S02E13 - Nine-Nine

"Nine-Nine" is the thirteenth episode of Season 2 of We Can Fix Pawbert and the first half of a two-part crossover with Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It returns the pack to Precinct 99 exactly one year after their first visit, on a laundering case whose seized ledgers appear to be written in Lynxley accounting and on which Pawbert has been asked for by name.

Synopsis

On October 30th, a year to the day after the pack's first visit to Precinct 99, Captain Raymond Holt asks for help on a case that may bear on the Clawrence investigation. At the precinct they reunite with Jake Peralta, Amy Santiago, Rosa Diaz, Charles Boyle, Terry Jeffords, and Gina Linetti. Holt briefs them on the Fungus Emporium, a mushroom store whose revenue far exceeds its customer traffic and whose seized ledgers use a system Amy cannot identify. Pawbert recognizes it as his father's. In the evidence room he breaks the second layer laid over it: recorded dates sit thirty-nine days off the real ones and each amount splits across three columns, and the shop moves roughly two hundred thousand a month. Charles brings him food and learns his recipe napkin hangs on the safehouse corkboard. Jake and Rosa break the proprietor, Morley Sporesworth, who names Tempest Holdings as the source of the money and his instructions. Pawbert flags the weather-themed name as pointing to Clawrence, once the weather wall system's chief engineer, and Luther passes the lead to ZSI. Jake then asks to hold the annual Halloween heist at the safehouse. Holt argues it would work as a security audit. The pack accepts on conditions, and Pawbert insists the trophy stay in plain sight for the Ninety-Nine to take.

Plot

It is October 30th at Site Two, and the pack is crowded into the safehouse kitchen. Pawbert is at the stove with pancakes, Nick is complaining that they are intimidatingly good, and Judy is reading her tablet. Nick catches the date on the wall calendar and works out that it is exactly one year since the pack first went to Precinct 99, looking from the heist trophy on the shelf to Charles's napkin pinned to the corkboard. Luther's phone goes off in the middle of the thought. Bogo has relayed a request from Precinct 99 for help with a case that may connect to the Clawrence investigation: financial patterns the detectives read as Lynxley-based, on which they have asked for Pawbert by name. He turns the stove off and leaves the pancake half-cooked.

The bullpen is decorated for the following night, plastic bats and fake cobwebs over the ordinary chaos, Terry curling a filing cabinet in the corner. Jake reaches them first and declares the anniversary destiny; Amy puts it nearer one in three hundred sixty-five and is overruled. Nick and Jake run the pawshake they invented the year before, a paw bump and a digit wiggle and something that may be a gang sign, and neither of them is embarrassed by it. Amy asks whether Judy kept the color-coding protocol, and Judy has added a subsection for threat assessments. Rosa arrives at Luther's shoulder without either of them reacting and repeats their exchange from a year earlier with the word "still" standing in on both sides of it. Charles arrives with welcome-back muffins whose secret ingredient is more hope than last time, and Gina surfaces long enough to rate the mood and disappear again. Terry puts the cabinet down, crosses the room in three strides, and claps Luther on the shoulder; that Luther absorbs it without moving seems to impress him. Captain Holt comes out of his office, greets each of them by rank and name, and takes them to the briefing room.

The complaints about the Fungus Emporium started six weeks ago and were mundane: delivery trucks at odd hours and a smell coming off the premises. Rosa establishes that the smell was not mushrooms but industrial solvent, the kind used to wash dye pack residue off cash. The shop takes far more money than its customer traffic can explain, and Amy has found patterns in the seized records that match no legitimate accounting system. Pawbert traces a column with one paw and recognizes what he is looking at. It is his father's system, modified and updated, but built on the base structure Milton made him learn at twelve by handing him the household expenses to audit. Given time, he can follow the money.

He spends hours over it in the evidence room while Luther holds the wall by the door. Charles brings a mushroom risotto on the grounds that the case demands thematic catering, and Pawbert tells him the pancake recipe napkin has been on the safehouse corkboard the whole year. Charles is undone by this and has to be steered out by Jake before he can hug anyone. Luther's assessment, once the door closes, is that the capybara is intense.

Judy and Amy come in later to find the paperwork covered in red ink. There is a second layer over Milton's cipher: recorded dates run thirty-nine days off the real ones, and every amount is split across three columns that have to be added back together. The shop has been moving roughly two hundred thousand a month, which Amy notes is enough for multiple counts. What Pawbert cannot follow is the outgoing side, where the transfers reference a code from outside the Lynxley system entirely. For that they need the proprietor, and Pawbert warns them that whoever taught him the system made sure he would fear them more than the police.

Morley Sporesworth is a mole, eight inches tall on an elevated chair, and Jake and Rosa take him apart between them while the pack watches through the glass. Jake recites the offsets, the split columns, and the monthly total back at him until the mole understands the books are already broken. Morley asks for a lawyer. Rosa tells him what will happen while he waits for one: every transaction traced, every shell company found, and whoever sits at the far end of the money learning exactly who led them there. He gives up the name Tempest Holdings, the source of both the cash and his instructions, and insists he knows nothing else. In the observation room Pawbert's ears flatten before he has finished thinking it through. Tempest is a weather word, and Clawrence ran the weather wall system as its chief engineer until Milton forced him out. Hiding a signature in the name of a shell company is what Milton would call ego in plain sight. It is not enough to find Clawrence, only another thread, and Luther texts Ross to put ZSI on it.

With Morley in a holding cell, the ledgers bagged for ZSI transport, and Tempest Holdings flagged across every relevant database in the city-state, Jake blocks the door before the pack can leave. Tomorrow is Halloween, the annual heist belongs to the defending champion, and the defending champion is obliged to host, which would put the Ninety-Nine inside a ZSI-secured safehouse. Luther refuses outright and Nick offers security as his objection twice. Holt takes the argument into his office instead. He asks what a safehouse is for, and how that protection is kept effective, and walks them to the answer: a heist is an exercise in finding entry points, blind spots, and predictable patterns, so a night of experienced officers trying every creative method they can think of would leave the pack knowing precisely where its weaknesses are. He offers his own stake in the question, since his husband Kevin once sheltered in a safehouse under Jake's protection, and vouches for the squad on a criminal's assessment that they are too weird to be corrupt. Jake, who has been listening through the door, falls into the room. Then Holt turns to Pawbert directly: the precinct protected him once, helped him win a ridiculous trophy, and taught him that joy was not a betrayal of accountability, and he has since found the mammals Holt told him to look for.

Luther accepts on terms. It is an overt audit rather than a secret test, everyone is told what it is for, and nobody enters unaccounted for; Amy volunteers a guest manifest cross-referenced against badge numbers and clearances, and Nick wants anything found reported the moment it is found, a condition Rosa justifies by reminding the room that Jake once located a vent leading straight into the evidence room. Pawbert adds one of his own. The trophy is still the prize, and if the Ninety-Nine wants it they have to earn it. In the hallway afterward Charles tells him his eyes are a different sad now, like the sadness has company, and hurries off to write it in the journal he keeps of beautiful moments at work. Goodbyes happen at the precinct door: Jake sets the time at five, Amy hands Judy a flash drive with all fifteen of her contingency scenarios on the reasoning that an audit its subject cannot prepare for is incomplete, Rosa and Luther exchange a nod, and Holt promises that the Ninety-Nine does not hold back.

Back at Site Two the pack works the room from four directions. Nick moves furniture for sightlines, Judy checks protocols against Amy's scenarios, and Luther calls Ross, who reports that ZSI is already running Tempest Holdings and expects preliminary results by the end of the week. Asked where they are hiding the trophy, Pawbert rules that they are not: it stays on the shelf where it is, in plain sight, which Nick rates strategically terrible and Pawbert calls a statement. At the corkboard he tells Luther that the Ninety-Nine were the first mammals outside the pack to make him feel he could be something other than what his family made him, and that having them in the safehouse feels like closing a circle. In bed that night he says the thing he genuinely does not understand is how it can feel like this, looking forward to tomorrow instead of surviving it. Luther gives it a name: hope.

Key Moments

• The pack marks October 30th at Site Two, one year to the day since their first visit to Precinct 99
• Bogo relays Precinct 99's request for assistance, with Pawbert asked for by name
• Rosa and Luther replay their first exchange, "still" taking the place of what each of them said a year ago
• Charles arrives with welcome-back muffins; Gina surfaces to rate the mood and vanishes again
• Holt briefs the pack on the Fungus Emporium: off-hours deliveries, solvent smells, and revenue its customer traffic cannot explain
• Pawbert recognizes Milton's accounting system in the seized ledgers, the one he was made to read at twelve auditing household expenses
• Charles learns his recipe napkin has been on the safehouse corkboard for a year
• Pawbert breaks the second layer over the cipher, a thirty-nine-day date offset with amounts split across three columns, exposing roughly two hundred thousand a month
• The outgoing transfers reference a code from outside the Lynxley system, which is why the proprietor is needed
• Jake and Rosa break Morley Sporesworth in interrogation, and he names Tempest Holdings
• Pawbert reads the weather-themed name as a Clawrence marker, and Luther routes the lead to Ross at ZSI
• Jake asks to hold the annual Halloween heist at the safehouse
• Holt reframes the heist as a security audit of a location under active threat
• The pack accepts on stated conditions: an overt audit, accounted-for entry, and immediate disclosure of anything found
• Pawbert adds his own condition: the trophy remains the prize, and it has to be earned
• Charles tells Pawbert his sadness has company now
• Amy hands Judy her fifteen contingency scenarios on a flash drive so the audit will be complete
• Pawbert refuses to hide the trophy, leaving it on the shelf as a challenge

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Site Two - the kitchen, living room, and bedroom
• Precinct 99 - bullpen, briefing room, evidence room, interrogation room, observation room, Holt's office, hallway, and exterior
• The Fungus Emporium - the mushroom shop at the center of the case (referenced, not seen)

Items

• Heist trophy - "ULTIMATE HEIST CHAMPION/GENIUS" in gold; on the shelf at Site Two, and Pawbert rules it stays visible
• Charles's napkin - Charles's pancake recipe in his own looping penmanship with "NINE-NINE!" shouted across the bottom, on the safehouse corkboard; Pawbert tells him he kept it
• Mother's recipe card - On the corkboard beside the napkin
• Maddie's card - On the corkboard beside the napkin
• Corkboard - In the safehouse common area, holding the napkin, the recipe card, and Maddie's card
• Amy's contingency flash drive - Fifteen heist scenarios, handed to Judy at the departure

Notes

• This is the second Brooklyn Nine-Nine crossover, following the first encounter in the Season 1 heist episodes. Jake references Pawbert's title defense as the "ULTIMATE HEIST CHAMPION/GENIUS."
• Gina Linetti (mink) makes a brief appearance in the bullpen, her only scene in the episode.