Props to Pooh, Sars, and my friend Chels.
Two mounted police officers are making their morning rounds on the bridle path in Central Park. According to the Laws of Foreshadowing, we know that when X = the intelligence level of cop conversation and Y = their distance from a dead body, X always has an inverse relationship to Y. One cop says to the other, "I found a George Foreman grill on eBay!" You do the math. The cops ride on a little while longer and approach a parked car just on the other side of a footbridge. One of the cops calls out, "Rise and shine, lovebirds," obviously forgetting that a phrase like "rise and shine" is Dramatic Irony Code for "dead body ahoy." The other cop dismounts and walks over to the driver's side, where we see the window is shot out, there's a guy slumped over against the steering wheel, and all kinds of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee gore spattered on the dashboard. Oh, hey, it's a dead body. The cop shouts out, "They didn't take the radio, they took his head off -- and they took his pants, too!"
Before long the Special Victims Unit is at the scene. Detectives Olivia "Revlon Colorstay" Benson and Elliot "Love God" Stabler peer into the deathmobile and find only one spent round -- a .44 magnum. I don't know why the cops decided this was an SVU case. I guess they put out an NPB: a No Pants Bulletin.
Opening credits. The doodly-doodly synthesizer. Major characters striding ever-so-purposefully four-abreast.
Back at the station Stabler and Benson meet with Cap'n Cragen, Detective Munch, and Detective Monique Jeffries. The whole gang takes turns barking out information on the dead guy. "Victim's name: Dean Woodruff!" "Age thirty-five, salesman for fitness equipment!" "Divorced once, has an ex-wife and two kids upstate!" "Shot in his own car between two and two-thirty AM!" "No eyewitnesses!" One at a time, people! There's enough expository script material for everyone! Munch speculates on the .44 slug: "Means the shooter was either a wacko or insecure." Cragen asks what he means. "It's overkill and messy," says Munch. Benson mentions that the crime scene is a big "grope spot." Stabler nods. "Yeah, it's a romantic place for honeymooners, teenagers, co-workers." It occurs to me that Stabler's job as a character on L & O: SVU and my job as a recapper for the SAME SHOW might make us co-workers. Anyway, SVU is running down the fingerprints and checking to see if there was somebody with the victim. "Maybe he was alone," says Munch. Benson doesn't get it: "Maybe his pants came off from the force of the shot?" "All I'm saying is that he could have been having safe sex with himself. Safe that is, until he got shot," says Munch. Okay, Munch? My MIND was safe until it was forced to process "Detective Munch" and "masturbation" at the same time.
During the autopsy, Medical Examinista Rogers says the cause of death was "definitely a bullet to the back of the head." Stabler and Benson ask about what it means that the victim's drawers were down. "There was semen," says M.E. Rogers, "but don't get too excited." Uh, yeah, Rogers, we think someone already did. She explains that the release could be "part of the body's natural death reflex." Thanks for that info. Nobody's too excited at all now.
Uh . . . where's Cassidy?
A chung-chung! clanks us on over to Dean Woodruff's office at 787 Broadway, on Monday, October 4. As Dean Woodruff's boss tells Munch what a great salesman he was, Jeffries notices a blonde woman crying in her office and goes to talk to her. "You never think something like this will happen to one of your friends," the weepy blonde sniffs. "Dean was -- special." "Special? How?" asks Jeffries. Um, for one thing, he's a "Special Victim." Weepy Blonde goes on to say that Woodruff always took friends and co-workers out for drinks. "Where?" Jeffries asks her. "Mostly to . . . Le Bar," says Weepy Blonde, who breaks down crying again, as if it suddenly occurred to her that "Le Bar" is a tragically annoying name for a bar.
Soon Jeffries and Munch are showing Woodruff's photo to a female Le Bartender. "Let me guess, either he knocked the wrong person up or skipped out on some alimony payments," Le Bartender quips. "Sounds like he had a way with women," says Munch. Le Bartender tells them that Woodruff always hit on women using a sleazy sensitive-guy routine that worked every time. When they tell her Woodruff's dead, Le Bartender is stunned: "But -- he was just in here last night." "Who'd he leave with?" asks Munch. Le Bartender shakes her head: "The women that come in here, they're all thin and hungry with cell phones growing out of their ears -- it could have been anyone."
stop: Woodruff's apartment, where the landlord tells Munch that Woodruff's only problem as a tenant was that he kept having to change his lock. "He gave out his key way too easy. I'm not saying that he was easy." Jeffries looks in Woodruff's desk and finds collections of hotel matches and cocktail napkins. They find greeting cards with sappy messages from various women. They find photos of Woodruff with various women. They find a big, shiny inspirational plaque that says "Thank God I'm a Womanizing Creep." Munch's cell phone rings, and hilariously, Munch doesn't know how to answer it. Jeffries takes the call, and gets the news that a Moira Shannon, a.k.a. Weepy Blonde, has gun permits for three guns, including a .44. They look down and see a photo of Woodruff with Weepy Blonde Moira . . .
. . . but when they interview Weepy Blonde Moira again, she says she hasn't set foot in Le Bar in months. "Not after Dean dumped me," she snivels. When asked about the gun permits, she says that her dad taught her how to hunt and she's always carried a gun. She says that the .44 was "just a phase -- it's a cannon, so impractical." Kate Spade handbags were designed to hold only like a .22 or so. She says she sold the .44 about a year after she got it and has the receipt at home and everything. So Munch and Jeffries hit Le Bar again and show Le Bartender a photo of Weepy Blonde Moira to see if she'd left with Woodruff. "The vodka and tonic -- she's old news," says Le Bartender. She rifles through a whole bunch of photos the detectives have brought her: "Her, then me, the blonde, then me, some preppy little anorexic girl, then me . . ." We get it, Miss In-Between. Finally she says that most of the patrons come from "the same Upper East Side gene pool," but she'd never before seen the woman Woodruff left with. She adds that usually he had to talk his pick-up bullshit for at least ten minutes, "but with this one -- he hardly had to open his mouth." Le Bartender points out a couple of patrons that Woodruff had been sitting with the night before. Munch goes over and flashes the picture at Le Snotty Male Patron, who gets defensive for no reason whatsoever, and Jeffries slams him back down in his seat, because she just lives for that kind of stuff. Le Snotty Female Patron looks at the picture: "Massive pecs, washboard abs -- I called him the Willy Loman of dumbbells, which he didn't appreciate, or didn't get," she snorts, like she's the Dorothy Parker of dull-ass debutantes or something. Munch asks her if she knows the woman who left with Woodruff. She hesitates. "One of the Mulroneys," she says. Munch and Jeffries exchange an "uh-oh" look.
At the station, the gang rattles off various info on Stephanie Mulroney, the only surviving child of the Mulroney family. "With the cousins and in-laws, the Mulroneys are a huge clan," says Benson. Hey, that sounds like the Kennedys. Stabler adds that Stephanie has had a wild past, including a possession bust. Kennedy much? Munch waxes cynical about Stephanie's current "socially-conscious work." Cragen pipes up, "Let's keep politics out of this." Munch rags on: "Community service hides a multitude of sins." Déjà Kennedy? Cragen points out that Stephanie is just a witness. Benson chimes in, saying the Mulroney family has had "more than their share" of trouble. Smells like Kennedy spirit. Anyway, the SVU gang has left messages at Stephanie's place and on her answering machine but they have yet to hear from her. "Think Chappaquiddick, my friends," says Munch. "These people don't talk until they have their ducks all in a row." Everyone looks at Munch as if to say, dude, what does Chappaquiddick have to do with anything?
An extra comes by and tells Cap'n Cragen that "some mouthpiece" is waiting in his office. It's Pat Rumsey -- a.k.a. the late Governor Mulroney's legal adviser and toady. He smiles at Cragen with that disarming privileged-old-white-guy charm and introduces himself as a "family friend" of the Mulroneys. He opens his briefcase and pulls out a copy of Stephanie's "statement," saying, "I wanted to present you with all the facts while her memory is still fresh," and acts like he's doing Cragen a huge freakin' favor. "We'll still have to get our own statement," says Cragen. "Of course," says Rumsey, "As soon as she's ready." He walks out. Cragen tries his damnedest to make his Muppety face express "chagrin."
At the Mulroney Compound, Stabler and Benson wait in a paneled study and look upon the splendor that is Mulroney and the decor that is such an Ethan Allen wet dream. "I heard that when the oldest daughter died, two thousand mourners lined Fifth Avenue," says Benson. I bang my head against the TV screen to spell out WE GET THE KENNEDY PARALLEL in Morse Code. Then the steely and powerful Mrs. Mulroney walks in just as Stabler and Benson are admiring the antique cigar-cutter once owned by Freud. Oops, I mean Winston Churchill. What made me think of Freud? Anyway, Mrs. M introduces herself as "Regina Mulroney," with the "Regina" pronounced reg-EYE-na, which is decidedly more matriarchal-sounding. ["And a city in Canada." -- Sars] She takes to the couch wearily and declares that she's got "the worst sort of déjà vu," because every time a policeman comes to her house, a family member has died. She gazes out the window and in her best Mistress Thespian voice says, "It's five years to the day since my son went down in the fog off the Dalmatian Coast with the ambassador . . ." She sighs. Benson points out that Stephanie is not dead. They ask to see Stephanie, and after a little run-around Ma Mulroney finally admits that little Stephanie is secluded in a private hospital, under sedation.
So Benson and Stabler hustle on over to the Mulroney-endowed Clinic For Traumatized Trustafarians to interview Stephanie Mulroney while Reg-EYE-na and her toady Pat Rumsey hover over her like gargoyles. Stephanie has to look at Rumsey or Ma Mulroney before she answers each question. Yes, she says, she left Le Bar with Dean Woodruff, though she doesn't remember what time. "Did you meet him there?" asks Benson. Stephanie looks at Rumsey yet again. "I was having a rough day, and so was he." They ask her what happened in the car. "He was making some joke about the disadvantages of bucket seats --" she says. "Explain the joke?" asks Stabler. "It's rather obvious, isn't it?" says Rumsey and gives him a Look. Ma Mulroney steps in and says that Stephanie was telling him not so fast, "or something like that, weren't you, Stephanie?" Stephanie nods, or something. "I was leaning over to change the radio station," she says. "What was playing?" Stabler asks. Little Stephanie gives him a blank look as the gears turn sloowwly in her brain, until at last she answers, "I don't know." Then, she says, the shooting happened, which she doesn't really describe except for one really helpful detail: "It was so loud!" She says the shooter had black-rimmed glasses and dark hair. "Why didn't you call the police?" asks Stabler. "It was awful," she whimpers. "You have no idea how awful it was," and finally Reg-EYE-na Mulroney swoops down and lets Little Stephanie cry on her brooch.
Back at the cop shop, the whole SVU gang compares notes: Little Stephanie's story is consistent with the medical exam, but otherwise it's her word against theirs. "Those were not wagon trains circled around Stephanie, those were tanks," says Stabler. Nobody's sure if Little Stephanie and Woodruff had sex but Cragen rules out a DNA swab, saying that "sympathy for the Mulroney family runs high." Since Woodruff was such a womanizer, they decide to check out his ex-wife and also perhaps some of the boyfriends of the gazillion women he'd been with. Also, Munch and Jeffries check with Ballistics and discover that Womanizer Woodruff was shot with a rare gun called a Black Talon, a notorious cop-killer that's no longer made because its bullets were so identifiable and easily traced, making the murder plots on other TV detective shows way too simple to solve. Meanwhile, Benson and Stabler go upstate to visit the ex-wife of Womanizer Woodruff. She says Woodruff used to pick up tons of college women at "The College of Muffy," especially before it went co-ed.
Chung-chung! Benson and Stabler visit Barrett College and stroll the campus with a female college administrator, who says that Woodruff supposedly had a reputation for being "a ladies man, a lothario." In case we forgot. "We know that Stephanie Mulroney dropped out her sophomore year," says Benson. "Did Dean Woodruff have anything to do with that?" The administrator finally admits that Stephanie cried rape, but the story never added up -- more likely, he seduced her and treated her shabbily. "So is Stephanie a pathological liar or what?" asks Benson. "She was a bright girl," says the administrator, "I think the burden was too much for her." "What burden?" Stabler asks. "The burden of being a Mulroney," says the administrator. Yeah, what with everyone confusing her with a Kennedy and all.
Back at the Mulroney Compound, they show Stephanie a composite picture of the shooter. She hands it back in two seconds flat, saying "yes, it's him." Stabler asks her if she's sure she doesn't have anything to add, when Toady Rumsey cuts in: "What part of yes don't you understand?" "The part about Barrett College!" Benson calls out. Little Stephanie pipes up: "I ran into him at the bar, okay? Is that --" but Toady Rumsey hushes her. Reg-EYE-na Mulroney steps up. "Are you here to make a positive identification, or are you here to make a martyr out of my daughter? Because the Mulroney family really doesn't need any more martyrs!" What's that scraping noise? Oh, it's just Ma Mulroney's eight-foot-tall cross dragging behind her on the tile. Cragen glowers. Sort of.
Cut to a commercial for The Best Thing. Okay, so Buddy Holly's plane crash was the day the music died, but apparently it didn't go to hell until the day Madonna recorded her own version of "American Pie."
In Adam Schiff's office, Cap'n Cragen faces off in a Battle Of The Bald Guys against Schiff and another balding L & O top cop whose name I don't know, so I'll have to call him "Spiffy Suit." Schiff and Spiffy Suit argue that the Mulroneys are "powerful pillars of the community." Heh heh: "powerful pillars." Schiff adds, "We're up against some very big guns." Heh heh: "big guns." But Cragen doesn't care if the Mulroneys are top bananas. "Look, Adam -- this girl's story is a mess," he says. He thinks motive is there: "Maybe he date-raped her, maybe he had sex with her and forgot to call. Either way she was mortified. We think she stewed in her resentment over the years, and let herself get picked up." Schiff and Spiffy Suit are skeptical especially since there's no weapon, but Schiff tells Cragen to talk to . . .
. . . McCoy! So Cragen goes down the hall to convince DA Jack "Silver Fox" McCoy and Abby "Stone Cold" Carmichael to get their kick-ass selves on the case against Stephanie Mulroney. "We think she's the shooter," says Cragen. "She told us she was changing the radio station when this black-rimmed glasses guy shooter appeared, but she can't remember what song was playing. You change the radio station when something is on that annoys you. These are things that you remember." Yeah, but for the sake of argument I'd have to say there's this one song that I hate so much I go into a fugue state whenever I hear it. It's by Matchbox 20, and no, I can't tell you how it goes. "A .44 is a big gun," says Abby. "The whole idea of her shooting him from behind begs credulity." But McCoy's in a what-the-hell mood and decides to go for it: "We'll go murder two, and then flip her on the shooter."
Supreme Court Part 43: the arraignment hearing. Stephanie is led into the courtroom in restraints and Reg-EYE-na Mulroney is in the gallery. Toady Rumsey talks the judge into taking the restraints off Little Stephanie. "Please, out of respect," he says. Stephanie stands there with wounded-puppy expression on her face and turns towards Ma Mulroney with a look in her eyes that seems to say, I don't like scary arraignment hearing! Courtroom bad! The toady enters a "not guilty" plea on her behalf, and McCoy argues against bail based on the fact that the Mulroneys obtained an expedited passport for Stephanie just the day before. Abby adds, "With her unlimited financial resources, your Honor, she would be a serious flight risk." The judge growls that he won't have Little Stephanie "gallivanting around Europe like some jet-set fugitive," denies bail, and pounds his gavel, because Abby and McCoy rock.
Out on the courthouse steps, Reg-EYE-na Mulroney snivels for the reporters and Toady Rumsey wrangles some spin control about the passport being for a family reunion. Abby tells the reporters, "The Mulroneys deserve all due process of the law -- no more, no less." "I hope to God we're right on this," says McCoy, as he walks off with Abby and Cragen. "I hear Logan's learning to love Staten Island," says Cragen.
A little while later, everyone in SVU is on the phones following up leads. Jeffries gets a call and waves over Cap'n Cragen. "There's been another shooting," she tells him. ".44 caliber, back of the head." It's another parked car, and another victim with his pants down. D'oh! Cragen gives up on trying to coax anything more than a befuddled expression out of his adorable foam-rubber face, and sighs.
Stabler and Benson peer at another stiff keeled over behind a spattered windshield. "This looks familiar," says Stabler, "déjà vu all over again." Okay, I don't know about your definition of "déjà vu," Stabler, but mine is "the feeling that one has heard a television character mangle a common expression before." Meanwhile, Munch has his Random Sarcastic Quote Generator set on "VOX" in this scene, which means that whenever anyone says anything he blurts out yet another gritty non-sequitur. The detectives find the spent .44 round on the passenger side car, along with what's left of the vanity mirror. "Vanity, thy name is Woman!" Munch crows. "That's frailty, not vanity, you misogynist," snaps Jeffries. Heh. Munch says something about "the artist formerly known as Prince's old girlfriend" which makes no sense whatsoever. Finally everyone just ignores him and he's left talking to the corpse in the car: "Life -- one minute you're getting your doorknob polished, the minute you're trying to sweet-talk your way past St. Peter . . ." But dead men tell no tales, and unfortunately they can't say "shut up, Munch!" either.
The victim's name is Stanley Brecker. The investigating cop says a girl named Helen Katish was with him, though at first he messes up and calls her Helen "Catfish." Stabler, Benson, and Jeffries interview her. She's pretty creeped out. "The guy died while I -- you know," and shoots Jeffries and Benson a look that says don't you hate it when that happens? But she says she got a look at the shooter. Which I totally don't buy. If it was possible to have peripheral vision that good during "you know" . . . well, some of us would be watching a LOT more TV. Helen Catfish describes the shooter: "I remember his eyes -- bright and shiny -- with those Buddy Holly glasses." "Black glasses?" asks Stabler. "Yeah," says Catfish, "like a little psychotic nerd." When Stabler asks her what she does for a living, she hesitantly answers and says she's a "model" and an "actress," and so on, until even most kindergarten children are shouting at the TV, "We GET that she's a hooker already! And probably a porno star, too!" Catfish says she met Brecker in a bar, "and he seemed like a nice guy."
They talk to the Widow Brecker at home, who says she never imagined her husband would be shot, figuring he'd get a heart attack or a stroke from the business pressure. "He works in the garment industry," she explains, "which can be really cutthroat. If it wasn't some union guy putting pressure on him, it was some goon looking for some protection money. It never ended . . . well, I guess now it has . . ." She sobs. The Breckers' living room decor looks like it comes straight out of a spread in Goodfellas Housekeeping. I'm just sayin'.
At the station, Jeffries and Munch tell Cap'n Cragen that Ballistics is working on trying to see if the two bullet slugs came from the same gun. Cragen looks ready to shit a brick. When Munch asks him about the "Mulroney chick," Cragen replies, "You mean the arrest-that's-going-to-end-my-career Mulroney chick?" "So much for your hell hath no fury theory," says Munch. Shut up, Munch. Benson and Stabler burst in with the news that the Widow Brecker couldn't possibly have killed her husband, which means . . . "Oh great," says Cragen, "now we're looking for some Son-of-Sam freak. Walks up to parked cars and only shoots the guys. Why?" I don't know, but I've been thinking that it would be so much more SVU of them to call the shooter a "Sex Shooter," after the Apollonia 6 song. Don't you think? Anyway, Stabler's guess is that the culprit is "a loser who never gets any himself." Cragen works on his all-purpose sigh some more.
Meanwhile, Helen Catfish describes the shooter to a cop as he puts together a computer composite. The ghastly visage of Elvis Costello's evil twin begins to take form on the monitor. Elsewhere, Jeffries goes back into the files to look for similar shootings and discovers four open cases from six years ago -- three have slugs fired from the same gun. Cragen picks up the phone and dials . . .
. . . Sgt. Lenny Briscoe! Yeah! Briscoooe!!! Benson and Stabler go to visit his precinct and he tells them what he remembers about the old cases. "Me and Logan froze our asses off trying to find the gun," he says, but in the end, all they had was a description of a guy with glasses. "Black glasses -- like Buddy Holly?" asks Benson." Briscoe hands her an old composite sketch that looks similar to the new one. "Black glasses, like Buddy Holly." Tip for criminals: if you must wear glasses on your shooting/pantsing sprees, you really ought to pick an eyewear style more obscure than "Buddy Holly." You want to bet this guy wouldn't have been such a wanted man if he were wearing Roy Orbison glasses? Roy Orbison glasses are way creepier, too. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Detective Green, a.k.a. Dr. Greg, is in this scene, too. He has, like, one line.
Okay, okay, I admit it: I love that Pets.com hand puppet.
Jeffries breaks the news to Cragen that Briscoe's old suspect seems to be the same shooter in these new cases. "Not the Mulroney girl," sighs Cragen. But there's good news, too: Jeffries found a gun dealer in New Jersey who recalls selling Black Talons to a guy with black horn-rimmed glasses five years ago. So she and Munch go to talk to this gun dealer at his new job in the circus, where he performs a sideshow act called "Mr. Photographic Long-Term Memory." Okay, so I made that up. He still just runs a gun shop. "Yeah, I remember a jerk with black glasses," he says. After he and Munch have a bitchy interchange about selling cop-killers and it being a free country and all, Jeffries asks for the store records, but Gun guy says he's against government interference in free enterprise. "So am I," says Jeffries, "that's why I consider a court order an intrusion," and slaps him with one. He hands over a folder, as if he'd just pulled it from a "jerks with black glasses" file.
The name of the black glasses-clad customer from days of yore is Arthur Pruitt, and a background check reveals some priors for credit-card fraud and an address at a residential hotel in Chinatown. Briscoe, Dr. Greg, and the whole SVU gang marches down to the flophouse and ask for Pruitt at the front desk and discover that he's -- just sitting there in the lobby! Uh, didn't they find last week's just sitting there in the lobby of his transient hotel? week the SVU should try just strolling the lobbies of transient hotels shouting out, "Hello? Child molesters? Anyone?" Anyway, the guy in the lobby sits there and asks Benson to show her ID, even though she's one of six cops standing there giving him the stink-eye. Then he puts on his . . . Buddy Holly glasses! He smiles: "I'm the man you're looking for." They go up to his room where he has a wall covered with old newspaper articles. As the Briscoe and Benson look them over, Pruitt is in the doorway smiling this creepy self-satisfied smile, as if he's listening to some kind of freaky Martha Stewart voice in his head: News clippings about all the people you've killed. It's a good thing.
The lineup consists of Pruitt and two other guys with Buddy Holly-ish glasses. Helen Catfish identifies Pruitt right away. A female witness from Briscoe's old case takes about two seconds to pick him out, and Little Stephanie Mulroney IDs him so fast that we all nearly go back in time. Cragen looks sick, which kind of counts as an expression.
And now, Confession Room Theatre presents: Dr. Greg and Briscoe! Dr. Greg tries sucking up to Pruitt, telling him how sicko-cool the crime scene photos were, and then Briscoe performs a dramatic monologue called "You Never Can Forget The Smell Of Death, Let Me Tell You." Pruitt yawns. ! Munch and Jeffries. Munch flails around going, "I'm going to kill you! I'm going to Mike Tyson you!" and breaks new existential ground by proving that it IS possible for a bad cop to do "bad cop" badly. Finally, Stabler and Benson give it a shot. Actually, Stabler does all the talking while Benson stands near the window and strikes cute poses in her black turtleneck. Anyway, Stabler starts talking to him about the Woodruff shooting. "We saw your handiwork, it was awesome," he says. " And then you leave the girl alone?" Pruitt appears to be moved, somehow. Stabler continues: "You left the girl alone. That was . . ." he trails off. "Gentlemanly," Pruitt finishes for him. Stabler snaps his fingers. "The very word I'm looking for. You are a gentleman of the old school." After a very long, charged pause, Pruitt nods. "So that's a yes?" asks Stabler. "Under coercion," says Pruitt, "that's a yes." Go, Stabler!
Outside the confession room, Cragen says to Munch, "Schiff's going to ream me a new one" now that Pruitt has confessed to Dean Woodruff's murder. But Munch wonders why Pruitt's been stonewalling for hours and then suddenly flops. Munch got a hunch!
Chung-chung! The Medical Examinista's office. One reason we love M.E. Rogers is that she has a stomach strong enough to look over Brecker's autopsy photos and endure getting hit on by Munch. "Will you ever have dinner with me?" he asks her. "Not while I can still feed myself," she says. This is another reason we love M.E. Rogers. She also notices that, unlike Woodruff, Brecker appears to have had the crap beat out of him a few weeks before he died.
In his office, Schiff grumbles to Cragen, "The public has deified the Mulroneys. They've done a lot to deserve that attention." "That sense of entitlement doesn't extend to the law," snaps Cragen. "Oh, well, it does," Schiff snaps back, "and someone's going to have to fall on his sword." Guess who, Cragen? There's a knock on the door and Ma Mulroney, Stephanie, and the toady Rumsey come in and sit down. Schiff tells them that the charges are being dropped. Reg-EYE-na is harping her gratitude at being kept out of the tabloids, Little Stephanie looks bored, and Toady is saying a bunch of crap about "youthful indiscretion," when suddenly my tape ran out and I had to pop in a new one, so I can't go into too much detail about Cragen having to suck up big time as he apologizes to the Mulroneys. I do recall that he looked befuddled. Also, he may have sighed.
Outside the DA's office, Munch tells Cragen his theory about Brecker's murder actually being a Mafia killing. "Brecker was a family man, but was killed in mid oral-cop with some actress-model-whatever, which is a nice euphemism for employee of the month in a porno business . . . the wife mentioned that Brecker was shaken down by two bullneck boys in leather jackets." "So this wasn't a serial killer?" says Cragen -- which is to say, he DOESN'T say, "Shut up, Munch." "It's all too neat, all too simple," says Munch, as the light bulb of a theory pops on over his head. Actually, it's a whole damn conspiracy-theory three-tier baroque chandelier lighting up over his head. "Stephanie Mulroney killed Woodruff. I know it, I feel it," he says. Cragen storms off: "I'm going to forget we had this conversation." As he leaves, Munch keeps on shouting across the plaza, "Trust me on this! 'Mulroney' means 'Mafia' in Gaelic, Captain, I'm telling you . . ."
Chung-chung! For a moment I hope that this noise is the sound of Munch getting clocked by a flying hubcap in front of the courthouse. But no, it's the start of a new episode: Law & Order Classic, with just a touch of Specialness. Lieutenant Van Buren and Cap'n Cragen are getting chewed out by Spiffy Suit. "The commissioner wants to know what you've got -- a mob hit or a serial killer?" barks Spiffy Suit. Van Buren explains that both squads are on the case. Spiffy Suit threatens that the mayor is on the warpath: "If Pruitt's not our man, the body is on you," pointing to Cragen. Cragen looks -- oh, forget it.
"I think Pruitt's our man," says Briscoe. "Too bad the commissioner and the mayor don't agree with you," says Van Buren, who points out that there's no motive or weapon for Pruitt's case; still, they can hold Pruitt on the weapons charges, and Benson has found out that Pruitt seems to be buddies with a guy named Ordoñez, who has mob connections. They divide up tasks. Stabler wants to talk to Helen Catfish; then they realize they need to get back to the Widow Brecker as well. Cragen says, "Let's just nail it down, okay? I don't want to eat another bucket of brownies." Mmm, brownies.
Benson and Dr. Greg speak with the Widow Brecker again, who mentions that her husband was beat up a few weeks before, and he'd cashed in a bunch of savings bonds, and some strange guy kept calling. Basically she stops just short of saying, "and the other day I was cleaning, and I couldn't help noticing there was this severed horse head in the bed."
Meanwhile, Briscoe drops by the Organized Crime Control Bureau, where they look up records on Brecker's garment business. The OCCB cop peers at a computer file and says, "Looks like a couple of goombahs were paying Brecker a visit." Goombahs? You mean, midgets with orange skin and knickers are behind all this? Oh wait -- sorry, I was thinking of oompah-loompahs. Whatever.
stop: a sports bar, where a mob insider talks with Briscoe and Munch. The entire dialogue sounds like it came off a Berlitz tape for "Conversational Mafia." The insider says that Brecker's hit "coulda been about garbage -- Gus Iacone, he controls haulin' around there." Briscoe: "Most of Iacone's crew were busted by the feds last year." Insider: "Yeah, nobody was makin' their collections." Munch: "So why whack a business man?" Insider: "While Gus's boys were on ice, some of the garmentos, they get used to taking out their own trash." It turns out Iacone's people brought in a guy from Ohio to take care of business, and it could be this Ordoñez guy who's somehow connected to Pruitt. What am I talking about: of course it's Ordoñez.
The whole gang checks back in with Van Buren in a kind of useless scene. They've got a mug shot of Ordoñez, and Van Buren asks the detectives if anyone's shown the photo to Helen Catfish yet. Stabler breaks the news that Catfish has disappeared: she went out Monday night, didn't show up work the day, and hasn't been seen since. Also, Stabler disappears after this scene and crosses back through the wormhole transporting him through the powerful electromagnetic field between L & O and L & O: SVU. Or something.
Benson and Dr. Greg stop by Helen Catfish's "work," which turns out to be an Internet porno business specializing in real-time peep shows; the whole operation seems to be run out of some kind of film studio filled with smut and computer equipment. Benson and Stabler talk to a sort of impatient guy futzing around with the video feeds on two computer monitors. "Helen started here about eight months ago," he's telling the detectives. By the way, everyone, pay no attention to the background, which consists of at least half a dozen stage sets where various naughty soft-core boudoir and locker room and jailhouse scenarios are being videotaped, and where women in bright red lacy babydolls and women in merry widow corsets and women in schoolgirl outfits with spanking rulers and women in French-maid costumes with feather dusters are hard at work. Okay? Benson and Stabler talk to the video/computer guy, who answers their questions hurriedly. "Are we bothering you?" asks Benson. "I've got six chat rooms to monitor!" gripes the pornowebmaster. Uh . . . that's not . . . chat going on in those rooms. Otherwise, though, this is a pretty realistic portrayal of what goes on behind the scenes at popular web sites; the big lingerie slumber party you see in this scene is very much like what goes on every day here at MBTV Headquarters. Only with more TV sets. Anyway, Pornowebmaster tells the detectives that Catfish seemed fine on Monday, the last time he saw her -- got a nice check. "So there doesn't seem to be any money problems," says Dr. Greg. "Did OK -- once she started doing girl-on-girl." "Who did she work with?" asks Benson. "Danielle," says Pornowebmaster, leering. "They really hit it off."
Elsewhere, Briscoe and Munch try to track down this Ordoñez goombah. They follow a trail of sweatshops and chumps with broken legs. They find out Ordoñez likes to break legs in parking garages and drives a gold Lincoln. Meanwhile, Benson and Dr. Greg talk to Danielle, Helen Catfish's friend. "I understand you two were -- close," says Benson. "The girl-on-girl thing? Just a way to make money," says Danielle. Dr. Greg raises an eyebrow like he's surprised or something. Uh, Dr. Greg -- didn't your old boss David E. Kelley teach you anything? Danielle says that Catfish was doing some call-girl work, but only until their own web site got going. Danielle and Catfish were going to be the Wing and Sars of smut! "Helen ordered those computers over there," says Danielle, pointing to some boxes in a corner. "And she got, what do you call it, an ISDN line?" Benson looks at the boxes. "It's all state-of-the-art stuff," she says (excuse me, an ISDN line?). "And expensive." Danielle explains where Catfish got the money: "Some producer she met gave her an advance for a movie." And, the night she disappeared, Catfish had gone to meet this producer at a restaurant . . .
. . . where, according to the bartender, Catfish appeared to have been stood up, then went out to make a phone call and never came back. A street vendor outside doesn't recognize Catfish's picture, but when they show him Ordoñez's picture he says he saw the goombah walking very fast on his way back from the pier . . .
. . . where a crane lifts a gold Lincoln out of the water. Catfish's body is in the back seat, wearing a really wet, really tacky-ass fake leopard-skin coat. Nobody should have to die in a coat like that.
Briscoe and Munch and a giggly gaggle of webporn actresses figure out that, hey! the so-called movie producer acquainted with Helen Catfish must have been Ordoñez. , Benson and Dr. Greg talk to the limo driver who introduced Catfish to Ordoñez . Limo driver says, hey! Ordoñez borrowed a car from his company and went to North Bergen, New Jersey. At the station they compare notes with Briscoe and Munch who, hey! have a list of Ordoñez's scheduled hits. Benson notices, hey! a business in North Bergen. They race over and, hey! catch Ordoñez just before he breaks another leg.
Back at the cop shop, they question Ordoñez, who looks really creepy, like Charo without makeup. "I don't know no Iacone," he says. Benson sits down and straddles the back of a chair like she's the Fonz or something, but she can't get anything out of Ordoñez. Van Buren and Briscoe come in waving around a ton of evidence -- Catfish's blood was on his shoes, the Black Talon slug in the car. "You like to rub my face in it," says Ordoñez. "We want who hired you," says Van Buren. He wants to bargain. He leans forward. "I got something big," he says, "I want the minimum." "We'll leave that to the lawyers," says Van Buren. Ordoñiez thinks about this, then opens his big, creepy mouth: "You heard of the Mulroneys?" Munch looks at everyone with a what-did-I-tell-you look. "The daughter killed the first guy, she killed him up in her place," says Ordoñez. He goes on to say he got a call from Iacone to clean it up and make it look like one of Pruitt's jobs, then he had to kill a second guy to cover it up, and since Brecker needed to be whacked, he was able to do two jobs at once, because he's a time-efficient kind of goon. "Why should we believe any of this?" asks Van Buren. Ordoñez smiles. "I got some pictures of the dead guy up in her place."
In the DA's office, Reg-EYE-na Mulroney, Stephanie, and Toady Rumsey face off with McCoy and Abby. "You cahn't truly believe that my daughter shot this man!" trumpets Ma Mulroney. McCoy says he had three medical examiners go over Woodruff's autopsy, which reveals that he was actually killed by a blow to the head. Work it, McCoy! Abby kicks some additional ass by pointing out Pruitt had a solid alibi for the night of the Woodruff shooting. "It was a set-up," says McCoy. Stephanie just sits there with a look like, "Um, is it time for my morphine yet?" Suddenly Rumsey pipes up, "It was a clear case of self-defense!" Everyone's like, what? The toady explains that Stephanie invited Womanizer Woodruff for coffee and he tried to rape her, so she struck him with an ashtray. "We should have pressed charges against this young man at the college," adds Ma Mulroney in disgust. "Why is the first time we're hearing about this?" asks Abby. "We didn't think the authorities would believe her," says Rumsey, "so we took matters into our own hands." "You hahve to understand our position," sighs Reg-EYE-na Mulroney. "The scrutiny that is placed on our family is" -- dramatic pause -- "enormous." "At worst, Mr. Ordoñiez shot a corpse," says Rumsey. "And another man to allay suspicion," Abby shoots back. "We hadn't ordered that!" Rumsey says, indignantly, as if the second shooting was just some jumbo platter of buffalo wings. Besides, he says, Brecker was already targeted. "All, right -- who called Iacone to clean up Stephanie's mess?" asks McCoy. "I'm not at liberty to divulge that," says Rumsey. McCoy gets really worked up. Finally, Reg-EYE-na asks them to at least investigate Stephanie's story and treat her as a special Special victim "as a favor to the family," and McCoy mutters, "the welfare of your family is not my concern, Mrs. Mulroney." Did I mention that I love McCoy? It's kind of a "daddy" thing, but still.
So McCoy goes to interview Gus Iacone, the Grand Poobah of Goombahs, in prison, but he refuses to talk. Meanwhile, Abby goes to interview Womanizer Woodruff's ex-wife, who apparently alleged in her divorce suit that Woodruff was a nasty, stinking, wife-beating, thong-chasing, coworker-manhandling maggot bastard dickcheese. This is not exactly the legal terminology. Ex-wife says the allegations are true, and that one of Woodruff's co-workers, an Emily Shore, called her to complain of sexual harassment.
At Woodruff's office, Abby talks to Emily Shore (who was sort of an extra during the scene at Woodruff's office in the first episode). Emily's story is that Woodruff first tried to break into her hotel room at a sales conference in Rochester, then continued to hit on her back at the office; finally the harassment escalated to a rape which she never reported, since Woodruff was her boss. She breaks down crying, and by the time she's finished with her story Abby looks close to tears, too. When she meets up with McCoy again, she's starting to think there's something to Stephanie's story, but McCoy doesn't want to make a deal.
Reg-EYE-na Mulroney visits Schiff in his office. Apparently they're old friends, with possibly a wink-wink emphasis on "friends." Maybe also on "old," but, uh, I don't want to think about it. Reg-EYE-na peers sultrily from behind another one of her big honking brooches and asks Schiff, "Cahn't you make it all go away?" Schiff says no, but she says she hears that the investigation clears her daughter, anyway. "My family has been through a lot," she says for the gazillionth time. "McCoy will give you a fair shake," says Schiff. She mentions something about really enjoying the day they spent together last year on Shelter Island. I don't want to think about it. "I still have the house," she says. I don't want to think about it. She flounces out. Schiff thinks about it.
Meanwhile, the case against Iacone is falling apart, because Ordoñez has a perjury conviction in another state and his testimony has been precluded. Outside the courthouse, McCoy gripes to Abby that they have nothing on Iacone. But Abby says she's been looking at Woodruff's personnel files, and they mention nothing about sexual misconduct, and it doesn't look like he and Emily Shore even worked together. McCoy shrugs: "Maybe the company didn't want to leave a paper trail." Abby doesn't think so: "Jack, I think they're lying about Woodruff." She says she had a look at Woodruff's divorce deposition, and the ex-wife doesn't mention any philandering or abuse or any other type of dicksmackery. "You smell a fix," says McCoy. Abby, now cleared for takeoff on Kick Some Ass Airlines, says, "Emily Shore paid cash for a new BMW last week." McCoy's eyebrows go waaaay up.
Cut to Abby serving up some First Class Kickass to Emily Shore: "You lied to me. You never even worked with Dean Woodruff." "He -- he still came on to me," Emily stammers. Abby keeps going: "The trip to Rochester? I called the hotel. You didn't check in." Coffee, tea, or kickass? McCoy jumps in: "What's even worse, Miss Shore, you were prepared to go to court and perjure yourself!" "Am I going to jail?" Emily asks, like a big dope. "You accepted a bribe," says Abby. The prospect of jail time scares the shit out of Emily Shore and in fact spooks all the natural wave out her hair, which is as flat as week-old roadkill in this scene. Although her toady lawyer hisses at her to keep her mouth shut, she 'fesses up and tells them Pat Rumsey contacted her: "He said that Dean raped the Mulroney girl -- and that they could prove it if somebody would say that they did it before! I took the money. So did Dean's ex-wife."
McCoy rallies the squad. Dr. Greg arrests Toady Rumsey for the murder of Helen Catfish and Stanley Brecker. Briscoe and Abby arrest Reg-EYE-na Mulroney at the Mulroney Compound, where they catch her in a casual moment without her pearls, just lounging around the house wearing her Overwrought Performance Fleece sweats. "You cahn't be serious," says Ma Mulroney, as Briscoe slaps the cuffs on her. "Afraid so," says Abby. "I can't believe we're doing this," says Briscoe.
The sorry asses of Reg-EYE-na Mulroney, Rumsey, and Stephanie are in court, being arraigned on charges of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of tampering with evidence in the first degree. Reporters are everywhere. Abby sets their bail at gazillions of dollars but the judge sets it at two hundred grand each, doubting they'll go on the lam. Schiff goes apeshit on McCoy and Abby.
At Schiff's urging, McCoy goes to the Mulroney compound to hear out Reg-EYE-na. After she trots out pictures of all her dead children, she insists to McCoy that the toady Rumsey did all this cover-up without her knowledge, and even got the money from her accounts. McCoy doesn't buy it. "Well then -- who the hell are you?" says Reg-EYE-na. "I'm the guy who's going to convict you of murder, unless you want to talk a deal," says McCoy. "Reg-EYE-na Mulroney does not deal!" she says. McCoy hints at the Mulroney's shady past. "Every fortune has a secret," she says. They go on like this for a while until Reg-EYE-na points one bad-ass finger at McCoy and hisses, "You come after me, I will crush you." Since she comes from the Big Iron Skillet school of acting, this is no small threat.
Okay, people, it's straight Law & Order from here on out. The rest of this will be about ninety-nine percent snark-free.
In the DA's office, McCoy tells Toady Rumsey that Regina is selling him out, but he doesn't believe it and refuses to testify. "Nobody was supposed to get killed," he says, and tells a sob story about how he is too old to walk away from the Mulroneys and had no choice. "It doesn't move me, Mr. Rumsey," says McCoy. Finally Rumsey thinks for a minute, and then starts telling his story: "Regina called me to her home the night Woodruff was killed . . ."
His testimony continues in the courtroom. "Regina came down with a number" -- Gus Iacone's number -- "and said to call from outside." Then he went back to Stephanie's place until someone took the body away; then he was told to call Iacone again to take the suspicion off Stephanie. He admits that witnesses were bribed to testify that Womanizer Woodruff was a rapist. "If he date-raped the defendant at college, why was that necessary?" asks McCoy. "The true story was that she had consensual sex with Mr. Woodruff," says Rumsey. "And when he wouldn't see her again, she filed charges." Stephanie gets an "oh-shit" look. "And so she killed him fifteen years later?" asks McCoy. "To the contrary," says Rumsey. "In the middle of their tryst he tried to leave, and she said, 'No-one walks out on a Mulroney.'"
The defense lawyer grills Toady Rumsey for one fact aside from "his self-serving testimony" that links Regina Mulroney to anything. Rumsey is stumped. McCoy looks worried.
Stephanie testifies that she left the bar with Woodruff and asked him over for coffee. "As soon as we got in the door, he was all over me," she says. She whonked him with "this big ashtray" -- three or four times. I imagine it making a chung-chung! sound. Heh. When she realized he was dead she ran to "Uncle Pat's," who called Ordoñez to come and pick up the body and take it to the park and shoot it. Then she was instructed to tell police that a guy with glasses did the shooting.
Then it's McCoy's turn to question Little Stephanie. McCoy is getting all hoarse the way he does when he is really workin' it. He really lays on the Super Killer Rasp when he asks Stephanie why she asked the guy who raped her back in college OVER TO HER APARTMENT FOR COFFEE? The little dope says, "When I saw him in the bar, he apologized -- he said he'd changed -- he said -- he still really liked me." Okay, lying or not, I think most used Kleenex has better self-esteem than this Stephanie person. I think even Munch's used Kleenex has better self-esteem. Anyway, McCoy lays into her for all her lies and inconsistencies, which she claims are just "what Uncle Pat told me to say." McCoy persists until the Mulroney lawyer leaps up and yells, "Objection!" Mrs. Mulroney glowers.
The day, though, it's Ma Mulroney's turn on the stand, where she says that Rumsey kept everything from her. Then she wearily says, "I'm not proud of all the things my daughter has done, but I've lost -- I've lost a husband and two children along the way -- and you grab hold of what's left --" She damn near sings "My Heart Will Go On." McCoy keeps dogging her with questions about Iacone, and she keeps evading them by trumpeting on and on about all the things her family has done, how her son died in a plane crash in Kosovo serving our country, et cetera. McCoy appeals to the judge: "She's trying to prejudice the jury with her personal misfortunes." Finally Reg-EYE-na elocutes ferociously: "Cahn't you understand the burden that comes with this legacy?! CAHN'T you understand everything in our lives is under a microscope?! After everything I've done for this city, you insult everything I stahnd for with your false and reckless accusations!!!" Then she runs out of italics and breaks down weeping.
Anyway, the jury finds Stephanie guilty of evidence tampering; no verdict on murder. Reg-EYE-na Mulroney is found not guilty of all counts. We don't know about Toady Rumsey. Reg-EYE-na puts on her Jackie O sunglasses and slinks back to her mansion.
In Schiff's office, McCoy says he won't retry Little Stephanie. "What's the use?" he says. "Regina Mulroney will just park herself in the gallery; she rode the graves of her family to an acquittal." "Well, you know who you were dealing with," says Schiff. McCoy smiles a little: "The Mulroney legacy lives on, at least until the catastrophe." "It's the catastrophes that keep you going," mutters Schiff. Aw, Schiff.
Fade to black. week: back to the perverts!