# Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk #
# I'm a woman's man, no time to talk #
# Music loud and women warm #
# I've been kicked around since I was born #
# And now it's alright, it's OK #
# And you may look the other way #
# We can try to understand #
# The New York Times' effect on man #
# Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother #
# You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive #
# Feel the city breakin' and ev'rybody shakin' #
# And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive #
# Ah, ha, ha, ha #
# Stayin' alive, stayin' alive #
# Ah, ha, ha, ha #
# Stayin' alive... #
Louis Tre.
$220 a pop, Essex?
Must be feeling festive.
Think I just closed the biggest deal of my life.
Well, in that case, let's start a tab.
What's she drinking?
- Margarita rocks. - Next one's on me.
Hey, need a light?
Thanks.
Who are we looking at?
Essex Palmer, or what's left of him.
29-year-old internet entrepreneur.
According to witnesses, one minute he lit up, next minute he blew up.
Exploding cigar?
He was a regular with a twisted sense of humour
and pulled practical jokes.
On himself?
To suffer a painful death in a public place?
- He wasn't in on this joke. - No.
Talk about going out with a bang.
# Out here in the fields #
# I fight for my meals #
# I get my back into my living #
# Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah #
He made a fortune buying and selling high-end comic books online.
Then he started buying and selling comic stores.
Word is, the kid was loaded and his wallet agrees.
A guy outside picked it up after it was dropped.
Pickpocket?
The blast couldn't have blown it out the door.
The cash and the cards are still there.
Maybe he dropped it.
You get prints, I'll get the rest of the story.
Anything else from the patrons?
Everybody heard the loud explosion and then after that, it was panic.
He did come alone.
Yes. He was celebrating some new business venture.
He celebrated by slipping something into a drink.
A roofie?
Well, it sure ain't a Spanish Fly.
You in there? We're gonna be late.
You awake in there?
Ruben. It's 7:30 in the morning.
Today is the day for the Blessing of the Bikes.
- You promised to go. - The Blessing of the Bikes. OK.
You forgot.
No.
I did not forget about it.
The line's gonna be long, so we have to hurry. Mom, we're leaving now.
He's been up since 5:30.
Yeah. I went to bed at 5:30.
- Do you want some coffee? - We gotta go.
OK. Sorry. You guys have fun.
Alright.
- Grab a shirt, we're leaving. - Alright.
And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them.
And when the living creatures were lifted up,
the wheels were lifted up.
Wherever the spirit went, they went.
And the wheels were lifted up over against them
for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
May the Almighty and merciful Lord be our companion on our many journeys
and bring us back to our homes in peace, health and happiness.
This bicycle is blessed by the sprinkling of this Holy Water
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
This is blessed by the sprinkling of Holy Water
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
This bicycle is blessed by the sprinkling of this Holy Water
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Think my mom will let me ride my bike by myself?
- Is that what this was all about? - I'm 10 years old.
Time me to the corner.
- Ready, set, go! - Alright. Don't hit anybody, OK?
It's Messer.
Hey, don't go, don't go past the corner, buddy. Hey!
Let me call you back.
Ruben!
Ruben, go home! Right now!
Help! Somebody help!
I need an ambulance at 459 West 75th.
A Caucasian male fled the scene of a shooting.
He's armed. He went down the 76th Street subway entrance.
Brown jacket, approximately six feet.
Alright.
- Alright, alright. Are you shot? - No.
I need to swab and photograph the wound before it's stitched.
- You'll be fine. - Check on my sister.
So, our victim - Justin Scott.
Alright, he said the shooter came in alone,
told him to empty the register at gunpoint.
Open the register!
Took two additional hits.
The perp had something heavy or maybe hard up his sleeve.
And the female witness?
Justin's sister, Lucy.
She came from the back as the shooter fled.
He turned back and shot at her, then ran across the street.
Did you see enough to ID him in a line-up?
I saw him from the back.
Justin and Lucy said that the whites of the perp's eyes were blue.
Haven't found a bullet or an impact mark.
It appears that the bullet passed through this orange.
It entered here, exited here.
# We can walk in straight lines #
# We can't see quite right #
# We've lost the plot #
# And we can't get it back #
# So let's lose ourselves #
# Let's lose ourselves #
# Can you spot the English here? #
# We can see it for real #
# But it doesn't make sense #
# And it can climb its way to the top of that cloud #
# Oh, I'm away with the fairies now #
# I'm away with the fairies now... #
Mario Galanti!
Mario Galanti, NYPD.
Hey.
You hearing me?
Hey!
Hey! Hey!
I'm sorry!
I can't hear anything!
I need you to come with...
Turns out Mario Galanti was dumb enough to nab our vic's wallet
and he's been completely deaf since the blast.
Acoustic trauma caused by a loud noise or explosion.
You need a light?
Thanks.
And he dropped the wallet.
But he has no trouble talking.
He swears that all he did was rip Essex off.
If he didn't cause the explosion, who did?
I can't tell you who, but I can tell you what.
The cigar, right?
More specifically, the mouth end of a Gran Cahill cigar.
It was blown down the trachea.
And COD was massive internal haemorrhaging
caused by the concussive force of an explosion at close proximity.
I sent a sample of the tobacco out for detailed isotopic analysis.
But from my collegiate experience smoking stogies, I'd say it was
fresh, likely hand-rolled with a few unnatural additives, of course.
Like smokeless gunpowder?
I found heavy traces of that on the clothing.
Which is usually used in high explosives.
I did find something else. On the victim's tie, I found a stain.
It was mineral water with a twist.
Contained DNA from the saliva of this guy.
- Lawrence Gelachter? - He was in CODIS.
I wonder what his relationship is to Essex Palmer?
Judging from the look of the stain, it wasn't friendly.
He spit on the guy.
- Do we have Mr Gelachter's address? - Yeah, Flack's meeting us there.
Alright then. Unless there's something else.
There is one more thing. Mucuna Pruriens.
In India, they're also known as velvet bean, cow itch.
But here in the United States, we usually call it itching powder.
Oh. No.
Looks like he stuck it in his pocket and then after the blast,
it wound up dispersed on his clothes.
Why aren't you, uh...
The long-sleeved lab coat. Both stylish and functional.
Uh, well, exploding cigars, you know,
insect ice cubes, itching powder.
- What kind of a clown are we after? - No way.
Lawrence Gelachter... it's Laughing Larry!
We raised the subdermal bruising on Justin Scott's face.
He got slammed pretty hard.
Your bodega thief's weapon of choice is a revolver.
Open the register!
GSR from Justin Scott's head wound
didn't give us any compatible hits in the database.
I did find traces of fibreglass in the laceration of the cheekbone.
I found fibreglass on the register.
Well, I might have a theory
for why the whites of the suspect's eyes were blue.
Sclera, the whites of the eyes, can have a purple or blue tint
if someone is suffering from Osteogenesis Imperfecta.
And individuals with Ol, their bones do fracture easily.
That's why I hypothesised your thief could be wearing a fibreglass cast.
That would explain the crushing of Justin Scott's cheekbone.
And why he thought the perp had something up his sleeve.
This osteo... uh, thing?
Uh, can, uh, we track it?
If our robber saw a doctor about it,
then we might find photos of suspects from physicians.
Boom. So we show these photos to Justin and Lucy.
They ID our guy and we are...
What?
Danny, what?
No. No. Sid, where did you find him?
- What is it? - An alley off 75th Street.
There was a bicycle found that said Ruben on it.
- Ruben. - You know this kid?
Take him away! Don't touch the body.
OK.
- Get him outta here. - No. Wait, wait.
Wait.
No, he...
I saw him take the shortcut home.
- Wait. - Let's go.
I saw him. I saw him.
He was fine.
I saw him. He rode the bike right away from me.
I shouldn't have stopped. Why did I stop?
I should have made sure the kid got home safe.
Ruben was a block and a half from your apartment building.
There was a man bleeding. Justin needed you.
- You acted on instinct, Danny. - Oh, man, I wish I hadn't.
I wish I hadn't.
He just got his bicycle blessed this morning.
Danny.
I just heard.
This is a tough one.
I'm not good at this kind of thing.
What should I say to him?
Just tell him you're not very good at this kind of thing.
It's about time you guys got back.
I was starting to get worried.
How long was the line?
Where's Ruben?
Rikki.
Where's Ruben, Danny?
Rikki, we... I'm sorry.
We, uh, we, we were on our way back...
We were on our way back and then, uh, there was a robbery at a bodega.
No, no. Just tell me where he is.
You tell me where I can find him.
Just, just say that he's OK.
Oh, just tell me that he's OK.
Tell me he's OK.
I can't tell you that he's OK.
No, no.
No...!
Process what was collected at the bodega.
Whatever Danny started, finish. I want answers, not guesses.
- Got it. - I got your message.
The robbery is connected to the shooting of Ruben Sandoval.
I found citric acid on the bullet Sid extracted from Ruben.
The bullet that went through the orange.
You didn't find it at the scene because it entered Ruben just here.
Axillary region. You could be shot there and not immediately know it.
I imagine Ruben was on his bike. He heard the gunshot, was scared.
Adrenaline pumping. Doesn't feel the initial pain.
Heads home, but doesn't make it.
- Did the bullet get a match in IBIS? - Nope.
The calibre of the bullet is inconsistent with a revolver.
Does that mean we have two shooters?
Danny only heard one shot.
Laughing Larry? You gotta be kidding me.
Do you know how much of my childhood was cruelly destroyed by this moron?
- Trust me. I feel your pain. - You two wanna enlighten me here?
I was into comic books as a kid, right?
And this guy had a full-page ad in the back of each and every one
selling things like Dribble Glasses, Onion Gum, Hypno-Coins.
Plastic vomit, rubber dog doo.
- Sounds great. - It all looked great.
I'd do whatever it took.
I'd scrimp, I'd save, I'd mow every last lawn in the neighbourhood
to get my hands on Sneezing Salts or a 100 piece Battle Fleet.
When I went to the mailbox, and right there before my innocent eyes
would be disappointment in a box.
I once spent my summer allowance on this Hovercraft
that would take me and my friends riding on a carpet of thin air.
Hover crap.
And the X-ray Specs I bought to see through girls' clothes?
All I saw with those was a nun coming at me.
- Unbelievable. - Right?
I bought Sea Monkeys.
But that was then and this is now. So, come on.
We have a man to see about a cigar.
Welcome to Laughing Larry's Laffatorium
where you get more yucks for less bucks.
Don't you look spiffy? Do you mind if I take your picture?
On the victim's tie I found a stain.
It turned out to be mineral water with a twist.
It contained DNA from Larry's saliva.
Laugh it up, Lare.
Pull another gag
and I'll add assaulting an officer to your murder charge.
Wait a minute. You guys are cops? Who died?
Essex Palmer. That's what we want to talk to you about.
- Whoa. You mean somebody killed him? - So you two did know each other.
You decide to fool him with an exploding cigar?
- What did you say? - That's how he died.
Well, just a hot-damn minute now.
If you think that I killed him, you're bigger stooges than I thought.
So how did you two meet?
He walked in here. He said he was a big fan.
He loved my stuff and he offered to buy the whole thing
and 10 years of back stock.
He wanted to turn it into some kind of
e- commerce venture - Laffatorium. Com.
Me?
I don't know the internet from intercourse.
But I can tell you, after 40 years of raising rubber chickens,
he was bailing me out of a damn deep hole.
- You got any paperwork to prove it? - It was all on a handshake.
Yeah? He get the joy buzzer too?
Bet he didn't know what he was getting into
until it blew up in his face.
I've sold exploding cigars for years
and they've only ever hurt people's pride.
- Tell that to Essex Palmer. - It wasn't mine.
- Did you give him a cigar? - Yeah...
- Where did you get it? - I don't know.
People give me cigars all the time. It's part of my shtick. What?
Well, how about I shtick you in lockup?
Alright, I don't know.
I don't even remember who gave it to me.
Wait. There was this guy.
He was a new father. He gave it to me.
- I just had a baby girl. - He just gave it to me.
Hey, thanks. Congratulations.
Alright, OK?
He was, uh, uh, medium build,
light hair, about your age, only a lot better looking.
Alright, alright. So you passed on his cigar to Essex.
Didn't cost me anything.
Well, it cost him plenty.
The only combustible agent in Laughing Larry's exploding cigars
is lead azide.
No smokeless gun powder. As much as I hate to admit it, he's right.
They won't kill you.
And the tobacco?
I'm still waiting for isotopic analysis on Essex's cigar.
But I did scope a visual comparison between the two.
Laughing Larry's smokes are strictly low-grade.
Small leaf, paper fillers and lots of preservatives.
- Consistent with Larry's story, too. - Cheap and tasteless.
I found a kink in Laughing Larry's tale. Kim Wey Imports.
According to the tax board, they're a Chinatown novelty distributor
who have filed no less than seven liens against Laughing Larry.
He owes them quite a bit of coin.
Good reason to want Laughing Larry dead.
Unpaid receipt of Class C fireworks
including party poppers, snapping caps and exploding cigars.
When Larry couldn't pay up,
they decided to deliver their message loud and clear.
Wow, we're not just talking party poppers.
This place is more like a powder keg.
Aren't fireworks illegal in the state of New York?
Yep. So is murder.
Hey, folks. NYPD. Time to close up shop!
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hey!
Stop! Freeze!
Hold it right there!
I'd rather let it go.
Stella, Lindsay, get out!
We're outta here.
Go! Go! Go! Go!
Stop, drop and roll, you son of a bitch.
He's the reason I had to sell black market fireworks.
You're gonna blame your illegal immigration status on Larry too.
You think I care about being deported? He owes me 100 grand.
Even if it meant killing him with a cigar?
If I wanted to kill that idiot, I'd strangle him.
And believe me, I thought about it.
But I held off when it looked like he was about to sell.
I even paid him a little visit to make sure he remembered his debts.
Sign it.
The deal's in my pocket. He offered me 100 grand plus 50K in interest.
It doesn't look like he signed it to me, Mr Wey.
It's his disappearing ink. He thinks he's funny. But I can find him.
Maybe you can send him a postcard from Shanghai.
There it is.
If Larry had no reason to want Essex dead,
Wey has no reason to want Larry dead.
All they wanted was money.
Means that our real killer is still invisible.
Hey, Sid.
Mr Ross. What brings you down here?
Uh, one question.
How often are you wrong?
Uh, I mean, your theory that the bodega robber
suffered from Osteogenesis Imperfecta is just that, a theory, right?
I hope you haven't come down here to question me
without some evidentiary ammunition.
Well, the perp's blue eyes. I have a theory of my own.
Bring it.
Hawkes subpoenaed three specialists in Osteogenesis Imperfecta
for their records.
Justin and Lucy couldn't make a positive ID to any of the photos.
In the meantime, the fibreglass that Danny found at the scene,
I found trace levels of caffeine and aspartame.
Description of a diet soda, which contains carbon dioxide.
Which, if someone suffered from Ol, they'd be instructed to avoid
because carbon dioxide can dissolve calcium in bone tissue.
Not many patients follow their doctor's instructions.
I thought of that.
But it still did leave a small window of doubt in your diagnosis. OK.
So, I started thinking.
What if the fibreglass cast was a coincidence?
That our perp simply had a broken arm.
Which led me to discover a possible alternative
to what caused the whites of the perp's eyes to be blue.
So you came down here to run your theory by me
so you could tell Mac that I have your back.
- I guess so. - OK.
Why are the whites of our perp's eyes blue?
Eyeball tattooing.
What?
You're gonna have to start making sense.
I checked with Sid.
Our perp doesn't necessarily have Osteogenesis Imperfecta.
Danny found a hair, a clipped dog's hair at the scene.
It had traces of dye, but not just any dye, alright?
A dye used for tattooing.
On a dog.
Well, some veterinarians tattoo the lighter areas on the dog's nose.
The ink protects against skin cancer.
They also tattoo pets' ears for identification
and they usually clip the hair.
OK. But I'm not seeing a connection to blue eyes or our bodega suspect.
Veterinarians send the pets to tattoo artists, places that you and I go.
I mean, well, I would go...
Anyways, I located several establishments.
And one place in particular offered me a special on eyeball tattooing.
We're the only ones who do it. It's one of the oldest forms of tattooing.
We inject colour pigment under the top layer of the eye.
Your brown eyes would really pop with a little bit of green.
I can give you a discount.
Actually, no. I'm looking for someone who might have these eye tattoos.
Counting her? Only four people I know who have it.
I'm gonna need those names.
I didn't do anything. You don't know what you're saying.
The whites of your eyes are blue. It's kinda hard to miss that.
You were in that bodega.
You slammed your gun into Justin's face.
You crushed his cheek with your cast.
You stole the money from the register and fled. We have two eyewitnesses.
A kid took a bullet and died.
What?
I never fired my gun.
There was a crime scene investigator around the corner.
He heard a gunshot.
That's because I was shot at.
You saw Justin fire a gun?
- Who else could it be? - There was no gun in the bodega.
You figure it out but I didn't fire my gun.
That's what you do. You can prove that?
I dumped my gun.
It's in the third canister along the wall in the station.
I am not going down for murder, man.
Did you see him fire his gun?
I never said he did it. I heard a gunshot.
By the time I rounded the corner, Ollie was running away with a gun.
Lucy Scott said he fired his gun.
Thought I told you to take some time off.
You did. I just don't wanna go home.
When I go down that hallway now,
I'm not gonna hear the kid laughing on the other side of the walls.
Crying when he doesn't wanna go to bed.
I'm afraid I'm gonna miss him.
Ollie's telling the truth.
He had no trace of GSR
and the gun retrieved was not recently fired.
- And is it a revolver? - Yes.
Which doesn't explain why the bullet in Ruben was a 9mm.
No match to a revolver.
Justin Scott fired a weapon?
We didn't find a weapon on him or in the bodega.
But then again, we weren't looking for one.
This is our crime scene based on Lucy Scott's account of what happened.
The shooter fired back from the street
as she approached her brother.
I found an orange pierced by a bullet here.
Justin's there, Lucy's behind him.
So the line of fire has to be in this area.
But Ollie Barnes is over six feet tall.
If he fired back at Lucy, how did a bullet pierce an orange
that was at least a foot below his sight of her?
I mean, either he's a really bad shot or somebody else fired at her.
And Ollie's theory. Someone shot at him.
If we change the spatial orientation of the orange...
...the path of the bullet changes.
The orange didn't come from the stand by the street,
it came from the boxes near the door.
The bullet pierced the orange then Ruben.
But the kid was shot on the right side, the side closest to Ollie.
No, Danny. Ruben heard what you heard.
He turned toward the sound of Lucy and the gunshot.
Help! Somebody stop him!
There's only one person who could have been in the position
to shoot both the orange... and Ruben Sandoval.
I don't understand, Detective. Is the guy that robbed us dead?
No.
We arrested Ollie Barnes for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
That's the young kid you shot and killed.
His name is Ruben Sandoval.
- I don't think... - Yes, you do.
Your intention was to stop Ollie as he fled the bodega.
You were kneeling down by Justin when you shot him.
What did you do with the gun?
Somebody stop him!
What are you doing?
It can't be true. It can't be true.
I didn't shoot that kid. Did I?
Ruben was riding his bike past the bodega when you pulled the trigger.
It was a split second in time.
Help! Somebody stop him!
Ruben, go straight home, Ruben!
Go straight home!
What have we got?
We got the isotopic results back from the cigar fragment
that Sid found in Palmer's throat.
Pre-embargo Cuban tobacco and a wrapper leaf from Cameroon.
$100 a pop.
Couple it with this "It's a Girl" label,
there's only one place that sells them.
Haynes House of Fine Tobacco.
Has a web-based in-house surveillance system.
And only one person bought those cigars in the past week.
But the video is really grainy and I've tweaked it into oblivion.
It's time for Plan B.
Biometrics?
Bingo.
If we can define our guy's facial measurements, length of nose,
width between the eyes, width of mouth,
maybe we can get a hit in PIMS.
And about half a dozen possible perps with priors.
It's time to bring Larry in for a line-up.
- Can they see me? - No.
- Poor saps are missing out. - Please...
See if you can see the man you saw from the photo.
Wait.
That's him.
Number three.
You sure that's the guy who gave you the cigar?
- I just had a baby girl. - Congratulations.
Thanks.
- That's him. - Benjamin Sutor.
He's new to the system. He works for an ammo company.
He just got booked
for violating a restraining order filed by his ex-wife.
Report says she was awarded full custody of their son.
But he's a toddler. There's no mention of a newborn.
Is that you?
You recognise me, Laughing Larry?
I thought he couldn't see me.
He can't.
Of course not.
But I know who you are.
You look the same as you did in the comic books I used to read.
You know, my best friend Sam and I, we never missed one of your ads.
You know what we wanted more than anything in the world?
The Narwhal Nuclear Submarine.
You said it was the most powerful weapon ever.
It would dive the deepest depths
and that we could search for sunken treasures.
Even though it was only $6.98,
it was more than either of us could afford on our own.
I came up with the brilliant idea that if we saved up,
we could buy it together.
And I have to admit I was a little bit sceptical
when it arrived and it was made out of cardboard.
I was unsure that it would do what you said that it could.
But Sam was sure that it would work.
Sam knew that it would work because Laughing Larry had said it would,
so why wouldn't it?
You know what you forgot to tell us is that,
is that Sam had to know how to swim.
I lost my best friend
and I swore that I would never read comic books again
or let my own son read comic books or play with toys or with other kids.
So I kept him in the house around the clock.
I was just too afraid that my boy was gonna get hurt.
So your wife took your son and filed a protective order against you.
It broke my heart.
But I couldn't blame them.
So I blamed him.
- I just had a baby girl. - Congratulations.
I'm sorry someone innocent died.
Here, Essex. Glad we're in business together.
That was not my intention. I tried to stop it but it was too late.
But I swear, for the rest of my life...
...I will pray for one thing.
And that is that you...
...that you never laugh again.
OK. Come on, let's go.