By: Suepafly
A punching bag takes quite the beating, the boxer trying to take his mind off things. He tells the boy that he’ll be back soon.
Three days later, a couple takes a look at an empty apartment, which the realtor says isn’t even on the market yet. They’re worried about the neighborhood, but she assures them that the neighborhood is on the rise. The man smells something and looks further. He finds the boxer dead of what looks like a drug overdose.
A customer looks over a piece at Abe’s shop. She wants to desecrate Henry’s credenza, and he doesn’t wish to sell it. She doesn’t take it well, but Jo comes with better prospects, a murder.
Jo takes Henry to Alphabet City, which looks rundown, but she says its getting better. Henry has seen it in better an worse times, history repeating itself. Henry sees the boy from the gym, but he’s not responsive. Henry takes a look at the body and deduces that the body was moved, and he has a head injury. This “junkie” may not be a junkie after all. Back at the ME office Henry finds that the blunt force trauma is the cause of death, and that the needle in his arm missed his vein completely. He was injected post mortem. Lucas comes back with the victim’s name, Raoul.
Henry calls to toxicology, needing the results immediately. In order to track down where the heroin came from he needs the results now. Jo knows that murder cases aren’t solved with smoking guns usually, but cases are built brick, by brick.
Henry takes Lucas with him to the apartment that Raoul was found in. The police searched the apartment already, but he thinks they lacked zeal. Henry wants to find any signs of heroin that he can, and realizes that the body was eaten by rats, so catching a rat may help. He sends Lucas after a rat while he looks around, remembering a time where typhoid broke out in the area. He treated the sick, even when he had to sneak inside to do so. A slum lord controlled the property, and he allowed rotting corpses to remain inside, infecting others, no caring about those who died or still lived, as one little boy remains with his dead father. Now. Outside a man asks him if he wants to buy some H. Henry does his normal over asking, and the man confesses that he did now Raoul, that he used to be his best customer, and now he was completely clean. Henry decides to buy some heroin, and gets busted.
At the station, Lieutenant Reece gets all the low down on Henry’s drug deal, almost laughing at his antics. If it were anyone else it would be more serious. Hansen doesn’t buy Henry’s late night drug deal reasoning. Jo sticks up for Henry that he wasn’t going to use the drugs. Henry planned to match the street drug with the drug in Raoul’s system. It may be the dumbest piece of police work she’s heard of. Lucas arrives with a cage full of rats. He wasn’t sure which ones had ingested Raoul, so he grabbed a few. And that becomes the dumbest piece of police work she’s heard of.
Jo and Henry speak with the victim’s girlfriend. Their big day was approaching, and Raoul had cleaned up his life. After prison he volunteered at the rec center mentoring kids so they wouldn’t end up like him. He took his second chance, there was no way that he would turn back to drugs.
Hansen doesn’t believe the theory, but Jo is firmly on board the Henry train.
Lucas wasn’t able to use the heroin in the rats to trace it back to a specific dealer, but he did find a ring inside of one of the rats. Henry looks over Raoul’s x-rays again, and notices a recent Pugilist break. He hit something or someone right before he died.
Henry and Jo head to the rec center. Fegan runs the place and he tells them that Raoul never missed a day, and Jo asked if Raoul had any enemies. Not really, but he was likely arguing with Tommy Delvro, a real estate mogul looking to tear down the rec center and build some fancy high rises. Raoul wasn’t going to go down quietly, he wasn’t going to the let rec center be torn down. He saw Raoul leave that night, being the only one with a key to the rec center. Henry spots the kid again, and sits for a chat. Henry has never been much of a fighter, but he tries to get the kid to open up. The boy is sad and Raoul was like an older brother to him. The boy shuts down on him.
Henry remembers the boy from the past. He gave him food, even though he wasn’t supposed to be there. The child gives Henry a bag his father crafted for him. The child was an orphan because of the slum lord, and the slum lord wants them both gone. Henry speaks of the deplorable conditions of his tenants, and the slum lord has his men beat up Henry in front of the child.
Jo and Henry head to a bodega where Raoul likely bought his lottery ticket. He was known and well liked there. Raoul saw the best of the neighborhood, whereas the store owner having dealt with the worst day in and day out is ready to sell.
At the Delvro work site, Mr. Delvro is unavailable, but Henry finds clues that Raoul was there. His shoes had a partially dried rubber on them, his body was transported from some place close, and he was killed likely by a shovel. Hansen had said that his phone as still transmitting from nearby, but they didn’t know exactly where. Jo calls the number, and they don’t hear it. Henry takes off his shoes, and walks on a new surface poured about two days ago. Henry digs into the rubber, and Mr. Delvro is suddenly available, demanding answers. Henry finds the phone with a call about 30 minutes before Raoul;s time of death. Delvro claims to not know who Raoul was, but he was the last person Raoul called before he died.
Lieutenant Reece invites Henry into the interrogation room. Delvro claims that he never knew who Raoul was, he never said who he was. Raoul isn’t the first person who was opposed to a revitalization of a neighborhood. They police don’t have enough to go after Delvro, and they’re forced to let him go.
Abe is enjoying happy hour, but Henry isn’t feeling so happy. His old medical bag was sold to a podiatrist, which doesn’t please him. That bag had sentimental value, which Abe points out he feels towards everything. Henry tells him that the worst thing about living forever is seeing the same injustices repeat. Jo’s found a connection to a shady past. The worker at the site, Spaganelli, has mob connections, and he’s gotten his hands dirty a few times.
Henry and Jo have a stake out, and they spot Delvro handing Spaganelli a package. They follow Spaganelli to the rec center, where he uses a key to enter, and leaves empty handed. Fegan had told them that he had the only key to the rec center. Jo picks the lock, a trick from her father, and they find Fegan’s locker. Inside is the package, and its full of money, about the amount of a contract hit if they’re not mistaken.
Jo takes Fegan into the ME office to see Raoul’s body. They ask him if $50,000 was worth killing the man over. He had nothing to do with Raoul’s death. He was getting the money to talk people in the area into going along with Delvro’s plan. Raoul did break his hand punching Fegan that evening, but that was the last time that he saw him. The only person he told that Raoul was going to go up against Delvro was Delvro.
Fegan tells Delvro that $50,000 isn’t nearly enough to have his friend’s blood on his hands. He’s undercover trying to get a confession out of Delvro. Delvro tells him why the rats haven’t overrun the city. The strong eat the weak. Fegan chose his side when he took the deal, there’s no going back.
Past. When Henry woke from his injuries in a hospital, three days had passed. Henry rushed to the room, but the boy that had been occupying the room is dead and gone, and a new family has moved in.
Now, Henry goes to see the boy. The boy doesn’t talk to cops, and as soon as he sees Spaganelli he takes off running. The boy was in the building when Raoul died. He was playing inside it. Jo and Henry find the kid’s bike but no sign of him. Jo puts out an APB for the kid. He was kidnapped in broad daylight. Hansen spots Spaganelli, but the kid isn’t inside. They thought it was Spaganelli that scared the kid, but perhaps it was the guy behind him, the Bodega owner. Jo and Henry head into the Bodega and find a closed sign outside, and the kid’s ball inside. Behind a hidden door the owner is yelling at the kid about keeping his mouth shut. Henry chases after the man, and Jo attends the child. Outside the man turns to fire on Henry, but he gets hit by a truck. The man lies dying, and Henry tries to get a confession out of him, but he dies before he can tell him what he was told.
Henry has the body in his office. That one is an accident, but with him ends the case. Delvro may not get on the hook for murder, but he does for his bribe. Henry and Jo head to the rec center. Fegan told the local business council about the bribe, and the rec center got a face lift. The boy decides that he wants to be a boxer or a doctor. Henry tells him that he can be both. Fights may not be fair, but there’s no reason to stop.
Henry invites Jo up for dinner, and Henry gets a surprise. Abe retrieved his doctor’s bag. Jo asks how the pair know each other. There’s a bit of babbling, and Henry ends that they’re family and so he stays. Jo reasons that since Abe has known Henry his entire life he probably has some great stories. She has no idea the whoppers he knows.
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