Unringing a Bell

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With Bell transferred to the Demographics Department, Holmes and Watson are having trouble getting along with the other detectives they've been getting assigned to work with. This doesn't stop them from arresting the guy who's been stealing all the Fabergé eggs, though.

Meanwhile, Bell is discovering what the Demographics Department does. It's mostly data analysis, although sometimes he gets to leave the office and investigate vague anonymous tips about people with dark features rolling barrels into recycling plants without authorization. And this time, he finds a decapitated body. Score! In addition to being headless, the body is also missing any hands or identification, so the case is off to a difficult start. Luckily, Watson has an encyclopedic knowledge of mobsters from twenty years earlier, and she recognizes the corpse from some scars on its legs. Seriously.

The dead man is Handsome Bobby Pardillo, which enrages his father, Robert Padrillo. He vows revenge on whoever did this, so it's no surprise that when Holmes and Watson find a member of the Ferrara family, his car immediately explodes. So now there's a mob war in the offing (if I have that right) unless something happens to stop it. Holmes tries to figure out how Handsome Bobby got tracked down, because he's been missing for 21 years. He determines that the NSA found him at the behest of Deputy Commissioner Da Silva, the very important police officer in charge of the Demographics Department.

Everything works out and Da Silva gets arrested, but the really important thing is that Bell and Holmes have a fight. Holmes is angry at Bell for leaving the Major Crimes Department, because he thinks Bell has a calling to be a proper detective. Bell, meanwhile, is resentful of Holmes. Not just for getting him shot, but because everything seems to come so easily for him. Holmes tells him about his drug addiction, which kind of turns Bell around. So at the end of the episode, Bell is back where he's supposed to be, and he seems committed to working on his physical rehab so he can get rid of his tremors and carry a gun again.

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We open in the NYPD meeting room, where a tuxedo-clad Holmes is demanding a leg from Mr. Riley. Mr. Riley demurs, but a police detective I don't recognize has a court order. Watson (wearing a nice gown) says Riley has stolen a Fabergé egg, among other things. The explanation for the fancy clothes is that Holmes and Watson were at the opening of the new Tiffany exhibit, watching Riley and his co-conspirator, Miss Adrienne Harper. Riley reluctantly gives up his leg to Holmes, who pops open a hidden compartment. He's in the middle of an entertainingly smug monologue about how great he is when Detective Nash shoos him and Watson out in mid-gloat.

In the bullpen, Holmes is grouchy. He claims it's because Nash missed Riley's prior convictions, which delayed their case, but I think he just doesn't like not being allowed to finish his speeches. Either way, Holmes and Watson dislike Nash. Apparently they've been through half the squad since Bell left. Holmes approaches Gregson and asks him to be their detective, but apparently Gregson has an actual job so he can't be bothered.

And speaking of Detective Bell, here he is! He's working in the Demographics department under Deputy Commissioner Frank Da Silva, who I keep thinking is one of the Murray brothers, like maybe Joel. You know, Freddy Rumsen on Mad Men? He's not, though; he's played by Peter Gerety, who was that judge on The Wire. Da Silva is giving assignments in a crowded conference room, and he assigns Bell and a woman named Wozniak to go to Nemetz Oil Recycling in Port Morris. They are to check out an anonymous tip regarding a "man with dark features" who rolled a barrel onto the site without permission. There's some banter about how this assignment is due to Bell's bad luck at picking NBA teams and Wozniak tries to get some character background in about how she hates field work.

At Nemetz, Bell and Wozniak get the scoop from a guy who won't even stop walking as he talks to them. Witnesses on shows like these are pretty rude, because it would be boring to always see people standing around and talking like normal humans do. He didn't see anything and thinks the anonymous caller probably just saw Rajit or Amid, who are legitimate employees. They pass a number of green barrels, which contain semi-toxic stuff. Wozniak goes to check the security tapes inside, where it's not nine degrees. Bell walks around the warehouse and studies barrels. One catches his eye and he knocks on it. It's hollow. When they open it up (everyone wearing breather masks, which is a pretty good idea), there's a headless body inside. Neat! And I like that Bell is being shown to have observational skills here. This version of Sherlock Holmes is much kinder to his police contacts than you usually get.

And now the police are on the scene! Gregson's there, although he's allegedly too busy with paperwork to go out on cases all the time. He and Bell are pleased to see each other, although Holmes has to keep a discreet distance. Bell spotted this barrel because he noted the UPC tag was low and the barrel had a new coat of paint. See? Observant. The body inside had no head or hands or identification. Bell chats with Watson about how unsettling it is to have daily threat briefings about terrorism threats to New York. Holmes thinks the NY-specific CTU idea is fascinating, but Bell rolls his eyes at the idea of talking to him. After Bell has flounced off, Watson assures Holmes that he'll calm down: "Time heals all wounds. Sometimes it just takes a larger dose." She has set him up perfectly: "Well, if that were true, it would be a tremendous comfort to this gentleman." See, because he's dead and decapitated. It will be difficult to identify the victim, and it's not an aspect that interests Holmes, because it's just a matter of waiting for the computers to spit out an answer to whether the DNA matches anything. So he directs his attention to the barrel. It was recently repainted from sky blue, so maybe it was at a Navy shipyard. Watson spots a scar on the corpse's leg and says, "Handsome Bobby." It's Robert Pardillo, who was last seen 21 years earlier walking out of court.

Back at NYPD, Watson delivers most of the exposition. Handsome Bobby was missing, but never considered dead. This corpse is lighter than Bobby was, but there are scars from laparoscopic surgery. He had a fake patella after Big Teddy Ferrara kneecapped him. It's all part of the legendary animosity between the Pardillos and Ferraras. Holmes would like to know how Watson knows all this. Her explanation is that she went to grade school in Queens, and some of her classmates were from mob families. I'm not sure I buy that explanation for Watson suddenly knowing everything about the mob, but we have to get this information into the show somehow. Holmes explains that the Mafia never interested him, since they're boring. Gregson wants to check Ferrara soldiers, and Holmes wants to get Handsome Bobby's father in to identify the body.

In the morgue, Robert Pardillo identifies his son. Mr. Pardillo, incidentally, is played by Paul Sorvino, which is shorthand for "mob boss." He last saw Bobby a couple months ago. Watson explains that Bobby had to go into hiding because he was suspected of killing a made guy in the Ferrara family. Holmes asks about how Mr. Pardillo communicated with Bobby, since Bobby was on the lam. Well, he doesn't say "on the lam," but he should have. They sent each other emails disguised as insurance spam. Love it. Bobby only came to town to see doctors, since there wasn't a good "gastro guy" upstate. Mr. Pardillo is angry and vows revenge on "the mug that done this." Dude, you know better than to vow revenge right in front of the police. Gregson walks him out.

Now that Holmes and Watson are alone in the morgue (how romantic!), Holmes says Pardillo is intent on retaliation. Well, yeah. He just said that. Holmes would like Watson to dig into police files on the Ferrara family's infrastructure while he goes to the Demographics unit in search of information about the anonymous person that called in the tip.

Da Silva welcomes Holmes to his office. The man who called in the tip didn't give his name, which apparently isn't unusual because they don't want to come off racist if they're wrong. The tech people traced the call to a pay phone down the street and can only say that the voice is of a man who's old and from the area. He gives Holmes a phone number so he can talk to the tech people directly, but that plot point is immediately forgotten for the rest of the episode. Holmes says he's also here to help out Da Silva, and the camera moves out of Da Silva's office so we can see Bell noticing the conversation. Holmes talks to Da Silva a bit more out of our earshot and walks away, glancing at Bell. Naturally, Bell chases him down. Holmes apparently volunteered to help out the Demographics Department, knowing that Bell would be too professional to object. It looks like Bell is going to object after all, so Holmes tells him, "Perhaps what you and I require is an airing of grievances." Bell is surprised to hear that Holmes considers himself to have a grievance, since Bell's the one who got shot. Holmes thinks it's petty of Bell not to accept his apologies. He calls Bell an analyst and a number-cruncher because he is a jerk, trying to get under his skin. He succeeds, which ends the conversation.

Watson is in bed, going through police files. Then she shouts, "Sherlock!" He immediately pops into her room wearing a butcher's smock and bloody rubber gloves. He's been working on the techniques of head-choppery. It involves looming behind the victim so you don't get blood all over you. He's concluded that their target is tall and left-handed. I feel like Sherlock Holmes has traditionally faced a lot of left-handed people. Anyway, Watson has settled on Dante Scalice as their murderer. Her theory is that when Robert Pardillo called the killer a "Mutt," that might have referred to Dante's Sicilian/Israeli ancestry. And these pictures of Dante's bar show a sky blue barrel. It's not proof, but it's enough to justify a little more investigation.

So they're digging through trash cans in the snow. All the trash is over a week old, suggesting that Dante hasn't gone anywhere. The car is outside, so he's at home. They start to leave when Dante comes out, so Holmes explains that they work with the police. Dante tells them to get lost, neglecting to respond to the news Handsome Bobby's death. He tells them he has an alibi for any time they care to name. He goes to his car, which blows up as they walk away. It is exceedingly unsurprising.

According to Gregson, the explosive was Tovex, which is very common in construction. So common, in fact, that even though the Pardillo family does a lot of construction, it's not enough to arrest them. The point is that now a Ferrara has killed a Pardillo and the Pardillos seem to have retaliated, which could lead to a mob war. Holmes is inside Dante's house, nosing around. He found a bucket under the sink where most of Handsome Bobby's head had dissolved in battery acid. Gross. You don't want that going on in your kitchen. So the Handsome Bobby case is down, and the new goal is to put the car bombing on Pardillo Sr. Watson wants to get back to the files to study Pardillo soldiers. But Holmes has found something else in Dante's kitchen: a manila folder containing printouts of Bobby's emails and cellphone records. So that's how Dante found Bobby! Holmes says the folder is "A care package from your National Security Agency." This is the sort of thing he should hand off to the police.

Holmes and Watson are meeting with an NSA agent who claims he's a web developer named McNally. Holmes shrugs that off as an obvious like, because Lantera Digital Solutions is a front. He wants to know why the government wanted Handsome Bobby dead, and he demonstrates that the phone and email records have alphanumeric codes from PRISM, an NSA database. McNally continues to deny everything, so Holmes threatens to sign him up to plushy websites." Petty!

Watson enters the elevator at the NYPD police station and finds Bell. She's here to pick up the bomb squad report. He's here to talk to Gregson about Holmes and Watson helping out at Demographics, but Watson has not heard about it. Bell's line is that they work with a lot sensitive CIs, which would be a bad fit for Holmes, so he wants Watson to tell Holmes to back off.

When Watson comes home. There are muffled explosions from inside a teeny fridge. Holmes is conducting experiments in hopes of tying the Tovex bomb to a Pardillo building site, although it's not likely to work. Watson does not engage him on the topic of the NSA working with the mob, because she would prefer to discuss the issue of them working for Demographics. She doesn't want to even though Holmes assures her there would be plenty of delicious data for detectives to study. In her opinion, this is all because Holmes doesn't like consulting for anyone, but Bell. He starts to explain himself, but then he gets a mysterious text message. He leaves, warning her not to touch anything.

Holmes climbs up a giant tower without walls to find McNally. Apparently when you meet NSA agents, you do it at an unfinished sewage-treatment plant. McNally says PRISM is secure and there was no leak. Handsome Bobby's emails were requested by a cop -- in the Demographics department. And if that weren't clear enough, McNally clarifies, "What Deputy Commissioner Da Silva wants, he gets." He's in charge of fighting terrorism for New York City, so he's allowed to ask for information. But the NSA bosses aren't thrilled with the mob violence that has resulted.

Back home, Holmes brushes his teeth. Watson is skeptical that Da Silva could be dirty, because he's such an important policeman. Holmes knows they'll need more evidence, and that it will be hard to investigate Da Silva without alerting him.

So, of course, Bell is in the living room. And he's unhappy about being lured there under false pretenses, especially because he believes that Da Silva is not corrupt. Holmes points out that he assigned Bell to investigate this anonymous tip. Bell dismisses Holmes's insights with the standard line: "Maybe you're just not as smart as you think you are." Holmes suggests that there might have been a good police reason to take Handsome Bobby out. Bell tells Watson, with great disappointment, "You know, I expect this kind of garbage from him." He leaves and Holmes follows, stiffly.

In the front hallway, Holmes and Bell have it out. Bell starts: "I won't forgive you so you want to send me on a witch hunt, wreck my career?" But it turns out that what Holmes is really angry about is that Bell is no longer acting as a detective. He tells Bell, "It's your calling. You are not an analyst. You are not an assessor of data. You transferred from Major Crimes either because your pride would not allow you to occupy the same space as me or because you're feeling sorry for yourself. In either case, a pathetic excuse!" I think it's interesting that he's so contemptuous of data assessors, considering how he spends much of his time. Bell is thrown a bit because he thought this was all personal, but he points out that he does have a tremor that keeps him from carrying a gun. Holmes shouts that he had faith in Bell's ability to finish his rehab. Bell says that's not fair, because everything comes easy for Holmes. So Holmes tells him about how he's a drug addict and is only two years removed from being in the gutter. He ends his story: "With help, I fought back. And I got a little bit better. And I know what I'm supposed to do with my life. Do you?" Bell leaves. That was a great scene because it showed that Holmes actually cares about Bell on a personal level.

Holmes and Watson walk through an undefined neighborhood, where they're looking for Big Teddy Ferrara. Watson thinks something doesn't feel right and she should be talking about that fedora she's wearing. ZING. They found Big Teddy's neighborhood by threatening his mistress with deportation. And to find his specific home, Holmes just blows a police whistle right in the middle of the street. Gotta move the plot along, am I right?

Teddy is not afraid of Holmes and Watson. He's played by Vincent Curatola, who was Johnny Sack on The Sopranos; he calls them a "couple of police errand boys or whatever you are." After an exchange of ineffectual threats, Teddy tells them, "We don't have a cop. Dante didn't have a cop." According to him, Dante got a packet ten days ago out of nowhere. Teddy told him didn't care and didn't tell him to do what he did. He's not really interested in getting involved in a mob war.

Bell meets with Da Silva. Bell spins a tale about how maybe someone wanted them to find the body. He suggests that Holmes is crazy and Da Silva answers, "Consider him gone. I trust your judgment. Just not about the Knicks."

Brownstone. Watson has ordered pizza, possibly because she feels like it's the right thing to do after talking to Italian-American mobsters. She believed Teddy. Holmes works from the other end of the case and asks why Da Silva would do it. A knock at the door is not pizza: it's Bell! He comes in and says there was something in Da Silva's voice he didn't trust, so he doubled back and went into his office. And he found proof that Da Silva was dirty. Bell says it's a career case. It's a file with enough to put Robert Pardillo behind bars for a thousand years, but Da Silva never did anything with it. Holmes finds a newspaper article with Pardillo's handwriting on it, and it's from just twelve days ago. He thinks Da Silva might have sacrificed Bobby to get out from under Pardillo Sr.'s thumb. The evidence in the file goes back to when Da Silva joined the force. He might have started as a mob plant but converted to being a good cop somewhere along the way. Bell thinks it's pretty late in Da Silva's career to decide not to be dirty.

Holmes believes the newspaper clipping was an instruction to kill Louis Martinez, a reformist candidate. There's another knock at the door, but this time it's just pizza. Holmes's theory is that Pardillo's idea was to get Bobby's body found so he could start a mob war and weaken the Pardillo family. The only way he could get a clean retirement is if Pardillo dies. Everyone's convinced, but Bell stole the file, so it's inadmissible in court. Using it would end Da Silva's career, but also Bell's. Something else is called for.

At Demographics, Bell tells Da Silva that the car bomb was linked to Pardillo's construction company. And they have a recording of Robert Pardillo approving the hit on Dante. Da Silva says, "That's a damn fine collar for Tommy Gregson. You tell him I said so."

Pardillo is on a docked boat when his phone rings. On the other end of the call, Da Silva is on the dock with a silenced pistol. He tells Pardillo he has something he needs to show him. But! They're surrounded by police! Da Silva is under arrest. Through a megaphone, Bell tells Pardillo to come out. He adds, "We're not gonna let the Deputy Commissioner hurt you." When Pardillo realizes that Da Silva was going to shoot him, he seems more than somewhat annoyed.

Holmes and Watson are in Gregson's office, listening to his end of a phone conversation: "No kiddin'. ... I bet he did! ... And thank you, sir." Holmes could hear the other end, so he knows that Da Silva is going to a minimum security facility for testifying against Pardillo and his family. Out in the bullpen, Bell is back, which is news to Holmes. Bell bought his old desk back for cash money. He meets Holmes's eyes and gives him a nod.

Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.