Take-Out (Season 19, Episode 16)
Premise: A freelance writer who spent six years in a Chinese prison is shot in a park, and the trail runs through the family of a man serving life for spying for China.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 16
- Detectives
- Det. Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto), Det. Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Keith Carradine as Martin Garvik, Michael Esper as David Sutton (David Garvik), Monica West as Tracy Meegan, Cindy Cheung as Liu Kang, J. Smith-Cameron as defense attorney Ward
- Director
- Jim McKay
- Writers
- William N. Fordes & Keith Eisner
Summary
The Investigation
“Take-Out” begins with a murder in a park: writer Alex Boone, shot twice in the head, his bag taken and his fingers marked by 29 old fractures. Liu Kang of the Sino-American Institute says a young man in a Concordia City College sweatshirt threw wine at Boone at an art opening the night before. Boone was jailed in China from 2002 on an espionage charge and freed in 2008, just before the Beijing Olympics.
Kang proves to be Boone’s estranged wife, and she says she saw a mustached white man standing over him with a gun. That lead points to limo driver Mike Adams, who draws a gun on the detectives and is shot dead. His .22 matches the murder weapon, and his phone shows a call the day before to David Sutton, a Concordia graduate student who denies knowing Boone.
Sutton’s birth name is David Garvik. His father, Martin, is serving life for passing defense software to China, his mother took her own life after the sentence, and Adams was a family friend. David campaigns online for his father’s release, while his sister, Tracy Meegan, thinks their father guilty and says Boone once phoned her about his papers. David is charged with murder.
The Trial
Defense attorney Ward refuses 15 years to life. Because David joined his father’s calls with lawyer Nathan Vick, privilege does not apply, and Vick is made to reveal that David said Boone deserved to be shot. Tracy gives her father’s papers to federal prosecutors, and McCoy, seeking federal help on a $2 billion fraud case, orders a manslaughter offer of six to 12 years. David refuses it and loses a court fight over the papers.
Martin offers to testify that he hired Adams himself. In a closed proffer, he admits spying, says Boone had learned of his meetings with a Chinese contact, Wang Chu, and claims he ordered the killing on a smuggled phone, placing Wang Chu’s port-wine birthmark on his neck. Cutter gets him to admit he would say anything to save his son, and the judge bars the testimony. Rubirosa finds a note in the surrendered papers putting the birthmark on Wang Chu’s right hand, and Kang recalls Boone saying the agent met a beautiful white woman whose daughter looked like her.
Spoiler, the ending: At a plea meeting, Martin cannot spot Wang Chu in a photo and admits the spy was his late wife, Elyse; he took the blame to protect their children. Tracy, who had lied about her contact with Boone, confesses she called Adams to stop Boone after he told her the truth about her mother. The charges against David are withdrawn, and McCoy leaves a plea deal for Tracy to Cutter.
Why it stands out
- Keith Carradine guest stars as Martin Garvik, a convicted spy serving a life sentence.
- McCoy orders a lenient plea offer in a murder case to earn a favor from federal prosecutors for an unrelated $2 billion fraud case.
- A misplaced birthmark exposes both a father’s false confession to murder and his decade-long cover for his late wife’s espionage.