Ace (Season 11, Episode 22)
Premise: A pregnant rape victim who vanishes from the hospital leads SVU to a Bulgarian ring smuggling women into New York to sell their babies.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 22
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Jo Marlowe (Sharon Stone), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Hanna-Liina Võsa as Sophia Zorav, Pasha D. Lychnikoff as Anton Petrov, David Paymer as Dr. Stephen Elroy, Gordana Rashovich as Lili Denkova, Delaney Williams as John Buchanan
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Ace” begins when workers find a beaten, raped woman who is eight months pregnant; she gives no name and slips out of a chaotic emergency room. She is the fourth pregnant woman this month to be followed from a subway station and raped at knifepoint by a masked man; Flossy, a homeless man living in his car, saw the attack and heard the woman speak a foreign language. She is Sophia Zorav, a Bulgarian admitted on a tourist visa for an uncle’s funeral; her aunt, Lili Denkova, says Sophia never arrived from the airport.
This time the rapist left DNA, and Munch and Fin arrest Donavan Black as he leads another pregnant woman off at knifepoint; Flossy picks him out. Then the story unravels. Sophia’s visa was bought with a bribe, Lili was never married, and her apartment is found ransacked, with signs she was shot in the head and her body carried off in a rug. A hidden phone leads to obstetrician Stephen Elroy, who signed the bogus death certificate, and to Glenn and Beth Butler, a childless couple Lili offered a baby. Three other pregnant Bulgarian women brought in the same way have vanished.
With Benson and Stabler posing as the Butlers, a man calling himself Mr. Brooks sets a price of $500,000 for Sophia’s newborn son. He is Anton Petrov, a former Bulgarian police antiterrorism chief turned mobster. Over Cragen’s objections, Marlowe insists on arresting Petrov at the handoff in Morningside Park, and Sophia is recovered alive. She refuses to testify, Elroy will plead guilty rather than talk, and lawyer John Buchanan turns up uninvited to represent Elroy while his partner takes Petrov. Sophia and her baby are then reported killed in a car bombing.
Elroy slips Marlowe a note asking for help. With Judge Sylvia Quinn she secretly makes Trevor Langan his shadow counsel, and in a sealed session in chambers Elroy confesses for immunity and witness protection, revealing that Lili lies beneath another woman in a false-bottomed coffin in the Bronx. In open court he lies as Buchanan directs, but Buchanan learns the body has been found, accuses Marlowe and the judge of fraud, and Quinn excludes it.
Spoiler, the ending: Marlowe then plays her ace: federal agents found the bomb before it went off, and the car was blown up empty. Sophia, alive with her son, tells Petrov to his face that she watched him shoot Lili, and facing a federal death penalty case he takes life without parole. Sophia will get asylum, her son Aleksander is a citizen by birth, and Elroy enters witness protection. Benson and Stabler confront Marlowe for lying to them, and she says she needed an ace in the hole.
Why it stands out
- Peter Hermann’s recurring defense attorney Trevor Langan serves as a shadow counsel, a second, secret lawyer who protects Elroy from the mob-connected lawyer representing him in court.
- Cragen reveals that Marlowe left the police as a lieutenant after a 1995 case in which, to catch a gang leader, she exposed two of her undercover detectives.
- David Paymer plays Dr. Elroy, Kate Nelligan plays Judge Sylvia Quinn, and Pasha D. Lychnikoff plays Anton Petrov.