Summary: Don’s team is called in when an unusual collectible goes missing from an ambassador’s vault.
Original air date: February 6, 2009 (US)
Written by: Aaron Rahsaan Thomas
Directed by: Emilio Estevez
Opening numbers:
5,800: Pairs made per minute
2: Trillion lacing variations
4: Steel shanks
30,000: Stitches
Family Concepts: (character development)
- David apparently has a lot of comic books
- Liz has been promoted to Supervisor of Organized Crime for the Denver FBI office. She turns down the offer to stay in LA
- Amita is in Kansas City for a combinatorics symposium
- Liz is a middle child and the only girl. Her older brother works for the State Department, her younger brother is in prison and her father “died years ago”
- Alan is a lab assistant for Charlie and Larry
Episode Quotes:
- David: I can understand stealing gold, stealing art. But who pulls a heist for shoes?
Don: Who keeps them in a vault!? - Don: Is this going to get us anywhere or are we just digressing?
Larry: When do I digress? - Alan: Is this the way you treat all your lab assistants?
Charlie: No.
Larry: Actually they spend a week in horticultural boot camp at the Eppes house. - Don: Air Geeks!
Episode Synopsis:
Don and David are called to the Brazilian Consulate after a robbery; the thieves left a huge diamond and art collection, choosing instead to steal a pair of shoes. The consular, Randall Nespola, recently paid $250,000 for the shoes at an auction; they are the first shoes made for the last run of Primers. The theft of shoes looks like the work of kids, however the thieves managed to break a high level security system in the process. Liz starts looking in criminal databases to see who might have the knowledge for such a theft.
David and Don talk to Vic Mortiz, aka Bit O Nutz, is also a high level she collector and the person Nespola beat at the auction. Mortiz says he doesn’t know anything about the theft even though he sent Nespola and La-La Buendia, the woman who ran the auction, threatening emails. The FBI doesn’t get a break until LAPD calls Nikki about a body found on skid-row. The man had been shot, but the interesting thing is he was wearing the shows stolen from Nespola. The shooting victim has several tattoos and Nikki is able to trace the man back to an Albanian prison.
Liz and Charlie narrow down the list of criminals with the ability to break voice recognition and other elements of Nespola’s security systems to Jean Stephanois, a French thief who’s history includes thefts in Paris and Monaco. He claims he knows nothing about this theft and considers stealing tennis shoes to be beneath his talents. The story holds up until Nikki traces the shooter in the skid row murder to Lee Diddums, Stephanois’ nephew. Diddums apparently lent the shoes to an Albanian group to make molds in order to make counterfeit copies of the shoes. The head of the counterfeiting ring, Nadroj Ria refuses to say where the original shoes are until after the FBI searches the entire warehouse stock only to discover the shoes aren’t there. Ria then confesses Diddums has the original shoes and plans to sell them on the black market.
Charlie points out the person who has the least risk in re-buying the shows would be Nespola. When the FBI arrives at the consular’s home, Stephanois is leaving. He’s arrested and Nespola initially refuses to turn the shoes over to Don; he states the shoes are his and Don says they are part of a murder investigation. Nespola agrees to give them the shoes, only to discover his son is wearing them, outside in the rain. The boy had seen his father hiding the shoes in a closet and thought they were a gift.