All you need to do is untangle those webs …
Summary: The FBI investigates a money laundering operation involving LA area restaurants and stolen credit cards.
Original air date: February 2, 2007 (US)
Written by: Sean Crouch
Directed by: Leslie Libman
Opening numbers:
3: Course meal
1: restaurant
4: Robberies
1592: Death squad murders
Several references to pi run throughout this episode
Family Concepts (character development):
- Don is ordered to see a psychiatrist due to the Crystal Hoyle shooting (301 Spree and 302 Two Daughters)
- Charlie: My circle circle tangent joke went right over the senator’s head.
- Colby: Sweet, the FBI’s payin for lunch.
- Millie: Don’t take this as criticism …
Charlie: Is it criticism?
Millie: Yes. - Megan: The thing about therapy you put a little bit in, get a lot out.
- Don: Do you think I need help?
Megan: I don’t think they’ve made the person yet who doesn’t - Colby: An unlocked door at the shady lawyer’s apartment; it’s never a good sign.
LAPD has been tracking a series of robberies involving high-end restaurants in the LA area. The latest robbery ends in the death of two LAPD police officers and the FBI is called in to assist. Don calls Charlie in to help; and Charlie starts work on a threat matrix to figure out how the robbers are picking their targets.
On the home front both Don and Charlie are dealing with issues. Don has been given an order to see a psychiatrist in response to the Crystal Hoyle shooting; Megan has already been cleared and encourages Don to give the therapist a chance. Charlie is faced with the ethical dilemma of working with a local pharmaceutical company with a spotty history.
Charlie is able to surmise the robbers are choosing their targets based on a local restaurant guide, picking ones that are high end to get the best return of stolen credit cards. He points out a likely target, but the robbery actually occurs at another location this time a valet is killed. Charlie realizes if he was so off with the potential target he must be wrong about his entire thought process and starts over. He realizes the robbery team is one of two teams working in tandem. Armed with this new information, he is able to pin point another target this time successfully and the robbery team is arrested.
Watching the interrogation of the robbery suspects Colby points out they have been trained in counter interrogation and the FBI will not get anything from their suspects. The van they were driving however does lead the team to a neighborhood where one Bernando Infante lives. Infante is an ex colonel in the Mexican Army and now an elementary school teacher. David and Colby bring in Infante who tells Megan about death squads that operate in Mexico and that he was involved with training such squads at one time. However when three children from a decimated village are threatened by such a squad, Infante smuggled the kids to the US. Now there are death squads tracking him hoping to find and kill these kids. The teams are stealing credit cards as a way to fund both the operation in the US and other operations in Mexico.
Charlie and Amita are able to track money transfers from Mexico to a wire office in LA and they identify one of the arrested members of the death squad and get an address. David and Colby raid the house and find evidence the remaining death squad team planning to kill Infante and everyone else they can at the school where Infante teaches. Just as the squad is about to open fire on the school playground, Don’s team arrives. Infante seeing the commotion gets the children and other teachers moving to the safety of the school but Infante himself is killed.
After initially blowing off the therapist as not able to understand what his job entails, Don returns to Dr. Bradford’s office wanting to talk. Charlie and Millie offer the pharmaceutical company the chance to have Charlie’s mathematical expertise on their project but there are additional requirements: all testing and computational work going through CalSci as well as a donation by the company to AIDS charities. The company rep is hesitant to accept the offer and we are left to speculate if there is an agreement.