The long-running crime drama continues its 14th series. In this week’s episode, two men are gunned down at a popular Italian restaurant. What at first appears to be an open-and-shut case takes on a new complexion when police realise that there were two separate killers acting on rather different motives.

Detectives Briscoe and Green are called to a double homicide at Raimondo’s, an exclusive Italian restaurant famed for attracting a mix of politicians, judges, celebrities and mobsters. Diners fled in terror when shots broke out and two men ended up dead – Mafioso John Corollo and Hollywood producer Thomas Mitchell.

Police believe Corollo was the target of the attack and that Mitchell simply caught a stray bullet, while witnesses say the gunman was a gambler named ‘Bumpy’. The cops trace the suspect to an illicit card game and arrest him. It is not long before Bumpy confesses that he shot Corollo because he was heckling a young lady who was singing at the bar. “All I told him was to keep his voice down,” he says.

Briscoe and Green think they have the case sewn up – until Van Buren reveals that the bullet which killed Mitchell did not come from Bumpy’s gun. “We got a second shooter?” an incredulous Green asks. It seems that Mitchell was the victim of an unrelated murder, and that his killer may have used the confusion caused by Bumpy to shoot the movie producer.

Probing Mitchell’s background, the detectives learn that he recently produced a hit movie loosely based on life at Raimondo’s. The film was derived from a book by would-be wiseguy Sonny King, who had been pestering and threatening Mitchell to try and get a bigger share of the film’s profits. Did King kill Mitchell over money?

King has an alibi for the film producer’s death, so Briscoe and Green wonder if he hired someone else to do the deed. A clue in King’s book leads them to suspect he may have used a ‘fixer’ named Artie Baldo (Joseph R Gannascoli, ‘The Sopranos’) to arrange the hit. “He’s the go-to-guy in the Greater Metropolitan Area when you want somebody whacked,” says Jersey detective Veronica Reynolds (Susie Essman, ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’). Briscoe organises a sting to trap Baldo and force him to confess that he helped Sonny King arrange the murder. “I just put Sonny in touch with somebody,” he says.

That somebody is a down-and-out killer-forhire called Denny Rogis. Briscoe and Green swoop to arrest Rogis, only to have their jurisdiction over the suspect disputed by the Jersey police. Some clever legal footwork by McCoy gets Rogis extradited to New York, where he is charged with Mitchell’s murder. Rogis promptly cuts a deal in return for fingering King as the mastermind of the crime. “Sonny King paid me ten grand to whack Tommy Mitchell, which I done,” Rogis says.

As the case goes to trial, McCoy is able to assemble a strong case against Sonny King. Aside from the testimony of Baldo and Rogis, he has a tape recording in which Mitchell promises to give King a $1million bonus from the movie’s profits – which he never paid. This sounds like ample motive for King to murder Mitchell, but McCoy begins to have his doubts.

King continues to insist that he is innocent, and he piques McCoy’s interest when he claims that the people at Raimondo’s hated him and Mitchell for making a film based on their lives. Is it possible that somebody at the exclusive restaurant had a vested interest in punishing King and Mitchell? If so, the true culprit may still be at large...