Deadbeat (Season 7, Episode 7)
Premise: A father who skipped out on about $200,000 in support is shot in a Midtown hotel, and the evidence points to the grandfather of his son, a boy with leukemia.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 7
- 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
- Val Avery as Max Schaeffer, Tamara Tunie as Caroline Bennett, Deborah Hedwall as Arlene Webber, Scott Sowers as Joe Kirby
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman & I.C. Rapoport
Summary
The Investigation
“Deadbeat” opens in a Midtown hotel, where a guest registered as Michael Malone is found shot in the chest with a .22. A guest down the hall heard the shot and saw a man of average height in a green shirt running off. Two car dealers with long records, Jimmy and Pete Pogosian, show up for a meeting with the dead man and are arrested on a gun charge, but their pistol is the wrong caliber.
The victim’s Miami girlfriend, Victoria Lewis, believes he was an undercover FBI informant and says she withdrew $50,000 for his trip. His real name is Michael Webber, and family court wants him: he owes his ex-wife, Arlene Webber, about $200,000 in alimony and child support. Their son Billy has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant, and Webber, a used-car broker with a large income, has never met him.
Collection agent Joe Kirby admits Webber paid him $10,000 in Miami to go away. Arlene’s father, Max Schaeffer, a linen-truck driver who wears a green shirt, gave Kirby the pager number used to find Webber. A bar owner says Schaeffer moved his weekly stop near the hotel up a day, arriving at about 5 p.m. on the day of the shooting, and detectives find hundred-dollar bills hidden in his toaster. With his cousin, a real estate lawyer, at his side, Schaeffer admits being in Webber’s room and is charged with second-degree murder.
The Trial
Defense lawyer Caroline Bennett casts Arlene as the real victim. Detectives find the .22, bearing Schaeffer’s prints, hidden in a restaurant storeroom on his route, and it turns out to be registered to Webber. Bennett then claims self-defense, saying Webber drew the gun during an argument. Arlene shows Ross scars where Webber burned her with cigarettes, and Ross agrees to a manslaughter plea despite McCoy’s doubts.
After Schaeffer describes the struggle in court, McCoy withdraws the deal: Webber flew from Miami with only a carry-on bag and could not have brought the gun. Faced with checks of every car on their lot, the Pogosians admit Kirby set up Webber’s trip, and Kirby says Schaeffer arranged it. When McCoy threatens to charge Arlene with supplying the gun, Schaeffer confesses that he planned the killing on his own.
Spoiler, the ending: Schaeffer pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter, with sentencing left to the judge. Ross then learns from Billy’s doctor that blood types in Webber’s old records could rule out paternity, so a donor test would have shown Webber was not Billy’s father. McCoy believes Arlene shared in the plot but keeps her case open rather than charging her.
Why it stands out
- Tamara Tunie, who plays defense attorney Caroline Bennett, later played Medical Examiner Dr. Melinda Warner on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
- McCoy pulls a negotiated plea in open court after noticing that the victim’s carry-on luggage rules out the self-defense story.
- The motive shifts at the end from a transplant to a paternity secret that would have wiped out the child support claim.