Episode #012

Air Date: 4 Jan 1985 (NBC)
Director: John Nicolella
Writer: Allison Hock

Episode Summary
Crockett and Tubbs are on assignment doing passenger surveillance at the airport. [Legs] A counter clerk signals Crockett, who comes to to find that a juvenile has just paid cash for a ticket to Bogota, Columbia. Sonny and Rico find the juvenile, Eddie Rivers, and his friend, Louis Martinez, sitting at an airport eatery, having a bite before the flight. The kids bolt from the table as the two detectives approach, and a chase ensues. The boys get away.

We next see Crockett grabbing a hot dog at a street vendor’s stand. An attorney named Sloane pulls up in a snazzy convertible. It’s immediately clear that Crockett loathes the guy, a public defender who has recently obliterated one of Crockett’s cases. The defendant in that case, a low-life dealer named Rojas, walked because Sloane rounded up a stable of witnesses, all of whom were subsequently paid off in cocaine by Rojas, not to testify. Sloane is an arrogant man, who seems to delight in irritating Sonny.

Sonny and Rico are sent to do surveillance on a coke lab in South Miami. Meanwhile, we hear a discussion between Martinez and Rivers, two kids from New York City with big dreams. Their idea is to make one big coke deal that will net them enough money to open a swanky club back in New York. Back at the surveillance site, Sonny and Rico watch the coke lab explode into smithereens. In checking the remains of the coke lab, they find that sophisticated business and equipment operations were going on. Coke was being shipped from Columbia in statues and processed at the lab. If the kids were playing ball with the coke lab boys, they’d be in way over their heads. There was only one survivor of the explosion, who gave up a name — Moya.

Eddie Rivers, now in Bogota, makes a drug pickup, meeting with a man who shows him how to store the coke in statues so it can be transported without detection by dogs and baggage handling security systems. Crockett and Tubbs pay a visit to a girl named Angela, who they’d busted a few months earlier, hoping she can tell them something about Moya and/or the coke lab. Angela points them to a Diego Moya and a gym in South Beach. They check out the action at the gym [Hit Me With your Best Shot], posing as businessmen looking to invest in a fighter. They meet Pepe Moya, who tells them that his brother, Diego, handles all the fight business, and he’ll be at the gym later that evening. Crockett would like to talk further, but Tubbs has spotted Louis Martinez slipping out of the back door of the gym, and hustles Sonny away. Louis has grabbed a cab, and Crockett and Tubbs pursue him to the Senator Hotel. They walk inside and, seconds later, see Eddie Rivers coming through the hotel door. They arrest Rivers, who is carrying a duffle bag with the statues in it.

Sonny and Rico work on Rivers back at OCB, trying to get him to cooperate with the police. Rivers tells him that his lawyer, Sloane, said the cops would just use him and then toss him away. Crockett, in particular, is furious, and he and Tubbs go in search of Sloane. When they find him, they force him to return to OCB and come clean with the kid about what a sleaze he really is and the fact that the kids should cooperate with the police. Sloane doesn’t exactly cooperate, but his actions are enough to convince Eddie Rivers to help the vice cops.

Eddie leads the cops to Martinez. They catch him and get his agreement to cooperate, as well, in order to avoid a mandatory 15-year jail sentence for dealing drugs. Crockett and Tubbs brief Rivers and Martinez about how to handle the drug deal at the Senator Hotel. Diego Moya and another man show up to the make the deal for the statue, but figuring to double-cross the boys all along, Diego proceeds to pull a gun on Eddie. The cops move in and kill Moya before he can kill the terrified boys.

Switek and Zito take Eddie and Louis to a safe house. In the mean time, Crockett and Tubbs head to the gym in the hopes of finding Pepe Moya, or at least Angela, who may know where he is. They find Angela, who says that Pepe is involved with the main coke lab. One of Angela’s friends bursts in on the discussion with Sonny and Rico. They grab him, and following a little unfriendy persuasion, the guy says that Pepe Moya is a real sicko, and that he’s willing to give the vice cops the location of the main coke lab so they can catch him. Back at OCB, Castillo says the rest of the vice squad will handle the raid on the main coke lab, and that Crockett and Tubbs are to get Martinez and Rivers to the airport to catch a flight home to New York.

Crockett and Tubbs take the kids to the airport. Pepe Moya shows up and shoots Eddie Rivers. Tubbs takes off after Moya, while Crockett stays with the injured Eddie. Tubbs kills Moya, but Eddie dies too. Crockett, grief-stricken, sitting helplessly on the floor at the airport, urges Louis to get on the airplane home. Tubbs urges Louis onto the plane and returns to Sonny. He says “Let’s go get the car.” Sonny says “Yeah, let’s go get the car,” but doesn’t move. Not knowing what to say or do, Rico simply sits
down beside his teary-eyed friend.

– Daryle Gardner-Bonneau