PERSON OF INTEREST Recap: Family Affair

Person of Interest 2.09 – C.O.D.

A man gets out of a taxi and tells the taxi driver that if he gives him his phone number and circles the block until he calls, he’ll pay him $500. He pulls out 5 $100 bills, tears them in half, and promises the cabbie the other half when he picks him up.

The cab driver, Fermin Ordoñez, is this week’s POI. He hails from Cuba, has no debts, excellent credit, and just emptied out his entire savings account. Finch hails his cab and then proceeds to bluejack his phone, place a camera, and hack the onboard computer. He talks to the cabby about the danger of driving a cab and suggests that he must be a good judge of character. Finch asks him what he thinks of him. Ordoñez suggests that Finch is probably a professor or a librarian, which pleases Finch.

Reese fills Finch in while he rides in the cab. Ordoñez defected from Cuba as a major league pitching prospect, but he tore ligaments in his arm, ending his baseball career. Reese picks up the physical surveillance by motorcycle when Finch exits the cab to go back to the library to monitor his electronic surveillance. Finch monitors the riders in Ordoñez’ cab and seems a bit amused and disgusted by what he sees.

Proving that HR is neither down, nor out, the mayors chief of staff and head of HR meets with our favorite dirty cop, Simmons. They discuss Elias – they need his backing. Simmons calls Fusco and assigns him to talk to Elias’ guys. Fusco tries to beg off but Simmons isn’t going to take no for an answer. He offers Elias’ goons the whereabouts of the one old mafia don, Grifoni, that Elias was unable to assassinate before going to prison. In return, they want Elias’ support. Elias’ men agree, but HR has to kill and deliver Grifoni.

Reese follows Ordoñez to a shop, where he sells a laptop for $800 to a friend. He takes that money and a garbage bag that seems to contain his life savings and meets a man, Mendoza, at a restaurant. Mendoza has agreed to smuggle his wife and son into the country from Cuba and Ordoñez has been saving all his money and has finally gotten enough. Unfortunately, the man tells him that the price went up and Ordoñez leaves, angry and heartsick. The neighbors are starting to get suspicious and he fears his wife will be arrested.

Finch sends Carter the cab’s GPS logs and asks her to look into them. Carter cross-references the coordinates with the police blotter and proceeds to a park where he apparently waited for almost a half hour the night before. When she arrives, she sees a friend from the force. Apparently the park is the scene of a homicide – a Russian national was found dead in a park from multiple gunshot wounds. The scene is crawling with Secret Service agents. On the body, they find a stack of $100 bills that have been torn in half. They are looking for any personal effects he may have, such as a laptop, and how the man got to the park.

Ordoñez picks up a blond woman. She has a Russian accent and directs him to drive down an isolated one way street. She offers him a $100 and asks him about his fare from the night before – did the man leave anything in the cab? He tells her that he doesn’t know anything and she gives him the money and gets out of the cab. Reese jumps in, much to Ordoñez’ dismay. Reese tells him that they are about to be boxed into the alley by two cars with multiple gunman and directs him to drive right for one of the cars blocking the way. He does and they escape the gunmen.

Finch traces the call the blond woman made after leaving the cab – she was speaking Estonian and Reese recognizes the trap they just escaped as an old Estonian mafia trick. He disconnects the GPS in Ordoñez’ car and tries to get him to tell him what the dead Russian left in his cab. Finally, he tells the story – he drove the guy around for a while, then he dropped him off at the park and he never came back and never paid. He found a laptop underneath the seat and sold it to a friend because he felt that the man owed him for his services.

Reese and Ordoñez go to his friend’s shop, but it’s been ransacked and his friend is dead. His friend had sold the laptop before he was killed though, so the Estonians still don’t have access. Finch hacks the guy’s email and finds out that he sold it to a person online using the alias of D3mon8.

Carter meets with one of the Secret Service agents and tells her what she knows about the laptop. The agent explains that the victim, a man named Pushkov, was a talented Russian hacker. The laptop no doubt contains some stolen info, but they don’t know exactly what. Finch digs into things and thinks he hacked the Homeland Security Automated Identification Database. A terrorist with this kind of data could sneak nearly anyone into the country, thus the importance of the Estonians obtaining the laptop and killing everyone who knows about it.

Simmons calls Fusco to set up the hit on Grifoni and Fusco tells him that’s he’s definitely out. Simmons emails him a video of him participating in incriminating activities, namely with a gun on another officer who has since disappeared. Fusco tries to call Reese for help, but Reese is busying kicking Estonian ass, so he can’t help him. Simmons texts him again and so he calls back and agrees to participate.

Finch tracks D3mon8 to a pool hall and he and Bear head there to retrieve the laptop. He offers the man twice his asking price – $100k for the laptop, with the understanding that he disappear for at least a year so that he doesn’t end up a target of the Estonians. D3mon8, whose real name is Albert, agrees and takes the money. Finch tells Reese that he has the laptop and heads for the door. Before he can leave, though, he’s confronted by the blond “angel of death”.

Finch tells her that he knows what is on the laptop and will not give it up, at any price. Bear lunges at her and she orders a few goons to shoot him, but before they can, Reese comes and starts beating people up. Finch sics Bear on another and Ordoñez comes through with the last guy buy hitting him in the head with a baseball. Carter calls as they go to leave the hall. She tells him that the blonde’s cell phone GPS just got picked up at the pool hall and warns them to leave.

Fusco’s phone rings – it’s Reese calling him back. He thinks about telling Reese what’s going on, but decides not to. He and his colleague walk up to the house where Gifoni is staying. Gifoni comes out of the house and heads for this car. Fusco and the other officer approach him to kill him but he seems to be expecting them and laughs when he sees them walk up. Another man jumps from the car and shoots Fusco’s partner. He tells Fusco to take a message to Simmons and HR.

Finch tells Ordoñez that a new cab is on the way to replace his wrecked one. Carter introduces him to the Secret Service agent and suggests that he will provide the laptop if they will help get his wife and kid out of Cuba.

Reese is throwing a ball for Bear in the park while Ordoñez watches some kids play baseball. Carter walks up with his wife and son and they are reunited. Carter and Reese watch their reunion and enjoy that they made it possible. Reese asks her about Fusco and she says she will keep an eye on him.

Fusco passes along Elias’ message to Simmons and basically tells him to go to hell. As he sits back down at his desk, Carter’s phone rings – it’s an anonymous tip about a detective that disappeared months earlier. The tipster told her that the cop was murdered, by another cop. She tells this to Fusco, who is now very, very worried.

My Thoughts:

Wow, what an episode! No flashbacks to enlighten the back story, but a ton of things to like. This week’s story was definitely a feel-good one, with a lot more altruism than usual on the part of Finch and Reese as this time, they not only saved the POI’s life, but used their resources to greatly improve it as well.  We got to see the lighter side of some of the characters – Finch sharing his baseball knowledge, Reese and Finch spending time with Bear, and Carter and Reese congratulating themselves on a job well done. We also had some dark stuff with Fusco. His character really seems to be at a turning point now – he thought he had escaped HR and now he seems to be trapped again as bad as ever, despite having made the conscious effort to turn his life around. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up as a POT in one of the next few episodes.

Memorable Quotes:

…which I’m sure you obtained by submitting an official request to the TLC – Carter
Not quite, but if it will make you feel better, I can hack into their network and make it look like I did  – Finch

How did your date go with Detective Beecher? It *sounded* like it really went well! – Finch

You’re a baseball reference machine, Finch, you should get out more, take in a game once in a while! – Reese
Who says I don’t? –  Finch

Be sure to watch Person of Interest on Thursdays 9/8c on CBS!