The Ledger

14.12 Payback

In this episode (14.12), the murder of a small-time bookie leads to some tension between a man and his nephew struggling for control for their branch of the mob, and a real estate agent with an unusual part-time job. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with the discovery of the victim, Jerry Tortino, in a horse's stable. The uniformed police officer who greets Briscoe and Green offers some off-the-cuff crime scene analysis. Everyone's a crime scene specialist now, Green cracks. Briscoe turns to the horse, hoping for a witness, and says to an employee, "His name's not Mr. Ed, is it?" They learn that Tortino used to be a big bookie, but his business had diminished in recent years after some time in jail. The ME points out a crescent-shaped burn mark on the man's neck, indicating that his killer had branded him in some way, perhaps as a signature. They learn that prior to his conviction, Tortino had ratten out some people in the Misucci crime family. (The Misuccis are always mentioned in mob episodes.) Specifically, he had rolled out someone named Righetti. The dets visit the Righetti's nephew at his social club. He's defiant but good-humored, offering them some food. He says that unless they have something to charge him with, they should "take it under the arches," meaning leave. Briscoe says in response, "Where do they get the lingo?" I'm not sure, but I think that Righetti was referencing a scene from Taxi Driver in which a cab dispatcher tells De Niro to "take it under the arches" if he has a problem with the way things are done.

Anyway, it turns out that NYPD has someone deeply undercover with Righetti's crew, and he was even at the social club when the dets visited. The UC tells them where to find Righetti: an apartment on Mott Street (in Chinatown). They find him there, being attended to by a visiting nurse, and sitting in his shower, fully clothed, with an umbrella over his head. They bring him in for questioning, and he appears to remember Briscoe from the very old days, and even remembers what he used to drink, and that his wife had red hair. The nurse tells them that Righetti is not really crazy and that she got a good deal on an apartment from a contact of Righetti's, a real estate agent named Stillman. Stillman is the same guy who helped Tortino find his apartment. Hm.

Briscoe wants a wiretap on Righetti to see if there's a connection him and the murder, and to see if he's really crazy. A sympathetic judge gives them a the warrant. The wiretap yields a conversation between Righetti and Stillman about an apartment on East 79th. Van Buren says, wait, we had a murder last night on E 79th. Same building and everything. They begin to suspect that the conversation was a coded request to have someone killed on E79th, and that the real estate agent was arranging the hits. The detectives talk to the detective investigating that murder, and learn that the victim there also had a brand on his neck. Hm!

McCoy visits with an assistant US Attorney. It turns out that her husband was the victim in this second murder. It looks like he was killed as a message to her, since she was involved as the prosecutor in his case. She tells McCoy she wants Stillman convicted. They arrest him. His lawyer, Mr Margolis, shows up and makes a motion to exclude the wiretap, since it had nothing to do with the crime, and the tap was supposed to be to get evidence against Righetti, not Stillman. The judge agrees and tosses the tape.

Southerlyn dons some jeans and talks to the undercover detective in the park. The DAs learn that Stillman has a safe deposit box. They open it and find a money clip with an embossed crescent on it and a lighter: ad hoc branding iron. Even so, Stillman refuses to make a deal.

The trial begins (41 minutes into the ep) and the defense argues that different weapons could have been used to commit the crimes. Angry at the defendant's defiant stand, the US Atty marches out of the trial. The case isn't going well, so McCoy makes an offer to Stillman. Around the same time, the UC detective tells them where to find the gun. They theorize that the Righetti nephew knew he was being wire-tapped when he revealed the location of the gun, and that he did so to get his uncle convicted of the crime, so that he could have all the power to himself. They arrest the elder Righetti, finding him in a bathroom and sneakers. Briscoe cracks that the guys from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy will want to have a word with him.

Once they pick up Righetti, another US Atty stops by and wants the DA's office to hold off on prosecuting Righetti, because they want to make a deal with him so they can reel in even bigger fish. McCoy is pissed, but Branch is ready to do what the US Atty wants. Branch orders McCoy to release Righetti and withdraw his offer to Stillman. Branch and McCoy get in a huge fight, raising their voices and everything. It is maybe the biggest intra-office fight I've ever seen on the show. McCoy does as he's told, however, and Stillman can't believe the offer is being withdrawn. Shortly thereafter, McCoy is called to another crime scene: Righetti and his nurse have been murdered.

The episode is notable primarily because of the big fight between McCoy and Branch. In a way, the tension between them is a parallel to the tension between the two Righettis.

I should point out that this episode features a mob boss pretending to be crazy, a ploy ripped not only from real life (see the case of Vincent "Chin" Gigante) but also from a previous episode of L&O.

Posted by adm at April 9, 2004 07:41 PM

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