Publish and Perish (Season 15, Episode 21)
Premise: An adult-film star turned memoirist is found shot in her Manhattan sublet, and Fontana and Nick Falco, his fill-in partner, follow the case from her enraged editor to a former police commissioner nominated for a top national security post.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 21
- Detectives
- Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), Det. Nick Falco (Michael Imperioli)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Kevin Dunn as Arnie MacLaren, Randy Graff as Helen DeVries, Paul Schulze as Det. Pete Milligan, Helen Carey as defense attorney Charlotte Swan, Michael Tucker as Quentin
- Ripped from the headlines
- The story reportedly echoes the Bernard Kerik scandal of December 2004: the former New York police commissioner withdrew from his nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security over a nanny issue, and he had earlier had an affair with publisher Judith Regan.
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Tom Szentgyorgyi
Summary
The Investigation
“Publish and Perish” opens as two teenage boys with binoculars spot a bloodied woman across the street. She is Samantha Savage, an adult-video star in town promoting her bestselling memoir, shot once with what proves to be her own .380. With Ed Green recovering, Fontana is teamed with Nick Falco from Brooklyn North. Savage’s father, Elston Norrell, had hounded her for money and says two detectives warned him off; one admits the request came from former police commissioner Arnie MacLaren, the President’s pick for a top domestic security post, who says he met Savage once and did her a favor.
Phone records point to Helen DeVries, editor of both Savage’s and MacLaren’s books, who left Savage threatening voicemails after she defected to a rival publisher. Street Crime detective Pete Milligan produces Walter Parks, a cocaine dealer who claims he saw a white woman dump a gun near the scene; it is Savage’s gun and the murder weapon. Falco insists on waiting while Borgia gets a judge to extend a search warrant to a borrowed car that doesn’t match a witness’s description, and blood on its armrest leads to DeVries’s arrest.
A judge refuses to suppress the blood. The prosecutors then learn that DeVries was ticketed on Hudson Street that night, far from Savage’s apartment, and that both women often visited a building there where MacLaren uses a city-rented apartment. Soon after, DeVries is shot dead in a Midtown garage beside a note dedicated to Samantha. Her ex-husband reveals she was dating MacLaren, who admits that affair but denies one with Savage. The bullet traces to a gun Milligan seized years earlier, Parks says Milligan planted cocaine on him and scripted his story, and Milligan is arrested.
The Trial
MacLaren withdraws his nomination, citing unpaid taxes for a nanny. Borgia threatens to charge Milligan’s ex-wife, a police sergeant who dropped a domestic violence complaint against him in exchange for a desk job MacLaren arranged, and Milligan takes manslaughter with ten years. He testifies that MacLaren supplied Savage’s gun and blood to frame DeVries, then pushed him to kill her. MacLaren’s lawyer, Quentin Putney, shows that prosecutors also went easy on Milligan’s son over a hit-and-run MacLaren had once made disappear.
Swan, DeVries’s lawyer, then gives McCoy a photo of MacLaren in bed with Savage that Savage e-mailed to DeVries the night she died. In plea talks MacLaren admits that affair and says DeVries pounded on his door an hour after the picture arrived, but he denies going to Savage’s apartment and, against his lawyer’s advice, rejects a 20-year offer.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts MacLaren of second-degree murder, and the D.A.’s office hears that his powerful friends are abandoning him.
Why it stands out
- Michael Imperioli joins the cast as Det. Nick Falco, temporarily replacing Ed Green while Jesse L. Martin was away filming Rent.
- A search hinges on Falco’s caution: he holds off on a car that doesn’t match the description until a judge extends the warrant, and the evidence survives a suppression motion.
- The lawyer for the second victim, Charlotte Swan, ends up supplying the key photograph against MacLaren after weighing attorney-client privilege.