The Ledger

7.20 We Like Mike

In this episode (7.20), Briscoe and Curtis suspect that a guy named Mike Bodack committed a murder, but eventually Bodack becomes their chief witness against another suspect. Unfortunately, Bodack has to sacrifice a lot to testify, so the question becomes whether he has the courage to do so.

After some investigation in the first 10 minutes of the show, Briscoe and Curtis settle on Bodack as their suspect, picking him up at a wedding reception and taking him in for questioning. He had the blood of his victim, Matthew Sherman, on the suit jacket he was wearing the night of the murder, but he says he merely helped him change a flat tire and moved on. Under pressure, he finally tells detectives that he saw another man approach the victim as he was leaving: a Puerto Rican guy with a tattoo of a dragon on his arm. Mike's new in-laws show up and stop the interview.

Still pursuing Mike as their suspect, they head over to his place of work -- a bookie's office in the Bronx. They meet another worker there who is very nervous, and afraid that Ray, their boss, will get upset if any calls go unanswered. Poking around, Briscoe finds a gun in the cabinet. Unfortunately for them, it's not the murder weapon. The case against Mike is falling apart, so they dig deeper and start looking into the Puerto Rican tattoo guy angle. They talk to a Korean dry cleaner in the neighborhood who saw a woman robbed. The detectives tak to the woman who says that indeed it was a Latino male with a dragon tattoo who robbed her. They trace this transient guy through his medical care, learn his name is Ricardo Garcia, and eventually discover that he's been arrested for shoplifting. They head down to the courthouse where he's being arraigned, expecting to take him down for the police station for a line-up so that the lady he robbed a while back can identify him. But when they get there, he's apparently been taken back to wherever he was being held, and they can't find him. Also, a uniformed officer had taken the woman to the courthouse instead of to the precinct. But, through coincidence, the woman looks over Briscoe's shoulder and sees Garcia, the guy who robbed her. She says, "That's him!" and they bring him in for questioning.

They search his brother's apartment, where they get a wallet that says "MS" from his brother, and find the murder weapon under a mattress, as well as a sock with some blood on it. After some coaxing from Briscoe, Garcia confesses, and says he didn't mean to do it.

Meanwhile, Mike is freed from Rikers and charges against him are dropped. Cheekbones apologizes to him, but he's still upset. But, McCoy and Carmichael may not be done with him yet: things aren't going well against Garcia, because a judge suppresses the mugging victim's ID of Garcia because it was improper, and so all the evidence that derived from that is tossed out, too. In this way, Mike becomes the chief witness against Garcia. Ross visits him at his job as a doorman, and he picks Garcia out of a line-up. Garcia is arrested. (34 minutes in.)

As they prepare for trial, Cheekbones can't find Mike. Eventually, she finds him hiding in his apartment, which has been torn up by people trying to intimidate him. He no longer wants to testify. To find out whose intimidating him, they tap his phones and listen to a call threatening him. They trace the call to -- who else -- Garcia's brother.

The trial begins (44 minutes in) and the victim's wife testifies. But before Mike can testify, the bookie's office where he worked gets raided, and he's charges with vice crimes. McCoy heads out to the Bronx to negotiation with the DA so he can get Mike released to testify. Unfortunately, Mike doesn't want to testify any more because anything he says in the Garcia case can be used against him by the Bronx DA, who wants to convict Mike of the bookmaking crimes.

After much thought, Mike takes the stand, but then tries to take the fifth amendment on certain questions so he doesn't incriminate himself. The judge orders all of Mike's testimony to be thrown out and releases him from the stand. McCoy pleads with the judge to allow him to confer with Mike, but it seems to late. But then Mike has a crisis of conscience, and McCoy tells him if he doesn't testify the murderer will go free. Mike returns to the stand and testifies against Garcia. We like Mike! He saves the day, and Garcia is convicted. The cherry on the sundae is that the Bronx DA drops the charges against Mike, and everybody is happy.

It seems not believable that Garcia would be convicted almost solely on the basis of Mike's seeing Garcia approach the victim, but whatever.

Quick casting note: the victim's wife is played by Reiko Aylesworth, who went on to star as Michelle Dessler on 24.

Posted by adm at April 18, 2004 01:35 PM

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