Episode 203: Trust Me

Trust Me
Season 2, Episode 3

Air date	July 24, 2008
Written by	Craig O'Neill & Jason Tracey
Directed by	Paul Holahan
Episode Guide
previous Turn and Burn	next Comrades

Trust Me is the third episode of the second season and is the fifteenth episode overall.

Notes[]

Clients: Andy, Diane
Bad Guys: Zeke, Baranski

Synopsis[]

Andy, a cell-phone salesman, was conned into investing in a fake Cuban nightclub. Michael helps Andy when the loan sharks he borrowed from come knocking.

Spy Facts[]

There aren't many rules in the spy trade. There are a few "agreements" that most intelligence agencies honor though. Low-level agents get traded, not prosecuted. You don't shoot foreign operatives if you can avoid it. And you stay away from embassies and consulates.
Consulates are a great place to renew your visa, pay your taxes back home or find foreign spies working under diplomatic cover. Like all bureaucrats, consulate employees live in fear of a pissed off journalist.
Most of the people who work in a consulate are just municipal drones enjoying an overseas post. But the head of security? That guy's almost always a spy.
One job of a security chief is babysitting the secrets. If one goes missing, it's a big deal. Even if it's just transactional data on chemical imports. Steal a few files, no matter how boring, and you've got leverage. Play your cards right and you can trade what you've got for what you want.
In any covert operation, your first concern is remaining undetected. Whether you're infiltrating a military base or getting car parts from your mom's garage without her knowing, staying invisible is tough. And no matter how good you are... sometimes they're better.
Exploiting an asset is easier when they have a vice: an addiction you can feed. Drugs, money, respect, women.
If you need to get into a secure area, the best approach is to give yourself a good reason to be there. Why sneak past guards when you can just spill a martini?
A hairpin is one of the most versatile tools in a thief's arsenal. It's as good as a key most of the time; but not when the lock is a magnetic card reader.
The key to hand-to-hand combat is being able to close the distance between you and your opponent without putting them on their guard.
There are two schools of safe cracking. Some people like to beat the lock, some people like to break the lock. But it doesn't matter when the safe is sitting wide open. Good counterfeit money is more expensive than you think. If you're looking to fake money on the cheap, a real bill bound to a stack of filler will do.
Thirty years ago, the CIA would've killed for bugs as small as cell phones. They're the perfect improvised listening device but they burn juice like a Humvee. If there's no charger handy, an unused USB port will do the trick.
To win a negotiation, you have to show you're willing to walk away. And the best way to show you're willing to walk away, is to walk away.
They say a picture's worth a thousand words. Add in a few hundred that survive the censor's black pen, suddenly, you've really got something.

Full Recap[]

”There aren’t many rules in the spy trade,” Michael said in the voiceover to open the show. But there are some agreements that most agencies follow: ”low-level agents get traded, not prosecuted; you don’t shoot foreign operatives if you can avoid it; and you stay away from embassies and consulates.” That last one was said as Michael and Sam rolled up to the Pakistani consulate. He thought he could find out something about Carla, his new handler, because he believed she once worked in Kurdistan.

Michael posed as a Miami Herald reporter to get into the offices of the consulate while Sam raised havoc in the lobby to draw out the head of security, Waseem, who Michael believed was a spy. After Waseem left his office to address Sam, Michael snuck into Waseem’s office to dig through his files. Michael stole a couple of files to have some leverage and make a deal for the information he really wanted. He smiled as he walked out of the office, Sam still shouting in the background.

Despite his international spy skills, Michael couldn’t sneak into his mom’s garage undetected, especially while she was in the midst of a friendly game of poker with pals. Fiona, sitting in on the game, was losing badly. When his mom took him aside to ask how things with Fee were going, Michael explained to her that he and Fiona are no longer an item. This upset Ma Westen. Meanwhile, mom’s friend talked about another friend’s son who was in trouble with a loan shark. Fiona volunteered Michael to help. Michael didn’t like that. Fiona thought it was sweet that the guy borrowed money to invest in his mother’s retirement. She said she wanted to help because, dropping a hint as lightly as a manhole cover, ”this guy Andy chose to put someone he loves before himself.”

Michael met with Andy and his mother Diane. He’d borrowed $200,000 and couldn’t pay it back. Then, after Michael and Fiona took him aside, he told them a story about getting into a partnership to open a club in Cuba, but that the FBI stormed in when he made the exchange with a guy named Zeke. Michael and Fiona told him he was conned and that the feds were impostors. They said they could get his money back and headed to Zeke’s club. Zeke seemed to be a ladies’ man, so Fiona worked her feminine wiles to gain access to the back of the club. Meanwhile, the plan to draw out the Pakistani spy worked, so they met and discussed what they each needed – but Michael’s needs were worth more than the files he’d stolen, so Waseem blew him off. Back at the club, Fiona got all the way to Zeke’s safe, but couldn’t get into the safe without Zeke’s key card.

Diane called Michael in a panic, saying the loan shark, Baranski, was at the house. When Michael and Sam got there, Andy was getting kicked around, but Michael quickly took care of two of the goons with a rolled up ”Cat Fancy” magazine, spy style! Baranski told Michael he was now involved, and gave he and Andy two more days to come up with the cash.

Michael snuck up to Waseem as he laid in the park with a hot blonde, feeding her strawberries. After some chit-chat, Michael handed Waseem the stolen documents, but Waseem didn’t know Sam was snapping photos of the exchange. That’ll come back.

As Michael prepared to head into the club posing as an investor, his mom stopped by to tell him she was worried about him. Later, Michael went to the club pretending to be a Texas oil baron so that Zeke would bring him back to his office and offering him an investment deal. Lo and behold, it worked! Fiona stole the key card to the safe, but it was full of counterfeit cash. Michael planted a cell phone in Zeke’s office to listen in on him. When they were certain Zeke wanted to make a deal, Michael met with him again and brought Sam along to play his financial guy. In an effort to make Zeke nervous about losing the deal, and make him more willing to put some money on the table, Sam walked away from it.

When she showed up at the house for a card game, Fiona got ambushed by Michael’s mom. She told Fiona that he’s the best thing that ever happened to Michael. Fiona thanked her for saying that, but that she couldn’t continue being the second most important thing in Michael’s life. Before she could even finish saying that, Michael’s mom finished the sentence for her, and sympathetically handed Fiona a beer.

Michael found Waseem again and showed him the photos of the envelope exchange. He threatened to use them to get Waseem transferred, which would force him to give up the Miami life he was clearly enjoying.

Back at the club, Sam tried to convince Zeke to put $200,000 of his own money into an offshore account in order to make their deal go through. Zeke refused. Until a moment later, when he agreed to make the deal. Later, though, Michael and the gang listened to a phone call Zeke had with his bosses, who refused to agree to the offshore account deal. Michael called Baranski, the loan shark, to get some more time. Baranski agreed, but threatened to hold Andy’s mom hostage until he got his money. Michael warned him about hurting her, and was visibly angry. The stern jawline and steely eyes said it all.

Michael met with an old buddy, Barry, who could make the money appear in an offshore bank account. He met with Zeke, who watched the funds roll into the account and called for his goons, posing as FBI agents, to storm the house. Before they could, Sam and Fiona intercepted them, then shot and blew up their car, making Zeke think that they’d killed his partners. Michael demanded that Zeke get him the $200,000 in cash and at least double it to avoid the same kind of fate. Zeke scrambled to the club’s real safe and handed Michael all the money inside, $246,000. Zeke’s partners showed up at the club later, and Zeke told them what happened. They closed the door to his office, and probably on him.

Michael and Andy made the exchange with Baranski, the loan shark, and gave him a subscription to ”Cat Fancy,” as a monthly reminder to stay away from people’s moms. Later, Michael talked to his mom about Fiona and she said she was worried about him and that she didn’t want to think he wouldn’t find anyone.

Waseem tracked Michael down this time, and slipped him an envelope with a photo of Carla and some documents that had been mostly blacked out. ”They say a picture is worth a thousand words,” Michael’s voiceover said. ”Add in a few hundred that survives the censor’s black pen, suddenly, you’ve really got something.” He told Sam he thought he found Carla’s cover.

Cast[]

Main[]

Recurring[]

Paul Tei as Barry

Guest[]

Patrick Fabian as Zeke
Michael Naughton as Andy
Assaf Cohen as Waseem
Cindy Pickett as Diane
David Fine as Baranski
Judy Clayton as Phyllis
Brittney Collins as Trina
Harriet Oser as Regina

Trivia[]

When Michael enters the Pakistani Consulate portraying a reporter, he is holding the 19 May Miami Herald (Headline: "McCain, Obama, Clinton target Florida").
Michael's alias, Davis Cullen, references to a real person: Cullen Davis. Davis was tried and acquitted for murdering his estranged wife's lover and her daughter as well as seriously injuring his wife Priscilla in 1976 when they lived in Fort Worth, Texas.