Everybody Loves Raimondo's (Season 14, Episode 20)
Premise: A barroom shooting at an exclusive restaurant favored by mobsters and celebrities covers a second killing, of a producer whose mob movie made him enemies, and the trail leads from the author of the book behind the film into the restaurant itself.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 14, Episode 20
- 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
- Lenny Venito as Sonny King, Bill Camp as Denny Rogis, Ray Abruzzo as Paul Raimondo, Joseph R. Gannascoli as Artie Baldo, Susie Essman as Jersey City detective Veronica Reynolds
- Ripped from the headlines
- The episode is based on a 2003 shooting at Rao’s, the New York restaurant that served as the model for the fictional Raimondo’s.
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Story: Richard Sweren; Story & teleplay: Lorenzo Carcaterra
Summary
The Investigation
“Everybody Loves Raimondo’s” opens with a double shooting at Raimondo’s, an exclusive restaurant where regulars inherit or buy their tables. As a singer performs, crew boss John Carolo is shot twice in the back and movie producer Thomas Mitchell takes a bullet to the chest. Chief of Detectives Dan Giletti, dining at his weekly table, says the gunman was a bar patron known as Bumpy and that Mitchell caught a stray. Mitchell’s hit film, Al Dente, is about a restaurant much like Raimondo’s.
A raid on a dice game nets Carmine “Bumpy” Bustale and a .38. He admits shooting Carolo for talking through “Santa Lucia,” his grandmother’s favorite song, but the bullet in Mitchell came from another gun fired from the bar. Owner Paul Raimondo says Mitchell bid $50,000 for his table. Mitchell’s staff point to Sonny King, whose mob memoir became Al Dente; denied a share of the profits, King hounded Mitchell, once screaming threats at an airport baggage carousel, but he has an alibi.
Jersey City organized-crime detective Veronica Reynolds recognizes a hit broker in King’s book as Artie Baldo. Green poses as a client and hands Baldo $5,000, and Baldo, seeking immunity, admits sending King to Denny Rogis, a gunman who lives in a salvage yard. The Hudson County prosecutor demands credit for the arrest, and when a New Jersey judge balks at extraditing Rogis for murder, the prosecutors bring him back on a larceny charge for skipping his bar tab. Offered murder two, Rogis says King paid him $10,000, and King is arrested.
The Trial
Loan shark Pete Squiri testifies that King borrowed $12,000, offering as collateral a secret tape of Mitchell promising him a $1 million bonus if Al Dente grossed over $100 million, a promise Mitchell broke. On cross, King’s lawyer gets Squiri to say Mitchell broke promises to many Raimondo’s regulars. Rogis describes shooting Mitchell in the chaos of Bustale’s attack and dropping the gun, and King denies hiring him, calling his demands mere bargaining.
King’s complaint that Raimondo’s regulars hated both him and Mitchell prompts a look at Baldo’s phone records, which show a call to Raimondo’s the day he steered King to Rogis. Baldo admits King wanted Mitchell only frightened into paying; someone else paid to have him killed. The murder weapon turns up hidden in Paul Raimondo’s car, and Baldo says Raimondo paid him $25,000.
Spoiler, the ending: Offered murder two, Raimondo says Mitchell and King disrespected him three times: with the book, the movie and a hit planned in his restaurant. King, who paid only for a shakedown, is left facing attempted robbery rather than murder; no jury verdict is shown.
Why it stands out
- When a New Jersey judge balks at extraditing the hit man on a murder warrant, the prosecution gets him back across the river on a larceny charge for an unpaid bar bill.
- The hired gunman uses the chaos of an unrelated shooting, set off by a diner talking through a song, as cover to kill his target.
- Green goes undercover in a New Jersey pool hall to hire a hit broker, posing as a man with a “rat” problem.