Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001) s02e20 Episode Script
Blink
In New York City's war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Squad.
These are their stories.
House takes it with 21.
Pretty ladies bring me luck.
What's the limit? One thousand.
Gracias very much, pretty lady.
Penny, where were you last night? I was home, finishing this for you.
You weren't home.
Are you still following me? Penny, please, I just want a chance to explain It's impossible, Gregg.
Try to understand.
Penny.
Penny.
Penny! Here's your share.
We can go again on Thursday.
Okay.
Oh, and the chip down my dress? Just playing the part.
Next time, leave the acting to the drama majors.
Who helped you with this? Your little Korean hot pot? Don't call her that.
She worked out the algorithm, but I did the rest.
Neediness is not an attractive quality in a man, Gregg.
Neither is the inability to keep a secret.
Now, we agreed, no outside contractors.
I can handle Penny.
Then handle her.
The hair is different, but it's the same girl.
You should double down.
Or Bart and Homer over there will get the wrong idea or the right one.
You're busted.
You and your friend better get out of here.
Penny? Penny! Law & Order CI 2x20.
Blink This is a dog park, Sir.
Three people walking their dogs found her.
The way she's dressed, she could be working any of the fine establishments in the vicinity.
Working them hard, apparently.
There's almost 2,000 there.
Penelope Chai, math major at Hudson.
This bar code, is that the Department of Defense security clearance? Yeah.
Once we saw that, we figured she might actually be a rocket scientist.
Maybe somebody was after the state secrets in her pretty head.
Fingers broken post-mortem.
It's like a signal or a warning or Yeah, she's got calluses here and on her thumb.
Whatever she was doing here, this was the wrong place to do it.
So the killer was standing in plain sight.
Yet, he still took the time to To snap every one of her fingers.
I He left the money, he didn't bother to make it look like a robbery.
He's either stupid or cocky.
Yeah, or he didn't think we'd be fooled.
Paid us a compliment? Math Research Lab Hudson University Wednesday, March 13 National security? Penny's work didn't have anything to do with that.
She designed predictive systems for pattern recognition software.
To predict what? Food procurement for the Quartermaster Corps.
And mess hall supplies.
Yes, we have a grant to virtualize their procedures.
A grant.
Does that mean Miss Chai was paid for her work? Oh, a very modest salary.
In fact, she asked me for a raise last month.
She said she needed to get an apartment.
But I had to tell her no.
She got the money somewhere.
She moved out of her dorm, didn't leave a forwarding address.
Did she always keep her desk this impersonal? Just her style.
Very guarded.
Was there anybody she let her guard down with? She seemed to get along well with Amy.
Amy Wittlin.
That's her desk over there, with the palm tree.
- Party island.
- Yeah.
Wow.
Okay, uh, who's who? That's Amy in the green bikini.
Rosalie, she's a junior in the math department, and Tomas Ramone, also a math major.
Freeport, Bahamas.
The place to be for math majors.
For what, duty-free calculators? Predictive analysis.
Oh, my God.
She was so nice.
What happened to her? We're still sorting that out.
She was found in Chelsea, over by the West Side highway.
She was pretty beat up.
Any of you know what she might have been doing over there? I'll give you a hint.
- A card shoe.
- We're just fooling around.
Fooling around with cards? For example, at the casinos at Freeport, hmm? Play cards, hours on end, you get calluses on your forefinger, your thumb.
Like you and Penny.
Do you mind if I deal? I heard that a blackjack deck has a memory.
Keep track of the cards that are played, you know the cards that are left.
If you're a math wiz, you can work out the odds of, well For every hand.
It's a predictive system of pattern recognition.
- That's what they'd call it.
- I call it counting cards.
Is that what you were doing last night? And she got caught? - They wouldn't - Her fingers were broken.
You think somebody was trying to make a point? It was this place on West 22nd.
This This private club.
They came after us.
We got split up.
I thought she'd show up in the morning.
I swear to God, I just thought they were trying to scare us.
Well, it worked.
We'll be in touch.
Eighty seven, two hundred and thirteen, fifteen, nine, ten and thirteen.
That's it.
Beautiful.
Just Beautiful.
- Gregg, your program is so sweet.
- Penny's dead.
The police found her near the clubs last night.
Okay, take it easy.
Ken, look, I don't wanna be a part of this anymore, okay? I was doing it for her.
But now For her? If I thought that you were doing this just to get back into her pants, I wouldn't have brought you into it in the first place.
I told you / You and Penny wasn't in the cards.
You'll get other women.
Believe me.
Just don't wimp out on us.
Because it's not what you do, it's what you get done.
Apartment of Penny Chai Thursday, March 14 Four weeks and she was still living out of boxes.
Eames, sounds like the hard drive is running.
It could be defragmenting the drive.
Or erasing it.
It's password protected.
Security software's overriding the off switch.
It's locked in.
Can't pull the battery.
Shall we hack? Password programs usually give you a hint after three tries.
San-nakji.
That's some hint.
It's octopus stew.
I did a six-month tour in South Korea.
They use live octopus.
The tentacles get up your nose.
It's hilarious.
A riot.
Trying "octopus".
Bingo.
The erase program's been running almost 16 and a half hours.
It started after Penny was already dead.
They killed her, then came here.
And the program was set to overwrite the data 33 times.
Whatever was on her computer, they wanted it erased beyond recovery.
Probably because it leads back to them.
Too bad for them.
They did a better job erasing her.
Our computer nerds recovered the last file deleted before the erase program was activated.
It looks like software to generate random numbers.
Her professor said it wasn't part of her defense work.
A random number generator doesn't sound like something a card counter would use.
She wouldn't.
It's a predictive system, it's her specialty.
It's the kind of software that she'd write for someone else.
Maybe the same person that she's hiding from.
She's moved out of her dorm into a sublet.
She's been living out of her suitcases.
Lots of photos of her family in Raleigh.
Of her at her prom, with her Korean-American boyfriend.
So this nice hometown girl was being stalked and none of her friends knew? Well, maybe she didn't talk the talk, but she was walking the walk.
She dropped three classes the week before she moved.
One of them, multivariable calculus, was a requirement for her major.
If she drops it, she doesn't graduate.
Yeah, but she did drop it.
Penny Chai? I don't know, I might have been in some of her classes.
So what? No, see, Gregg, you were the only guy in all three classes.
The three classes she dropped.
Her super at the sublet recognized you from a photo.
She saw you in front of the building.
What were you doing outside her building? I was I was doing a project with her.
I was waiting for her to get home.
Random number generator.
We found it on her computer.
Yeah.
Right.
It generates lottery numbers.
It's legal.
It just It just increases the odds of winning.
Well, we like that.
How does it work? This equation here, what's "x"? It's anything you want, it's a variable.
Oh, okay, um "X" times four over twelve.
What's four? It's a constant.
It's just a unit of measurement.
- Four is a unit? - Yes.
- What does it measure? - Nothing.
It doesn't measure anything.
Look, it's not even finished yet.
Okay? It's not even gonna be finished, so just leave me alone.
A unit of measurement.
Four of something is a unit.
Four of what? "X" times four divided by twelve.
Twelve, what do you think, inches? A unit of measurement that's four inches long.
Of course.
He's usually at Milligan's after 7:00.
Somebody I know? Somebody my dad knew.
It could be hands, if this is what you think it is.
The only unit of measurement four inches long is a hand.
Hands are how you measure horses from hoofs to withers.
This is about horses.
And this measurement here Ah! Eighth of a mile.
Furlongs.
- The length of the track.
- Yes.
And these equations here, win-loss, one for the beast, one for the jockey.
Are you the girl he brought to the funeral? 'Cause if I didn't say it then, you are very lovely.
I didn't bring anyone to the funeral.
This program is for handicapping horse races.
Does it work? About as well as the system his father used.
He used to check the horses out in their stalls before the race, see if their ears were up or down and bet accordingly.
Well, maybe that's the point of all this.
A gimmick to sell to gamblers? It has the veneer of logic, doesn't it? And it factors in every variable.
And does so very elegantly.
If you could use this for credible justification of any long shot bet, even suspicious ones, it would, right, Ferdie? Yes, it would.
It would at that.
No playing with Daddy's stuff, Captain.
Come over here with Uncle Gregg and Uncle Phil.
Ken, please, we need you to focus.
On what? You girls need to cowboy up.
Those cops are shooting in the dark.
You don't know what they know.
So I'll find out.
Guys, it's just a hiccup.
Go home.
Okay? Go to the gym, do something.
And just relax.
I have to go out later, just for an hour.
I have to cool these guys down.
Maybe they're right.
Maybe this time it's pushing it.
They ran a full schedule at Del Mar.
You know, we could run the winners and the losers through the program.
Anything missing from your desk? No, but I don't remember leaving these files like this.
Well, my notepad's missing the top sheet.
This Post-it was on my phone, not on my blotter.
You see anyone at my desk? Yeah.
Plain clothes from the 58.
He had a visitor's clip.
He was here when I came on shift an hour ago.
He said you told him to wait for you.
Well, what did he look like? Caucasian, average height, hat, puffy coat, tinted glasses and a scarf.
He skimmed these folders but he read the one on Penelope Chai.
I clipped the autopsy report to my notes on Tomas Ramone.
He moved the clip.
He wanted to know what we have.
Yeah, he entered the lion's den.
- Bold.
- He's out of his mind.
No, it's worse.
He doesn't know fear.
He signed in using ID stolen from a messenger.
He came in during the shift change.
So nobody paid any attention.
These are useless.
Either his head's down or he's turned away.
He came in with the vaguest of plans and then he winged it.
He's smart, he adapts.
He's dancing on a high wire.
If there's a leader in this scam, he's it.
So now, everything we know about the scam, he knows.
Well, he doesn't know we know this.
You fix a race, one way to get caught is to put a heavy bet on a long shot winner.
And the racing board will want to know why you bet on that horse.
This program will give him an answer.
I fix a race, I put every variable about my horse in the program.
I do the same thing with every horse in every race.
The program uses a combination of my winning horse's variables to pick horses in other races for me to bet on.
If anybody questions your winning bet, you can point to your other bets and your handicapping system.
It turns my long shot winner into some lucky pick by a sucker with a system.
It's a smoke screen.
Now we just need to pick out the sucker who's been using this system.
This program was created two weeks ago, which means running two weeks' worth of racing results through the program.
Can't be too tough for the State Racing Board.
Taylor & Associates Construction Site Tuesday, March 19 That's right.
I made the bet last Saturday afternoon at the OTB on Queens Boulevard.
We're investigating muggings of OTB customers there.
Well, if I'd seen anyone get mugged, you're the first people I would've called.
How did you Through the tax form you filled out when you collected your winnings.
That was a real red-letter day for you, huh? Winning $10,000 on that long shot bet.
I got lucky.
You know, I heard that people that play the ponies a lot, they develop their own system.
I don't play a lot.
Sorry.
You need a hand? I don't.
Thanks.
My partner's the mountain goat.
I have a little problem with heights.
How about you? My mother's father was Mohawk.
He used to tell stories about working high steel.
It sounded like fun.
So you became an engineer? - Where'd you get your degree? - Hudson.
Two years ago.
What's that frat for engineers? Engineers, mathematicians? Alpha Beta Pi.
That's the one.
You a brother? I joined for the keggers.
Watch your step.
- Just don't look down.
- Yeah, easy for you to say.
You know, I can't I just can't stop thinking about that long shot bet, Ken.
Walking in off the street, hitting a 16-to-one long shot.
Yeah, you're right.
Last week, I heard one of the subs talking, he knew a guy who knew a guy, so I bet the horse.
Is there something wrong with your jaw? I saw you working it.
I popped an eardrum cave diving off Maui last year.
Cave diving.
Not in a million years.
One wrong move and you're fish bait.
That's the attraction, isn't it, Ken? You just have to keep your cool.
Testing yourself.
And that's why you're You're up here instead of in the office, with the real engineers.
I like being in the arena, making things happen.
Yeah, thinking on your feet.
Otherwise, what? You get restless? You see, I see now.
You have a reduced startle response.
I mean, most people, when they almost take a header off a building, you know, they For me, example.
They get scared.
Their eyes open wide, they blink big.
It's called an increase in blink magnitude.
But you, not you, you know.
No, it didn't bother you a bit.
You panic, you die.
Yeah.
Harris has no known association with gambling syndicates.
Closest he's been to horses is taking his son for a pony ride to the zoo.
He went to the same school as Gregg Monroe and Penny Chai.
He was in the same frat.
His bets conformed to the computer program.
Can't Harris just be a young engineer who made a lucky bet? A young engineer with no discernible fear response.
People like him, they become firefighters, racecar drivers, or tweak the upbringing another way, they become psychopaths.
Which way did Harris get tweaked? At Hudson, he was a member of the skydiving club, he's been a volunteer firefighter - Definitely a miscreant.
- On the other hand, his DMV records show three speeding tickets from high school.
Two of which he was going 80 miles an hour in a 35-mile-an-hour zone.
Look, he has what it took to sneak into this building.
It's very thin, people.
Let me know when you have something that sticks to the spoon.
A couple of clowns.
Especially the big guy.
- I can't believe they rattled you.
- They're not clowns.
They found you, didn't they? Time to bail.
We made $10,000, that's cool.
That's cool? Remind me again how deep you are in the hole, Mr.
Dotcom.
$250,000? How're you gonna make the bets? The cops know you.
They don't know you.
That's what matters.
Let me worry about putting the bets down.
You never worry.
You don't worry about us, you don't worry about Penny getting killed.
Why is that, Ken? You got something to say, Gregg? Say it to those cops.
Right there in that building there.
Eleventh floor.
Goren and Eames.
Go ahead.
Nobody's going to the police, Kenny.
If you do, have the freaking decency to give me a head start.
Talk to you tomorrow.
I'm scared too, Kenny.
Sometimes I wish you could feel what it's like.
But I don't.
The only way I can do this is if you believe in me.
Now, just let me get through this one thing, then I'll hang it up.
Okay? The racing board reeled him in this morning.
He made a series of bets on his credit card two days ago that lined him up with the computer program.
This is Mr.
Cooley of the State Board.
Hey.
/ Hi.
And that's Bannerman? He was in promotions at Aqueduct until last year, when a security check showed he'd run up over $300,000 in gambling debts.
He knows jockeys, trainers.
He's ready to talk.
I fixed a race at Belmont and I used this computer program to make it look legit.
That's it.
How'd you fix the race? No, no, no.
That comes later after we hammer out a deal.
Well, can he at least tell us where he found the computer program? From this Oriental chick I met in Atlantic City.
I noticed her counting cards in a casino.
I threatened to turn her in unless she would, you know, come up to my room.
I told her about my association with racing and she told me she was working on this betting program.
We decided to work together.
But as soon as I got the program from her, I didn't need her.
Penny, she had a very thick Korean accent and Did you have trouble understanding her? Yeah, at first, but I got used to it.
We'll discuss your offer and we'll get back to you next week.
Next week? We can resolve this today.
No, I'm going to the islands tomorrow.
I'll be back Tuesday.
We'll let you know then.
Bannerman's a diversion.
He never met Penny Chai.
They threw him at us to buy time.
Harris and Monroe? Awfully sophisticated for a couple of frat boys.
Got him.
A list of Kastner's past clients.
All members of the Israeli mob.
Bannerman's probably in hock to them.
Playing patsy to That's his way of paying off his debt.
The Israeli mob's behind this scam? They are now.
Ken Harris felt us closing in on him.
The normal man would quit.
Not him.
No, instead he partners up with the most vicious criminals he can find, raising the stakes because Well, it's his nature.
Bannerman charged his bets on his credit card, right? Using a dial-up account at an OTB office.
Now, how did Harris make his bets? Credit card, doesn't say which one.
Well, we need the actual charge.
Check his credit card report to find the card.
His credit's good, just the usual credit inquiries from a car dealership, department stores, an insurance company last week.
Here, three credit cards.
I'll try the one with the higher limit.
- What? - Here we go.
$500 at the OTB last week.
This charge is credited to Totalizer Inc.
That's the same as Bannerman's charge.
It must be a company for processing dial-up betting accounts.
Well, you have two bites at fixing a race.
Before it's run and you know, right after.
You can't change the results, but maybe you can change the bets.
And I'll bet that we'll find a frat brother at Totalizer.
Kenmore Bar & Grill Friday, March 22 Where is he? I got a text-message to meet him here.
He's probably putting his kid to sleep.
So, big day tomorrow.
How you doing, huh? You mind if I take a load off? Hey, what're you frat boys drinking? That's okay, Detective Goren, we were just leaving.
This seat taken? How you doing, Phil? Alex Eames.
Hi.
Oh, and don't worry about Ken.
- We sent you those messages.
- Yeah.
We wanted to meet the real brains behind the operation.
Especially you, Phil.
The man who found the flaw in the way Totalizer processes dial-up bets.
They told us they don't process the dial-up bets until the first four races of the day are run.
Which means that someone working in data security at Totalizer could change the bets of those four races.
You know, change losing bets into winning bets.
Kind of like waving a wand.
I'm not the only person in data security, okay? You can't put this on me.
You covered yourself really good, Phil.
You really did.
You have nothing to worry about.
Especially from us.
I mean, nothing at all.
You wanna know Ken's secret? He's incapable of experiencing fear and well, that means It means he's a menace.
Especially with people that he gets into business with, you know, people like you two.
Have you met Ken's new partners? This is Ralph Bannerman.
Bannerman's lawyer, Frank Kastner, a few of Mr.
Kastner's regular clients.
Bookmaker, bookmaker, leg-breaker, murderer, another leg-breaker, and they're all members of the Israeli mob.
They're Ken's new partners.
Which means, they're your new partners, too.
He didn't tell you? Boy, that Ken.
He's just full of surprises, isn't he? You know, there's another surprise that he kept from you, Gregg? Somebody tried to erase the random numbers program from Penny's computer.
After she was killed.
Who else, besides you, knew that Penny helped you write that program? Ken killed her.
And now he's on the way to getting the both of you killed.
It's up to you, if he'll succeed.
Right.
That's 10 groups of eight picks, six tickets on the Orlando Derby.
Total, $160,000.
No, thank you.
Now we send my buddy the confirmation numbers, we let him do the rest.
Trust me.
We can't lose if we tried.
Three winners across the board.
I'm not showing a win on these confirmation codes.
That can't be right.
We got eight picks, six winners in each group.
I'm looking at your bets right here.
No winners.
Sorry, son.
Let's talk outside.
Let me get in touch with my guy.
We can figure this out.
I figured out you just cost me $160,000 Excuse me.
We need to borrow your friend here.
Hey, come on, guys.
It's only for a couple of hours.
You can catch up to him later, all right? My wife and kid.
If those guys think I cheated them There's no "if", Ken.
Mrs.
Harris, we're with the police.
Oh, my God, Ken.
Has something happened? He's been arrested.
You need to come down to the station with us.
I'll get my son.
It figures.
Those two wusses would make me the fall guy.
I thought I was making legitimate bets.
I had no idea Phil and Gregg had rigged the system.
And your little scam with your Israeli friends? They didn't look happy you ripped them off.
All I have to say about that is, you people set me up.
Really hung my ass in the breeze.
But that's okay.
I'm in here with you.
They're out there.
Well, that's good short-term thinking, Ken.
You're charged with one count of betting fraud.
A "D" felony.
I can have you arraigned by 2:00.
I can agree to your release by your own recognizance and have you on the street lickety-split.
With no chance of making it to the subway station in one piece.
Or you can plead guilty to the murder of Penelope Chai and serve your time in isolation, under the protection of the Department of Correction.
I like Plan A better.
Plan A is a death sentence.
I'm not afraid of the Israelis.
Believe me, I've been in hairier situations.
- Cave off of Maui.
- That's a walk in the park.
I once had a parachute pack refuse to open at 15,000 feet.
I opened it with a pen knife, Don't you get scared? You know, like most people? You know I mean, you don't get scared at all? I wonder why? It's a gift.
It allows me to push myself harder than other people.
You can always trick yourself into believing that you're invincible.
If somebody tags me with a laser sight, I'm gonna keep going.
Your wife, Kerry, is that why she's attracted to you? Because of your self-confidence? You'll have to ask her.
I'll tell you this, she's the reason I get out of bed in the morning.
She's my prayer warrior.
She believes in you.
It's important.
She knows I'll never let her down.
You wanna know how she's doing? Cause we can Come on.
Your son's watching cartoons with a social worker.
Why is Kerry in that room? She doesn't have anything to do with anything.
I wanna talk to her.
Since you're under arrest, Mr.
Harris, I can't allow it.
But I can see her.
I'm allowed to talk to her.
If there's anything that you need to say to her, you know, give her your love or How's my husband? When can I see him? It shouldn't be much longer.
Your son's really liking those cartoons.
He's a very active child.
Just like his dad, huh? With all that scuba diving, jumping out of planes, it's a thrill a minute.
He trained hard to do those things.
Kid stays with you.
That's smart.
Anything happens to Kenny, his parachute doesn't open or he runs out of He can take care of himself.
How long have you been together? Since high school.
Those must've been exciting years for you.
We had a lot of fun.
Were you with him when he got those speeding tickets going 80 miles an hour in a 35-mile-an-hour zone? Was that fun? You told him to slow down, didn't you? But he didn't.
He wasn't scared? He never gets scared? Do you ever wonder why he can't sit still, why he's always looking for stimulation? He's not always like that.
According to his boss, he's disruptive, he plays people.
- Do you ever see him do that? - No.
People like Ken.
He's manipulative.
He has a high tolerance for fear stimuli.
Do you understand what that means? He has all the traits of a certain personality type.
It's this type.
Here.
Psychopathic personality.
- This isn't Ken.
- No? He knows he has to change.
Well, there's knowing.
And there's doing.
He can do it.
She knows it.
- You don't believe that.
- Yeah, I do.
Kerry.
You know what kind of man you hitched your wagon to.
You know that he's not gonna change.
His fearlessness, this gift, it's a curse.
- You know it's gonna get him killed.
- No, it's Look, when you opened the door this afternoon, I saw what you were thinking.
- Kenny's dead.
- No, I didn't think that.
Kenny's not gonna die.
Well, maybe you can explain this.
We saw this inquiry Kenny's credit reports from Colonial Trust Insurance.
They own Kenny's insurance policy, right? Last week, you increased the benefit from $200,000 to $2,000,000, and Kenny doesn't know, does he? You want to grow old with him.
You want your son to have a father.
But you looked at the odds, and you're betting that he ain't gonna make it.
What am I supposed to do? He thinks he can't get hurt! And he won't stop! He just won't stop! Well, there's your prayer warrior.
The woman who loved me, who had faith in me.
As far as she's concerned, your race is run.
Now, if you can't even make her believe you anymore What chance do I really have? You're You're feeling it now.
It's searching you out.
Laser sight.
I gotta run the odds.
I gotta be quick about it.
How much time do I have? How much time before it hits the Now do we have your attention? I'll take the deal.
You'll plead to Miss Chai's murder? Yes.
I want protection.
For your wife and child? For me.
Wow.
Will wonders never cease? He blinked.
He may be human after all.
Optimist.
These are their stories.
House takes it with 21.
Pretty ladies bring me luck.
What's the limit? One thousand.
Gracias very much, pretty lady.
Penny, where were you last night? I was home, finishing this for you.
You weren't home.
Are you still following me? Penny, please, I just want a chance to explain It's impossible, Gregg.
Try to understand.
Penny.
Penny.
Penny! Here's your share.
We can go again on Thursday.
Okay.
Oh, and the chip down my dress? Just playing the part.
Next time, leave the acting to the drama majors.
Who helped you with this? Your little Korean hot pot? Don't call her that.
She worked out the algorithm, but I did the rest.
Neediness is not an attractive quality in a man, Gregg.
Neither is the inability to keep a secret.
Now, we agreed, no outside contractors.
I can handle Penny.
Then handle her.
The hair is different, but it's the same girl.
You should double down.
Or Bart and Homer over there will get the wrong idea or the right one.
You're busted.
You and your friend better get out of here.
Penny? Penny! Law & Order CI 2x20.
Blink This is a dog park, Sir.
Three people walking their dogs found her.
The way she's dressed, she could be working any of the fine establishments in the vicinity.
Working them hard, apparently.
There's almost 2,000 there.
Penelope Chai, math major at Hudson.
This bar code, is that the Department of Defense security clearance? Yeah.
Once we saw that, we figured she might actually be a rocket scientist.
Maybe somebody was after the state secrets in her pretty head.
Fingers broken post-mortem.
It's like a signal or a warning or Yeah, she's got calluses here and on her thumb.
Whatever she was doing here, this was the wrong place to do it.
So the killer was standing in plain sight.
Yet, he still took the time to To snap every one of her fingers.
I He left the money, he didn't bother to make it look like a robbery.
He's either stupid or cocky.
Yeah, or he didn't think we'd be fooled.
Paid us a compliment? Math Research Lab Hudson University Wednesday, March 13 National security? Penny's work didn't have anything to do with that.
She designed predictive systems for pattern recognition software.
To predict what? Food procurement for the Quartermaster Corps.
And mess hall supplies.
Yes, we have a grant to virtualize their procedures.
A grant.
Does that mean Miss Chai was paid for her work? Oh, a very modest salary.
In fact, she asked me for a raise last month.
She said she needed to get an apartment.
But I had to tell her no.
She got the money somewhere.
She moved out of her dorm, didn't leave a forwarding address.
Did she always keep her desk this impersonal? Just her style.
Very guarded.
Was there anybody she let her guard down with? She seemed to get along well with Amy.
Amy Wittlin.
That's her desk over there, with the palm tree.
- Party island.
- Yeah.
Wow.
Okay, uh, who's who? That's Amy in the green bikini.
Rosalie, she's a junior in the math department, and Tomas Ramone, also a math major.
Freeport, Bahamas.
The place to be for math majors.
For what, duty-free calculators? Predictive analysis.
Oh, my God.
She was so nice.
What happened to her? We're still sorting that out.
She was found in Chelsea, over by the West Side highway.
She was pretty beat up.
Any of you know what she might have been doing over there? I'll give you a hint.
- A card shoe.
- We're just fooling around.
Fooling around with cards? For example, at the casinos at Freeport, hmm? Play cards, hours on end, you get calluses on your forefinger, your thumb.
Like you and Penny.
Do you mind if I deal? I heard that a blackjack deck has a memory.
Keep track of the cards that are played, you know the cards that are left.
If you're a math wiz, you can work out the odds of, well For every hand.
It's a predictive system of pattern recognition.
- That's what they'd call it.
- I call it counting cards.
Is that what you were doing last night? And she got caught? - They wouldn't - Her fingers were broken.
You think somebody was trying to make a point? It was this place on West 22nd.
This This private club.
They came after us.
We got split up.
I thought she'd show up in the morning.
I swear to God, I just thought they were trying to scare us.
Well, it worked.
We'll be in touch.
Eighty seven, two hundred and thirteen, fifteen, nine, ten and thirteen.
That's it.
Beautiful.
Just Beautiful.
- Gregg, your program is so sweet.
- Penny's dead.
The police found her near the clubs last night.
Okay, take it easy.
Ken, look, I don't wanna be a part of this anymore, okay? I was doing it for her.
But now For her? If I thought that you were doing this just to get back into her pants, I wouldn't have brought you into it in the first place.
I told you / You and Penny wasn't in the cards.
You'll get other women.
Believe me.
Just don't wimp out on us.
Because it's not what you do, it's what you get done.
Apartment of Penny Chai Thursday, March 14 Four weeks and she was still living out of boxes.
Eames, sounds like the hard drive is running.
It could be defragmenting the drive.
Or erasing it.
It's password protected.
Security software's overriding the off switch.
It's locked in.
Can't pull the battery.
Shall we hack? Password programs usually give you a hint after three tries.
San-nakji.
That's some hint.
It's octopus stew.
I did a six-month tour in South Korea.
They use live octopus.
The tentacles get up your nose.
It's hilarious.
A riot.
Trying "octopus".
Bingo.
The erase program's been running almost 16 and a half hours.
It started after Penny was already dead.
They killed her, then came here.
And the program was set to overwrite the data 33 times.
Whatever was on her computer, they wanted it erased beyond recovery.
Probably because it leads back to them.
Too bad for them.
They did a better job erasing her.
Our computer nerds recovered the last file deleted before the erase program was activated.
It looks like software to generate random numbers.
Her professor said it wasn't part of her defense work.
A random number generator doesn't sound like something a card counter would use.
She wouldn't.
It's a predictive system, it's her specialty.
It's the kind of software that she'd write for someone else.
Maybe the same person that she's hiding from.
She's moved out of her dorm into a sublet.
She's been living out of her suitcases.
Lots of photos of her family in Raleigh.
Of her at her prom, with her Korean-American boyfriend.
So this nice hometown girl was being stalked and none of her friends knew? Well, maybe she didn't talk the talk, but she was walking the walk.
She dropped three classes the week before she moved.
One of them, multivariable calculus, was a requirement for her major.
If she drops it, she doesn't graduate.
Yeah, but she did drop it.
Penny Chai? I don't know, I might have been in some of her classes.
So what? No, see, Gregg, you were the only guy in all three classes.
The three classes she dropped.
Her super at the sublet recognized you from a photo.
She saw you in front of the building.
What were you doing outside her building? I was I was doing a project with her.
I was waiting for her to get home.
Random number generator.
We found it on her computer.
Yeah.
Right.
It generates lottery numbers.
It's legal.
It just It just increases the odds of winning.
Well, we like that.
How does it work? This equation here, what's "x"? It's anything you want, it's a variable.
Oh, okay, um "X" times four over twelve.
What's four? It's a constant.
It's just a unit of measurement.
- Four is a unit? - Yes.
- What does it measure? - Nothing.
It doesn't measure anything.
Look, it's not even finished yet.
Okay? It's not even gonna be finished, so just leave me alone.
A unit of measurement.
Four of something is a unit.
Four of what? "X" times four divided by twelve.
Twelve, what do you think, inches? A unit of measurement that's four inches long.
Of course.
He's usually at Milligan's after 7:00.
Somebody I know? Somebody my dad knew.
It could be hands, if this is what you think it is.
The only unit of measurement four inches long is a hand.
Hands are how you measure horses from hoofs to withers.
This is about horses.
And this measurement here Ah! Eighth of a mile.
Furlongs.
- The length of the track.
- Yes.
And these equations here, win-loss, one for the beast, one for the jockey.
Are you the girl he brought to the funeral? 'Cause if I didn't say it then, you are very lovely.
I didn't bring anyone to the funeral.
This program is for handicapping horse races.
Does it work? About as well as the system his father used.
He used to check the horses out in their stalls before the race, see if their ears were up or down and bet accordingly.
Well, maybe that's the point of all this.
A gimmick to sell to gamblers? It has the veneer of logic, doesn't it? And it factors in every variable.
And does so very elegantly.
If you could use this for credible justification of any long shot bet, even suspicious ones, it would, right, Ferdie? Yes, it would.
It would at that.
No playing with Daddy's stuff, Captain.
Come over here with Uncle Gregg and Uncle Phil.
Ken, please, we need you to focus.
On what? You girls need to cowboy up.
Those cops are shooting in the dark.
You don't know what they know.
So I'll find out.
Guys, it's just a hiccup.
Go home.
Okay? Go to the gym, do something.
And just relax.
I have to go out later, just for an hour.
I have to cool these guys down.
Maybe they're right.
Maybe this time it's pushing it.
They ran a full schedule at Del Mar.
You know, we could run the winners and the losers through the program.
Anything missing from your desk? No, but I don't remember leaving these files like this.
Well, my notepad's missing the top sheet.
This Post-it was on my phone, not on my blotter.
You see anyone at my desk? Yeah.
Plain clothes from the 58.
He had a visitor's clip.
He was here when I came on shift an hour ago.
He said you told him to wait for you.
Well, what did he look like? Caucasian, average height, hat, puffy coat, tinted glasses and a scarf.
He skimmed these folders but he read the one on Penelope Chai.
I clipped the autopsy report to my notes on Tomas Ramone.
He moved the clip.
He wanted to know what we have.
Yeah, he entered the lion's den.
- Bold.
- He's out of his mind.
No, it's worse.
He doesn't know fear.
He signed in using ID stolen from a messenger.
He came in during the shift change.
So nobody paid any attention.
These are useless.
Either his head's down or he's turned away.
He came in with the vaguest of plans and then he winged it.
He's smart, he adapts.
He's dancing on a high wire.
If there's a leader in this scam, he's it.
So now, everything we know about the scam, he knows.
Well, he doesn't know we know this.
You fix a race, one way to get caught is to put a heavy bet on a long shot winner.
And the racing board will want to know why you bet on that horse.
This program will give him an answer.
I fix a race, I put every variable about my horse in the program.
I do the same thing with every horse in every race.
The program uses a combination of my winning horse's variables to pick horses in other races for me to bet on.
If anybody questions your winning bet, you can point to your other bets and your handicapping system.
It turns my long shot winner into some lucky pick by a sucker with a system.
It's a smoke screen.
Now we just need to pick out the sucker who's been using this system.
This program was created two weeks ago, which means running two weeks' worth of racing results through the program.
Can't be too tough for the State Racing Board.
Taylor & Associates Construction Site Tuesday, March 19 That's right.
I made the bet last Saturday afternoon at the OTB on Queens Boulevard.
We're investigating muggings of OTB customers there.
Well, if I'd seen anyone get mugged, you're the first people I would've called.
How did you Through the tax form you filled out when you collected your winnings.
That was a real red-letter day for you, huh? Winning $10,000 on that long shot bet.
I got lucky.
You know, I heard that people that play the ponies a lot, they develop their own system.
I don't play a lot.
Sorry.
You need a hand? I don't.
Thanks.
My partner's the mountain goat.
I have a little problem with heights.
How about you? My mother's father was Mohawk.
He used to tell stories about working high steel.
It sounded like fun.
So you became an engineer? - Where'd you get your degree? - Hudson.
Two years ago.
What's that frat for engineers? Engineers, mathematicians? Alpha Beta Pi.
That's the one.
You a brother? I joined for the keggers.
Watch your step.
- Just don't look down.
- Yeah, easy for you to say.
You know, I can't I just can't stop thinking about that long shot bet, Ken.
Walking in off the street, hitting a 16-to-one long shot.
Yeah, you're right.
Last week, I heard one of the subs talking, he knew a guy who knew a guy, so I bet the horse.
Is there something wrong with your jaw? I saw you working it.
I popped an eardrum cave diving off Maui last year.
Cave diving.
Not in a million years.
One wrong move and you're fish bait.
That's the attraction, isn't it, Ken? You just have to keep your cool.
Testing yourself.
And that's why you're You're up here instead of in the office, with the real engineers.
I like being in the arena, making things happen.
Yeah, thinking on your feet.
Otherwise, what? You get restless? You see, I see now.
You have a reduced startle response.
I mean, most people, when they almost take a header off a building, you know, they For me, example.
They get scared.
Their eyes open wide, they blink big.
It's called an increase in blink magnitude.
But you, not you, you know.
No, it didn't bother you a bit.
You panic, you die.
Yeah.
Harris has no known association with gambling syndicates.
Closest he's been to horses is taking his son for a pony ride to the zoo.
He went to the same school as Gregg Monroe and Penny Chai.
He was in the same frat.
His bets conformed to the computer program.
Can't Harris just be a young engineer who made a lucky bet? A young engineer with no discernible fear response.
People like him, they become firefighters, racecar drivers, or tweak the upbringing another way, they become psychopaths.
Which way did Harris get tweaked? At Hudson, he was a member of the skydiving club, he's been a volunteer firefighter - Definitely a miscreant.
- On the other hand, his DMV records show three speeding tickets from high school.
Two of which he was going 80 miles an hour in a 35-mile-an-hour zone.
Look, he has what it took to sneak into this building.
It's very thin, people.
Let me know when you have something that sticks to the spoon.
A couple of clowns.
Especially the big guy.
- I can't believe they rattled you.
- They're not clowns.
They found you, didn't they? Time to bail.
We made $10,000, that's cool.
That's cool? Remind me again how deep you are in the hole, Mr.
Dotcom.
$250,000? How're you gonna make the bets? The cops know you.
They don't know you.
That's what matters.
Let me worry about putting the bets down.
You never worry.
You don't worry about us, you don't worry about Penny getting killed.
Why is that, Ken? You got something to say, Gregg? Say it to those cops.
Right there in that building there.
Eleventh floor.
Goren and Eames.
Go ahead.
Nobody's going to the police, Kenny.
If you do, have the freaking decency to give me a head start.
Talk to you tomorrow.
I'm scared too, Kenny.
Sometimes I wish you could feel what it's like.
But I don't.
The only way I can do this is if you believe in me.
Now, just let me get through this one thing, then I'll hang it up.
Okay? The racing board reeled him in this morning.
He made a series of bets on his credit card two days ago that lined him up with the computer program.
This is Mr.
Cooley of the State Board.
Hey.
/ Hi.
And that's Bannerman? He was in promotions at Aqueduct until last year, when a security check showed he'd run up over $300,000 in gambling debts.
He knows jockeys, trainers.
He's ready to talk.
I fixed a race at Belmont and I used this computer program to make it look legit.
That's it.
How'd you fix the race? No, no, no.
That comes later after we hammer out a deal.
Well, can he at least tell us where he found the computer program? From this Oriental chick I met in Atlantic City.
I noticed her counting cards in a casino.
I threatened to turn her in unless she would, you know, come up to my room.
I told her about my association with racing and she told me she was working on this betting program.
We decided to work together.
But as soon as I got the program from her, I didn't need her.
Penny, she had a very thick Korean accent and Did you have trouble understanding her? Yeah, at first, but I got used to it.
We'll discuss your offer and we'll get back to you next week.
Next week? We can resolve this today.
No, I'm going to the islands tomorrow.
I'll be back Tuesday.
We'll let you know then.
Bannerman's a diversion.
He never met Penny Chai.
They threw him at us to buy time.
Harris and Monroe? Awfully sophisticated for a couple of frat boys.
Got him.
A list of Kastner's past clients.
All members of the Israeli mob.
Bannerman's probably in hock to them.
Playing patsy to That's his way of paying off his debt.
The Israeli mob's behind this scam? They are now.
Ken Harris felt us closing in on him.
The normal man would quit.
Not him.
No, instead he partners up with the most vicious criminals he can find, raising the stakes because Well, it's his nature.
Bannerman charged his bets on his credit card, right? Using a dial-up account at an OTB office.
Now, how did Harris make his bets? Credit card, doesn't say which one.
Well, we need the actual charge.
Check his credit card report to find the card.
His credit's good, just the usual credit inquiries from a car dealership, department stores, an insurance company last week.
Here, three credit cards.
I'll try the one with the higher limit.
- What? - Here we go.
$500 at the OTB last week.
This charge is credited to Totalizer Inc.
That's the same as Bannerman's charge.
It must be a company for processing dial-up betting accounts.
Well, you have two bites at fixing a race.
Before it's run and you know, right after.
You can't change the results, but maybe you can change the bets.
And I'll bet that we'll find a frat brother at Totalizer.
Kenmore Bar & Grill Friday, March 22 Where is he? I got a text-message to meet him here.
He's probably putting his kid to sleep.
So, big day tomorrow.
How you doing, huh? You mind if I take a load off? Hey, what're you frat boys drinking? That's okay, Detective Goren, we were just leaving.
This seat taken? How you doing, Phil? Alex Eames.
Hi.
Oh, and don't worry about Ken.
- We sent you those messages.
- Yeah.
We wanted to meet the real brains behind the operation.
Especially you, Phil.
The man who found the flaw in the way Totalizer processes dial-up bets.
They told us they don't process the dial-up bets until the first four races of the day are run.
Which means that someone working in data security at Totalizer could change the bets of those four races.
You know, change losing bets into winning bets.
Kind of like waving a wand.
I'm not the only person in data security, okay? You can't put this on me.
You covered yourself really good, Phil.
You really did.
You have nothing to worry about.
Especially from us.
I mean, nothing at all.
You wanna know Ken's secret? He's incapable of experiencing fear and well, that means It means he's a menace.
Especially with people that he gets into business with, you know, people like you two.
Have you met Ken's new partners? This is Ralph Bannerman.
Bannerman's lawyer, Frank Kastner, a few of Mr.
Kastner's regular clients.
Bookmaker, bookmaker, leg-breaker, murderer, another leg-breaker, and they're all members of the Israeli mob.
They're Ken's new partners.
Which means, they're your new partners, too.
He didn't tell you? Boy, that Ken.
He's just full of surprises, isn't he? You know, there's another surprise that he kept from you, Gregg? Somebody tried to erase the random numbers program from Penny's computer.
After she was killed.
Who else, besides you, knew that Penny helped you write that program? Ken killed her.
And now he's on the way to getting the both of you killed.
It's up to you, if he'll succeed.
Right.
That's 10 groups of eight picks, six tickets on the Orlando Derby.
Total, $160,000.
No, thank you.
Now we send my buddy the confirmation numbers, we let him do the rest.
Trust me.
We can't lose if we tried.
Three winners across the board.
I'm not showing a win on these confirmation codes.
That can't be right.
We got eight picks, six winners in each group.
I'm looking at your bets right here.
No winners.
Sorry, son.
Let's talk outside.
Let me get in touch with my guy.
We can figure this out.
I figured out you just cost me $160,000 Excuse me.
We need to borrow your friend here.
Hey, come on, guys.
It's only for a couple of hours.
You can catch up to him later, all right? My wife and kid.
If those guys think I cheated them There's no "if", Ken.
Mrs.
Harris, we're with the police.
Oh, my God, Ken.
Has something happened? He's been arrested.
You need to come down to the station with us.
I'll get my son.
It figures.
Those two wusses would make me the fall guy.
I thought I was making legitimate bets.
I had no idea Phil and Gregg had rigged the system.
And your little scam with your Israeli friends? They didn't look happy you ripped them off.
All I have to say about that is, you people set me up.
Really hung my ass in the breeze.
But that's okay.
I'm in here with you.
They're out there.
Well, that's good short-term thinking, Ken.
You're charged with one count of betting fraud.
A "D" felony.
I can have you arraigned by 2:00.
I can agree to your release by your own recognizance and have you on the street lickety-split.
With no chance of making it to the subway station in one piece.
Or you can plead guilty to the murder of Penelope Chai and serve your time in isolation, under the protection of the Department of Correction.
I like Plan A better.
Plan A is a death sentence.
I'm not afraid of the Israelis.
Believe me, I've been in hairier situations.
- Cave off of Maui.
- That's a walk in the park.
I once had a parachute pack refuse to open at 15,000 feet.
I opened it with a pen knife, Don't you get scared? You know, like most people? You know I mean, you don't get scared at all? I wonder why? It's a gift.
It allows me to push myself harder than other people.
You can always trick yourself into believing that you're invincible.
If somebody tags me with a laser sight, I'm gonna keep going.
Your wife, Kerry, is that why she's attracted to you? Because of your self-confidence? You'll have to ask her.
I'll tell you this, she's the reason I get out of bed in the morning.
She's my prayer warrior.
She believes in you.
It's important.
She knows I'll never let her down.
You wanna know how she's doing? Cause we can Come on.
Your son's watching cartoons with a social worker.
Why is Kerry in that room? She doesn't have anything to do with anything.
I wanna talk to her.
Since you're under arrest, Mr.
Harris, I can't allow it.
But I can see her.
I'm allowed to talk to her.
If there's anything that you need to say to her, you know, give her your love or How's my husband? When can I see him? It shouldn't be much longer.
Your son's really liking those cartoons.
He's a very active child.
Just like his dad, huh? With all that scuba diving, jumping out of planes, it's a thrill a minute.
He trained hard to do those things.
Kid stays with you.
That's smart.
Anything happens to Kenny, his parachute doesn't open or he runs out of He can take care of himself.
How long have you been together? Since high school.
Those must've been exciting years for you.
We had a lot of fun.
Were you with him when he got those speeding tickets going 80 miles an hour in a 35-mile-an-hour zone? Was that fun? You told him to slow down, didn't you? But he didn't.
He wasn't scared? He never gets scared? Do you ever wonder why he can't sit still, why he's always looking for stimulation? He's not always like that.
According to his boss, he's disruptive, he plays people.
- Do you ever see him do that? - No.
People like Ken.
He's manipulative.
He has a high tolerance for fear stimuli.
Do you understand what that means? He has all the traits of a certain personality type.
It's this type.
Here.
Psychopathic personality.
- This isn't Ken.
- No? He knows he has to change.
Well, there's knowing.
And there's doing.
He can do it.
She knows it.
- You don't believe that.
- Yeah, I do.
Kerry.
You know what kind of man you hitched your wagon to.
You know that he's not gonna change.
His fearlessness, this gift, it's a curse.
- You know it's gonna get him killed.
- No, it's Look, when you opened the door this afternoon, I saw what you were thinking.
- Kenny's dead.
- No, I didn't think that.
Kenny's not gonna die.
Well, maybe you can explain this.
We saw this inquiry Kenny's credit reports from Colonial Trust Insurance.
They own Kenny's insurance policy, right? Last week, you increased the benefit from $200,000 to $2,000,000, and Kenny doesn't know, does he? You want to grow old with him.
You want your son to have a father.
But you looked at the odds, and you're betting that he ain't gonna make it.
What am I supposed to do? He thinks he can't get hurt! And he won't stop! He just won't stop! Well, there's your prayer warrior.
The woman who loved me, who had faith in me.
As far as she's concerned, your race is run.
Now, if you can't even make her believe you anymore What chance do I really have? You're You're feeling it now.
It's searching you out.
Laser sight.
I gotta run the odds.
I gotta be quick about it.
How much time do I have? How much time before it hits the Now do we have your attention? I'll take the deal.
You'll plead to Miss Chai's murder? Yes.
I want protection.
For your wife and child? For me.
Wow.
Will wonders never cease? He blinked.
He may be human after all.
Optimist.