Airdate: December 2, 1977
Written by: Juanita Bartlett
Directed by: Russ Mayberry
While picking up his mail and eyeing his neighbors’ mail for things worth pilfering, Angel sees his neighbor Muriel stagger out of her apartment with a gunshot wound in her side. She falls dead down the stairs, and hitter Del Kane (Madison Arnold) comes out following her. He sees Angel and begins shooting at him as well, but Angel flees before he can get hit.
He immediately flees to Jim Rockford’s trailer. Hearing his story, Jim is sympathetic but assumes that Angel has told the police what he saw. Angel hasn’t come forward and doesn’t want to, but the choice is out of his hands. The police, having Jim on a list of Angel’s known associates, have followed him to the trailer.
Reluctantly identifying Kane from a lineup, Angel parlays his knowledge into a luxury hotel stay with unlimited room service. Kane gets bail and attempts to both kill him and intimidate him. D.A. John Pleasence (Gerald McRaney) manages to keep him onboard for what he assumes will be a slam dunk trial. After Angel’s testimony, Judge Hovis (Peter Forster) finds that the state has not made its case and declares Kane not guilty.
With Kane back out on the street Angel still has a target on his back, and through running his mouth has made sure that Jim has one as well. That leaves no option but to make sure Kane gets nailed for the contract he’s actually in LA to fulfill. It’s a hit on bookie Louis Gaedel (Eugene Peterson), ordered by old boss Nova (Frank DeKova and ambitious lieutenant Murray Riddel (Vincent Baggetta).
Hotel of Tropes:
- Cold Sniper: Kane is a practiced hitman who rarely speaks but often stares daggers.
- Corrupt Bureaucrat: The judge bounces the case against Kane despite compelling testimony from Angel. Nova later mentions in passing his buying off the judge.
- Could Say It, But...: At the lineup Angel’s cowardice won’t allow him to say that he saw Kane shooting Muriel, but through process of elimination does say that Kane is the only one he doesn’t recognize as a cop.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Muriel wasn’t a professional job for Kane. He seems to have thought she was his girlfriend and killed her for her sexual activities on the job.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Muriel was a prostitute and her character is filled in posthumously by a friend in the same profession.
- Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Angel intends to cash in on the case with a tell-all book. His ghostwriter backs out because taking part in the book could put him in danger. He also tells Angel that his writing sucks.
- Irrevocable Order: Nova tries to cancel the hit on Gaedel to get the heat off. Kane calls it a freebie because whether he’s getting paid or not, his rep depends on the target being dead.
- Name of Cain: Kane is a killer for hire whose surname is a homophone for the first murderer.
- Post-Stress Overeating: Angel justifies his huge room service bill by saying that he eats when he’s scared. As demonstrated when Rocky makes a snack run for him later in the episode he also has some Bizarre Taste in Food.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: When Kane captures him Angel offers to give him information on Jim’s contacts and whereabouts in return for his own life. Showing more emotion than he has all episode, Kane is disgusted and attempts to kill Angel right then and there. Luckily for Angel Jim and the cops pull up.
- Stealing from the Till: Nova intends to have Gaedel killed because he suspects skimming. Riddel wants Gaedel’s job.
- Too Dumb to Live: Gaedel blows off Jim’s warning that Riddel is in on a plot to kill him, but he’s ignoring red flags that no one should even have to tell him about.
