If eight is their luckiest number, nine is their most magical …
Summary: An undercover agent is kidnapped sending Don’s team into the black market of Chinatown to find her.
Original air date: January 23, 2009 (US)
Written by: Peter MacNicol
Directed by: Julie Hebert
Opening numbers:
2: Vans
50: Rounds
140: Decibels
1: Missing Agent
Family Concepts: (character development)
- Alan took Don and Charlie to the Silk Dragon Restaurant when they were kids
- Alan is at his fiftieth high school reunion
- Nikki is taking a weekend computer graphics course
Continuity Notes:
- Episode takes place during the celebrations for the Chinese year of the ox
- Samuel Kraft is now called Simon Kraft. No onscreen reason is given for the change.
Episode Quotes:
- David: Looks all right.
Colby: Looks open is what it looks, man and I’m starving - Charlie: [to Amita] Do you think I should call Don or am I overreacting … you took to long. [dials]
Episode Synopsis:
During celebrations for the Year of the Ox three Chinese women are snatched off a Chinatown street. David and Colby, unaware of the kidnappings stop at a Chinese restaurant for take out. They are still perusing the menus when two men come into the restaurant start yelling at the owner, then begin shooting. Colby and David are able to take cover and eventually kill both gunmen however there are four dead people and another six are injured. Colby is questioning one of the injured men who tells him the gunmen were shouting something about wanting they’re girls back. The questioning is interrupted by Alice Chen an ICE agent who states one of her agents was kidnapped off the street and her main suspects are the two gunmen Colby and David shot. Things are complicated even more when Charlie calls Don and informs his brother Simon Kraft has been to the house with a drawing of a dragon on one of Charlie’s letters.
Chen’s agent is named Kim Hsiao; Hsiao is one of the three women kidnapped off the street. She was working in a sweatshop for Jimmy Lin, the shooter in the restaurant and the leader of an Asian gang called the Jade Boys. Chen says Kim should be wearing a beacon, however the range is only a mile or so. Don sends Colby and David to the sweatshop to see what they can find out. They find the workers gone, three more bodies: foot soldiers for Lin and another man, Colin Pang, starting a fire. David arrests Pang and once the fire is out, they can hear voices screaming behind a blocked door. Colby opens it to find the room full of women, the sweatshop workers but no sign of Kim. Pang tells David and Alice he was selling Jimmy Lin’s sweatshop workers to Harvey Yoon, the restaurant owner. Yoon then sold the women into the sex trade. When Lin found out about it, he killed his foot soldiers and went after Yoon.
Kraft shows up at the FBI Building wanting an interview with Don. He is willing to help with the case, and as he puts it, even solve it for them, if Don is willing to be interviewed for an internet show Simon has been pitching about forensic psychics. Don refuses and takes Kraft’s camera.
Charlie and Larry work to try and clean up a recording of a phone call Kim made to Alice right before she was snatched. They think they can use a series of filters to clean up the audio enough to hear what Kim was trying to say. Meanwhile Amita works on the hard drive found at the restaurant. For some reason the screen saver, a mahjong board is using a lot of memory but can’t be accessed. Alice puts Kraft back on the case when one of his drawings appears to play out. Kraft had a drawing of a dragon eating two dolls. An accident involving a dragon float includes the bodies of the two women kidnapped with Kim Hsiao. Don and Colby start a search for Kim using her last known whereabouts as a starting point. Kraft in back seat starts giving directions leading Don to an area cemetery. Once within range, the receiver for Kim’s beacon starts pinging. The receiver leads Don and Colby to a recent burial; opening the grave Colby finds Kim Hsiao, miraculously still alive.
Amita and Larry find two odd columns of information in the books for the restaurant: one column headed “take out” has number combinations that all add up to eight. A second column headed “wedding catering” has conbinations that all add up to nine. They also figure out how to break the code on the mahjong board revealing what they think are pictures of women used for prostitution. Alice however has a different idea, all of the dead women were wearing red dresses, red being a lucky color is worn by Chinese women at their weddings. Alice thinks the girls are all ghost brides: Harvey Yoon and now his brother Walter are killing the women and burying them with Chinese men who never married.
David, Colby and Nikki head for a cultural center run by Walter Yoon. David and Nikki find a computer with the mahjong board screen saver, Colby however finds Simon Kraft, dead in the parking lot behind the building he was run over. He did however record two men manhandling another woman into the van before it killed him and Nikki finds her picture under one of the mahjong tiles along with the cemetery plot where Walter Yoon intends to bury her. Don and the team get to the cemetery in time to find Yoon and two other men in the process of digging into a grave. Yoon claims the rite is part of Chinese culture and it’s not a funeral but a wedding. Colby is able to shoot Yoon when Alice distracts him; the girl is rescued before Yoon can kill her.