Numb3rs s03e06 Episode Script
Longshot
- Hundred on Buckey's Folly to win.
- Hundred? Seems like you're on some streak, huh, Danny? - Sorry? - Just keep picking winners.
Yeah.
Just, uh, tweaked my system a little.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the horses are on the track.
The flag is up.
They are all in line.
And away they go.
At the wire, it's Buckey's Folly by a nose! - Why are you doing that right now? - Did you know that primitive societies believed in using percussion as a means of communicating with the dead? Are you drumming for someone in particular? Yes.
I'm drumming for the corpse of my inspiration.
And banging bongos worked for Richard Feynman, so Well, Feynman delighted in making music.
I never percuss for pleasure.
Actually, I may have before me a problem that cannot be drummed away.
Larry, why don't you take a relaxing soak in the Jacuzzi? No.
When it comes to matters of the heart, even Archimedes preferred a cold shower.
Megan? She's She's exciting, and she's beautiful.
And this thing that is between us, it's beginning to affect my work.
What is going on between you two? I have not the slightest idea.
Well, you never work well with emotional uncertainty.
Do you think that's it? Do you think that emotional uncertainty lies at the heart of all this? Really, I'm not as familiar with that side of you.
No, nor it seems, am I.
No real witnesses.
Broad daylight here, no one saw a thing? Excuse us, folks.
Excuse me.
- Hey, Chuck.
How you doing, buddy? - Hey, Don.
Well, apparently, the long shot was winning in a photo finish, - and everybody was focused on the race.
- Uh-huh.
- Come on, folks.
- Found this on the body.
- Something for Charlie, I guess.
- Oh, yeah? Yeah.
Looks like a pretty complicated betting scheme, there's race references in the margins.
- Why'd they call us? - Call came from inside.
There's an agent from O-C already had an investigation underway.
- Right.
- Apparently, the track ownership had ties to an organized crime group.
Hey, Agent Eppes.
- Hey, nice to see you.
- Yeah.
What, uh? - Liz.
- Yeah.
Liz Warner, right? You guys know each other, huh? Don was my Tactical Training Instructor up at Quantico.
What, now, you're heading your own O-C unit? Whoa.
See what a good teacher I am, Colby.
Agent in charge took a leave of absence, so I was asked to keep the investigation up and running.
All right, Agent-In-Charge, come here.
What have you got? Owner of the racetrack, Maurice Connors, likes to gamble.
- Uh-huh.
- Isn't very good at it.
So, Ivan Tabakian bought up his markers.
- Oh, yeah? Ivan Tabakian? - Mm-hmm.
He's a major player.
His crew's into credit card scams, - insurance fraud, and extortion.
- Right.
No.
I know who he is.
- What-What have they got going on here? - Well, it's a gambling scam, but we haven't put our finger on it yet.
What, you think this kid's connected? We found that notebook with the body.
From the looks of it, seems like this kid, Danny Roberts, may be helping Tabakian.
I don't know.
Sounds a little thin to me.
We also found some betting slips on the body.
Past ten days, 90 races.
This kid Danny Roberts made more than 30 bets.
- Yeah.
So? - And won every single time.
Explain to me why the drum has to be in my office.
Because I had to clear my floor.
They're steaming the carpets in the Physics Department.
- Hey.
- Perfect.
Hey.
You-You guys hungry? Let's go grab so dinner.
I can't get any dinner, but I need you to look at this for me.
Would you? - Just take a second.
- Okay, sure.
- Speaking of dinner - I know.
I-I'm sorry.
I- I just I've been so bogged down with Work? Lawrence? Come take a gander at this.
It's a category-based approach to I don't know what, but it's a forecasting system, right? It's very sophisticated.
Oh, no, no, no.
This is more than sophisticated.
You know what this reminds me of? A topos approach to Bach's music.
- I said, "very sophisticated.
" - Yes, you did.
- Where did this come from? - It's from a-a guy who was - murdered at a racetrack.
- A racetrack? Yeah, and we think he was using it to pick horses.
Yeah, but if so, this whole approach is counterintuitive.
- Well, how so? - Well, if you're trying to forecast a horse race, you're usually trying to pick the winner, but, uh? What? But these equations aren't designed that way.
How are they designed? They're designed to ignore the winner.
Because he wasn't picking the winner.
He was picking the second place horse.
Hey, why design a system to pick second place? How does that system let you pick 30 straight winners in a row? Doesn't make sense.
You know, if you're gonna fix horse races on a regular basis, you have to pick horses that are at least contenders.
Right, because if the long shot wins too many times, then, - I mean, it's gonna look strange.
- Right.
So, - you have to pick a horse that could win.
- Second.
And then Tabakian would have to make sure that horse had help.
Looks like somebody beat us to Danny Roberts' apartment.
Landlord just called LAPD with a break-in.
I'll go.
I heard about what happened, so I let myself in.
- When's the last time you were here? - I dropped off the mail yesterday.
Can you tell if anything's missing? I don't think so, but I can't tell really.
- And you live downstairs? - Mm-hmm.
Any chance you might have heard something last night? I took an Ambien before I went to bed.
I'm not much help, am I? - You have any idea who this is? - Oh, Danny's girlfriend.
She did something with computers, I think.
- Danny was crazy about her.
- Any idea where we might find her? Well, they spent most of their time at her place down in San Pedro.
- You had any lunch yet? - Hmm? - Is that a yes or a hmm? - I'm sorry.
What? I said, do you want lunch? - What are you looking at? - It's a forecasting system.
It's extremely complex.
I just can't seem to crack the logic of this enabling argument.
- All right, so take a break.
- I'll just I'll make myself - a nice turkey sandwich later.
- You sure? - Mm-hmm.
- These raspberries look delicious.
I bought two baskets of them.
Ever since that big thing on the news about antioxidants, you can't find a blueberry, these raspberries- they're so cheap.
- What did you say? - I said the raspberries are so cheap.
- 'Cause everyone wants blueberries? - And I thought you weren't interested.
Um I got to check on something.
I got to go find Don, so I'm gonna be home later for dinner.
Okay.
But I'm going out for dinner.
So I, uh, did a tour in Washington.
- Good for the resume.
- Oh, yeah? What? You miss kicking ass? Oh, you only think that because you taught me how.
Hey, you were a wild girl.
I mean, if I recall, you had a a bit of an issue with adrenaline, right? I like to think it's more of a hobby than an issue.
Uh-huh.
Now, how'd you stumble onto this case? Well, we were running a surveillance on a midlevel supplier linked to a Salvadorian drug cartel.
He liked coming to the track, so we came with him.
What? That's where you found Tabakian? Yeah, we're thinking the drugs and him can't be a coincidence, but so far, we've never seen any product at the track.
Now, just tell me if this owner guy is he cooperating? - Maurice Connors? No.
- Oh? Track's a cash cow, so, long as it is, he figures Tabakian's just gonna keep him around.
- Hey.
- Howdy.
You know, we could shake things up for him with Tabakian.
You know? Risky game you like to play.
I like to think of it more as a hobby.
So that's him.
How you wanna play this? Uh, well, you lead.
I'll shake.
Mr.
Connors, FBI.
We'd like to talk to you about what happened yesterday.
I don't know anything about it.
You don't know anything about a murder at your racetrack? Well, I'm aware of what happened, but I didn't know the kid.
Really? 'Cause according to some of your tellers, he was a regular.
We have a lot of regulars.
Yeah, how many of them are stabbed during the races? You're suggesting his death had something to do with my racetrack? I don't know, maybe with the track's new management? - New management? - Yeah, Ivan Tabakian.
- You know anything about him? - I don't think I should answer - any more questions.
- You haven't answered any yet.
Eppes.
Yeah, all right,we're on our way.
Hey, Liz, we gotta go.
You know, doesn't really matter if you answer our questions.
'Cause all Tabakian's gonna hear is that you were talking to the FBI.
Thanks for all your help, Mr.
Connors.
We'll be seeing you.
Got the dump on Danny Roberts's phone.
- Anything good? - Yeah, past month, he's only called two numbers regularly; one is a San Pedro exchange, probably his girlfriend.
- Yeah? Did you get her name? - And an address.
Plug that in to your fancy little nav system in your Acura.
Oh, don't play - What about the other one? - It's an off-track betting place.
Palomar OTB.
That sounds good.
What'd they say? I didn't call them.
Didn't really seem important.
That was almost funny, Granger.
- Come on, what did they say? - Transferred me over to legal affairs.
They said they're happy to cooperate.
Soon as I produce a subpoena.
Let's go see the girlfriend.
So I think I know why Danny Roberts was focused on picking second place finishers.
He designed a system that identifies arbitrage opportunities.
- What does that mean? - It means he was looking for bargains.
Bargains? - Racetrack use pari-mutuel betting systems where market forces determine the odds.
It was actually invented by a French perfume maker, uh, in the 1800s - All right, Charlie, just - Okay.
In pari-mutuel betting, the odds fluctuate according to how much is wagered on a horse.
So it's like kind of like an auction where the more people there are that want to buy something, - the more expensive it becomes.
- And sold! In horse-racing, more expensive translates to lower odds.
So, the lower the odds, the smaller the return on the bet.
So the favorite is just a horse with the most amount of money bet? That's exactly it.
And so many people are focused on picking the winner, there's an active exchange of information - going on about the favorite.
- But we're dealing with a horse here that no one's really pang attention to, so And it can also be a highly inefficient market.
That inefficiency creates a situation where the potential for reward outweighs the risk.
And those are the opportunities that Roberts was betting on.
But that still doesn't explain how Roberts won 30 straight bets, right? No, you're right, it doesn't.
I mean, something must've changed, you know, whether it was in his system, or at the track.
- Right, enough to get him killed.
- And in order to determine that, I need data on those races so I can compare his system to the most recent results.
- How recent? - Just, like, you know, the races in the past year.
Yeah, welcome to my world.
I write software for an IT company.
It's freelance, so I mostly work out of home.
Danny always used to stop by after the races, and when he didn't show up Can you think of anybody who might've wanted to hurt him? No.
I'm sorry.
How about if I give the whole "just us girls" thing a try? All right.
I'll call the office, check on the status of the subpoena for the OTB.
Good luck.
Thanks.
- Had you guys set a date yet? - Next spring.
We were kind of an odd pair.
Danny was outgoing, and I was more the geek.
Hmm.
I got something similar going on myself.
I just don't understand how this could have happened.
Do you know if Danny had an argument with someone at the track? He didn't even talk to anybody at the track.
He was too focused on working his system.
Do you think he could have been involved in fixing horse races? Agent Reeves, most months I had to pay Danny's rent.
If he was cheating, wouldn't he be winning? He was winning.
So maybe this Danny Roberts kid was keeping the girlfriend in the dark.
She was totally surprised about the winnings.
I don't know.
Wouldn't be the first time a guy tried to hide money from his girl.
I'm with you, but the way the landlady spoke about them, young couple in love, it's not really adding up.
This thing isn't adding up in a big way.
Turns out he was hiding more than just 30 bets from her.
That's the results of the subpoena from Danny Roberts's account at Palomar OTB.
He set up the account a couple weeks ago and he placed one bet.
- What, Pick-Six? - Yeah.
What is a Pick-Six? You have to pick the winner in six straight races.
It's basically like winning the lottery, and he just did it five days ago.
- Yeah, what did he get? - Half a mil.
Oh, well, there's a lot of motive for someone.
Or not.
I just talked to them.
They told me that he never cashed the ticket.
So you know Don pretty well, huh? You know what Quantico's like.
Yeah, I bet he was a pretty tough instructor, huh? He was just back from the field.
- Fugitive hunting? - Yeah.
And still getting used to being back in civilization.
Any reason you're asking? I just screwed something up a while back.
Well, I can tell you this much.
Fact you're still here, means something.
But I wouldn't count on being forgiven twice.
So, Danny Roberts picks six winners for half a million dollars, but doesn't cash the ticket? Just doesn't make any sense.
Girlfriend said he was borrowing rent money.
Sounds like he was hiding the winnings from someone.
- Yeah, bet, too, maybe.
- What do you mean? Roberts is down at the track every day, right? So why place a bet through an online OTB when you could do it in person? - Because he couldn't.
- The tellers all knew him.
So maybe he wasn't working for Tabakian? Which might explain why he's dead right now.
- Six winners.
- Six consecutive winners.
- A streak of 30 wins.
- All from a system designed to - pick a second place horse? - Does it make sense? No.
In theory, it should never have happened.
Hey, you guys.
What are you two up to now? We have been dealt a paradox of theory versus praxis.
Is that bad? Well, we're attempting to decipher a betting system that's achieved something that it just wasn't designed to do.
And currently, we stand at the abyss, having reached the limits of our knowledge of the sport of Kings.
- Oh, racetrack.
Huh? - Do you know about horse racing? Well, before I met your mother, I used to hang out at the track, uh, a lot.
Really? I would never have pegged you for a railbird.
Yeah, well, I I got hooked when I was a kid.
I- I knew nothing about this.
Well, like I said, it was before I met your mother.
I take it Margaret was not a fan of the horses.
Uh, no, she was a big fan of college funds.
Hmm.
Hey, by the way, uh if we leave right now, we can make it to the track for, uh, morning workouts.
- Yeah, great.
Larry? - No.
Count me out.
Now horses going around a track, it all puts me in mind of an acute childhood trauma.
- Really? What happened? - I was nine.
I was with my parents at a county fair, and I saw a man get crushed.
Wow.
By a horse? Horses, actually.
Yeah, it was a merry-go-round.
- Let's go, Dad.
- Yeah, coming.
- Hey.
- Hey.
Want some coffee? Yeah, sure.
So, we may be right about Danny Roberts not working for Tabakian, but so far, I got nothing.
Roberts bounced a check here and there, but there's no reason for him to hide money from a creditor.
Yeah, well, let's see what Charlie comes up with.
Back at Quantico, you never really talked about your brother.
No? As I recall, you never really talked about yourself with anyone.
- Thanks.
- Well I wasn't in a really good way back then.
Well, I hear you may be mellowing with age.
Well, let's hope so, right? I've just heard some things about you and a certain federal prosecutor.
Oh, yeah, did you? Don Eppes with the same woman for more than a week.
I don't know, some might call it progress.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends who you ask, right? So, the kid, Danny Roberts, he's got no debt, he's not working for Tabakian why does he get whacked? You know, we had a witness, a trainer.
He'd been doping horses.
Injecting an antidiuretic - so a horse would retain water, - Uh-huh.
carry excess weight.
He was all set to testify for the grand jury.
But what, Tabakian found out? He had the guy's hands nailed to a stall, brought a horse in and had the guy kicked to death.
Pff.
Nice.
So Danny Roberts's system was designed to pick the second place horse.
Why? Because there's a bias in the betting on second place.
I mean, if you know what you're doing, you can exploit that.
- Now how do you know? - Railbird, remember? It took me half a day to work that out mathematically.
Well, you should've come to me sooner.
Yeah.
So, handicapping.
We're trying to predict how a horse will run at the distance of the current race.
Exactly.
But you have to consider past performances, type of horse, track conditions, experience of the jockey.
See, I'd even take it a few steps further.
I would.
I'd factor an average race speed, interval pace, wind speed, - time of day, assigned weights, - Oh, Charlie.
- gate slot, sun position - Charlie - Charlie, you can't account for everything.
- You can, - if you can think of everything.
- Ah.
But this is what's confusing here.
Look.
It's a probability adjustment describing a dynamic system with hidden states.
Charlie.
Railbird.
Railbird.
It's just something that's not readily apparent to other bettors.
Look, in my experience, handicappers know practically everything.
That is, unless you want to take cheating into consideration.
- Well, that's just it, isn't it? - What? Cheating is the behavior that Roberts designed his algorithm for.
- Who are you calling? - Your brother.
Next thing you'll know, you're going to tell me you gotta call Don.
Thanks.
- Oh, hey, Megan.
- May I come in? Uh, yeah, yeah, uh um Just, um - It's a little unexpected.
- I know.
I'm sorry.
I really should have, um, called.
I just wasn't really sure I was coming here until I was already, um - here.
- I-It's- Yeah, that's fine.
And Don said that Charlie and Alan went to the track.
You didn't go with? No, no, no, no.
Gambling on animals.
That's a messy business.
No, no, I much prefer cards.
In there you have an appreciable structure, you know, played out in a graded tensor product space, so Sounds like structure is pretty important to you.
I'm sensing a-a more than casual inquiry.
Well, I think what's been going on between us is pretty unstructured.
Yeah.
Look, we make baryogenesis look tidy.
- I don't know what that means.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
I- It's an asymmetry between matter and anti-matter, which emerged shortly after the Big Bang.
It's- Yeah, it's baryogenesis.
I think I'm finding that, that things between us are maybe just, I don't know, um just kind of a trifle free-form.
I'm guessing that's why you haven't called in a while.
Well, you see, Megan, I-I'm just finding this whole journey from I to us- it's just a little more distracting than I originally anticipated.
And I would have guessed that a guy that lives in his car wouldn't need that much structure.
There's few things better organized than a 1931 Ford.
Listen, I'm not, um, making any demands.
No, and I'm not suggesting that you are.
But if you need a little more structure, I'm not necessarily opposed to that.
- You're not? - Uh-uh, and if you can get past the distraction, there's a Truffaut retrospective this weekend.
Okay.
Yeah, let me just check my planner.
I'll see you this weekend.
Yeah, it looks- it looks clear.
So originally, Roberts designed his system to pick second place finishers, - and then something changed.
- Yeah, cheating.
It was my idea.
- Mm-hmm.
- Right, a- and suddenly, the horses that should be winning stopped winning, and that screws up his ability to pick the runner-up.
So then he makes an adjustment because, well, he realizes that the outcomes are consistently falling outside the range of realistic probabilities.
It's like a weather report.
For the forecast calls for a heat wave, than instead there's a freak snowstorm.
You know, once or twice, that's anomalous.
You can't predict anything perfectly, but if that pattern is persistent, you've got to assume that there are unknown factors to consider.
- Unknown factors like cheating.
- See, Roberts retooled his system to account for those fixed races, and presto.
30 straight winners.
- So it proves it was a scam.
- Yeah.
Maybe it was the cheating that got the guy killed.
Yeah, he may be right.
I loaded all the race data onto my laptop, so I was able to run every Pick-Six winner for the past six months through Roberts' algorithm.
- And? - A snowstorm in July.
Right, at least for the past few months.
I mean, five winners.
Each of them won the Pick-Six when the races were fixed.
That's just not a coincidence.
Granger.
Hey, we got something from Charlie.
I tried to give you a call.
Yeah, I got your message.
I was at Cal Sci.
Ah, Larry.
- You're dying to ask, aren't you? - No.
- I think it's the unpredictability.
- I didn't ask.
All right, you didn't ask.
I do think, uh, you're a little bit of an odd pair, but Exactly.
What do you see? Celia Martinez' bank account.
She's one of the Pick-Six winners Charlie linked to the cheating.
- Yeah.
- The last transaction is to an Estate Trust.
I think Celia Martinez is dead.
- What are you doing? - Just checking something.
Social Security numbers of the other Pick-Six winners.
Yeah.
Wharton is dead? Look at this.
They're all dead.
So, you got two overdoses, a fatal hit-and-run And the other two deaths were caused by drowning and a fall.
So all five deaths were accidental? What are the odds of that? About the same as all five winning the Pick-Six.
All right, so let's look at 'em as homicides.
Right? All right, I'll get into it with the Medical Examiner.
Tabakian's got to be behind this.
Well, then, we just connect him to the money.
Or we just go pick him up.
Last time we were this close, he killed my witness.
Are we tip our hand early, we only add to the body count.
Thanks again for the use of the tub, Alan.
I'd say anytime, but you might think I meant it.
No, no, I promise I won't make it a habit.
I was kidding, Larry.
You know you're always welcome.
Anytime.
Thanks.
By the way, if you get tired of that nomadic lifestyle of yours, I, um, I do happen to have some, uh, brochures of a condo development.
They're really great properties.
While back, I was thinking of taking one myself.
It's so funny you're even mentioning this.
All right.
How so? Because lately, I have been rethinking some of my earlier assumptions with regards to, - you know, pure intellectual endeavor.
- Ah.
Oh, you figured out that grown women won't make out in the backseats of cars, huh? I don't know, I just think I may have lost touch with certain important aspects of life in the real world.
- Hmm.
- Plus my car.
No backseat.
Let me get you one of those brochures.
All five victims cleared out their accounts with a cashier's check.
The checks were cashed at banks overseas in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Ugh, so I'm guessing the accounts went nowhere? Ah, the money is a dead end.
We have five victims from five different neighborhoods and five different ethnicities.
There's no common denominator.
Except Tabakian.
He found them; we just got to figure out how.
Maybe it's an employment thing, a work connection.
Raymond Wharton didn't even have a job.
Neither did Celia Martinez.
That's it, the unemployment office.
It's two blocks away.
It's quicker to walk.
Hey, so Don asked me if I could connect the Pick-Six winners to Tabakian, but so far, we don't have enough data, and any data-mining algorithm may require way more information than we already have, so it's like - Larry.
- Yeah.
How much did you hear of what I just said? You don't have enough data to connect the people to your mob boss.
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
So concentrate on the data you do have and maybe there's a way to connect them through their bets.
Larry, that's brilliant.
What is it with me and structure? Do you find me overly structured? I don't kn- Why are you asking me? Just humor me here, just answer this question.
Well, on the one hand, you don't have a home; and on the other, you eat monochromatically.
Look, do you remember when I was an undergraduate in your quantum physics class? Yes, how could I ever forget? That class was the first place that I learned about the paradoxes between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Yeah, and we're still in search of a theory to unify the two in a single explanation of gravity.
But w-where were you headed with this? There's no unifying theory for Larry Fleinhardt.
And I think Megan could very well be your own private gravity.
I have records for all five of them, but they all went to different job centers.
Can you access that information from here? Sure.
Everything's linked.
I can pull up a list of companies that each of them interviewed with.
Wait, can you scroll back up for a second? - Do you see something? - Yeah.
Take a look at this.
They all interviewed at the racetrack? - Can you see who they talked to there? - Uh, that sort of thing would only be in the original files.
So, let's look at the original files.
It takes five business days to process a request.
- Hey, all right, so - Where you been? Wait, wait.
Hold on, hold on, we got here as fast as we could.
- Just relax.
What's going on? - Look, there wasn't enough data.
Larry said, "Try to use other data.
" I said, "Use other data?" - I-I reworked the algorithm, you know.
- Shh.
Just slow down, just slow down.
I made improvements to Roberts' algorithm.
I took a look at all the racing results for the past two years, and you know, not just the Pick-Six.
I looked at all the betting.
- And? - They were fixing races way before they fixed the Pick-Six.
- What do you mean? - They started by fixing races, like, once a month.
Then twice a month, then more frequently.
Look, there is a regular progression to this pattern.
Charlie, we already know they were fixing races.
Right, but now, now we know when they were doing it.
I mean, Don, don't you see? If, if they killed those five Pick-Six winners right after they got their money, then what's to stop them from killing all the other winners of all the other fixed races? - That would be - 18 other murders.
Charlie, that's a lot of bodies.
I mean, look, we'd know if these guys killed that many people.
Well, not if they staged the deaths as accidents.
So look at this.
Here's another one.
Not deceased.
I'm starting to think we're not looking at more bodies.
- All right, so what is it? - I mean, first of all, we're not looking at 18 different people.
We're looking at six guys who won a lot of bets over the course of the 18 dates that Charlie gave us.
Six guys.
And they all have to be connected to Tabakian.
All right, look, why don't you just start checking into their backgrounds? All right.
- Give up on the water cure? - Yeah, it wasn't really working.
- Plus, I ran out of hot water.
- Oh.
Here I am, once again monopolizing your bathtub.
I apologize.
- You take as much time as you need.
- Thank you.
- You all right? - Yeah, it's just the efforts I've made to simplify my life have started to complicate it.
You know, not long ago, I was, um, I was worried about Charlie, you know.
About him having a normal life.
That's a bit of a challenge, given the circumstances of his genius.
Yeah, that's what I realized.
So I thought maybe, uh, normal for him was not on target.
And perhaps for you, simple is off the mark.
- I've never known life to be simple.
- Larry? - Yeah, in here.
- Hey, I need you to look at something.
- Why are you both in here? - Okay, what is it I'm looking at? That's my question.
Look closely.
If you didn't know that this was evidence in an FBI investigation, - what would you say that it was? - I'm sorry, what is it you're asking? Ignore the context of the murder, you know what, and imagine the page a little bigger, what does it look like? Uh it looks like a blue book that one of my teaching assistants has graded.
- That's exactly what I thought.
- Oh, yeah, one of those things you guys give your students to do exams in, right? I think someone was helping Danny Roberts.
I think someone was checking and improving his work.
- So he had an accomplice.
- Who was talented at math.
So, according to Charlie, Roberts was getting help on his system.
Yeah, now, if Danny Roberts had an accomplice, that means somebody else knows about the cheating at the track.
Which means we still have a witness out there.
No, his girlfriend told Megan that he worked at the track alone.
So maybe whoever helped him wasn't at the track.
The girlfriend was into computers, she writes software.
- Maurice, just calm down, all right? - Well, how long is it gonna take? About 45 minutes.
We got the full records from Unemployment.
Maurice Connors' name is all over their interview cards.
Wait, what happened to the five business days? I let her hold my gun.
That's a subpoena.
Every single one of the Pick-Six victims, they went into the track looking for work, Connors must have directed them straight to Tabakian.
- Wow, that's accessory to murder.
- Yeah, to say the least.
All right, good.
Hey, did you get anything on the guys who won the bets on fixed races? Yeah, three of them had sheets, mostly drug related.
Ooh.
Mind if I have a look? Yeah, I'll show you the files.
They're on the desk.
I'll get to run, - but you can take a look.
- Thanks.
I want it noted for the record that my client is here voluntarily.
Yeah, well, if it means I didn't have to go out and drag him in here, - consider it noted.
- You have no cause to arrest my client.
You know these people, right? - Go ahead, take a good look now.
- Don't answer that.
- You interviewed them for jobs.
- I interview a lot of people.
How many get murdered after winning the Pick Six? Maurice, I'm ordering you not to respond.
You're ordering him? Who's the client here? Look, I got your name signed on the interview cards.
All right? That's one, two, three, four, five.
- I had nothing to do with this.
- Mr.
Connors, it's gonna take a jury about ten minutes to decide otherwise.
- Maurice, you need to keep quiet.
- No, you need to keep quiet.
Let's go.
We're done here.
Hey, you walk out that door, I'm telling you they're gonna kill you.
They will kill you.
You have no right to interfere with the representation of my client.
Your client.
Who's paying your bills, counselor? Go ahead, ask him who's paying his bills? Boyd? Maurice, don't make a mistake.
I didn't kill anybody.
I'm afraid I can no longer represent you.
One guess who his first call's gonna be.
Tabakian told me to keep an eye out for single people, no families.
People who could work the late shift at his club.
- Why? - He told me he was expanding his business into drug trafficking.
He figured out a way to clean their money.
All right.
Mr.
Connors, you just hang tight for two minutes.
You remember I told you I followed a drug supplier to the track? - Yeah, the Salvadorians.
- Yeah.
Turns out the supplier's name was on Colby's list of people who won money on the fixed races.
Looks like Tabakian was paying for drugs by fixing races and laundering the money at the same time.
Hey, what, they bet with the dirty money, then he washes it.
They even paid their taxes.
Danny Roberts must have just stumbled into this.
Yeah, along with the girlfriend.
Megan and Colby are on their way to San Pedro and bringing her in right now.
All right, good.
Sharrlyn? It's Agent Reeves.
It's clear.
Granger.
Look at this.
That's blood spatter.
Looks like Tabakian got here before us.
So the locals are running a neighborhood canvas, but so far, nothing.
What? They carried a girl's body out of here in broad daylight.
Yeah, we're trying to track down deliveries or mailmen, anybody who might have seen something.
Sharrlyn Smith has a master's degree in Math from Stanford University.
So she was definitely Danny Roberts' accomplice.
Great.
Which means I just lost another witness.
Yeah? All right.
We got to go.
The techs monitoring Danny Roberts' account at the OTB, they just got a hit.
A hit? - That half-million dollar ticket, it just got cashed.
Someone transferred all the money to an off-shore account.
Our techs traced it to an IP address inside this hotel.
Tabakian's crew probably found the log-in IDs when they tossed the girlfriend's apartment.
So they killed our only witness, and they cashed the ticket.
Why leave a half mil on the table if you don't have to? Let me get those keys.
Thank you.
- FBI! - FBI! You're supposed to be dead.
Danny asked if I'd look at his system.
It just it wasn't working anymore.
And that's how you realized they were fixing the races? The only way to explain the results was cheating.
So I wrote an algorithm that included a proviso for it.
That's how Danny picked - I didn't know that he was doing that.
- You had the Pick-Six ticket.
We were afraid the tellers would notice if he was winning all the time.
But the Pick-Six ticket it would be enough for us to start a life together.
If I'd never worked on his system, Danny wouldn't be dead.
Why did you fake your death? They came to my house.
I hid in my car.
I waited all day for them to leave.
And when I saw what they did, I panicked.
I figured if everybody thought I was dead Sharrlyn your algorithm gives us a wedge into a major narcotics ring.
But Tabakian and his guys are not gonna stop looking for you until they know you're not a threat to them.
- So what am I supposed to do? - You help us, and we protect you.
Agent Reeves, they killed Danny in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of people.
I know.
And I'm not gonna let that happen to you.
But you have to help me.
Back at Quantico, it was all about the rush for me.
But now What? You're mellowing with age? Don't get me wrong, I still like kicking down doors.
Yeah, I know, it can wear thin, right? Ivan Tabakian, FBI.
I've got a warrant for your arrest.
Let's go, get up.
Let's go! Get up.
I'm eating my fish.
A nice sea bass.
Perhaps this can wait? Hey! Was I talking to you?! Huh?! Wasn't talking to you, either.
Get up! - All right.
I know the drill.
- Uh-huh.
This time, we got a witness you can't touch.
Let's go.
Maybe it's just my own history speaking, but I'd like to think that Antoine grows up to be a cop.
What? A cop? Did you and I just see the same movie? Well, you never know how things turn out.
Well, I guess for some people, that's, you know, that's part of the fun.
- And for you? - Clearly, I'm not some people.
So go over the schedule with me one more time.
Okay, dinner and a movie every other Friday, lunch on Thursdays.
No, Wednesdays.
- And I get a wild card once a month.
- That's it, that's it.
To use at your own discretion.
And what do we call this? Oh how about structured complexity.
You know, I'm thinking of using my wildcard.
- Oh, yeah? - Yeah.
Maybe for breakfast tomorrow.
Okay.
- Hundred? Seems like you're on some streak, huh, Danny? - Sorry? - Just keep picking winners.
Yeah.
Just, uh, tweaked my system a little.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the horses are on the track.
The flag is up.
They are all in line.
And away they go.
At the wire, it's Buckey's Folly by a nose! - Why are you doing that right now? - Did you know that primitive societies believed in using percussion as a means of communicating with the dead? Are you drumming for someone in particular? Yes.
I'm drumming for the corpse of my inspiration.
And banging bongos worked for Richard Feynman, so Well, Feynman delighted in making music.
I never percuss for pleasure.
Actually, I may have before me a problem that cannot be drummed away.
Larry, why don't you take a relaxing soak in the Jacuzzi? No.
When it comes to matters of the heart, even Archimedes preferred a cold shower.
Megan? She's She's exciting, and she's beautiful.
And this thing that is between us, it's beginning to affect my work.
What is going on between you two? I have not the slightest idea.
Well, you never work well with emotional uncertainty.
Do you think that's it? Do you think that emotional uncertainty lies at the heart of all this? Really, I'm not as familiar with that side of you.
No, nor it seems, am I.
No real witnesses.
Broad daylight here, no one saw a thing? Excuse us, folks.
Excuse me.
- Hey, Chuck.
How you doing, buddy? - Hey, Don.
Well, apparently, the long shot was winning in a photo finish, - and everybody was focused on the race.
- Uh-huh.
- Come on, folks.
- Found this on the body.
- Something for Charlie, I guess.
- Oh, yeah? Yeah.
Looks like a pretty complicated betting scheme, there's race references in the margins.
- Why'd they call us? - Call came from inside.
There's an agent from O-C already had an investigation underway.
- Right.
- Apparently, the track ownership had ties to an organized crime group.
Hey, Agent Eppes.
- Hey, nice to see you.
- Yeah.
What, uh? - Liz.
- Yeah.
Liz Warner, right? You guys know each other, huh? Don was my Tactical Training Instructor up at Quantico.
What, now, you're heading your own O-C unit? Whoa.
See what a good teacher I am, Colby.
Agent in charge took a leave of absence, so I was asked to keep the investigation up and running.
All right, Agent-In-Charge, come here.
What have you got? Owner of the racetrack, Maurice Connors, likes to gamble.
- Uh-huh.
- Isn't very good at it.
So, Ivan Tabakian bought up his markers.
- Oh, yeah? Ivan Tabakian? - Mm-hmm.
He's a major player.
His crew's into credit card scams, - insurance fraud, and extortion.
- Right.
No.
I know who he is.
- What-What have they got going on here? - Well, it's a gambling scam, but we haven't put our finger on it yet.
What, you think this kid's connected? We found that notebook with the body.
From the looks of it, seems like this kid, Danny Roberts, may be helping Tabakian.
I don't know.
Sounds a little thin to me.
We also found some betting slips on the body.
Past ten days, 90 races.
This kid Danny Roberts made more than 30 bets.
- Yeah.
So? - And won every single time.
Explain to me why the drum has to be in my office.
Because I had to clear my floor.
They're steaming the carpets in the Physics Department.
- Hey.
- Perfect.
Hey.
You-You guys hungry? Let's go grab so dinner.
I can't get any dinner, but I need you to look at this for me.
Would you? - Just take a second.
- Okay, sure.
- Speaking of dinner - I know.
I-I'm sorry.
I- I just I've been so bogged down with Work? Lawrence? Come take a gander at this.
It's a category-based approach to I don't know what, but it's a forecasting system, right? It's very sophisticated.
Oh, no, no, no.
This is more than sophisticated.
You know what this reminds me of? A topos approach to Bach's music.
- I said, "very sophisticated.
" - Yes, you did.
- Where did this come from? - It's from a-a guy who was - murdered at a racetrack.
- A racetrack? Yeah, and we think he was using it to pick horses.
Yeah, but if so, this whole approach is counterintuitive.
- Well, how so? - Well, if you're trying to forecast a horse race, you're usually trying to pick the winner, but, uh? What? But these equations aren't designed that way.
How are they designed? They're designed to ignore the winner.
Because he wasn't picking the winner.
He was picking the second place horse.
Hey, why design a system to pick second place? How does that system let you pick 30 straight winners in a row? Doesn't make sense.
You know, if you're gonna fix horse races on a regular basis, you have to pick horses that are at least contenders.
Right, because if the long shot wins too many times, then, - I mean, it's gonna look strange.
- Right.
So, - you have to pick a horse that could win.
- Second.
And then Tabakian would have to make sure that horse had help.
Looks like somebody beat us to Danny Roberts' apartment.
Landlord just called LAPD with a break-in.
I'll go.
I heard about what happened, so I let myself in.
- When's the last time you were here? - I dropped off the mail yesterday.
Can you tell if anything's missing? I don't think so, but I can't tell really.
- And you live downstairs? - Mm-hmm.
Any chance you might have heard something last night? I took an Ambien before I went to bed.
I'm not much help, am I? - You have any idea who this is? - Oh, Danny's girlfriend.
She did something with computers, I think.
- Danny was crazy about her.
- Any idea where we might find her? Well, they spent most of their time at her place down in San Pedro.
- You had any lunch yet? - Hmm? - Is that a yes or a hmm? - I'm sorry.
What? I said, do you want lunch? - What are you looking at? - It's a forecasting system.
It's extremely complex.
I just can't seem to crack the logic of this enabling argument.
- All right, so take a break.
- I'll just I'll make myself - a nice turkey sandwich later.
- You sure? - Mm-hmm.
- These raspberries look delicious.
I bought two baskets of them.
Ever since that big thing on the news about antioxidants, you can't find a blueberry, these raspberries- they're so cheap.
- What did you say? - I said the raspberries are so cheap.
- 'Cause everyone wants blueberries? - And I thought you weren't interested.
Um I got to check on something.
I got to go find Don, so I'm gonna be home later for dinner.
Okay.
But I'm going out for dinner.
So I, uh, did a tour in Washington.
- Good for the resume.
- Oh, yeah? What? You miss kicking ass? Oh, you only think that because you taught me how.
Hey, you were a wild girl.
I mean, if I recall, you had a a bit of an issue with adrenaline, right? I like to think it's more of a hobby than an issue.
Uh-huh.
Now, how'd you stumble onto this case? Well, we were running a surveillance on a midlevel supplier linked to a Salvadorian drug cartel.
He liked coming to the track, so we came with him.
What? That's where you found Tabakian? Yeah, we're thinking the drugs and him can't be a coincidence, but so far, we've never seen any product at the track.
Now, just tell me if this owner guy is he cooperating? - Maurice Connors? No.
- Oh? Track's a cash cow, so, long as it is, he figures Tabakian's just gonna keep him around.
- Hey.
- Howdy.
You know, we could shake things up for him with Tabakian.
You know? Risky game you like to play.
I like to think of it more as a hobby.
So that's him.
How you wanna play this? Uh, well, you lead.
I'll shake.
Mr.
Connors, FBI.
We'd like to talk to you about what happened yesterday.
I don't know anything about it.
You don't know anything about a murder at your racetrack? Well, I'm aware of what happened, but I didn't know the kid.
Really? 'Cause according to some of your tellers, he was a regular.
We have a lot of regulars.
Yeah, how many of them are stabbed during the races? You're suggesting his death had something to do with my racetrack? I don't know, maybe with the track's new management? - New management? - Yeah, Ivan Tabakian.
- You know anything about him? - I don't think I should answer - any more questions.
- You haven't answered any yet.
Eppes.
Yeah, all right,we're on our way.
Hey, Liz, we gotta go.
You know, doesn't really matter if you answer our questions.
'Cause all Tabakian's gonna hear is that you were talking to the FBI.
Thanks for all your help, Mr.
Connors.
We'll be seeing you.
Got the dump on Danny Roberts's phone.
- Anything good? - Yeah, past month, he's only called two numbers regularly; one is a San Pedro exchange, probably his girlfriend.
- Yeah? Did you get her name? - And an address.
Plug that in to your fancy little nav system in your Acura.
Oh, don't play - What about the other one? - It's an off-track betting place.
Palomar OTB.
That sounds good.
What'd they say? I didn't call them.
Didn't really seem important.
That was almost funny, Granger.
- Come on, what did they say? - Transferred me over to legal affairs.
They said they're happy to cooperate.
Soon as I produce a subpoena.
Let's go see the girlfriend.
So I think I know why Danny Roberts was focused on picking second place finishers.
He designed a system that identifies arbitrage opportunities.
- What does that mean? - It means he was looking for bargains.
Bargains? - Racetrack use pari-mutuel betting systems where market forces determine the odds.
It was actually invented by a French perfume maker, uh, in the 1800s - All right, Charlie, just - Okay.
In pari-mutuel betting, the odds fluctuate according to how much is wagered on a horse.
So it's like kind of like an auction where the more people there are that want to buy something, - the more expensive it becomes.
- And sold! In horse-racing, more expensive translates to lower odds.
So, the lower the odds, the smaller the return on the bet.
So the favorite is just a horse with the most amount of money bet? That's exactly it.
And so many people are focused on picking the winner, there's an active exchange of information - going on about the favorite.
- But we're dealing with a horse here that no one's really pang attention to, so And it can also be a highly inefficient market.
That inefficiency creates a situation where the potential for reward outweighs the risk.
And those are the opportunities that Roberts was betting on.
But that still doesn't explain how Roberts won 30 straight bets, right? No, you're right, it doesn't.
I mean, something must've changed, you know, whether it was in his system, or at the track.
- Right, enough to get him killed.
- And in order to determine that, I need data on those races so I can compare his system to the most recent results.
- How recent? - Just, like, you know, the races in the past year.
Yeah, welcome to my world.
I write software for an IT company.
It's freelance, so I mostly work out of home.
Danny always used to stop by after the races, and when he didn't show up Can you think of anybody who might've wanted to hurt him? No.
I'm sorry.
How about if I give the whole "just us girls" thing a try? All right.
I'll call the office, check on the status of the subpoena for the OTB.
Good luck.
Thanks.
- Had you guys set a date yet? - Next spring.
We were kind of an odd pair.
Danny was outgoing, and I was more the geek.
Hmm.
I got something similar going on myself.
I just don't understand how this could have happened.
Do you know if Danny had an argument with someone at the track? He didn't even talk to anybody at the track.
He was too focused on working his system.
Do you think he could have been involved in fixing horse races? Agent Reeves, most months I had to pay Danny's rent.
If he was cheating, wouldn't he be winning? He was winning.
So maybe this Danny Roberts kid was keeping the girlfriend in the dark.
She was totally surprised about the winnings.
I don't know.
Wouldn't be the first time a guy tried to hide money from his girl.
I'm with you, but the way the landlady spoke about them, young couple in love, it's not really adding up.
This thing isn't adding up in a big way.
Turns out he was hiding more than just 30 bets from her.
That's the results of the subpoena from Danny Roberts's account at Palomar OTB.
He set up the account a couple weeks ago and he placed one bet.
- What, Pick-Six? - Yeah.
What is a Pick-Six? You have to pick the winner in six straight races.
It's basically like winning the lottery, and he just did it five days ago.
- Yeah, what did he get? - Half a mil.
Oh, well, there's a lot of motive for someone.
Or not.
I just talked to them.
They told me that he never cashed the ticket.
So you know Don pretty well, huh? You know what Quantico's like.
Yeah, I bet he was a pretty tough instructor, huh? He was just back from the field.
- Fugitive hunting? - Yeah.
And still getting used to being back in civilization.
Any reason you're asking? I just screwed something up a while back.
Well, I can tell you this much.
Fact you're still here, means something.
But I wouldn't count on being forgiven twice.
So, Danny Roberts picks six winners for half a million dollars, but doesn't cash the ticket? Just doesn't make any sense.
Girlfriend said he was borrowing rent money.
Sounds like he was hiding the winnings from someone.
- Yeah, bet, too, maybe.
- What do you mean? Roberts is down at the track every day, right? So why place a bet through an online OTB when you could do it in person? - Because he couldn't.
- The tellers all knew him.
So maybe he wasn't working for Tabakian? Which might explain why he's dead right now.
- Six winners.
- Six consecutive winners.
- A streak of 30 wins.
- All from a system designed to - pick a second place horse? - Does it make sense? No.
In theory, it should never have happened.
Hey, you guys.
What are you two up to now? We have been dealt a paradox of theory versus praxis.
Is that bad? Well, we're attempting to decipher a betting system that's achieved something that it just wasn't designed to do.
And currently, we stand at the abyss, having reached the limits of our knowledge of the sport of Kings.
- Oh, racetrack.
Huh? - Do you know about horse racing? Well, before I met your mother, I used to hang out at the track, uh, a lot.
Really? I would never have pegged you for a railbird.
Yeah, well, I I got hooked when I was a kid.
I- I knew nothing about this.
Well, like I said, it was before I met your mother.
I take it Margaret was not a fan of the horses.
Uh, no, she was a big fan of college funds.
Hmm.
Hey, by the way, uh if we leave right now, we can make it to the track for, uh, morning workouts.
- Yeah, great.
Larry? - No.
Count me out.
Now horses going around a track, it all puts me in mind of an acute childhood trauma.
- Really? What happened? - I was nine.
I was with my parents at a county fair, and I saw a man get crushed.
Wow.
By a horse? Horses, actually.
Yeah, it was a merry-go-round.
- Let's go, Dad.
- Yeah, coming.
- Hey.
- Hey.
Want some coffee? Yeah, sure.
So, we may be right about Danny Roberts not working for Tabakian, but so far, I got nothing.
Roberts bounced a check here and there, but there's no reason for him to hide money from a creditor.
Yeah, well, let's see what Charlie comes up with.
Back at Quantico, you never really talked about your brother.
No? As I recall, you never really talked about yourself with anyone.
- Thanks.
- Well I wasn't in a really good way back then.
Well, I hear you may be mellowing with age.
Well, let's hope so, right? I've just heard some things about you and a certain federal prosecutor.
Oh, yeah, did you? Don Eppes with the same woman for more than a week.
I don't know, some might call it progress.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends who you ask, right? So, the kid, Danny Roberts, he's got no debt, he's not working for Tabakian why does he get whacked? You know, we had a witness, a trainer.
He'd been doping horses.
Injecting an antidiuretic - so a horse would retain water, - Uh-huh.
carry excess weight.
He was all set to testify for the grand jury.
But what, Tabakian found out? He had the guy's hands nailed to a stall, brought a horse in and had the guy kicked to death.
Pff.
Nice.
So Danny Roberts's system was designed to pick the second place horse.
Why? Because there's a bias in the betting on second place.
I mean, if you know what you're doing, you can exploit that.
- Now how do you know? - Railbird, remember? It took me half a day to work that out mathematically.
Well, you should've come to me sooner.
Yeah.
So, handicapping.
We're trying to predict how a horse will run at the distance of the current race.
Exactly.
But you have to consider past performances, type of horse, track conditions, experience of the jockey.
See, I'd even take it a few steps further.
I would.
I'd factor an average race speed, interval pace, wind speed, - time of day, assigned weights, - Oh, Charlie.
- gate slot, sun position - Charlie - Charlie, you can't account for everything.
- You can, - if you can think of everything.
- Ah.
But this is what's confusing here.
Look.
It's a probability adjustment describing a dynamic system with hidden states.
Charlie.
Railbird.
Railbird.
It's just something that's not readily apparent to other bettors.
Look, in my experience, handicappers know practically everything.
That is, unless you want to take cheating into consideration.
- Well, that's just it, isn't it? - What? Cheating is the behavior that Roberts designed his algorithm for.
- Who are you calling? - Your brother.
Next thing you'll know, you're going to tell me you gotta call Don.
Thanks.
- Oh, hey, Megan.
- May I come in? Uh, yeah, yeah, uh um Just, um - It's a little unexpected.
- I know.
I'm sorry.
I really should have, um, called.
I just wasn't really sure I was coming here until I was already, um - here.
- I-It's- Yeah, that's fine.
And Don said that Charlie and Alan went to the track.
You didn't go with? No, no, no, no.
Gambling on animals.
That's a messy business.
No, no, I much prefer cards.
In there you have an appreciable structure, you know, played out in a graded tensor product space, so Sounds like structure is pretty important to you.
I'm sensing a-a more than casual inquiry.
Well, I think what's been going on between us is pretty unstructured.
Yeah.
Look, we make baryogenesis look tidy.
- I don't know what that means.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
I- It's an asymmetry between matter and anti-matter, which emerged shortly after the Big Bang.
It's- Yeah, it's baryogenesis.
I think I'm finding that, that things between us are maybe just, I don't know, um just kind of a trifle free-form.
I'm guessing that's why you haven't called in a while.
Well, you see, Megan, I-I'm just finding this whole journey from I to us- it's just a little more distracting than I originally anticipated.
And I would have guessed that a guy that lives in his car wouldn't need that much structure.
There's few things better organized than a 1931 Ford.
Listen, I'm not, um, making any demands.
No, and I'm not suggesting that you are.
But if you need a little more structure, I'm not necessarily opposed to that.
- You're not? - Uh-uh, and if you can get past the distraction, there's a Truffaut retrospective this weekend.
Okay.
Yeah, let me just check my planner.
I'll see you this weekend.
Yeah, it looks- it looks clear.
So originally, Roberts designed his system to pick second place finishers, - and then something changed.
- Yeah, cheating.
It was my idea.
- Mm-hmm.
- Right, a- and suddenly, the horses that should be winning stopped winning, and that screws up his ability to pick the runner-up.
So then he makes an adjustment because, well, he realizes that the outcomes are consistently falling outside the range of realistic probabilities.
It's like a weather report.
For the forecast calls for a heat wave, than instead there's a freak snowstorm.
You know, once or twice, that's anomalous.
You can't predict anything perfectly, but if that pattern is persistent, you've got to assume that there are unknown factors to consider.
- Unknown factors like cheating.
- See, Roberts retooled his system to account for those fixed races, and presto.
30 straight winners.
- So it proves it was a scam.
- Yeah.
Maybe it was the cheating that got the guy killed.
Yeah, he may be right.
I loaded all the race data onto my laptop, so I was able to run every Pick-Six winner for the past six months through Roberts' algorithm.
- And? - A snowstorm in July.
Right, at least for the past few months.
I mean, five winners.
Each of them won the Pick-Six when the races were fixed.
That's just not a coincidence.
Granger.
Hey, we got something from Charlie.
I tried to give you a call.
Yeah, I got your message.
I was at Cal Sci.
Ah, Larry.
- You're dying to ask, aren't you? - No.
- I think it's the unpredictability.
- I didn't ask.
All right, you didn't ask.
I do think, uh, you're a little bit of an odd pair, but Exactly.
What do you see? Celia Martinez' bank account.
She's one of the Pick-Six winners Charlie linked to the cheating.
- Yeah.
- The last transaction is to an Estate Trust.
I think Celia Martinez is dead.
- What are you doing? - Just checking something.
Social Security numbers of the other Pick-Six winners.
Yeah.
Wharton is dead? Look at this.
They're all dead.
So, you got two overdoses, a fatal hit-and-run And the other two deaths were caused by drowning and a fall.
So all five deaths were accidental? What are the odds of that? About the same as all five winning the Pick-Six.
All right, so let's look at 'em as homicides.
Right? All right, I'll get into it with the Medical Examiner.
Tabakian's got to be behind this.
Well, then, we just connect him to the money.
Or we just go pick him up.
Last time we were this close, he killed my witness.
Are we tip our hand early, we only add to the body count.
Thanks again for the use of the tub, Alan.
I'd say anytime, but you might think I meant it.
No, no, I promise I won't make it a habit.
I was kidding, Larry.
You know you're always welcome.
Anytime.
Thanks.
By the way, if you get tired of that nomadic lifestyle of yours, I, um, I do happen to have some, uh, brochures of a condo development.
They're really great properties.
While back, I was thinking of taking one myself.
It's so funny you're even mentioning this.
All right.
How so? Because lately, I have been rethinking some of my earlier assumptions with regards to, - you know, pure intellectual endeavor.
- Ah.
Oh, you figured out that grown women won't make out in the backseats of cars, huh? I don't know, I just think I may have lost touch with certain important aspects of life in the real world.
- Hmm.
- Plus my car.
No backseat.
Let me get you one of those brochures.
All five victims cleared out their accounts with a cashier's check.
The checks were cashed at banks overseas in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Ugh, so I'm guessing the accounts went nowhere? Ah, the money is a dead end.
We have five victims from five different neighborhoods and five different ethnicities.
There's no common denominator.
Except Tabakian.
He found them; we just got to figure out how.
Maybe it's an employment thing, a work connection.
Raymond Wharton didn't even have a job.
Neither did Celia Martinez.
That's it, the unemployment office.
It's two blocks away.
It's quicker to walk.
Hey, so Don asked me if I could connect the Pick-Six winners to Tabakian, but so far, we don't have enough data, and any data-mining algorithm may require way more information than we already have, so it's like - Larry.
- Yeah.
How much did you hear of what I just said? You don't have enough data to connect the people to your mob boss.
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
So concentrate on the data you do have and maybe there's a way to connect them through their bets.
Larry, that's brilliant.
What is it with me and structure? Do you find me overly structured? I don't kn- Why are you asking me? Just humor me here, just answer this question.
Well, on the one hand, you don't have a home; and on the other, you eat monochromatically.
Look, do you remember when I was an undergraduate in your quantum physics class? Yes, how could I ever forget? That class was the first place that I learned about the paradoxes between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Yeah, and we're still in search of a theory to unify the two in a single explanation of gravity.
But w-where were you headed with this? There's no unifying theory for Larry Fleinhardt.
And I think Megan could very well be your own private gravity.
I have records for all five of them, but they all went to different job centers.
Can you access that information from here? Sure.
Everything's linked.
I can pull up a list of companies that each of them interviewed with.
Wait, can you scroll back up for a second? - Do you see something? - Yeah.
Take a look at this.
They all interviewed at the racetrack? - Can you see who they talked to there? - Uh, that sort of thing would only be in the original files.
So, let's look at the original files.
It takes five business days to process a request.
- Hey, all right, so - Where you been? Wait, wait.
Hold on, hold on, we got here as fast as we could.
- Just relax.
What's going on? - Look, there wasn't enough data.
Larry said, "Try to use other data.
" I said, "Use other data?" - I-I reworked the algorithm, you know.
- Shh.
Just slow down, just slow down.
I made improvements to Roberts' algorithm.
I took a look at all the racing results for the past two years, and you know, not just the Pick-Six.
I looked at all the betting.
- And? - They were fixing races way before they fixed the Pick-Six.
- What do you mean? - They started by fixing races, like, once a month.
Then twice a month, then more frequently.
Look, there is a regular progression to this pattern.
Charlie, we already know they were fixing races.
Right, but now, now we know when they were doing it.
I mean, Don, don't you see? If, if they killed those five Pick-Six winners right after they got their money, then what's to stop them from killing all the other winners of all the other fixed races? - That would be - 18 other murders.
Charlie, that's a lot of bodies.
I mean, look, we'd know if these guys killed that many people.
Well, not if they staged the deaths as accidents.
So look at this.
Here's another one.
Not deceased.
I'm starting to think we're not looking at more bodies.
- All right, so what is it? - I mean, first of all, we're not looking at 18 different people.
We're looking at six guys who won a lot of bets over the course of the 18 dates that Charlie gave us.
Six guys.
And they all have to be connected to Tabakian.
All right, look, why don't you just start checking into their backgrounds? All right.
- Give up on the water cure? - Yeah, it wasn't really working.
- Plus, I ran out of hot water.
- Oh.
Here I am, once again monopolizing your bathtub.
I apologize.
- You take as much time as you need.
- Thank you.
- You all right? - Yeah, it's just the efforts I've made to simplify my life have started to complicate it.
You know, not long ago, I was, um, I was worried about Charlie, you know.
About him having a normal life.
That's a bit of a challenge, given the circumstances of his genius.
Yeah, that's what I realized.
So I thought maybe, uh, normal for him was not on target.
And perhaps for you, simple is off the mark.
- I've never known life to be simple.
- Larry? - Yeah, in here.
- Hey, I need you to look at something.
- Why are you both in here? - Okay, what is it I'm looking at? That's my question.
Look closely.
If you didn't know that this was evidence in an FBI investigation, - what would you say that it was? - I'm sorry, what is it you're asking? Ignore the context of the murder, you know what, and imagine the page a little bigger, what does it look like? Uh it looks like a blue book that one of my teaching assistants has graded.
- That's exactly what I thought.
- Oh, yeah, one of those things you guys give your students to do exams in, right? I think someone was helping Danny Roberts.
I think someone was checking and improving his work.
- So he had an accomplice.
- Who was talented at math.
So, according to Charlie, Roberts was getting help on his system.
Yeah, now, if Danny Roberts had an accomplice, that means somebody else knows about the cheating at the track.
Which means we still have a witness out there.
No, his girlfriend told Megan that he worked at the track alone.
So maybe whoever helped him wasn't at the track.
The girlfriend was into computers, she writes software.
- Maurice, just calm down, all right? - Well, how long is it gonna take? About 45 minutes.
We got the full records from Unemployment.
Maurice Connors' name is all over their interview cards.
Wait, what happened to the five business days? I let her hold my gun.
That's a subpoena.
Every single one of the Pick-Six victims, they went into the track looking for work, Connors must have directed them straight to Tabakian.
- Wow, that's accessory to murder.
- Yeah, to say the least.
All right, good.
Hey, did you get anything on the guys who won the bets on fixed races? Yeah, three of them had sheets, mostly drug related.
Ooh.
Mind if I have a look? Yeah, I'll show you the files.
They're on the desk.
I'll get to run, - but you can take a look.
- Thanks.
I want it noted for the record that my client is here voluntarily.
Yeah, well, if it means I didn't have to go out and drag him in here, - consider it noted.
- You have no cause to arrest my client.
You know these people, right? - Go ahead, take a good look now.
- Don't answer that.
- You interviewed them for jobs.
- I interview a lot of people.
How many get murdered after winning the Pick Six? Maurice, I'm ordering you not to respond.
You're ordering him? Who's the client here? Look, I got your name signed on the interview cards.
All right? That's one, two, three, four, five.
- I had nothing to do with this.
- Mr.
Connors, it's gonna take a jury about ten minutes to decide otherwise.
- Maurice, you need to keep quiet.
- No, you need to keep quiet.
Let's go.
We're done here.
Hey, you walk out that door, I'm telling you they're gonna kill you.
They will kill you.
You have no right to interfere with the representation of my client.
Your client.
Who's paying your bills, counselor? Go ahead, ask him who's paying his bills? Boyd? Maurice, don't make a mistake.
I didn't kill anybody.
I'm afraid I can no longer represent you.
One guess who his first call's gonna be.
Tabakian told me to keep an eye out for single people, no families.
People who could work the late shift at his club.
- Why? - He told me he was expanding his business into drug trafficking.
He figured out a way to clean their money.
All right.
Mr.
Connors, you just hang tight for two minutes.
You remember I told you I followed a drug supplier to the track? - Yeah, the Salvadorians.
- Yeah.
Turns out the supplier's name was on Colby's list of people who won money on the fixed races.
Looks like Tabakian was paying for drugs by fixing races and laundering the money at the same time.
Hey, what, they bet with the dirty money, then he washes it.
They even paid their taxes.
Danny Roberts must have just stumbled into this.
Yeah, along with the girlfriend.
Megan and Colby are on their way to San Pedro and bringing her in right now.
All right, good.
Sharrlyn? It's Agent Reeves.
It's clear.
Granger.
Look at this.
That's blood spatter.
Looks like Tabakian got here before us.
So the locals are running a neighborhood canvas, but so far, nothing.
What? They carried a girl's body out of here in broad daylight.
Yeah, we're trying to track down deliveries or mailmen, anybody who might have seen something.
Sharrlyn Smith has a master's degree in Math from Stanford University.
So she was definitely Danny Roberts' accomplice.
Great.
Which means I just lost another witness.
Yeah? All right.
We got to go.
The techs monitoring Danny Roberts' account at the OTB, they just got a hit.
A hit? - That half-million dollar ticket, it just got cashed.
Someone transferred all the money to an off-shore account.
Our techs traced it to an IP address inside this hotel.
Tabakian's crew probably found the log-in IDs when they tossed the girlfriend's apartment.
So they killed our only witness, and they cashed the ticket.
Why leave a half mil on the table if you don't have to? Let me get those keys.
Thank you.
- FBI! - FBI! You're supposed to be dead.
Danny asked if I'd look at his system.
It just it wasn't working anymore.
And that's how you realized they were fixing the races? The only way to explain the results was cheating.
So I wrote an algorithm that included a proviso for it.
That's how Danny picked - I didn't know that he was doing that.
- You had the Pick-Six ticket.
We were afraid the tellers would notice if he was winning all the time.
But the Pick-Six ticket it would be enough for us to start a life together.
If I'd never worked on his system, Danny wouldn't be dead.
Why did you fake your death? They came to my house.
I hid in my car.
I waited all day for them to leave.
And when I saw what they did, I panicked.
I figured if everybody thought I was dead Sharrlyn your algorithm gives us a wedge into a major narcotics ring.
But Tabakian and his guys are not gonna stop looking for you until they know you're not a threat to them.
- So what am I supposed to do? - You help us, and we protect you.
Agent Reeves, they killed Danny in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of people.
I know.
And I'm not gonna let that happen to you.
But you have to help me.
Back at Quantico, it was all about the rush for me.
But now What? You're mellowing with age? Don't get me wrong, I still like kicking down doors.
Yeah, I know, it can wear thin, right? Ivan Tabakian, FBI.
I've got a warrant for your arrest.
Let's go, get up.
Let's go! Get up.
I'm eating my fish.
A nice sea bass.
Perhaps this can wait? Hey! Was I talking to you?! Huh?! Wasn't talking to you, either.
Get up! - All right.
I know the drill.
- Uh-huh.
This time, we got a witness you can't touch.
Let's go.
Maybe it's just my own history speaking, but I'd like to think that Antoine grows up to be a cop.
What? A cop? Did you and I just see the same movie? Well, you never know how things turn out.
Well, I guess for some people, that's, you know, that's part of the fun.
- And for you? - Clearly, I'm not some people.
So go over the schedule with me one more time.
Okay, dinner and a movie every other Friday, lunch on Thursdays.
No, Wednesdays.
- And I get a wild card once a month.
- That's it, that's it.
To use at your own discretion.
And what do we call this? Oh how about structured complexity.
You know, I'm thinking of using my wildcard.
- Oh, yeah? - Yeah.
Maybe for breakfast tomorrow.
Okay.