The Ledger

12.3 For Love or Money

In this episode (12.3), a man is killed in a parking lot, and virtually anyone could be responsible. Eventually, it appears that a woman and her daughter are to blame, but even they are not wholly loyal to each other. Briscoe and Green unravel the complicated case, and McCoy and SS use their prosecutorial wiles to find out the truth.

The episode begins with a couple of teenagers walking in a parking lot. It appears that they are stoned. They stumble over a dead guy, and one of them says, "Talk about a total buzz kill." CSU arrives and determines that the man has been shot to death, and has been dead about 3-4 hours. He has many drivers licenses and other forms of ID, with different names on them. Looking around at the parking lot, Briscoe says, "Parking in this city will kill ya."

The victim's name is Ronald Buck. They talk to his parole officer who points them to his sister in Queens, who points them to his place of work, who says he got into a fight on his first day at the job. They visit a bar he was known to frequent, and talk to his bookie, who they think may have been motivated to kill him. Briscoe says, "It's The Sopranos...It makes 'em think they can get away with anything."

They visit OCCB to check out Buck's association with organized crime, and they learn that the Politi and Ribisi families are at war, and Buck might be a casualty. They check in with the head of the Polito family, who is in prison. He says he'll give them some info on the killing if they can arrange for the FBI to back off his son a little. They take him out of the federal prison, and lead him through the crime scene. He points out some things the killer did wrong, but doesn't give them any solid data. Van Buren is mad at them for taking Polito out of federal prison, and they review the evidence they have so far, which isn't much.

They go back to the victim's sister who points them to Estaban Cruz, who once stabbed him, and this leads to a prison log, which reveals the sister's brother visited him 3 times in jail, which leads to a storage locker, which leads to a thief named Paul who is connected to an unsolved murder/robbery of a man named Cobin.

They talk to Cobin's wife and stepdaughter (who seems unnecessarily present during an interview scene). They talk to a detective from the Cobin case, and find a connection between Ronnie Buck's carpet cleaning business and Cobin. The wife denies knowing Buck, but she signed the invoice for his company to provide services to her husband's store. Perhaps she hired Buck to kill her husband, Mr Cobin?

They talk to Buck's partner, Mr Karpinksy. He's at Rikers, and says Buck is in fact a hitman and he killed Cobin, and that he arranged the hit in a parking lot with a lady. A lawyer named Dimmick is the connection between Buck and Corbin's wife.

The ADAs review the evidence with Lewin. They talk to Mr Cobin's first husband, who said she was merciless during their divorce and accused him of abusing their daughter. They search Mrs Cobin's house, and find a stub from the parking lot where Buck was killed. they arrest her for the murder of Buck and her husband. (33')

A judge splits the two cases, and she stands trial for the Buck murder (43'). During the mom's testimony, it appears she is covering for her daughter. Her lawyer, recurring character Mr Axtell, picks up on this. Mrs Cobin rolls on her daughter and says the daughter killed Buck, avenging Mr Cobin's death. The verdict comes back: Mrs Cobin is not guilty of Murder 1.

The daughter hasn't been charged, however, and the closing scene of the episode is the mom and the daughter meeting on a boat, alone. Long time viewers will note that this is quite strange, because on the original series, there is never a scene where one of the main characters -- a detective, lawyer, or psychologist -- is not present. This might be a clue as to what is coming next: the mom admits to her daughter her role in Cobin's death (her daughter slept with Cobin), but they are being tape-recorded from the doc. The daughter set up her mom, whom they re-arrest. (59')

I think this is the 250th L&O episode I have summarized since I began this site in December 2003.

Posted by adm at June 22, 2004 02:01 AM

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