Barter (Season 7, Episode 12)
Premise: A co-op treasurer is shot in her building’s garage, apparently mistaken for a neighbor, and the killings lead back to a lender who holds life insurance on his borrowers.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 12
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- George DiCenzo as Sam “Bunny” Russo, Scott Bryce as Steven Tashjian, Dana Reeve as Susan Tashjian, Victor Argo as Enrique Flores
- Director
- Dan Karlok
- Writers
- René Balcer & Eddie Feldmann
Summary
The Investigation
“Barter” opens with Shelly Ganz, a 33-year-old financial planner, killed by a single shotgun blast in the garage of her parents’ co-op, with her cash and cards untouched. Her ex-boyfriend, Peter Messina, has an alibi. As the building’s treasurer, Ganz screened buyers and chased delinquent loans, and she had not yet acted on a request from neighbors Steven and Susan Tashjian, who wanted to pledge their apartment against a $1.2 million business loan from the Beechwood Loan Company.
Briscoe and Curtis notice that Susan Tashjian resembles Ganz, drives a similar car and usually parks in that spot at that hour. A super recalls a man asking for her, and a description of a car patched with primer leads through body shops to Enrique Flores of Hunts Point, whose boot size fits prints in the garage. While Flores is in custody, Susan Tashjian is shot three times outside her gym. Her husband is released for lack of evidence, but Flores also owes Beechwood $90,000.
Beechwood’s owner, Sam “Bunny” Russo, holds a $600,000 policy on Susan’s life, and an insurance agent reports that the firm collected on four borrowers last year, three of them shot dead while in default. One was dressmaker Edward Kaiser; another, private investigator Jason Waxman, had noted a plate that traces to a car in Flores’s shop. Re-arrested, Flores has a heart attack and admits both killings to a doctor while Curtis stands nearby. Russo is arrested and rejects McCoy’s offer of life without parole.
The Trial
A judge suppresses Flores’s bedside admission under doctor-patient privilege, and Flores refuses to testify. Records show that Steven Tashjian referred Kaiser to Beechwood, called him the week he vanished, and then had about $200,000 shaved off his own loan. McCoy gives Tashjian full immunity for his testimony even though his alibi for that night looks weak, and Ross warns that McCoy is inviting perjury.
On the stand, Tashjian blames Russo for the killings, but objections to his speculation keep being sustained. McCoy then turns on his own witness, asking what Tashjian did to earn his discount, and Tashjian breaks down and admits he killed Kaiser on Russo’s orders.
Spoiler, the ending: Tashjian’s immunity stands. Russo later names the remaining gunmen, Flores for Ganz and Waxman and a man in the carting business, Ray Mayeri, for Susan Tashjian, but will not discuss his investors. McCoy tells Ross he was never fully sure Tashjian was the killer, and she says he owes her for staying away from the ethics committee.
Why it stands out
- McCoy walks a thin ethical line by granting full immunity to a witness he suspects of murder.
- A suspect’s confession is thrown out because doctor-patient privilege holds even with a detective in the hospital room.
- The case breaks when McCoy cross-examines his own immunized witness into confessing to murder in open court.