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New federal prosecutor Esther Randolph arrives in town, and she has no interest in getting up to anything but the business of putting Nucky behind bars. She also has zero use for Nelson Van Alden, who is having his own problems now that he doesn't have the money to pay off Lucy for her baby-carrying (and doesn't have a wife to give the baby to anymore anyway). Lucy manages to be the enterprising one as she takes the baby to see Nucky. Well, once a sugar daddy, always a sugar daddy. Nucky in turn summons Van Alden and proposes a deal where VA would report to Nucky on Randolph's case, while Nucky would provide for the child. Van Alden seems to go for it, though he does later appeal to Randolph with Nucky's case file in hand.
The new consortium of decision makers -- Jimmy, Lansky, Luciano, Capone, Harrow, and Eli -- meet to decide on steps in their burgeoning criminal empire. The consensus is that they don't have time to wait for Nucky to get sent to prison -- now is the time to kill him. Jimmy doesn't want to, out of some naïve belief that it wouldn't have to come to this, but after Gillian whispers in his ear about not looking like a waffler, Jimmy approaches Nucky at Babbette's during a Jack Dempsey press conference, identifies him, and then walks away as an assassin opens fire on Nucky. He got his hand up in front of the bullet, so it looks like he'll live, but just barely.
Margaret spends the bulk of the episode in Brooklyn, seeking out her lost family. Things are tense and unpleasant between her and her brother -- and we are confirmed that Margaret left for the States because she got pregnant -- but there's a closeness with her three younger sisters. When Margaret brings the youngest a book and mentions that she should come stay with her in Atlantic City sometime, her brother steps in and tells Margaret to leave them alone.
Back in Atlantic City, Owen Sleater reveals his true purpose for having been stationed here in the States, as he finds an old IRA deserter in a dingy bar and ends up garroting him in the bathroom, When he returns to Nucky's house he finds Margaret recently returned. Neither of them are aware of Nucky having been shot, and with the house all to themselves, they finally give in to the inevitable and DO IT.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open with Jack Dempsey practicing in a boxing ring set up on the beach in Atlantic City, just as Nucky had proposed earlier. And Nucky's there, along with a hundred or so spectators and countless reporters. Also, not for nothing, but Jack Dempsey could have been on the 1920s version of Gossip Girl with that bone structure. That is not a face that has been punched for a living. He fields questions from the adoring press, and then brings in a little person dressed as a Frenchman (the same nationality as his upcoming opponent) for an extra bit of showboating. Afterwards, Jack is glad-handing with Nucky and Bader outside the tent. Nucky asks him to do some promotion at Babbette's later this week, to which Jack agrees. Another reporter approaches with one more question, this time for Nucky: what did he and the Attorney General talk about on the golf course recently? Nucky evades the question, and then tells Jack to show him the "old right hook," and Dempsey puts the reporter in a playful headlock in the way that only devastatingly handsome professional athletes can do to soft journalists.
Elsewhere, Van Alden returns home to Lucy playing her music and smoking, with an air of impatience about her. She says the baby cried for five hours straight today, and she just got her down to bed. "Did you feed her?" Van Alden asks stupidly. She wants to know if he was able to reach his wife. He wasn't -- she's gone to visit an aunt in Milwaukee and won't speak to him. "We're being tested, Rose and I," he says. Lucy asks what about her? Van Alden: "I'm sure you're being tested as well, in your fashion." Heh. No, Lucy wants to know what happened to their arrangement, the one where she carries his baby for nine months and then hands it over to him for money. He doesn't have the money, however, and may not ever have it. (Also, unspoken, but no wife to give said baby to at the moment.) The baby starts crying in that super loud and intrusive way that they do when filmmakers want to covey that the baby is becoming a burden. Lucy starts pressing for her $3,000. "Lord knows what I was thinking," Van Alden says, to himself if no one else, which makes her think he's been conning her this whole time. He doesn't know how else to defend himself, so he just leaves, with Lucy hollering out after him: "This is your baby! You bought it!" She yells that the kid doesn't even have a name yet. From the apartment door: "Shut up with the shouting!" From Lucy: "YOU SHUT UP!"