Payback (Season 14, Episode 12)
Premise: A former bookie who informed on a Mafia crew boss is executed in a Central Park carriage stable, and the killings that follow lead to a mild-mannered real estate broker working for the newly freed boss.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 14, Episode 12
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- T. Scott Cunningham as Cary Stillman, Joseph Ragno as Federico Righetti, Jana Robbins as Asst. US Attorney Jean Piccone, Ben Shenkman as defense attorney Nick Margolis, Matthew Del Negro as Vinny
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Lorenzo Carcaterra
Summary
The Investigation
“Payback” opens with a mob-style hit in a West Side carriage stable, where workers find part-time driver Jerry Tortino executed with two bullets to the back of his head. The M.E. points out a crescent moon branded behind his right ear after death. Tortino once ran the West Side’s biggest betting operation, and his record shows he shortened a prison term by informing on Federico Righetti, a Masucci family crew boss whom federal authorities released only weeks earlier.
Righetti’s nephew Peter now runs the crew, and an undercover agent, Vinny, says the family learned months ago who had informed. Righetti, known for feigning insanity, has a protective lawyer and an alibi at his dialysis clinic, but his nurse calls him sharp and mentions the broker he recommended to her: Cary Stillman, who also found the Tortinos their new apartment.
A wiretap catches Righetti asking Stillman about a ninth-floor “A” line apartment on East 79th Street. Soon after, Alec Ravello of apartment 9-A is shot in the park and branded the same way. Ravello was married to Jean Piccone, the federal prosecutor who convicted Righetti, and Stillman is arrested.
The Trial
Stillman’s lawyer, Nick Margolis, gets the wiretap suppressed because the judge who approved it had a long feud with Righetti. Stillman’s safe-deposit box yields about $300,000 in cash, .380 ammunition, and a money clip and lighter that match the brands, marking the broker as a part-time hit man. Stillman blames gambling and refuses a manslaughter deal that would require him to give up Righetti.
At trial, ballistics shows two different guns were used, and Stillman calmly explains everything away. Then Vinny passes along a tip from a federal wire on Peter: the Tortino gun is in a pond near Central Park South. Marks on unfired rounds in Stillman’s box show they were once loaded into that gun, so Stillman takes the manslaughter deal, and Righetti is arrested.
Before Stillman can allocute, federal prosecutor Jessica Myers asks Branch to withdraw the deal and release Righetti so the government can use him against the rest of the crew. Branch orders McCoy to comply, and McCoy offers Stillman life in prison instead.
Spoiler, the ending: Righetti is soon shot dead on his evening walk, and his nurse is killed with him. McCoy wonders whether the feds expected Peter to kill his uncle once he was back on the street; the detectives doubt they are that clever. Stillman’s answer to the new offer is not shown.
Why it stands out
- The hit man is a mild-mannered real estate broker who kills on the side and signs his work with a crescent-moon brand from an art deco money clip.
- A wiretap is thrown out not over any flaw in the tap itself but because the judge who signed it had a long feud with its target.
- Branch overrules McCoy at the request of federal prosecutors and orders a mob boss released, and the boss turns up dead soon afterward.