S01E02 - The Blacklist

"The Blacklist" is the second episode of Season 1 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It opens the morning after the transport ambush in "The Weakest Lynx" and sets the pattern the season runs on: Pawbert gives up what he knows about the Lynxley organization, and the team works the names he gives them.

Synopsis

A ZPD tactical team raids a Lynxley Holdings office and arrests Samuel Fureed, the family accountant shredding decades of records, but chief enforcer Hackjaw escapes down the fire escape. At the safehouse, prosecutor Sandra Woolfe offers Pawbert Lynxley a proffer letter granting protected disclosure and changed custody terms. If his cooperation proves out, the full agreement follows: reduced charges, a recommended twelve-year determinate sentence, conditional release at about ten years three months, and five years of supervision. Pawbert signs without negotiating. In his first debriefing he lays out the organization's three tiers and names Hackjaw as the mammal who fled the office. He talks with his therapist, Dr. Fuzzby, by video call and watches arrest coverage that includes no photograph of him. Raid intel places Hackjaw at a Canal District warehouse, and Pawbert works the operation from a surveillance van, warning officers that a loading dock listed as sealed was kept usable off the books. Hackjaw runs for it; officers take him down, two of them injured. He tells Pawbert through a body camera that every operative has his picture, then passes his lawyer a note doubling the bounty. Pawbert eats dinner with the team and sleeps without nightmares.

Plot

Samuel Fureed, a weasel who has kept the Lynxley books for thirty years, works late in a Lynxley Holdings office, feeding bank statements, shell company registrations, and transaction records into a shredder. Hackjaw, the family's chief enforcer, waits by the window to see the job finished. A phone call tells Fureed that the arraignment has gone through, that the youngest Lynxley is in a safehouse talking cooperation, and that his own name is on the list if the lynx talks. Before Fureed can choose between the stacks and the door, ZPD tactical breaches the office behind Captain Hoggbottom. He is cuffed against his own desk. Hackjaw is already on the fire escape, and by the time the room is clear he has gone.

The next morning at the safehouse, Pawbert comes into the kitchen after a night spent awake, the bruise across his cheekbone gone purple. Nick is making coffee and pours him a cup. Pawbert asks why Nick did not transfer off the case. Nick says Chief Bogo asked him to stay and that he agreed, and when Pawbert presses for a reason, Nick tells him he knows what it looks like when everyone has already decided what you are. He leaves it there.

Later that day the living room is rearranged for a deposition. Sandra Woolfe, a sheep and a government prosecutor, sits across from Pawbert with Nikki Bramble beside him as counsel and Luther posted at the door. Woolfe states the exposure first: six counts at arraignment, of which two are Class A-I felonies whose mandatory minimums run from twenty to forty years apiece, and a trial he would lose and then die in prison for. What she has brought is a proffer rather than the agreement itself. It grants protected disclosure and changes his custody terms, and nothing he says under it can be used against him unless he lies. If the cooperation proves out, the binding agreement follows in writing before a judge. She itemizes what full disclosure would buy. The first-degree attempted murder counts against the two officers would come down, Judy's to attempted murder in the second degree, which drops the minimum from twenty years to five, and Nick's to aggravated assault upon a law enforcement officer. Gary De'Snake's count would become reckless endangerment in the first degree and the arson count attempted arson in the second, while the count for Nibbles Maplestick stays as filed. The recommended sentence would be twelve years determinate with conditional release eligibility at roughly ten years and three months, plus five years of post-release supervision, and the conditions of his incarceration would depend on how useful his cooperation proves. Woolfe waits for the negotiation. Pawbert tells her he should go to prison, offers full disclosure without asking for anything in return, and signs.

Woolfe leaves with the signed letter. Nick and Judy step onto the porch, alone together for the first time since the ambush. Judy keeps putting a paw to the place on her neck where the venom went in, and admits she cannot tell whether what she feels is anger or grief or exhaustion. Nick tells her it is all three at once. He has been near where Pawbert is, he says, desperate enough to belong somewhere that he did things he hated, and the difference is that Pawbert has mammals fighting for him where Nick had nobody until her. Then he waves it off with a joke about the coffee.

The first formal debriefing runs at the dining room table with a recorder between them. Pawbert lays the organization out in three tiers, family at the top, lieutenants under them, muscle at the bottom, and draws the chart himself. He knows it because Milton lectured him on it, and he never had a place on it; the family kept him at the edges on errands and small jobs they trusted to no one outside the family and to him only barely. Since Milton never gives orders directly to the bottom tier, the way to cripple the network is through the middle. Asked for names, Pawbert gives Hackjaw, the chief enforcer who handles problems that need to stop being problems. Judy describes the wolverine who went out a window during the previous night's raid, and Pawbert confirms who it was.

By video call from his room, Pawbert tells Dr. Fuzzby that handing over the information felt like betrayal even though the family had already tried to kill him. She treats the assassination attempt as a kind of clarity, and he says aloud that there was never going to be love from his father, and that he had known it without letting himself believe it. That evening he watches the arrest coverage cycle on the news. The broadcast runs family photographs, Milton at a gala, Cattrick with a mayor, Kitty at a charity event, and Pawbert is in none of them. Nick finds him sitting in the dark with the television off, sits down at the other end of the couch, and stays.

Intelligence recovered in the accountant raid puts Hackjaw at a warehouse on Vine Street in the Canal District. Judy plans the operation for that night and intends to leave Pawbert secured at the safehouse. He argues that he can identify Hackjaw, knows his habits, and would have flagged the exposure points on the transport route if anyone had asked him. Luther allows it on one condition: the surveillance van, monitors only, no exposure. Working the thermal and body camera feeds without a muzzle for the first time since his arrest, Pawbert warns the teams that the canal-side loading dock their building plans list as sealed was kept usable off the books while the family moved product through the place, and that Hackjaw knows which panel opens. Judy sends a team to cover it. Pawbert then picks Hackjaw out of the heat signatures by his pacing. Luther calls the breach, and Hackjaw runs for the loading dock into the team waiting there, putting one officer down before four of them pin him. Two officers are injured, neither critically.

As he is walked to transport, Hackjaw turns to a body camera and speaks to Pawbert through it, telling him every operative in the organization has his picture and that it is only a question of when. Luther cuts the feed. In a detention facility meeting room that night, shackled to the table with an ocelot lawyer across from him, Hackjaw passes a note doubling the bounty. The lawyer promises bail by morning, and Hackjaw tells him bail is not what he wants.

Back at the safehouse, Nick cooks spaghetti and Judy sets the table, and Pawbert waits in the doorway until Nick tells him to sit. One name is off the list. Judy counts fifty-three left; Pawbert puts the number at forty-nine, because the family has already killed some of them in its own cleanup. He observes that the Lynxleys do not leave loose ends, then corrects himself: he is the one they failed to tie off. Luther tells him it is going to stay that way. Later, alone with his mother's photograph while the green sweater sits in an evidence locker somewhere, Pawbert finds her face already blurring in his memory. It is his first day of actual cooperation, and the mammals on the other end of the radio acted on what he told them. He sleeps without nightmares.

Key Moments

• ZPD tactical raids a Lynxley Holdings office and arrests Samuel Fureed mid-shred, but Hackjaw escapes down the fire escape
• Sandra Woolfe presents a proffer letter granting protected disclosure and changed custody terms, with the binding agreement contingent on the cooperation proving out
• The per-victim charge reductions are specified: Hopps to attempted murder in the second degree, Wilde to aggravated assault upon a law enforcement officer, De'Snake to reckless endangerment in the first degree, and the arson count to attempted arson in the second
• The recommended terms are stated as twelve years determinate, conditional release at roughly ten years and three months, and five years of post-release supervision
• Pawbert signs without negotiating
• The first debriefing reveals the three-tier structure of the Lynxley network, and Pawbert names Hackjaw as the mammal who fled the office
• News coverage of the arrests runs family photographs, none of which include Pawbert
• Pawbert works the Vine Street operation from the surveillance van and flags the canal-side loading dock the family kept usable off the books
• Hackjaw is taken at that exit, the first successful takedown against the Lynxley network
• Hackjaw threatens Pawbert through a body camera, then doubles the bounty from detention
• The blacklist count is established at dinner: fifty-three remaining by the team's list, forty-nine by Pawbert's

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Lynxley Holdings - the accountant's office on the fourteenth floor, raided at dawn
• Safehouse - kitchen, living room, dining room, porch, and Pawbert's room
• Canal District - the Vine Street warehouse where Hackjaw is found
• Surveillance van, parked down the block from the warehouse
• Detention facility - meeting room

Items

• Proffer letter - Signed at the safehouse; grants protected disclosure and changes Pawbert's custody terms, with the binding agreement to follow only if the cooperation proves out
• Muzzle - Off for the first time since the arrest during the warehouse operation, a consequence of the changed custody terms
• Photo of mother - On the nightstand in Pawbert's room; her face is already blurring in his memory
• Green sweater - Still held in evidence lockup, referenced but not seen
• Hackjaw's note - Passed to his lawyer in the detention facility, doubling the bounty on Pawbert

Notes

• Samuel Fureed, the weasel accountant caught shredding Lynxley financial records, is named after Sam Bankman-Fried, the real-world cryptocurrency executive convicted of fraud.