CSI:New York

Season 4 - Episode 11 - Child's Play

Written by Pam Veasey & Trey Callaway
Directed by Jeffery Hunt
Special Guest Star: AJ Buckley
Guest Starring: Robert Joy, Richard V.Licata, Jacqueline Pinol, Brad Rowe, Al Santos, and Matthew Yang King

An exploding cigar in a hip nightclub kills Essex Palmer, a successful businessman. Det. Flack discovers that someone outside of the club had pick-pocketed Essex and then dropped his wallet outside of the club. The wallet has Mario Galanti’s fingerprints on it. When Det. Flack finds him, he discovers that Mario is basically deaf from the explosion that killed Essex. Mario swears that all he did was try to steal Essex’s wallet. Sid also finds the mouth end of a Gran Cahill cigar lodged in Essex’s trachea.

Meanwhile, Danny and one of his neighbor’s children, Ruben Sandoval, go to have their bicycles blessed. On the way back from the blessing, Danny hears a gunshot and tells Ruben to go straight home while he tries to help the victim. Justin Scott and his sister, Lucy Scott, were robbed and the thief wounded Justin in the head. Both Justin and Lucy said that the whites of the robber’s eyes were blue.

Later, Lindsay finds traces of mineral water and Lawrence Gelachter’s saliva on Essex’s tie. Gelachter, also known as Laughing Larry, is the owner of a well known, long standing joke shop. Laughing Larry admits to giving Essex the cigar, but he says that a random man had given it to him on the street. This leads the CSIs to believe that someone had been trying to kill Larry and not Essex.

Sid is able to tell that Justin was assaulted with a revolver, causing the cut on his head. He also thinks that the robber might be suffering from a rare disease due to the abnormal hue of his eyes. As Danny is discussing the case with Sid and Dr. Hawkes, he notices a child’s body being brought in. He realizes that it is Ruben, who was found shot in an alley near the scene of the robbery. Mac is able to connect the robbery to Ruben’s shooting. Dr. Hawkes believes that the gunshot Danny heard was the one that struck Ruben, and because of where it hit him he didn’t know he was shot until later.

Adam thinks that the thief’s eyes were blue not because of a disease, but because of eyeball tattooing. Only one shop does that, so they are easily able to track down the customers that have had it done. The CSIs are able to track down Ollie Barnes, whom they connect to the robbery. Ollie says that he never fired his gun, but that the owner of the shop shot him at. Mac is able to deduce that Lucy fired at Ollie, but the bullet inadvertently hit Ruben without any of them knowing.

Stella is able to track down the store that the cigar that killed Essex was purchased at. From this she identifies men who had purchased that particular type of cigar recently, and brings in Laughing Larry to pick out which man handed him the cigar. Larry picks out Benjamin Sutor. Benjamin says that he had intended to kill Larry because one of his products had caused the accidental death of his best friend when they were children. When he found out that Larry had given the cigar to someone else, he tried to reclaim it, but couldn’t.