Nowhere Man (Season 14, Episode 19)
Premise: The murder of a veteran appeals prosecutor reveals that he spent two decades in the DA’s office under a stolen identity, and a mob case he quietly dropped ten years earlier leads McCoy to his killers.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 14, Episode 19
- 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
- Vyto Ruginis as defense attorney William Wachtler, Steven R. Schirripa as Frederico “Books” Libretti, John Viscardi as Anthony “Biscuits” Biscotti, Joseph Hindy as Franco Tortomassi, Michael Bloomberg as Mayor Michael Bloomberg
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Nowhere Man” opens with the murder of Assistant District Attorney Daniel Tenofsky, found in Central Park near the John Lennon memorial, shot once in the chest and stabbed more than a dozen times, his watch and wallet gone. The Appeals Bureau veteran, once McCoy’s trial partner, lived alone with almost no personal life, and a late-night call to his home came from a pizzeria that had closed. A former girlfriend recalls him mentioning a brother in Arizona.
Rent receipts show Tenofsky living in Phoenix while supposedly at Brooklyn Law School, where a Daniel Tenofskie enrolled in 1977 and withdrew the next year. The real Tenofskie once took an accounting correspondence course in Phoenix. Police there identify the dead man as Jacob Deiter, a top economics graduate who took Tenofskie’s Social Security number and birth date from the school’s records and changed the spelling. With every case he handled now open to challenge, the appellate division’s chief judge assigns McCoy and Southerlyn to review his appeals.
One trial file is nearly empty. Ten years earlier Tenofsky had a grand jury hearing evidence against mob underboss Franco Tortomassi over the disappearance of Robert Parenti, a no-show worker on a newspaper loading dock; he then dropped the case, passed up a promotion and moved to Appeals. Parenti’s widow says her husband named Anthony “Biscuits” Biscotti and Frederico “Books” Libretti as the men to blame if he vanished, and the pizzeria where the fatal call was placed belonged to Biscotti’s uncle. The pair are arrested for Parenti’s murder.
The Trial
Their lawyer, William Wachtler, argues that they testified before the old grand jury and so received automatic transactional immunity, but the minutes and tapes are gone, and the judge finds no proof that immunity attached. McCoy realizes that the pair’s alibi, a concrete pour, marks Parenti’s grave, and the body is dug out of a concrete abutment the city is tearing up. Facing DNA evidence, they plead to manslaughter, waive immunity and say Tortomassi ordered both killings and that Tenofsky took a $50,000 bribe.
Tortomassi refuses a plea, and at trial the two witnesses disagree on who got the order. McCoy suspects Wachtler coached them and learns that Wachtler shared a 1978 class at Brooklyn Law with the real Tenofskie. Confronted, Wachtler agrees to testify against his clients. They had blackmailed Tenofsky with exposure rather than bribing him, and Biscotti and Libretti ran the kickback scheme and committed both murders behind Tortomassi’s back, killing Tenofsky when he talked of confessing.
Spoiler, the ending: Tortomassi is let go, and Biscotti, Libretti and Wachtler receive sentences meant to keep them off the streets for good. No brother is ever found, and who Tenofsky really was remains an open question.
Why it stands out
- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg makes a cameo appearance as himself.
- Former DA Adam Schiff is recalled as having hired Tenofsky and once planning to make him a bureau chief.
- The defense claims New York’s automatic transactional immunity for grand jury witnesses shields the hit men, but the judge rules it cannot be proven without the missing minutes.