The Torrents of Greed: Part 1 (Season 1, Episode 15)
Premise: An assault on a small shopkeeper leads Stone to a chance at the head of the Masucci crime family.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 15
- Detectives
- Sgt. Max Greevey (George Dzundza), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Charles Cioffi as Frank Masucci, Bruce Altman as Harv Beigel, Christine Baranski as Katherine Masucci Beigel, Stephen McHattie as Joe Pilefsky, Steven Keats as defense attorney George Zuckert
- Ripped from the headlines
- Frank Masucci is widely read as a stand-in for John Gotti; the missing union leader echoes Jimmy Hoffa’s 1975 disappearance.
- Director
- E. W. Swackhamer
- Writers
- Story: Michael Duggan; Story & teleplay: Michael S. Chernuchin
Summary
The Investigation
“The Torrents of Greed: Part 1” opens with Isaac Skolnick, a Russian immigrant who runs a candy store, found savagely beaten behind his counter. Nothing of value was taken by the attackers, and the only witness is Edgar Hoover, a mentally ill homeless man who wandered in afterward and saw someone leave. His account is shaky, but it gives the detectives a starting point. A similar attack on another shopkeeper suggests the beating was a message, not a robbery.
Greevey and Logan connect the assault to Joe Pilefsky, an enforcer, and from him to Mario Zalta, a capo in the Masucci crime family. The trail runs through a warehouse of untaxed cigarettes owned by Harv Beigel, a real-estate man married to the sister of crime boss Frank Masucci. The shopkeepers who refused to sell the contraband were the ones being punished. Three members of the family are arrested in connection with the attacks.
The Trial
Stone sees a bigger opportunity. Rather than settle for convicting the men who carried out the beating, he decides to use them against the man at the top. He offers Beigel leniency in exchange for testimony against Masucci himself, and Beigel and Pilefsky provide an account tying the boss to the murder of missing union president Russell Mackey, carried out by a hitman named Vinnie Ruffo. The deal means letting a well-connected insider walk away with a light sentence, a trade Stone accepts for the chance at Masucci. Even without a body, he takes Masucci to trial for murder.
The witnesses deliver detailed, damaging testimony, and the case looks strong. Then the defense goes to work on the most important witness’s story.
Spoiler, the ending: Defense attorney George Zuckert produces hospital records showing that Stone’s key witness was hospitalized when the killing supposedly happened, exposing the testimony as perjury. The judge dismisses the case against Masucci, and because of double jeopardy he can never be tried for that murder again. Stone realizes he was set up from the start.
Why it stands out
- The first half of the series’ first two-part story, which continues directly in Part 2.
- The Masucci crime family first appeared in “Everybody’s Favorite Bagman.”
- Stone’s loss turns on a basic constitutional protection, double jeopardy, that the second part has to work around.