The Ledger

Faccia a Faccia

In this mob-themed episode (8.15), a badly beaten body turns up in the lagoon in Central Park. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, and trace his steps: based on his stomach contents, they visit nearby peanut stands, then an Italian restaurant he mentioned to the peanut vendor. Because his face was so mutilitated and had previously undergone extensive plastic surgery, the detectives rely on a sculptor to reconstruct what he originally looked like. As soon as they see the bust, they realize that their victim is a former mob hitman who testified against his cohorts and then entered the witness protection program. Unfortunately for him, he made the rather unwise decision to return to New York to talk to a writer about ghost-writing his story.

The man who killed him, a low-level mob operator named Johnny DeMayo, was stalking him outside the Italian restaurant, so the maitre d' became suspicious and made a note of the eventual killer's license plate, which he turns over to Briscoe and Curtis. The detectives confront their suspect, who denies involvement, but soon enough, they uncover additional evidence which confirms he is the killer of the hitman. They drive out to his house with some heavily armed officers, and as they prepare to enter his room, guns drawn, Curtis hesitates to go through the door. Briscoe notices this, and marches in himself. They find their suspect critically injured, shot twice, and barely clinging to life.

At the hospital, he regains consciousness and denies involvement in the death of the hitman, but when McCoy threatens to turn him loose, he admits it, and offers to testify against the prominent boss of a crime family, who he says personally ordered the hit on the hitman. You might see this coming: federal investigators then get involved and say they have been building a case against this mob boss for years, and don't want to see it messed up by the NY DA's office. Schiff stands strong, though, and asserts his jurisdiction. Briscoe and Curtis are then dispatched to arrest the mob boss, who they find dottering around dressed in a bathrobe and shawl. He appears to be deeply senile.

Sound familiar? Pretending to be crazy to avoid prosecution was the preferred tactic of Vincent "Chin" Gigante, a New York crime boss who wandered around Greenwich Village in pajamas and a bathrobe. His tactic worked well, although it eventually failed him. So, once his attorney asserts he is incompetent to stand trial, the judge mandates a "730 exam" to determine his competence. You know what that means: send in Skoda to get to the bottom of things. Skoda deliberately provokes a confrontation with the mob boss's son to see how the supposedly crazy boss will react, and he reacts as a normal, sane person would: he moves to protect himself. Good job, Skodie! The judge rules he is competent, and the case proceeds.

But it's not over yet: as McCoy is preparing DeMayo for his testimony he suspects that DeMayo is not telling the whole truth, and perhaps did not even commit the killing himself. Cheekbones investigates and realizes plenty of people had a motive to kill the victim, including one woman whose father was killed by the victim many years ago. This woman happened to be the girlfriend of DeMayo. They talk to her and -- spoiler coming -- she admits to the murder, and says she came up with it herself, not at the behest of the senile mob boss. The defense moves to drop the charges against the mob boss, but McCoy argues that a "conspiracy" to kill the victim existed: DeMayo involved his girlfriend in the murder, and told the mob boss he was going to go through with it. The trial continues and --- more spoilers -- he is found guilty. Before the sentencing hearing, the defense approaches McCoy and asks for leniency. In exchange, he agrees to testify about the "five families" of the NY mafia, and Chinese and Russian mob operations. The episode ends with Schiff approaching a gallery of reporters, preparing to tell them about this arrangement.

Couple of casting notes: Not surprisingly, several of the cast members later turned up on The Sopranos. The girlfriend who actually committed the murder is played by Katherine Narducci, best known for her role as Charmaine Bucco on The Sopranos, and Johnny DeMayo is played by Michael Rispole, who went on to play Jackie Aprile in the first couple seasons of the series.

The title of the episode is Italian for "face to face," and it comes from a line of dialogue in which Narducci describes her position relative to her victim as she prepared to kill him.

Posted by adm at February 15, 2004 04:01 PM

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