Three dudes are hanging out in a bar, and when I say dudes, imagine smarmy, financial-types with loosened ties that you'd generally turn away from when they gave you a cheesy pick-up line. One, Sean, seems all troubled and can't be convinced by Todd to go to some event that requires tickets and will have an open bar. The other dude, though, whose chief concern is that his glass isn't empty, is in.
Is it any surprise that the time we see them, they're all dead in an apartment? Lupo and Green are there, sleuthing around, and from a copy of "Gay New York" they surmise that this is a love triangle, especially considering one guy has a gun in his hand and a single gunshot to the head. The apartment is in Todd's name, Sean just moved in, and the third guy is Dan, newly back from Iraq, and newly crashing there.
They interview some neighbor girls who correct the love triangle theory - Todd was gay, Sean was straight (and a man-ho), and Dan was a friend of Sean's who was just kicked out by his fiancée. They speak to her, and she explains that Dan was a drunk, he wouldn't have had a problem with Todd being gay especially after Todd and Sean took him in, and that she heard Todd talking about a guy he was seeing called "The MVP."
Back at the office, Green announces to Anita, "Turns out, our gay love triangle has two straight guys." She answers, "Plus your murder-suicide doesn't have a suicide." Forensics confirm he didn't kill himself, and they have an unidentified partial print on the gun. They take a look at all three victims and Anita suggests they look into whoever had the most bullets in him.
The Fearsome Twosome go to Todd's office and learn he was an environmental lawyer who didn't talk about his personal life and when they ask his assistant about The MVP she tells them that Todd didn't like sports. They take a look at his schedule and see a blank half-hour that was taken up by a personal call. She came in at the end of the call in time to hear Todd say he'd see whoever it was that night. But that night he'd been at a political fundraiser so he saw a lot of people.
A TV shows a congresswoman named Melanie Carver (the brilliant Jayne Atkinson -- or rather, Karen Hayes) giving some sort of speech, and then the screen is muted by a neat little man who gets a hard-on from working in politics. He organizes political fundraisers and is doing one for Melanie the day; the night before he'd done one for Jim Gilles which was the event Todd had attended. This guy, Victor Vargas, tells them that Todd and Jim had been having an argument, possibly about the fact that Gilles voted against a gay marriage bill. He also drops the tasty morsel that Gilles was known as "The MVP."
Gilles talks to the detectives outside his limousine, and after a number of questions including his whereabouts, gets rather testy and asks if he needs an alibi. Well, dude, you asked -- he claims he was back at his hotel. He also claims very strongly that he isn't gay, thankyouverymuch. Green tells him they weren't asking, but Gilles wraps things up and is driven away. Green points out to Lupo that secrets are hard to keep these days and googles "Jim Gilles gay" on his blackberry.
This leads them to Austin Scarlett's stunt double's apartment; the guy is a journalist who reminds them that this is all rumor but that basically yeah, totally gay. He has no concrete evidence and seems to have nothing useful at all until he drops that Gilles' hotel was across from Hellman's, a department store where the important shopping takes place in the men's room.
Green explains this all to Anita, and adds that Todd's mysterious personal call the day he died was to Gilles' private phone number. Lupo also adds some new info, that Gilles returned to his hotel sometime after midnight, not 8:30 like he claimed. They talk out a theory that Gilles could have killed Todd to keep him quiet about Gilles' homosexuality, given that that particular piece of info could kill his political career given his public stance on gay marriage. They should have just called him "Harry Greg" and been done with it. Anita points out that the whole theory assumes that Gilles' is gay. When Green points out that his hotel is across from "the cruising capital of midtown" she gives them a look to let them know that they'll have to go there to make sure that's what he's doing. They can't believe this, but she shrugs and replies, "Unless you want to slip into something sexy and buy the guy a drink, you need to start arguing about who goes on stall duty."
Lupo loses the argument, which leaves him uncomfortably eyeing a closed stall in the men's room in question. After a moment, he sucks it up and goes and sits down in the stall door. After a moment, a foot comes out from underneath and does a tapping mating dance, to which Lupo hands over his business card. Busted! And conveniently, it's none other than Jim Gilles doing the tapping. Green comes in and they arrest him for public indecency.
In an interview room, Gilles tries to first bluster his way out of it, then he pleads for their silence. Unfortunately his credit card tells the story of his and Todd's secret "friendship." Gilles says that they argued on the phone but not at the fundraiser, and that he was with another "friend" the evening of the murder.
That guy's alibi checks out, and Gilles's prints are not the ones on the gun, so as Lupo so elegantly puts it, "[they] just played smear the queer with an innocent man." Anita tells them they'll conveniently lose his arrest record and all will be well. She means it, too -- 1/3 of the episode gone, and we're acquainted only with a red herring. But they realize that Victor Vargas was either wrong or lying about Gilles and Todd arguing. Vargas has contributed handsomely to both Gilles's and Melanie Carver's campaigns by gathering lots of smaller donations from contributors. Anita reminds them that donor records will have home addresses.
Lupo and Green show up at a rather dumpy apartment that is supposedly Vargas's address, though it doesn't match up with his millionaire-donor lifestyle. They run into a tenant named Michael Calderone who claims Victor only stays with him once and a while. Turns out, however, that his name is down for donating $20K to Gilles's campaign, and as clearly he doesn't have that to give, they're able to threaten him with a felony and he folds like a beach chair. Turns out another guy was also there looking for Victor named Josh Pearlburg. (Which I'm sure is a creative and wrong spelling but since not a single site seems to list the full credits for this episode, Pearlburg it is.)
Josh turns out to be a pint-sized guy with tinted glasses and a cool beard and also buckets and buckets of money. He met Victor at a benefit and then invested with him. I don't quite get how the semi-precious stone import business works, but Josh put up the money to get the stones into the country and then made 40% on his investment. This worked for him with increasing amounts until he put in 20 million dollars and all sorts of "problems" cropped up that kept him from getting his money. It also happened to the guy who introduced them -- Poor Dead Sean.
They give Anita the updates and explain how Victor paid off stupid investors with newer stupid investors' money and made himself look respectable by being close with all sorts of politicians. There are many things I find politicians to be, and "respectable" isn't the first thing that comes to mind, but I'll roll with it. Victor then kept up the relationships with the politicians by using some of the money he'd swindled to contribute to their campaigns. They head out to talk to Vargas at the Melanie Carver fundraiser.
At the fundraiser, Vargas is directing flower arrangements and generally being slick and smiling too wide. Green and Lupo are less than amused and point out that he knew Sean; Victor smarms that he didn't think it was important since he didn't know him well. They try to scare him by mentioning their talk with Pearlburg, but Victor takes it all in stride and brushes them off to keep getting ready, adding excitedly that he thinks D.A. Jack McCoy might come. Do they know him? They question his alibi, and he says he was cleaning up after his fundraiser and talking to another political candidate named Franklin Slater. He finally takes his leave, which Green accepts since he nabs a vase with Victor's prints...
Prints that match the one on the gun, and bring up an outstanding warrant in Florida for his arrest under another name. At the bottom of the computer screen, a date literally flashes that tells them that the same report was accessed three days prior. Well, there's one thing about this hour that's straightforward, even if it is contrived.
Poor Dead Sean had made the inquiry, realizing that Victor was a fraud, and also made a call to Victor's company's cell phone clearly trying to get his money back. (Thanks, Anita!) It's not enough to arrest him for murder, but the fugitive arrest warrant is enough to bring him in. They nab him as he walks into the fundraiser on Melanie's arm.
Connie tries to convince the judge that Victor should be held without bail, given that he already skipped bail once in Florida. The judge seems to be mentally planning what she's going to do after she's off work instead, and blandly sets bail at 3 million.
Melanie is in Jack's office, and it's clearly a conversation rather than an interview where she tries to convince Jack that Victor is really a good guy. After she leaves, the lawyers talk over Victor posting bail and all of the letters of support from public servants. Connie astutely notices that Franklin Slater has not written one, which is odd given that he's Victor's alibi and a recipient of some very large campaign contributions.
Slater says he picked up Victor, they met with Slater's "people," and then he left. After a bit of questioning, Connie learns that while they were driving to their meeting, they made a stop at a men's store so Victor could pick up a new shirt since he claimed he'd been "sweating."
The man at the shirt store corroborates that Victor stopped in -- he gets all of his shirts custom made there, so they know him well -- and adds that Victor needed a new shirt since he had gotten cocktail sauce on his old one. Cocktail sauce...for a VAMPIRE? Sorry. It's late, I'm punchy.
Cutter reacts the same way, without the easy and bad joke. Connie explains how the timeline worked that Victor could slip out, kill the guys, and be back to get picked up by Slater. Cutter repeats it all to make sure we got it, and then decides to arrest him for murder.
Unsurprisingly, they find that Victor has skipped bail again. This is an extra bummer for Pearlburg, who was there with his lawyer to try and get the $3 million back for himself since he's claiming it was his and not Victor's. A knock at the door interrupts the moping and some messengers deliver envelopes to the lawyers and to Pearlburg, which contains a nice letter from Victor explaining that he just needs to go to South America to get the money back.
Jack reads it back in the office and notes, "It's the politest notice of jumping bail I've ever seen!" Connie then comes out to say there's no record of a Victor traveling, but that a Michael Calderone bought a ticket to Brazil. They hot-foot it to his apartment where they find Michael in the flesh. Not only him, but they find Victor, delirious from the huge amount of pills he took in an apparent suicide attempt, and call an ambulance.
Not content to be the weird guy who sent an apologetic letter to court and then tried to kill himself, Victor, once back in court and cleaned up, fires his lawyer and declares that he'll represent himself. Connie tries to dispute, but Victor asserts that he went to law school under a different name and was disbarred for stealing client funds. Okay, then! But the judge seems content to let him dig his own grave and okays it.
Cutter visits Victor in jail where he's as smooth as ever. But this time it's tinged with crazy as he seems totally sure that he won't be found guilty, saying they don't have much evidence. The lawyers, clearly believing they're dealing with a whackjob, point out what they have against him. Victor says he didn't need to kill Sean since he could have just paid him back, but Cutter smiles back that it was money stolen from other investors. It's like a slick-off between these two. Victor tells Cutter that he's making Victor's point, and Cutter laughs him off. Since we're only 3/4 through, though, it seems it won't be quite as easy as Cutter thinks.
Slater is on the stand as a witness and gives the new-shirt information. When it's Victor's time to cross-examine him, he gets Slater to admit that he also spoke to Sean that day. Cutter objects to various forms of questioning but Victor is allowed to get Slater to admit that Sean had told him not to spend the money he'd gotten from Victor since it was stolen. Unfortunately, if Slater had done that he'd have had to cut a serious amount of campaigning since it was a million dollars, and it would also come out that his major fundraiser was a crook. Victor is able to show that Sean being silenced was then advantageous to Slater, so maybe he did it. Cutter tries to cross-examine and stop the bleeding, but he's got pretty much nothing.
Melanie is at dinner with Jack and announces she's been called to testify. He tries to tell her they can't really talk about it, but she forges ahead and basically begs Jack to make the trial "go away" since Vargas' defense is basically that she, Slater, or another candidate did it. Her tune has certainly changed about Vargas, who she first calls a "turd" and then calls crazy. I'm kind of in love with a woman who can call someone a turd while holding a martini -- it really classes things up in a Dynasty sort of way. She begs some more and then brings up that Jack will need to run for office when the election comes around, and that Vargas has already put money toward Jack's campaign and therefore he could accuse Jack of killing the guys. But Jack still tells her there's nothing he can do.
And so there she is on the stand. Things aren't going terribly well for her since she's arguing that she took money from Vargas because of his reputation and because she believed what he said. But he points out rather astutely that her camp would have looked into his background and very simply been able to learn that things were shady, and that clearly they decided to say nothing because they wanted the money. He again uses the argument that he did with Slater about her benefiting from Sean's death and resulting silence. However, he then goes a bit off the deep end, ordering her to admit that Jack is her friend and is covering for her, while the judge yells at him to can it. Cutter looks stunned and decides to not cross-examine.
Jack's pissed, but Cutter defends that he didn't want to dignify Vargas's line of thinking since it was so ludicrous. Connie points out that Vargas is right that this is all about the money, and Jack agrees that no one wanted to know. He then asks them why Vargas didn't actually leave the country when he had the chance. Cutter tells them that he conned himself into thinking he could win. Jack points out that when he tried to kill himself, he was thinking differently, and that's the personality they should show the jury.
Vargas comes in to meet with Jack and delightfully asks if he's going over Cutter's head because of what Vargas said in court. Holy crap, I didn't realize how short Vargas was until he was surrounded by people-sized people. Vargas then gets creepy as he assures Jack it wasn't personal and that he'd love to support him in the election. Jack thanks him and excuses himself to "make a phone call," inviting Vargas to freshen up.
Set-up time. In the bathroom, Melanie comes out of the stall and tells him he was right that Jack is pulling the strings. She convinces him that Jack is now turning on Melanie because of his own political aspirations and that due to what Vargas has said in court Jack is going to paint Melanie's campaign as corrupt and run on stolen money. He's clearly upset and asserts that's not what he wanted, but she tells him her career is over. She plays on his desperate desire to be liked and respected and begs him to come clean, not just for her but for the people of New York and the country since she wants only to do good and help them. She's played him right, he says he's sorry, "But it's part of the game. You understand. Just like you said."
And then the jury hears all of this on an audiotape. He's caught, and demands to hear what comes on the tape, but that's it. Vargas still denies that he's a murderer, but Cutter is able to use everything he said against him. He finally breaks Vargas, who desperately tries to argue that everyone he worked with liked him, they really liked him. But it turns out that was only true for Sally Field.
Melanie triumphantly walks into Jack's office announcing that Vargas was found guilty of all three murders and congratulates him. But Jack asks her about the tape, how it didn't completely nail him but it did enough. She replies that it made him fall apart. He then asks about Vargas's reference to the rest of the tape, the "rest" that didn't exist and asks if she stopped it. She just cackles, borrowing some of Vargas' creepy, and tells Jack to remember to vote in the primary week. Good advice, that.