The Ledger

14.20 Everybody Loves Raimondo's

In this episode (14.20), two men are shot to death inside a favorite restaurant of mobsters and celebrities. One was killed because he heckled a woman singing Italian songs, the other appears to be an innocent bystander. But as Briscoe and Green learn, the truth is more complicated then that.

The episode is based on a similar shooting at an uptown Manhattan restaurant called Rao's a few months ago.

The episode begins with a man singing opera inside a restaurant. After he finishes, a woman is encouraged to sing a song. It's not as good, and you hear some heckling in the background before shots ring out and panic ensues. Briscoe and Green arrive on the scene and learn that one of the victims is Thomas Mitchell, a movie producer. Briscoe and Green are surprised to run into the NYPD's Chief of Detectives there. They ask him how he arrived so fast, and he says he was already there, having dinner. They learn from him that the other victim, a Mr. Carollo, apparently had some kind of "beef" (dispute) with another customer, who shot him dead. The shooter is a low-level mobster in his late 40s known as "Bumpy," but no one knows his real name. The detectives briefly talk to the owner of the restaurant, Paul Raimondo, who is upset. As Briscoe says, at Raimondo's, "the food is to die for."

Briscoe and Green begin their investigation by talking to other customers. The first one they talk to is a female judge. She explains that she likes the charm of the place, the mix of both sides of the law (successful people of all professions, she says), and she tells them the other victim, Mitchell, was a movie producer who recently produced a film called Al Dente about a mobbed-up restaurant similar to Raimondo's. Everybody, she says, loves Raimondo's.

The bartender at Raimondo's tells the dets that Carollo was "a made buy" and a crew boss. He also explains that people buy tables at the restaurant, so that they are always available when wanted. (They learn later the tables cost $50,000 and dinner for four costs $1000). The detectives learn that Al Dente was based on a tell-all book by a mobster wanna-be, and that Carollo and Bumpy hated each other. They also learn that Carolla ran a poker game on Arthur Avenue on the Bronx. A loan shark/collections manager, who works out of a Catholic church, tells them where they can find Bumpy, an inveterate gambler. The find Bumpy, aka Carmine Bustali, playing poker in the back room at a rec center. He's arrested 13 minutes into the episode.

He tells the detectives what they hadn't up to now realized: he shot Carollo for heckling the lady. Van Buren reports that the ballistics on his gun match the weapon used in Carollo's murder. That's the good news. The bad news is that Mitchell was shot with a different gun. Also, the forensics specialists figured out that the shot came from the bar, not where Bumpy was sitting. So they have to start over with their investigation into Mitchell's death. They visit Mitchell's office and talk to his assistant, who tells them about Sonny King, the author of the book that Al Dente was based on. She says that Mitchell had recently avoided talking to the pushy King, because King was always looking for more money from him. They talk to King, who tells them that people got mad at him because of the book, but he has an alibi for the night of the shooting: he was at a hockey game. Briscoe reads King's book looking for clues, and the dets visit the organized crime task force in New Jersey. They go out to dinner with a lady detective there who identifies a broker of hitmen described in the book named Artie. Briscoe goes undercover to arrange a hit via Artie. He plays pool with them, and makes a lot of fancy shots, then arranges a meeting for 10 o'clock that night in the parking lot. Artie tells him to bring $5,000 in $20 bills. That night, they make the arrest, and Artie soon rolls on Sonny King, saying he arranged the hit. The hit man, he says, is named Denny Rogis. They find Rogis living in a trailer in a salvage yard and arrest him, 28 minutes in to the episode.

But as Briscoe and Green prepare to arrest him, the NJ detective arrests him instead, over their objections. McCoy has to go visit the DA in NJ to figure out why they want to claim the collar. Turns out they just want the spotlight a little bit, which McCoy agrees to give them, as long as they can try Rogis in New York. They begin extradition proceedings, but the judge says he wants more evidence. McCoy comes up with the novel idea of charging him with not paying his tab at Raimondo's. It works, and the judge extradites him to NY on the larceny charge.

They make a deal with Rogis: Murder 2 in exchange for his testimony against King. He agrees, and King is arrested, 37 minutes in. As he cuffs him, Briscoe says, "Fame's a bitch."

The case against King is a little tricky, however, since the murder weapon disappeared during the panic at the scene, and motive still needs to be more firmly established. They learn that King borrowed money from a loan shark to finance the hit, the same loan shark questioned earlier. The loan shark says the collateral was a tape recording of Mitchell telling King he would give him $1 million of the film Al Dente grossed a certain amount of money, which it did. Mitchell never paid him the $1 million, though.

The trial begins (43 minutes in), and the loan shark says that Mitchell was full of crap." When things are going well, McCoy complains that the whole case is "polluted with American mobster mythology." The hitman testifies that he merely took the opportunity to shoot Mitchell in the restaurant because Bumpy had already started shooting Carollo. He also apologizes to Raimondo for shooting someone in his restaurant. When he takes the stand in his own defense, King says he borrowed the money from the loan shark to gamble on horses. He also says that everyone at Raimondo's was upset with Mitchell, too, because of the movie. This makes McCoy think that perhaps someone besides King had a motive to kill Mitchell. They re-interview Baldo, the hitman broker, who eventually admits that King merely wanted Rojis to scare Mitchell, and that someone else paid Rojis to kill Mitchell. That someone else turns out to be the owner of Raimondo's, whom Briscoe confronts. They need to find that missing murder weapon, however. It turns up in the dashboard of Raimondo's car, in a secret compartment opened by pressing the heater and radio buttons at the same time. (This kind of secret compartment was discussed during P. Diddy's trial on those shooting charges.) Raimondo admits he was upset with Mitchell and King over the movie and book, so he figured he could kill Mitchell and indirectly frame King. King is free of the murder charges, but still guilty of attempted robbery.

The episode was written by Sleepers author Lorenzo Carcaterra, a new producer of the show, who has also written a couple of episodes. Another one of his episodes, "Couples," is also elaborate, though even more complicated than this one.

Casting notes: famous cop Bo Dietl plays Bumpy, and several guys from the Sopranos also show up. Ray Abruzzo, who plays Little Carmine on The Sopranos, is Raimondo, and Joseph Gannascoli, one of the fat guys on The Sopranos (the one Christopher threw a sandwich at a few weeks ago), is the hitman broker here.

The title of the episode, of course, is a play on the CBS comedy series "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Rao's" (pronounced "Ray-O's"), the name of the restaurant Raimondo's seems to be modeled after.

Posted by adm at April 18, 2004 04:19 PM

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