, Jim agrees to help at his standard rate of $200 + expenses, and on the condition that Joey not launch any more preemptive attacks. Instead he starts a long con against Joey’s partner Burt Stryker (James Luisi, soon to be recast as starchy Lt. Chapman). Jim sends Angel (Stuart Margolin) in to Stryker’s office to negotiate. Stryker kicks him out, and in addition sends a gunman after him, with Jim rescuing Angel just in time.
The next stage of the hustle depends on the fact that Paulette is an on-paper owner of the restaurant, since her ex-con father can’t get things like a liquor license under his own name. Meaning that if she disappears Stryker can’t buy out the rest of the business. Jim stages a kidnapping and a fake murder in order to shake down Stryker for the money Joey needs to get his business back. Stryker intends to respond with deadly force, over the objections of his lawyer Barrow (Jimmy Lydon).
Tropes present in this episode:
- Batman Gambit: The plan Jim hatches depends on what he and Joey know about how Stryker will respond.
- Cowardly Lion: Angel grouses about being pushed into conning shady businessman Stryker, and obviously he’s alarmed by having a gun pulled on him. Afterwards, however, he gets keener on the operation.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Barrow, though he abets Stryker in some unethical-to-criminal strategies, strongly objects to murder, although there’s not really anything he can do about it.
- Faked Kidnapping: Paulette is just moved out of sight so that it looks like she’s been kidnapped.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Jim and Joey’s initial antipathy softens into respect and a kind of warmth through their actions against Stryker.
- Papa Wolf: Joey outright tells Sweet Tooth and his men to stay away from Paulette or they’re dead. His being more hotheaded than usual in regards to his daughter turns out to be key to Jim’s plan.
- Reformed Criminal: Joey is a former mob enforcer and he acts like one, but he’s serious about wanting to go straight and run an honest business.
- Staged Shooting: Stryker initially intuits that the kidnapping of Paulette DiMinna is fake, but is convinced when his henchman sees Joey shoot Jim dead in Jim’s criminal “Jim Taggart” guise. It’s all a matter of blanks and blood packs, of course, but it’s persuasive.
