***SPOILERS*** It's when successful businessman who runs a "John's Bargain" like clothing store in the city garment district the lovable Teddy Bear and soft spoken, he never raises his voice even in anger, Nicholas "Nicky" Ross, Theodore Bikel, is missing from his son's Joey, Keir Dullea, collage basketball game it's suspected by Joey and "Nicky's" wife Tolya, Peggy Feury, that something serious had happened to him. As it turned out "Nicky" was involved in a mass murder of six people that he was contracted for by his boss the peanut chomping "Solly" Dillman, David J. Stewart, whom he secretly works for.
Refusing to give his name to the police who, after his motor boat overturned, fished him out of the Hudson River "Nicky's" true identity is finally revealed, not by him, as top Mafia hit-man Nick Rozinski who's now not only in hot water with the police but the Mafia or Mob as well in getting himself caught and putting the lives of his wife and son in jeopardy. That by them, or his wife, revealing where "Nicky" keeps a key to a safe deposit box that has all the information, in the hit-jobs he did, about his employment for mobster "Solly" Dillman"!
***SPOILERS*** It takes him a while to see the mess he put himself and his family in as "Nicky" finally agreed to testify against "Solly" and his gang but unknown to him "Solly" had other plans for "Nicky". That's by offing him as he's about to got to court, under very heavy police protection, and testify against him! A number of wild shootouts in this "Naked City" episode as well as the final sequence with a dying "Nicky" repenting for his sins on the Federal Court's steps, as he's about to check out for good, makes it more then just your average TV crime episode. "Nicky" was nothing but a low-fife piece of crap up until he decided to do the right thing and that, despite dying, made him human for once, besides as in his secret identity as businessman Nick Ross, in his rotten life.