Ambitious (Season 9, Episode 21)
Premise: An audio installer is beaten to death after leaving a strip club, and the trail leads to the son of a jailed mob boss who has been extorting the club’s owners.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 21
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Joe Piscopo as Jeff Stahl, Mark Linn-Baker as Tom Wilder, Jeremy Davidson as Sean Russo, Richard Libertini as defense attorney Bernie Sklar, John Driver as federal prosecutor Bob Gervits
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- Story: Richard Sweren; Teleplay: Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Ambitious” opens with a mob-linked murder: Donald “Donnie” Gibson, who installs sound systems for clubs, is found battered to death in his van by a couple on their way to City Hall to marry. Gibson had pulled $4,000 from his business account that day, apparently to buy speakers of doubtful origin for a Flatbush disco. An old fence from his federal stolen-goods case says they spent the evening at Guys and Dolls, an Upper East Side strip club, until Gibson left around 11 p.m. to collect some merchandise.
Dancer Kimberly Davis, who sat with Gibson, made a call shortly before he left, and phone records lead to a pizzeria where Sean Russo, son of imprisoned mob boss Dominic “The Sledge” Russo, picked up. Russo, with three assault arrests, walks out on a minor violation once his lawyer, Bernie Sklar, arrives. Gibson’s wallet is then mailed to his widow, Lisa, in an envelope stained with pig’s blood; it turned up behind a West Side meat business run by Russo’s uncle, where Gibson’s blood is also found. Russo’s mother offers a shaky alibi, and ammonia and Freon traces on his SUV’s floor mat suggest a leak from a refrigeration unit, so Briscoe and Curtis arrest him.
The Trial
Russo’s arraignment draws a gallery of reputed mobsters, and McCoy gets bail raised from $1 million to $10 million. At a surety hearing, club co-owner Jeff Stahl pledges the club’s building for Russo, and Carmichael learns that Gibson had filed a $12,000 mechanic’s lien against the club. Stahl’s partner, Tom Wilder, admits Russo has been taking more than $100,000 a year from them, and that when Gibson threatened to bring in an FBI contact unless he was paid, Stahl went to Russo, supposedly only to have Gibson scared off. Both partners plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter in exchange for testimony and promised witness protection, and Stahl allocutes after the judge orders Russo out of the courtroom.
On the eve of trial, federal prosecutor Bob Gervits, who is pursuing a racketeering case, asks McCoy to let Russo plead to manslaughter with a sentence running alongside a ten-year federal term, in return for testimony against his father’s crew. McCoy refuses, but after the U.S. Attorney complains, Schiff overrules him.
Spoiler, the ending: Russo’s murder trial never happens. Gervits then indicts Stahl and Wilder for racketeering, declares that they no longer qualify for witness protection, and plans to use their guilty pleas against them. Fearing they will be killed in federal prison, the partners beg McCoy for help, and he can offer only to make some calls.
Why it stands out
- The state murder case is traded away for a federal racketeering deal, with Schiff overruling McCoy after the U.S. Attorney calls McCoy an obstructionist.
- In court, Sklar argues that the Mafia has never been proven to exist and calls the word an ethnic slur.
- Joe Piscopo and Mark Linn-Baker guest star as the club owners caught between the mob and both sets of prosecutors.