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While Nucky hunkers down (Narcisse is nowhere to be seen this episode), he's warned by Gaston Means that there's a "skunk" in his cellar, but Nucky doesn't learn who (partly because Means wants to charge him a small fortune) before Means is arrested. So Nucky asks Eli who he doesn't trust. But Eli being pressured by Knox to get all the main gangsters into a meeting together, is acting squirrelly enough — suddenly downplaying his former suspicions of Knox, and June doesn't help things by blabbing about the visit from that babyfaced insurance salesman — that Nucky realizes who it is. "I want out," he tells Sally Wheet at the end of the episode. It's probably either that or killing his own brother, right?
Chalky and Daughter are in hiding at the house of his mentor Oscar (Louis Gossett Jr.), and Chalky also wants to give everything up altogether and run away with Daughter. Instead, she disappears, and Narcisse's men have tracked him to Oscar's place. Oscar's men take them down, but Chalky certainly can't stay there forever, and with Daughter gone, there's not much point in running away.
And Gillian. Poor, poor Gillian. She has killed probably the fewest amount of people of any of the main series cast — and is finally clean and ready to make her peace with losing her grandson — but the murder of the guy who looked like her son finally comes back to haunt her. Roy Phillips turns out to be a detective under the employ of Leander Whitlock, and after Roy kills a man (in what turns out to have been a staged event) Gillian confesses the murder to him, at which point the house is crawling with Leander and Pinkerton men, and a screaming Gillian is carried away. Good lord, were those guys hiding there the entire time waiting for the confession?
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He can't help but wonder what sexy assignment Roy Phillips is off to . Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It’s the middle of the night and we’re on a dark road with Daughter and Chalky driving. Daughter is asking if they’ve "crossed over." Not into the spiritual realm, anyway. "Little ways back", Chalky tells her. "They’re getting close", he says. We see they’re actually sitting in the back seat and are being driven, two men in the front, and they pass a sign welcoming them to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Well, the name sounds promising! Chalky asks the men in front how "Oscar" is keeping these days. "Some and some," says the driver, with the guy riding shotgun saying nobody’s getting younger. Man, if people can’t even say "he’s well" about you in that vague social niceties way, you must be in rough shape. "Natural fact", adds the driver. We’ll hear it a lot from him this episode.
Shotgun asks Chalky how he came to know Oscar, and Chalky’s surprised that Oscar didn’t tell them anything other than to pick him up and get him some clean clothes. The discussion of how Chalky knows Oscar doesn’t happen, as the driver -- without headlights on, mind you -- abruptly turns off the road, freaking Chalky out a little bit with his apparent Daredevil-esque radar. They pull up at a dark house, and the men get out and go up to the house, leaving Chalky and Daughter alone. "You worked for Mr. Boneau?" he asks, and Chalky explains that he got himself in a "knockdown" with some corner boys. "The way I was then, looked for a fight any old how," he says. "Never even felt that razor", he adds. (And that’s the origin of that!) But he kept on fighting through the copious amounts of blood, and then this man came out, unlike anything Chalky’d ever seen. Folks just moved out of his way. The corner boys took off, and Chalky thanked him, but was too wounded to walk away. Oscar took him before the police came and put him to work. Taught him everything he knows. "That Oscar," says Chalky.
A light comes on in the house. "Haven of grace," Daughter explains to a puzzled Chalky (and to anyone else who didn’t take French throughout his time in the Canadian school system that that’s what "Havre de Grace" means). Another guy approaches the car from the house, telling them they can get out. Chalky’s still pretty wary, and the guy introduces himself as Winston, but everybody calls him "Scrapper," for reasons unknown. It’s not my experience that people are unaware of why they get the nicknames they do, so let’s assume he’s being a little bashful. He’s Oscar’s nephew.