We Like Mike (Season 7, Episode 20)
Premise: A bellhop who helped a young Wall Street worker change a flat tire minutes before the man was shot goes from murder suspect to the prosecution’s only eyewitness.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 20
- 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
- Frank John Hughes as Mike Bodak, Benny Nieves as Ricky Garcia, Casey Siemaszko as Defense Attorney Shuman, John Doman as Sergeant Frank Gottlieb, Reiko Aylesworth as Tiffany Sherman
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Gardner Stern & I.C. Rapoport
Summary
The Investigation
“We Like Mike” opens on a Sunday morning in Manhattan, where Tiffany Sherman finds her brother Matthew shot three times in his car, his wallet and watch gone and a flat tire half changed. A Princeton graduate with a Wall Street job, Matthew was on his way to pick her up at a doughnut shop. A customer with greasy hands had mentioned his coming wedding there, and the Greek Orthodox cross he wore leads the detectives through a priest and a rabbi to Mike Bodak, a hotel bellman, at his own rehearsal dinner.
Bodak says he only helped with the tire, but he left work early, paid $480 in cash for the dinner and has an old car-theft arrest. He admits answering phones for bookmaker Ray D’Antoni, and blood of Sherman’s type turns up on his jacket. Briscoe and Curtis arrest him at his wedding, in front of his bride, Ruth, and her father, a Housing Authority sergeant. In custody Bodak describes a Hispanic man with a tattoo on his hand whom he passed near the car.
A similar holdup of a stranded driver, Virginia Watts, and a Bellevue prescription lead to Ricky Garcia, whom Watts spots outside a courtroom after police bring her there by mistake. Sherman’s wallet is found on Garcia’s brother Tony, the gun and a bloody sock are in their apartment, and Garcia confesses. Bodak is released after three days in jail.
The Trial
Defense attorney Shuman gets the courthouse identification thrown out as tainted, along with the apartment search and the confession it produced; only the wallet survives, and the charges are dismissed. A resentful Bodak picks Garcia from a photo array, and Garcia is rearrested. Then Bodak stops cooperating after threatening calls, which a phone tap traces to Tony Garcia, who is arrested for witness tampering.
Bodak agrees to testify, but on the day of trial he is picked up in a raid on another of D’Antoni’s betting rooms, and the Bronx prosecutor refuses him immunity. On the stand he identifies Garcia, then pleads the Fifth when Shuman asks about his bookmaking work. The judge rules that he cannot answer some questions and refuse others, and tells the jury to disregard all of his testimony.
Spoiler, the ending: Urged by McCoy and against his own lawyer’s advice, Bodak returns to the stand, admits taking bets for D’Antoni, and repeats that he saw Garcia walking toward the car. The jury convicts Garcia of first-degree murder and robbery, and the Bronx later drops the bookmaking charges against Bodak.
Why it stands out
- The case rests on a witness who was wrongly arrested for the same murder, at his own wedding, and has little reason to help the prosecution.
- The judge rules that a witness who answers the prosecution’s questions cannot selectively plead the Fifth on cross-examination, and strikes Bodak’s testimony until he relents.
- The murder weapon and Garcia’s confession are suppressed because police steered a witness into an accidental courthouse identification.