Tango (Season 18, Episode 10)
Premise: A high school girl is raped and killed after straying from a Manhattan tow pound, and the case turns on whether a pimp or his drug-addicted girlfriend dealt the fatal blow.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 10
- Detectives
- Det. Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Pedro Pascal as Tito Cabassa, Maria Dizzia as Sugar/Melinda Whitman, Scott William Winters as Timmy Serco, Nestor Serrano as D.A. Juan Delgado, Jeffrey DeMunn as defense attorney Professor Norman Rothenberg
- Director
- Dean White
- Writers
- Stephanie Sengupta
Summary
The Investigation
“Tango” begins at a Manhattan tow pound, where two drunk teenagers from the suburbs try to reclaim a towed car. One collapses and is taken away by ambulance, and her friend, Anne-Marie Liscomb, wanders off along the West Side Highway. A cabbie, traced through flowers painted on his trunk, says his passenger had him stop for the girl, claiming to know her, and dropped them at a run-down hotel. Video shows a woman known as Sugar paying the fare, and blood is found in her room.
Anne-Marie’s phone was then used to call the parents of Sugar, really Melinda Whitman, a meth user from a comfortable family who has been expelled from rehab three times. A dealer helps detectives find her, and Anne-Marie’s body turns up in a dumpster nearby; she was raped, struck on the head and strangled with a cord. Whitman will not name the man, so detectives release her and send her a threatening note made to look like his. She runs straight to her boyfriend, pimp Tito Cabassa, who claims the sex was consensual and blames Whitman. Told he was carrying a gun meant for her, Whitman says Cabassa raped and killed the girl while she watched.
The Trial
Cabassa is charged with murder and Whitman with hindering prosecution. A judge suppresses Whitman’s statement because the fake note and the gun story drove it, and she has recanted anyway. A neighbor saw Sugar drop a designer shopping bag down the air shaft, and the neighbor’s boyfriend, Timmy Serco, jailed in the Bronx, wants a deal; McCoy gets Bronx District Attorney Juan Delgado to agree in exchange for a favor on parking tickets. Serco says that while Cabassa was out, a duffel bag in Whitman’s room was still moving. A hair dryer recovered from the shaft has her prints and the victim’s blood on its cord, and Whitman is charged with murder.
Cabassa takes a plea to rape and attempted murder in return for his testimony; Rubirosa, at Cutter’s urging, conducts his direct, and he says he believed Anne-Marie died when she hit her head. Cutter’s cross pushes Whitman until she admits she wanted the girl gone. Rubirosa then learns that an admiring anonymous email came from juror Ray Campbell, who has also approached her on the street, and she accuses Cutter of seating him and using her to sway the jury. McCoy shrugs it off, and the decision whether to alert the judge is left to her.
Spoiler, the ending: With the jury back, Rubirosa must choose between hearing the verdict and going to the judge. The verdict is read, and Whitman is found guilty of second-degree murder.
Why it stands out
- Pedro Pascal guest-stars as pimp Tito Cabassa.
- The detectives’ forged threat note gets Whitman’s first statement thrown out, forcing the prosecutors to rebuild the case around a jailhouse witness.
- Rubirosa clashes with Cutter over a juror’s attraction to her, which Cutter had noticed since jury selection without telling her.