Dealer’s Choice – Director: Ruba Nadda/Writer: John Callaghan
This one starts with a young guy (Sean Murphy) hiring Frankie and Trudy to find his stolen silver pocket watch. The watch obviously means a lot to Sean, as he gives them a fifty dollar advance and promises another fifty when they find it. The watch was stolen by some street urchins, so Frankie and Trudy start there, tracking the watch through several people until they find out some guy lost it at the blackjack table in an underground gambling joint. Unfortunately, the place belongs to Bessie Starkman, who’s still pissed off at Frankie for thwarting her (in Extra Innings). Frankie hints at blackmailing
Bessie (since a lot of cops come to gamble at her place) and she admits the watch is gone … stolen by some thugs who robbed her place a couple nights back. Frankie and Trudy offer to find out who robbed her (since they’re looking for the watch anyway) as long as Bessie promises not to murder anyone. Bessie isn’t happy about that and tells them they’ll be in trouble if they double-cross her (punctuating the threat by smashing the urn containing her mother’s ashes).
Bessie gives Trudy and Frankie jobs so they can nose around. Trudy 
becomes a blackjack dealer (she’s been playing cribbage with her mother for years), while Frankie is a hostess. The head of security (Vernon Ashton) warns Trudy not to cheat the customers or talk to them, but to be on the lookout for cheaters. Frankie doesn’t like being manhandled and is about to slap a guy, when Bessie informs her that he’s Charles Konaski, a very important customer. Konaski is impressed by Frankie’s moxie and gives her his card, telling her he might have a job for her. Mary and Flo are canvassing pawn shops when they run across the stolen watch. The clerk says the seller’s name is in the ledger, which the owner has taken home, so they’ll have to come back tomorrow. While examining the watch, Mary and Flo are surprised to see an inscription written in Chinese. At the club, Frankie
meets Leo, whose cousin (Ronnie) is Bessie’s floor manager, so Leo always drinks for free. Frankie figures out the robbers didn’t come through the back door, so she checks out the back rooms of the club. At the blackjack table, one guy leaves just as Vernon rousts another gambler, accusing him of cheating and dragging him towards the front door. Two masked men burst in through the back to hold the place up again, but Frankie confronts them fearlessly. Their guns are empty and Trudy decks one of them before they fight back and take off.
Turns out Frankie found the guns, robes, and masks in the employee bathroom and took the bullets out of the guns. She tells Bessie she must have a mole on her staff, since only an employee could’ve gotten into the 
bathroom to plant the stuff, leaving it for the robbers (who would’ve come in as customers). Frankie and Trudy discuss the robbery and Trudy points out that a cheater was thrown out right before each robbery, so maybe that was some kind of signal. Since Vernon rousted the supposed cheater without getting a sign from Trudy, they figure he might be in on it. Mary and Flo get Wendy to translate the writing on the watch, and wonder if it really belongs to Sean. At the casino, Vernon admits he planted the stuff in the bathroom, saying he had no choice since someone threatened to kill his wife if he didn’t cooperate. He gets his instructions via a dead drop and is supposed to be picking up a new message right away. Frankie offers to go with him, leaving Trudy to investigate some more around the club. She remembers the guy who left right before the robbery (Marty Ward, who claimed to work at Muldoon’s Grill), but when she mentions that to Ronnie, he dismisses it immediately.
Frankie and Vernon reach the drop spot and he goes to check it. Frankie is knocked out and woken up later by Bessie, who points out that Vernon’s dead body is right next to Frankie … as is the gun that killed him. Bessie isn’t too broken up about Vernon’s death when she finds out he was the mole, but she says they have to get the hell out of there. A cop shows up to arrest them and Bessie knocks him out, so she and Frankie have no choice but to run.
Frankie and Bessie stop by the office to let Trudy know what happened, then head to Wendy’s to hide out. When Detective Greyson shows up looking for 
Frankie, she and Bessie hide in Wendy’s secret booze room (which is pretty small). After Greyson leaves, Frankie and Bessie have an argument about Bessie’s proclivity for violence, which doesn’t bode well since they’re about to be locked in Wendy’s place together overnight. Trudy goes to Muldoon’s to see if Marty is the guy she punched out during the robbery, but he doesn’t have a mark on his face. Trudy goes to see Flo, who gives her a phone number she found in Vernon’s sock. When Trudy shows it to Bessie, she recognizes the number as that of the Magdinos, a mob family in Buffalo. They must be heavy hitters, as Bessie admits even she’s scared of them. At the pawnshop, Mary tells Flo that she checked Sean’s record and found out he assaulted a Chinese businessman a while back, so they wonder if he stole the watch from that guy. The pawnbroker gives them the name of the guy who pawned the watch. At Wendy’s, they compare notes and Wendy tells them a Chinese
businessman had a daughter who was recently sent back to China and they figure she and Sean must’ve been in love and her father freaked when he found out. They give Frankie the name of the guy who pawned the watch, which turns out to be Muldoon. They figure out the guy talking to Marty at the casino was Leo, Ronnie’s cousin … which suggests Ronnie might be in on the robbery. As soon as Bessie hears that, she heads for the club.
Frankie and Trudy find Bessie with a knife to Ronnie’s throat. Ronnie 
swears he had nothing to do with the heist and offers to give them Leo if he was involved. But when Frankie finds out Leo works for Charles Konaski, she realizes he’s the one behind the robberies, not Ronnie. The three of them go to Konaski’s, where they find Leo (who does have a black eye) and Konaski. Konaski admits he’s working for the Magadinos and has been stealing from Bessie to finance his own casino. Bessie is ready to kill him, but Frankie won’t let her and suggests they play a hand of poker to see who decides his fate. Bessie agrees, making Frankie (who claimed to be a clumsy card-dealer) deal because she doesn’t trust Trudy. They each end up with a full house, but Frankie’s is higher. Bessie’s not happy, but accepts the loss. But Frankie reveals to Trudy that she
cheated, dealing from the bottom of the deck. They give Sean his watch back and he tells them how he fell for his girlfriend when they were studying English Lit together, but her father disapproved and shipped her off to China. Wendy says she might be able to get a message to her in China, which makes Sean very happy. Greyson stops by the office to let Frankie know she’s off the hook and there’s some definite sexual tension there … but they don’t act on it.
This was a pretty good episode, giving us a bit more of the Frankie/Bessie 
rivalry we saw a few episodes ago. Bessie suggests that she and Frankie have more in common than Frankie wants to admit, which may be true but their fundamental personalities are quite different … especially in the way they view the value of human life. The sexual tension between Frankie and Greyson is getting heavier and I get the feeling we haven’t seen the last of it. They’ll probably end up banging sooner or later. It was also nice to see Mary and Flo working together again, proving that they’re pretty good detectives in their own right.
Favourite Quotes:
- “You’re more of a dollar bill, Bessie.” Frankie’s reply when Bessie says they’re like two sides of the same coin.
- “All three of you broads are crazy.” Konaski’s reaction when Frankie suggests she and Bessie play poker to decide his fate.
- “Was he wearing pants?” Flo’s query when she hears that Frankie was hanging out in her office with Greyson earlier.