Numb3rs (2005–2010): Season 6, Episode 1 - Hangman - full transcript
The team tries to protect an activist from a sniper, while Charlie and Amita try to keep his proposal and her answer a secret.
♪ Echoes start
as a cross in you ♪
♪ Trembling noises
that come too soon ♪
♪ Spatial movement
which seems to you ♪
♪ Resonating your mask or feud ♪
It's September, and
I'm looking at four letters,
written by four of the greatest
minds of the 20th century.
Hightower, Knox,
Newberry, Beiderman.
Each one had this
office before me,
and each one wrote a letter
to the professor who
would come after.
Now it's my turn.
I'm writing a letter
to the faceless,
nameless professor
who will take this
office after me.
Who are you?
♪ And then you cut ♪
What questions are
you wrestling with?
♪ You cut it out ♪
Where are you looking
for your answers?
♪ And everything ♪
♪ Goes back to the beginning ♪
Do you take this
office at the end
of a long and
distinguished career?
♪ Silence seizes
a cluttered room ♪
♪ Light is shed, not
a breath too soon ♪
Or are you on the ascent...
Your greatest
work waiting for you
amid an infinity
of possibilities?
♪ Darkness rises in all you do ♪
♪ Standing and drawn
across the room... ♪
Do you hover above the chaos,
looking for your answers
in patterns and trends,
or do you need to
be at ground level,
walking through the problem?
- Hey.
- Hey.
Looks like you jumped
the gun, Charlie.
- Nobody's been shot yet.
- I know, but, uh,
Don said that you guys
were doing VIP
security for a big rally,
and I figured I'd slap together
some, uh, crowd flux dynamics,
a dash of covering sets,
Tóth it all up a spanning tree.
G... G. Fejes Tóth
and, uh, L. Fejes Tóth...
They're the leading
authorities on, uh...
on covering sets.
I told you... it's not funny.
You know, in certain circles,
I am considered
to be really funny.
FBI circles?
- Who's the VIP?
- Benjamin Polk.
The, uh, political family?
Yeah, Benjamin's the apple
that fell off your spanning tree.
This guy walked away
from a trust fund to be,
uh, one of these people
that just protests
just about everything.
Caused a riot in Portland
during the 2005
Trade negotiations.
You know, a lot of
people in New Orleans
said he was a
hero during Katrina.
I mean, he brought in food
to neighborhoods that
the cops abandoned.
I'm not exactly sure what he is,
except our problem
for the next few days.
This place is a nightmare
from a security standpoint.
I mean, there are a zillion
good sniper positions.
There's no way to control
entry and exit from the park.
For our purposes, th-that's
where crowd flux can help.
You know, the same algorithms
that are used to keep your car
at a steady speed when
you're on cruise control
can be applied to
the flow of people
coming in and
out of a rally area.
And you guys remember when
we used covering sets, right?
Yeah, that was the
fishing net, right?
No, I think fishing
net... no, brute force.
It could've been our fireworks.
You guys, this is the
dog chasing the cat,
- chasing the mouse.
- It was lighthouses.
I made an analogy to the
positioning of lighthouses.
Get down! Get down!
Everybody stay down!
- You all right?
- 60-74 to Control,
we have sniper fire
in MacArthur Park,
vicinity of the band shell.
Colby, you see
anything over there?
Sounded like a .308...
Semiauto fire, so maybe an M1A1.
Okay. What's the muzzle
velocity on an M1A1?
- Like 700-800?
- 853 meters per second.
Effective range of 460 meters.
That accounts for a roughly...
quarter second delay.
Wind's out of the southeast...
What, at ten miles an hour?
Maybe 15.
Angle of declination...
Assuming a male...
National average height
of at least five-foot-nine...
In the trees!
David, moving.
Covering!
When I make my move,
you just make your way
to the band shell, okay?
LAPD?
FBI.
You want to tell me
what that was all about?
That was fair warning.
Don't get between Benjamin Polk
and the bullet
with his name on it.
My mother had this
photo of the Parthenon
from a trip she'd taken with
my father before I was born.
And one day, I, uh...
I scribbled all over
it with a crayon.
She was understandably
upset until my Dad pointed out
that I had covered it with
rectangles within rectangles,
retracing the Greeks'
use of the golden ratio.
Does that speak to the
mathematician's need
to understand beauty
or to the child's
need to tear it apart?
People don't want to admit
that the government's broken.
That's a big idea.
It's a scary idea.
This turnout makes me happy,
but it makes them nervous.
Change starts today!
The government has an interest
in keeping you comfortable,
in keeping you from
asking questions.
They can gas us, they can
club us, they cannot ignore us!
We don't espouse violence.
I'm not resisting!
The hard reality
is that confrontation
is the most effective way
of shaking people
out of their stupor.
I get a dozen death
threats every week.
The right hates me because
I'm a Commie pinko agitator.
The left hates me
because I'm a sellout.
This threat was
backed up with gunfire.
He was smart enough
to shoot at the FBI
and get away unidentified.
You should be smart
enough to be concerned.
Why? That's what I
got you guys for, right?
No, we can't guarantee
your safety in that park.
Let me guess.
You want me to change
the location of the rally?
Some airplane
hangar in the Valley
or a warehouse in San Pedro?
Only if you're worried
about getting shot.
All right, let's get
it out in the open.
You're wondering
if I was behind it.
Some kind of PR stunt.
Oh, you're capable of that.
Probably too smart to
risk getting caught, but...
I know that you
don't want to see
past the guy who threw
bricks and talked revolution...
Maybe I don't even blame you...
But I'm not him anymore.
Look, I was lucky enough
to survive my mistakes.
Now I'm just trying
to convince people
to turn over some of
their time to helping others.
You guys give your
whole lives to that.
I don't like a lot of the things
that this country has done,
but I have nothing but respect
for the people who
risk their lives for it.
And the least that I
can do is risk my own.
Is that a preview
of Tuesday's speech
or, uh, just the long
way around to saying no?
It's a little bit of both.
Man talks a pretty
word... or seven.
What do you think?
Keep your eyes open.
Stay with him.
Don seemed... different.
Uh, preoccupied.
When he got in his car
to chase after that sniper,
he hesitated.
The expression on his
face was almost pained.
You think maybe he hasn't
fully recovered from the stabbing?
I think, if he were hurting,
he wouldn't let anybody know.
Well, you know, sooner or
later, everyone slows down.
Speaking from
personal experience?
No.
I'm the exception to the rule.
And on the topic
of slowing down,
I seemed to notice
the, uh, absence
of a certain beautiful
young professor
around the house
these past few days.
What's going on, Charlie?
I've been here the whole time.
Amita has been
really busy, actually.
She's just been incredibly
busy with classes.
And I've been
busy, too, frankly.
Busy time for busy people.
You know, the least
challenging thing
about being Charlie
Eppes's father
is knowing when he is lying.
It's a clean shot at the dais.
A clean shot at us.
What do we have?
A male, white...
20s, 30s, 40s?
No prints, uses burner phones.
I mean, everything
about this guy says pro.
Except for the fact that he
shot at us in the first place.
Why even give himself away?
Why not wait till the
rally, then take your shot?
Maybe he was
trying to spook him.
Polk's been shot at before,
beaten up by the cops.
I don't think he's the kind
of guy that's going to flinch.
All right, see, this is
why we don't talk politics.
We're not talking
about politics, man.
We're talking about a
guy who gets threatened
every time he opens his
mouth, then he opens it anyway.
I mean, my dictionary...
That's... that's brave.
There's just no way we can
cover every problem here.
Forget about the buildings
surrounding the park.
There's buildings behind those.
It's like he was shooting at
us to point out the obvious.
Yeah, he was definitely
pointing out something.
Any word from CERN?
The Max Planck Institute
aimed a radio telescope
at the particular cloud in
the middle of the Milky Way.
They were looking
for amino acids.
- Do you know what they found?
- Ethyl formate.
Which happens to
be the same chemical
that gives
raspberries their flavor.
The Milky Way
tastes like raspberries.
So, no word from CERN.
No.
I expect my invitation to the
Hadron Collider is coming soon.
You have second thoughts about
spending six months in Geneva?
Just thoughts.
And that is Charlie
asking for help
with some aperiodic tiling.
- You want to come with?
- Actually, I have some
low density parity check
code that isn't writing itself.
I am going to make
an effort to leave
without running,
screaming from the room.
What?
Come on, that subtle yet
impossible to ignore breath
followed by the
half-hearted evasion.
This can only mean
one more chapter
in the unending romantic
serial of Charlie and Amita.
And I have no desire to
reprise my supporting role.
Larry...
No!
You're a poor little
rich boy from what,
four generations of politicians?
It's kind of hard to
generate a populist message
from your summer
home in Kennebunkport.
So you throw on a flannel shirt,
and you grab a mic at
a couple of our protests.
Six years of being
gassed and clubbed
doesn't sound that dilettante.
He's played the part
longer than most,
but what's he doing now?
Fund-raiser luncheons,
community center openings.
Celebrity activists
always end up being
more celebrity than activist.
Yeah, 'cause there's nothing
worse than a community center.
So he leaves your movement,
now you want to shut him up.
We're planning to
exercise our rights
to free speech
and lawful protest.
You know, there are rumors
that Polk was an FBI informant.
That's a good reason
to take a shot at him.
And turn him into a martyr?
We don't need to shoot Ben Polk.
He's gonna impale himself
on his own hypocrisy.
If we move the barricades
back here and here,
we're gonna
maximize Finger Effect
and minimize edge crowding.
So we'll have bomb
dogs and CTX units
here, here and here.
And then two aerial units,
one of ours, one of LAPD's.
I'm more worried
about the snipers.
We're going to cover as
many rooftops as we can.
And hopefully we can help you
pick the right rooftops.
Of course, you realize
this may be exactly
what he wants.
Allocate more resources
toward counter-sniper tactics,
leave ourselves
vulnerable somewhere else.
Which presupposes a
level of guile and lucidity.
Yeah, but a lot of these guys,
they just get off on
one-upping the police
and who they kill
is beside the point.
Which presupposes
a level of amorality.
He could've waited,
he could've taken his shot.
But he leaves a phone,
he warns us, he talks to us.
Setting the rules.
A prisoner knows that
he's going to be hanged
and the hangman
tells him two things:
That he's gonna be hanged
at dawn one day next week,
and that it'll be a surprise.
If the prisoner's
alive on Thursday,
he can't be surprised on Friday
and so he knows he
can't be hanged on Friday.
And if he's alive on Wednesday,
and he knows he can't
be hanged on Friday,
then Thursday's out as well.
So the reasoning
continues backwards.
Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday.
And the prisoner concludes
he's not gonna be hanged.
But next week, the
prisoner is hanged anyway.
Which is the surprise.
So the prediction has come
true despite his reasoning.
And that is called the
Unexpected Hanging Paradox.
The rules we're hearing may
not be the rules he's setting.
Two years ago, I would have been
out on the street,
screaming through a bullhorn,
probably arranging for
someone in the kitchen to tamper
with the hors d'oeuvres.
I believed that being
prosperous meant
you couldn't
appreciate the problems
of the less prosperous.
That compassion couldn't
exist without suffering.
I was wrong.
Prosperity does
not make you evil,
but it can blind you to
the way other people live.
Children go hungry in East L.A.
Honest people are denied justice
every day on the same
streets that you speed past.
But tomorrow night,
we're going to come
together in MacArthur Park.
We will embrace sacrifice
and decency, the most
fundamental of American...
Down!
All clear.
Firecracker.
Call our techs,
see if we can get
a triangulation.
Hello?
I would've thought
that this morning
would've bought me
a little more credibility.
Room full of windows,
no extra security.
I counted five agents,
assuming the
African-American woman
with the fast reflexes
was one of yours.
Five agents doesn't seem...
you know, respectful
of my intentions.
We are... we are taking
you very seriously.
You have my word on that.
Listen, my name is
David Sinclair, okay?
You are...?
Not yet.
Soon enough, but not yet.
Okay, well, is, uh...
Is there something
you'd like me to call you?
It wasn't your decision,
was it?
It was Polk.
He's so arrogant.
The world exists to serve him.
There's a threat on his life,
and he makes it your problem.
That's what they pay us for.
You know,
it could be anyone.
Anyone could just
walk up and shoot him.
Yeah. If they
were willing to die.
Is that what you
want to discuss?
The depth of my conviction?
My willingness to die?
You have something
you want to say,
why don't you just tell
me, you know, what it is?
I've shown you
my hand twice now.
The third time...
it'll be for real.
John von Neumann once said
that, in mathematics, you
don't understand things.
You just get used to them.
I wish I could have
debated that point with him,
because it seems to
me that, in mathematics,
we find the power
to refuse fate.
In understanding
the way things are,
we give ourselves the
means to change them.
Hey. So, the techs say
the firecrackers were rigged
to a model rocket ignition set,
set off by remote control.
So he has technical expertise.
Or a DSL connection.
Took me three minutes to
find instructions on the Internet.
Profile on the shooter?
Male, Western European descent.
Only, use of the
term African-American
suggests he has a
college education.
That's it?
He knows not to leave
physical evidence.
He also knows not to leave
much of a profile, I guess.
You're sure this is your man?
He delivered six cartons
of napkins and paper cups.
Chef said he didn't order it.
Yeah, see where he unloaded?
There, there... there.
- The firecrackers were in the box.
- Oh, you're right.
He did a pretty good job
of avoiding the cameras.
- And?
- And... consider
a barbershop pole, seen
through a camera lens.
If we see only a
portion of the pole,
we infer movement
up and to the right.
This is called the
aperture illusion.
But remove the obstruction,
we see the end of the stripes,
and then we're
looking at one side
of one spinning pole.
Unless the camera
itself is rotating.
Now, kinematically,
there's no difference
between a moving
camera on a still object,
and a still camera
on a moving object.
Or a series of still images,
which we can use then to infer
a rounded image of your guy.
And that would take...?
Well, less time
with Amita's help.
I'm sorry. Something
just occurred to me.
Charlie's way of
changing the subject?
You know, I think
there's something
going on between him and Amita.
No. No, no, no, no. Out.
Out! Out!
Out. Out.
Out, out, out.
We're pulling more
assistance from LAPD,
the marshals,
the sheriff's office,
but we have got to seriously
consider a change of venue.
Been through this
already. There's no time.
This reminds me of
this joke that my dad tells
about a guy... he's sitting on
a roof in the middle of a flood,
and a boat comes along,
and he's, like, "No, thanks.
God's going to save me."
Another one comes, same thing.
Helicopter comes.
"Pass. God's on his way."
And of course, he drowns.
And he says to God,
"Why'd you let me down?"
And God says, "What the
hell do you want from me?
I sent you two boats
and a helicopter."
You're supposed to
be God in this story?
I'm the guy in the boat,
wondering why you won't get on.
Look, whoever this guy
is, whether he silences me
with a bullet or with fear, it
amounts to the same thing.
Think I got to stay on the roof.
Bodyguards.
He's getting scared.
Kind of stuff he talks about...
Volunteerism, compassion...
That's not the kind of stuff
you shoot somebody over.
Yeah, well, someone
disagrees with you.
So, what occurred to me
is that this assailant must have
clearly scouted this park prior
to shooting at you.
- Uh, us, actually.
- He was shooting at me?
He was shooting at me.
So, what occurred to you? He
must have identified a number
of desirable locations for
firing on this band shell.
And assuming that he plans
to make good on his threats...
- He's not gonna give away his favorite spot.
- Yeah.
I actually managed to get that
far without a single algorithm.
- What do you bring to the party?
- Geomatic survey.
Okay, we actually have
3-D maps of the whole area.
Yeah, we have maps
of buildings and streets,
but we're going to
build a thematic map
with a bias for accessibility,
distance from the park...
Target visibility,
practicality of the shot.
Right. What you
bring to the party.
Check this out.
Hey, man, you...
you can you keep
a secret, right?
I was a Chinese spy and a
double agent for two years.
Managed to keep
that one under wraps.
Well, uh, all right.
I need some advice
about me and Amita.
Well, it's about me and
my dad and Don and Amita.
Um, I, uh...
Yeah. Pass.
Pass?
Oh, yeah, pass.
Can I ask you a question?
Does this touch upon
anything of a personal
- and romantic nature?
- No.
It's strictly case-related.
Okay. Fire away.
We have a man
who shoots at the FBI,
shows them flaws
in their own security.
Irrational actions, right?
Yeah, ostensibly...
Yet, he's
intellectually rigorous,
even thorough in
evading identification.
Now, maybe he's a
high-functioning psychopath.
Or, when faced with an opponent
of superior strength
and resources,
he's opted to wage
unconventional warfare.
Like Douglas Lenat's
Eurisko program.
You know, I should run
some simulations of my own.
Applied game theory.
You know who...
Never mind.
Shepard Crater.
Teaches high school
science in Elko, Nevada.
No arrests.
But from 1978 to '81,
the Intelligence Unit
had an interest in him.
He ran with a group
called Resist First.
The leaders were arrested
for the bombing of
a construction site,
though Crater was
never implicated.
Well, any connections to Polk?
No, and if you
believe the sheet,
Crater got scared
somewhere between straight
and amazingly dull after
his buddies got busted.
He's been teaching longer than
Polk's been out of high school.
Never been married, no
immediate family on record.
Now, Crater hasn't shown up
for work for the
last three weeks.
The Las Vegas office
is knocking on doors.
They're doing a deeper
background search.
Show his picture to Polk?
No, hold off. I want to see
what else we can hit him with.
- Okay.
- Colby and I did...
well, we did an assassination
map of the rally area.
It yielded seven
high-desirable sniper perches,
another 12 with rough
parity to the location
he shot at you...
or shot at us from.
Colby's already working on this.
He's, uh, doing
deployment adjustments,
so, unless you need me here...?
No. Go ahead.
I keep thinking about
this, uh, hangman's thing...
In retrospect,
th-that seems like
it might have been an
extemporaneous thought.
No. I think you're
onto something. I just...
I don't know what yet, but...
Anything you want to talk about?
No, not really.
Is there anything you
want to talk about?
No.
Okay. I'm glad we
cleared the air then.
No. You're okay, though, right?
You're not dealing with
any residual pain, or...?
You saw me hesitate in the park.
Maybe you seemed to be
moving a little slower than usual.
You got stabbed.
You... you almost died, so...
You think, uh, it's possible
that you pushed yourself
back to work too fast?
I mean, it's just...
how many things have we
seen done to the human body?
Punctured, burned, broken.
You know, we're just
so ridiculously fragile.
Somehow, you know, you
don't relate it to yourself, but...
I'm just a bag of blood and
bones like everyone else.
Boy, I'm not sure
any of us would get out
of bed if we all felt that way.
Yeah, well, I got to
get out of bed anyway.
I can move fine, buddy.
Maybe I'm just starting
to think before I do.
So, I know we agreed
not to talk politics...
But?
You got radicals
shooting other radicals
for not being radical enough.
There's got to be a moral
in there somewhere, right?
Yeah, like, don't talk politics.
Here we go... Number
seven on Charlie's list.
Fourth floor, south windows.
I mean, let's just
say I ran for office.
You'd vote for me, right?
What are you running for?
I mean, why does that matter?
What, you wouldn't vote for me?
I've seen you balance
your checkbook
with your fingers and your toes.
Well, come to think of
it, you could be governor.
All right, yeah, we're
not talking politics.
Wait. What's wrong
with this staircase?
It's the seventh one
- I've walked today?
- No.
The one leading up is
covered with crud, right?
No one's been up that way
in a couple of weeks at least.
Look at the one leading
down to the basement.
Yeah, it's clean.
Ten bucks says it's
wet and dark down there.
Don't move!
Please.
I'm trying very
hard not to kill you.
Agent Sinclair, right?
Yeah.
You're Shepard. Shepard Crater.
You know who I am, then
you know about Resist First,
about my skill set.
I know that you walked
away from violence
20 years ago.
Why now?
Why Polk?
Because he doesn't deserve
the things that he says.
Ask him about Portland.
Ask him about people
that did anything
he asked them to.
People he sacrificed
like cannon fodder.
Portland?
The riots?
Who got sacrificed?
Shepard, who did he sacrifice?
Come on!
If Polk were standing
there right now,
would you put yourself
between him and a bullet?
Told you before.
That's our job.
Right, your job.
Well, that means that
you're better men than him,
which means your
lives are more valuable,
which means you shouldn't
be standing in front of that bullet.
I've warned you.
I've shown you.
Anything that happens
now isn't my fault.
Come on.
We're trying to understand
what it is you want, okay?
You got to help us
out a little bit here.
Give us one good reason
why you're doing this.
Okay?
Give us two reasons.
Three.
The bomb squad says
the detonators found
in Crater's crash pad
were for something
considerably bigger
than firecrackers.
So, what have we got
here, a shooter or a bomber?
Or both.
From Nevada.
Crater had a son by
a common-law wife...
Richard Sloan.
Now, in 2007, Sloan's
at a Trade protest,
and guess who's on the bullhorn.
A young Mr. Polk.
Yup. This is still Polk 1.0.
The protest ended in tear gas,
a whole lot of
arrests and six dead.
- What? The kid?
- No.
Richard Sloan got
arrested, and four days later,
he was stabbed to
death in a jail fight.
So Crater's putting it on Polk?
There were rumors Polk
planned the violence.
Okay, so the next day,
he has a press conference,
denounces his own people
for getting out of hand,
and then takes half of
the movement with him
to a much more
media-friendly Polk 2.0.
Okay. Now you hit him.
All right, I-I guess I've
missed you guys again.
Um...
it's-it's no big deal,
but if you could please
call me back, that
would be great.
Thank you.
You on a new diet?
New train of thought...
The flavor of the cosmos.
Ethyl formate.
Where's that train taking you?
You know, it's hard to say.
Right now, I am
suspended in this...
this maddening, thrilling moment
just prior to the
exhilaration of epiphany.
It's the intellectual itch about
to explode into a sneeze.
How about you?
Well, I already did my FBI
deed for the day, so, uh...
Yeah, you know what?
I'm gonna start banging
around on these boards.
Oh, hey, that was good
work you did on the optic flow.
Um, you and Amita.
Raspberry seeds...
They're arranged in
a Fibonacci sequence,
- are they not?
- Yes, they are.
Aren't you curious
about what's-what's
going on with, uh...
- with me and Amita?
- Well,
given your historical trends,
you factor in age,
career dynamics,
uh, concomitant
cultural pressures,
it's fairly self-evident
that one of you has
proposed marriage.
And assuming that as my given,
it's observable that neither
of you is as yet prepared
to share the outcome
of said proposal,
but it's a position
I intend to respect.
Richard Sloan.
He was killed in Portland, 2007.
Trade protest.
I could feel myself spinning
off in the wrong direction.
We were building
day-care centers,
reaching out to the homeless.
All anybody ever saw were
the overturned police cars.
That day it...
just got all out of control.
Did it?
You couldn't walk away
from The New Way,
'cause everyone would know
you were that flaky rich boy
you were trying so hard to
convince them you weren't.
But a tragic riot, well...
That gave you an excuse
and a new platform.
A way to go respectable and
keep your street fighter cred.
You've been reading the blogs.
I've been watching the video.
They can gas us,
they can club us.
They cannot ignore us!
Five seconds later, first
round of garbage cans
go through a
department store window.
Almost as if on cue.
And that guy looks like
he's just given the cue.
It's not exactly
the Zapruder film.
Seven people died.
It was a tragedy.
A tragedy that
led to a lot of good
and saved a lot more lives.
We can shut you down,
revoke your permit.
Eight hours before the rally?
A couple hundred cops try
to kick 10,000
people out of the park?
That guy would eat it up.
Play victim
for the cameras and blame
all the violence on the FBI.
Now, I don't see your boss
or the governor
or the mayor
having a big appetite
for that kind of risk.
All that crap you
said yesterday...
you believe any of it?
I believe all of it.
- Next time you offer to buy me lunch...
- Yeah?
Remind me to ask for specifics.
Well, I-I am a retiree
on a fixed income
in these rather
uncertain economic times.
Mmm, hot dog is good.
I'm gonna have to head
back in a few minutes. Okay?
Oh, I know you're
very busy. I just,
uh, I was just
checking in with you.
- Don is doing fine.
- I know that.
- I meant with you.
- Me?
Well, since your promotion,
you've been shouldering
more and more responsibility,
but you never complain, David.
Well, if you ever need
someone to complain to...
- Thanks. I'll keep that in mind, okay.
- Okay.
Actually, can I ask
you a question?
- Some...
- Yeah.
A... a father's point of view?
Well, I do have that.
Say that your son is killed,
a-and you know
who's responsible...
A-at least you think
you do, anyway...
And he's not getting justice,
so you decide to get it for him.
What else am I going
to do? It's my son.
See, my life stops
until he's spoken for.
Okay, all right.
You spend two years
planning to kill this guy, right,
- and you're waiting for...
- Well, I'm afraid
- I can't help you there, David.
- Why not?
Well, because...
I-I'm not a killer.
If I allow my rage
to change who I am,
then this man has
taken two lives.
SOG 4 is clear on Wilshire,
heading into the Frozen Zone.
You kind of liked
the Kool-Aid, huh?
Turning your life around,
using your own mistakes
to help other people.
Guess I'm a
sucker for that story.
Your fans.
When you lead, you
have to sacrifice your soul.
You make decisions
you know will haunt you,
sacrifice the few
to benefit the most.
Anyone who tells
you any different
hasn't studied history.
You know, I've studied
a little bit of history,
and I've led.
Think I'll try to hang
on to my soul, though.
I thought they were pulling
out all the garbage cans.
Garbage cans and mailboxes.
Yeah, we've got possible
explosives on Wilshire.
Pull off.
Get down!
Liz, talk to me.
There's a lot of
smoke and flame,
but almost no concussion.
It was more like pyro
than serious explosives.
Let's get the bomb
squad here anyway,
and let's start
shutting down that rally.
- We're going back to the hotel.
- You can't shut us down.
- That's what Crater wants.
- Yeah, well, then he won.
You heard what
happened at the rally, right?
Yeah, I was just
applying the attack
- to some war game scenarios I've been running.
- And?
Well, it makes perfect
sense with Crater's strategy,
which has been making no sense.
How so?
Crater and the FBI are playing
an imperfect information game
like dominoes.
Right, where they
only see their own tiles,
not their opponents'.
But Crater is playing checkers,
exposing not only
his own strategy
but the weaknesses in ours.
In the hangman's paradox,
there's one school of thought
that argues that the
problem itself is flawed.
Right, just because the
judge sets a rule doesn't mean
the prisoner should assume
he's going to follow that rule.
Every time Crater exposes
a flaw in our strategy,
he forces us to
behave reactively.
Closing the holes by
moving the resources
on the terms that he set.
Moving Polk toward
Crater's terrain.
He never intended
to kill him at that rally.
Put the gun down, Shepard.
Does he know you
used him as a decoy?
No.
Maybe you're not
that good a man.
I could tell you how all this
wouldn't bring your son back
and how you would have
made a hero out of him.
It just comes down to the fact
that we can't let
you pull that trigger.
I visited Richie in
jail two days be...
befo...
befo...
before...
I tried to bail him out, but,
uh, there were so many arrests
that it took them a
week to arraign everyone.
By then...
Richie told me Polk
planned the whole thing,
used them.
I've been carrying his
story around for two years.
So put down the gun and tell it.
Sure... sure.
The words of a ghost
through the voice of a...
of a what?
What?
What am I?
What?
You're a father that
lost his son, right,
that does not want
to lose himself.
I told Richie all those stories
about, uh, who I'd
been, what I'd done.
I told him...
I told him that a man was
the things that he believes in.
I did everything but
drive him to that rally.
Shepard, when everyone
else was arrested in 1978,
there's a reason
that you were not.
Okay, I don't think you
could have taken it that far.
Listen... you...
are not a killer.
I killed my son!
Polk was just...
He was just the thing I
didn't protect him from.
But it doesn't matter.
No, it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter at all.
Doesn't matter to anyone but me.
It matters to us, Shepard.
Come on.
Listen, just put the gun down.
Come back.
Please.
Ple...
Control, we need a medic.
Ambulance is on the way.
Nah.
My son's story
belongs to you now.
Hightower, Knox,
Newberry, Beiderman.
Each of their signatures
is a self-swallowing set,
a name that shorthands
a body of thought,
a life's work.
The question isn't who you are.
The question is: Who
did I turn out to be?
- Okay, you ready?
- Yeah.
- Hey.
- Hey.
- Hi.
- What's up?
We, uh, we have
something to tell you.
We're getting married.
We're getting married.
- Oh.
- You guys are the first to know.
After my parents, which is
my fault, because I wanted
Charlie to ask their permission.
It's just a formality,
but it's a family tradition.
Yeah, it's a
formality that required
a four-day game of
transatlantic phone tag,
which is why I've been a
little, you know, evasive.
- Oh, I see.
- But it feels
really good to get it out.
Uh, I actually...
I kind of almost
spilled the beans
more than a few
times, but, uh...
It's hard keeping a
secret, but it's kind of fun...
- It was fun.
- Keeping a secret.
I think we did good.
Congratulations.
What do you say?
I think we get the,
- the good stuff out, huh?
- Yeah.
What, you-you already knew?
- How did you already know?
- Your parents told me.
Come on, it's what
I do for a living.
- So I told him.
- All right, he might have mentioned it, but...
Come here, sister-in-law.
Congratulations.
Big secret, huh?
Who am I to you?
Are faded chalk marks
and scratches on the floor
the only evidence
that I was here,
or did some scribbled note,
some fragment of a proof
invert your perception
of the world...
♪ And then you cut ♪
even confirm it,
cementing what you knew
in your heart to be true,
with the balance of
left column to right?
♪ And everything ♪
What footprints
have I left behind?
Do they endure,
or has the ocean of discovery
washed them away already?
♪ Goes back to the beginning ♪
♪ Silence seizes
a cluttered room ♪
How many lives have I touched?
♪ Light is shed not
a breath too soon ♪
Have I touched yours?
♪ Never said it was good,
never said it was new ♪
♪ Muted whisper of
the things you feel. ♪
as a cross in you ♪
♪ Trembling noises
that come too soon ♪
♪ Spatial movement
which seems to you ♪
♪ Resonating your mask or feud ♪
It's September, and
I'm looking at four letters,
written by four of the greatest
minds of the 20th century.
Hightower, Knox,
Newberry, Beiderman.
Each one had this
office before me,
and each one wrote a letter
to the professor who
would come after.
Now it's my turn.
I'm writing a letter
to the faceless,
nameless professor
who will take this
office after me.
Who are you?
♪ And then you cut ♪
What questions are
you wrestling with?
♪ You cut it out ♪
Where are you looking
for your answers?
♪ And everything ♪
♪ Goes back to the beginning ♪
Do you take this
office at the end
of a long and
distinguished career?
♪ Silence seizes
a cluttered room ♪
♪ Light is shed, not
a breath too soon ♪
Or are you on the ascent...
Your greatest
work waiting for you
amid an infinity
of possibilities?
♪ Darkness rises in all you do ♪
♪ Standing and drawn
across the room... ♪
Do you hover above the chaos,
looking for your answers
in patterns and trends,
or do you need to
be at ground level,
walking through the problem?
- Hey.
- Hey.
Looks like you jumped
the gun, Charlie.
- Nobody's been shot yet.
- I know, but, uh,
Don said that you guys
were doing VIP
security for a big rally,
and I figured I'd slap together
some, uh, crowd flux dynamics,
a dash of covering sets,
Tóth it all up a spanning tree.
G... G. Fejes Tóth
and, uh, L. Fejes Tóth...
They're the leading
authorities on, uh...
on covering sets.
I told you... it's not funny.
You know, in certain circles,
I am considered
to be really funny.
FBI circles?
- Who's the VIP?
- Benjamin Polk.
The, uh, political family?
Yeah, Benjamin's the apple
that fell off your spanning tree.
This guy walked away
from a trust fund to be,
uh, one of these people
that just protests
just about everything.
Caused a riot in Portland
during the 2005
Trade negotiations.
You know, a lot of
people in New Orleans
said he was a
hero during Katrina.
I mean, he brought in food
to neighborhoods that
the cops abandoned.
I'm not exactly sure what he is,
except our problem
for the next few days.
This place is a nightmare
from a security standpoint.
I mean, there are a zillion
good sniper positions.
There's no way to control
entry and exit from the park.
For our purposes, th-that's
where crowd flux can help.
You know, the same algorithms
that are used to keep your car
at a steady speed when
you're on cruise control
can be applied to
the flow of people
coming in and
out of a rally area.
And you guys remember when
we used covering sets, right?
Yeah, that was the
fishing net, right?
No, I think fishing
net... no, brute force.
It could've been our fireworks.
You guys, this is the
dog chasing the cat,
- chasing the mouse.
- It was lighthouses.
I made an analogy to the
positioning of lighthouses.
Get down! Get down!
Everybody stay down!
- You all right?
- 60-74 to Control,
we have sniper fire
in MacArthur Park,
vicinity of the band shell.
Colby, you see
anything over there?
Sounded like a .308...
Semiauto fire, so maybe an M1A1.
Okay. What's the muzzle
velocity on an M1A1?
- Like 700-800?
- 853 meters per second.
Effective range of 460 meters.
That accounts for a roughly...
quarter second delay.
Wind's out of the southeast...
What, at ten miles an hour?
Maybe 15.
Angle of declination...
Assuming a male...
National average height
of at least five-foot-nine...
In the trees!
David, moving.
Covering!
When I make my move,
you just make your way
to the band shell, okay?
LAPD?
FBI.
You want to tell me
what that was all about?
That was fair warning.
Don't get between Benjamin Polk
and the bullet
with his name on it.
My mother had this
photo of the Parthenon
from a trip she'd taken with
my father before I was born.
And one day, I, uh...
I scribbled all over
it with a crayon.
She was understandably
upset until my Dad pointed out
that I had covered it with
rectangles within rectangles,
retracing the Greeks'
use of the golden ratio.
Does that speak to the
mathematician's need
to understand beauty
or to the child's
need to tear it apart?
People don't want to admit
that the government's broken.
That's a big idea.
It's a scary idea.
This turnout makes me happy,
but it makes them nervous.
Change starts today!
The government has an interest
in keeping you comfortable,
in keeping you from
asking questions.
They can gas us, they can
club us, they cannot ignore us!
We don't espouse violence.
I'm not resisting!
The hard reality
is that confrontation
is the most effective way
of shaking people
out of their stupor.
I get a dozen death
threats every week.
The right hates me because
I'm a Commie pinko agitator.
The left hates me
because I'm a sellout.
This threat was
backed up with gunfire.
He was smart enough
to shoot at the FBI
and get away unidentified.
You should be smart
enough to be concerned.
Why? That's what I
got you guys for, right?
No, we can't guarantee
your safety in that park.
Let me guess.
You want me to change
the location of the rally?
Some airplane
hangar in the Valley
or a warehouse in San Pedro?
Only if you're worried
about getting shot.
All right, let's get
it out in the open.
You're wondering
if I was behind it.
Some kind of PR stunt.
Oh, you're capable of that.
Probably too smart to
risk getting caught, but...
I know that you
don't want to see
past the guy who threw
bricks and talked revolution...
Maybe I don't even blame you...
But I'm not him anymore.
Look, I was lucky enough
to survive my mistakes.
Now I'm just trying
to convince people
to turn over some of
their time to helping others.
You guys give your
whole lives to that.
I don't like a lot of the things
that this country has done,
but I have nothing but respect
for the people who
risk their lives for it.
And the least that I
can do is risk my own.
Is that a preview
of Tuesday's speech
or, uh, just the long
way around to saying no?
It's a little bit of both.
Man talks a pretty
word... or seven.
What do you think?
Keep your eyes open.
Stay with him.
Don seemed... different.
Uh, preoccupied.
When he got in his car
to chase after that sniper,
he hesitated.
The expression on his
face was almost pained.
You think maybe he hasn't
fully recovered from the stabbing?
I think, if he were hurting,
he wouldn't let anybody know.
Well, you know, sooner or
later, everyone slows down.
Speaking from
personal experience?
No.
I'm the exception to the rule.
And on the topic
of slowing down,
I seemed to notice
the, uh, absence
of a certain beautiful
young professor
around the house
these past few days.
What's going on, Charlie?
I've been here the whole time.
Amita has been
really busy, actually.
She's just been incredibly
busy with classes.
And I've been
busy, too, frankly.
Busy time for busy people.
You know, the least
challenging thing
about being Charlie
Eppes's father
is knowing when he is lying.
It's a clean shot at the dais.
A clean shot at us.
What do we have?
A male, white...
20s, 30s, 40s?
No prints, uses burner phones.
I mean, everything
about this guy says pro.
Except for the fact that he
shot at us in the first place.
Why even give himself away?
Why not wait till the
rally, then take your shot?
Maybe he was
trying to spook him.
Polk's been shot at before,
beaten up by the cops.
I don't think he's the kind
of guy that's going to flinch.
All right, see, this is
why we don't talk politics.
We're not talking
about politics, man.
We're talking about a
guy who gets threatened
every time he opens his
mouth, then he opens it anyway.
I mean, my dictionary...
That's... that's brave.
There's just no way we can
cover every problem here.
Forget about the buildings
surrounding the park.
There's buildings behind those.
It's like he was shooting at
us to point out the obvious.
Yeah, he was definitely
pointing out something.
Any word from CERN?
The Max Planck Institute
aimed a radio telescope
at the particular cloud in
the middle of the Milky Way.
They were looking
for amino acids.
- Do you know what they found?
- Ethyl formate.
Which happens to
be the same chemical
that gives
raspberries their flavor.
The Milky Way
tastes like raspberries.
So, no word from CERN.
No.
I expect my invitation to the
Hadron Collider is coming soon.
You have second thoughts about
spending six months in Geneva?
Just thoughts.
And that is Charlie
asking for help
with some aperiodic tiling.
- You want to come with?
- Actually, I have some
low density parity check
code that isn't writing itself.
I am going to make
an effort to leave
without running,
screaming from the room.
What?
Come on, that subtle yet
impossible to ignore breath
followed by the
half-hearted evasion.
This can only mean
one more chapter
in the unending romantic
serial of Charlie and Amita.
And I have no desire to
reprise my supporting role.
Larry...
No!
You're a poor little
rich boy from what,
four generations of politicians?
It's kind of hard to
generate a populist message
from your summer
home in Kennebunkport.
So you throw on a flannel shirt,
and you grab a mic at
a couple of our protests.
Six years of being
gassed and clubbed
doesn't sound that dilettante.
He's played the part
longer than most,
but what's he doing now?
Fund-raiser luncheons,
community center openings.
Celebrity activists
always end up being
more celebrity than activist.
Yeah, 'cause there's nothing
worse than a community center.
So he leaves your movement,
now you want to shut him up.
We're planning to
exercise our rights
to free speech
and lawful protest.
You know, there are rumors
that Polk was an FBI informant.
That's a good reason
to take a shot at him.
And turn him into a martyr?
We don't need to shoot Ben Polk.
He's gonna impale himself
on his own hypocrisy.
If we move the barricades
back here and here,
we're gonna
maximize Finger Effect
and minimize edge crowding.
So we'll have bomb
dogs and CTX units
here, here and here.
And then two aerial units,
one of ours, one of LAPD's.
I'm more worried
about the snipers.
We're going to cover as
many rooftops as we can.
And hopefully we can help you
pick the right rooftops.
Of course, you realize
this may be exactly
what he wants.
Allocate more resources
toward counter-sniper tactics,
leave ourselves
vulnerable somewhere else.
Which presupposes a
level of guile and lucidity.
Yeah, but a lot of these guys,
they just get off on
one-upping the police
and who they kill
is beside the point.
Which presupposes
a level of amorality.
He could've waited,
he could've taken his shot.
But he leaves a phone,
he warns us, he talks to us.
Setting the rules.
A prisoner knows that
he's going to be hanged
and the hangman
tells him two things:
That he's gonna be hanged
at dawn one day next week,
and that it'll be a surprise.
If the prisoner's
alive on Thursday,
he can't be surprised on Friday
and so he knows he
can't be hanged on Friday.
And if he's alive on Wednesday,
and he knows he can't
be hanged on Friday,
then Thursday's out as well.
So the reasoning
continues backwards.
Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday.
And the prisoner concludes
he's not gonna be hanged.
But next week, the
prisoner is hanged anyway.
Which is the surprise.
So the prediction has come
true despite his reasoning.
And that is called the
Unexpected Hanging Paradox.
The rules we're hearing may
not be the rules he's setting.
Two years ago, I would have been
out on the street,
screaming through a bullhorn,
probably arranging for
someone in the kitchen to tamper
with the hors d'oeuvres.
I believed that being
prosperous meant
you couldn't
appreciate the problems
of the less prosperous.
That compassion couldn't
exist without suffering.
I was wrong.
Prosperity does
not make you evil,
but it can blind you to
the way other people live.
Children go hungry in East L.A.
Honest people are denied justice
every day on the same
streets that you speed past.
But tomorrow night,
we're going to come
together in MacArthur Park.
We will embrace sacrifice
and decency, the most
fundamental of American...
Down!
All clear.
Firecracker.
Call our techs,
see if we can get
a triangulation.
Hello?
I would've thought
that this morning
would've bought me
a little more credibility.
Room full of windows,
no extra security.
I counted five agents,
assuming the
African-American woman
with the fast reflexes
was one of yours.
Five agents doesn't seem...
you know, respectful
of my intentions.
We are... we are taking
you very seriously.
You have my word on that.
Listen, my name is
David Sinclair, okay?
You are...?
Not yet.
Soon enough, but not yet.
Okay, well, is, uh...
Is there something
you'd like me to call you?
It wasn't your decision,
was it?
It was Polk.
He's so arrogant.
The world exists to serve him.
There's a threat on his life,
and he makes it your problem.
That's what they pay us for.
You know,
it could be anyone.
Anyone could just
walk up and shoot him.
Yeah. If they
were willing to die.
Is that what you
want to discuss?
The depth of my conviction?
My willingness to die?
You have something
you want to say,
why don't you just tell
me, you know, what it is?
I've shown you
my hand twice now.
The third time...
it'll be for real.
John von Neumann once said
that, in mathematics, you
don't understand things.
You just get used to them.
I wish I could have
debated that point with him,
because it seems to
me that, in mathematics,
we find the power
to refuse fate.
In understanding
the way things are,
we give ourselves the
means to change them.
Hey. So, the techs say
the firecrackers were rigged
to a model rocket ignition set,
set off by remote control.
So he has technical expertise.
Or a DSL connection.
Took me three minutes to
find instructions on the Internet.
Profile on the shooter?
Male, Western European descent.
Only, use of the
term African-American
suggests he has a
college education.
That's it?
He knows not to leave
physical evidence.
He also knows not to leave
much of a profile, I guess.
You're sure this is your man?
He delivered six cartons
of napkins and paper cups.
Chef said he didn't order it.
Yeah, see where he unloaded?
There, there... there.
- The firecrackers were in the box.
- Oh, you're right.
He did a pretty good job
of avoiding the cameras.
- And?
- And... consider
a barbershop pole, seen
through a camera lens.
If we see only a
portion of the pole,
we infer movement
up and to the right.
This is called the
aperture illusion.
But remove the obstruction,
we see the end of the stripes,
and then we're
looking at one side
of one spinning pole.
Unless the camera
itself is rotating.
Now, kinematically,
there's no difference
between a moving
camera on a still object,
and a still camera
on a moving object.
Or a series of still images,
which we can use then to infer
a rounded image of your guy.
And that would take...?
Well, less time
with Amita's help.
I'm sorry. Something
just occurred to me.
Charlie's way of
changing the subject?
You know, I think
there's something
going on between him and Amita.
No. No, no, no, no. Out.
Out! Out!
Out. Out.
Out, out, out.
We're pulling more
assistance from LAPD,
the marshals,
the sheriff's office,
but we have got to seriously
consider a change of venue.
Been through this
already. There's no time.
This reminds me of
this joke that my dad tells
about a guy... he's sitting on
a roof in the middle of a flood,
and a boat comes along,
and he's, like, "No, thanks.
God's going to save me."
Another one comes, same thing.
Helicopter comes.
"Pass. God's on his way."
And of course, he drowns.
And he says to God,
"Why'd you let me down?"
And God says, "What the
hell do you want from me?
I sent you two boats
and a helicopter."
You're supposed to
be God in this story?
I'm the guy in the boat,
wondering why you won't get on.
Look, whoever this guy
is, whether he silences me
with a bullet or with fear, it
amounts to the same thing.
Think I got to stay on the roof.
Bodyguards.
He's getting scared.
Kind of stuff he talks about...
Volunteerism, compassion...
That's not the kind of stuff
you shoot somebody over.
Yeah, well, someone
disagrees with you.
So, what occurred to me
is that this assailant must have
clearly scouted this park prior
to shooting at you.
- Uh, us, actually.
- He was shooting at me?
He was shooting at me.
So, what occurred to you? He
must have identified a number
of desirable locations for
firing on this band shell.
And assuming that he plans
to make good on his threats...
- He's not gonna give away his favorite spot.
- Yeah.
I actually managed to get that
far without a single algorithm.
- What do you bring to the party?
- Geomatic survey.
Okay, we actually have
3-D maps of the whole area.
Yeah, we have maps
of buildings and streets,
but we're going to
build a thematic map
with a bias for accessibility,
distance from the park...
Target visibility,
practicality of the shot.
Right. What you
bring to the party.
Check this out.
Hey, man, you...
you can you keep
a secret, right?
I was a Chinese spy and a
double agent for two years.
Managed to keep
that one under wraps.
Well, uh, all right.
I need some advice
about me and Amita.
Well, it's about me and
my dad and Don and Amita.
Um, I, uh...
Yeah. Pass.
Pass?
Oh, yeah, pass.
Can I ask you a question?
Does this touch upon
anything of a personal
- and romantic nature?
- No.
It's strictly case-related.
Okay. Fire away.
We have a man
who shoots at the FBI,
shows them flaws
in their own security.
Irrational actions, right?
Yeah, ostensibly...
Yet, he's
intellectually rigorous,
even thorough in
evading identification.
Now, maybe he's a
high-functioning psychopath.
Or, when faced with an opponent
of superior strength
and resources,
he's opted to wage
unconventional warfare.
Like Douglas Lenat's
Eurisko program.
You know, I should run
some simulations of my own.
Applied game theory.
You know who...
Never mind.
Shepard Crater.
Teaches high school
science in Elko, Nevada.
No arrests.
But from 1978 to '81,
the Intelligence Unit
had an interest in him.
He ran with a group
called Resist First.
The leaders were arrested
for the bombing of
a construction site,
though Crater was
never implicated.
Well, any connections to Polk?
No, and if you
believe the sheet,
Crater got scared
somewhere between straight
and amazingly dull after
his buddies got busted.
He's been teaching longer than
Polk's been out of high school.
Never been married, no
immediate family on record.
Now, Crater hasn't shown up
for work for the
last three weeks.
The Las Vegas office
is knocking on doors.
They're doing a deeper
background search.
Show his picture to Polk?
No, hold off. I want to see
what else we can hit him with.
- Okay.
- Colby and I did...
well, we did an assassination
map of the rally area.
It yielded seven
high-desirable sniper perches,
another 12 with rough
parity to the location
he shot at you...
or shot at us from.
Colby's already working on this.
He's, uh, doing
deployment adjustments,
so, unless you need me here...?
No. Go ahead.
I keep thinking about
this, uh, hangman's thing...
In retrospect,
th-that seems like
it might have been an
extemporaneous thought.
No. I think you're
onto something. I just...
I don't know what yet, but...
Anything you want to talk about?
No, not really.
Is there anything you
want to talk about?
No.
Okay. I'm glad we
cleared the air then.
No. You're okay, though, right?
You're not dealing with
any residual pain, or...?
You saw me hesitate in the park.
Maybe you seemed to be
moving a little slower than usual.
You got stabbed.
You... you almost died, so...
You think, uh, it's possible
that you pushed yourself
back to work too fast?
I mean, it's just...
how many things have we
seen done to the human body?
Punctured, burned, broken.
You know, we're just
so ridiculously fragile.
Somehow, you know, you
don't relate it to yourself, but...
I'm just a bag of blood and
bones like everyone else.
Boy, I'm not sure
any of us would get out
of bed if we all felt that way.
Yeah, well, I got to
get out of bed anyway.
I can move fine, buddy.
Maybe I'm just starting
to think before I do.
So, I know we agreed
not to talk politics...
But?
You got radicals
shooting other radicals
for not being radical enough.
There's got to be a moral
in there somewhere, right?
Yeah, like, don't talk politics.
Here we go... Number
seven on Charlie's list.
Fourth floor, south windows.
I mean, let's just
say I ran for office.
You'd vote for me, right?
What are you running for?
I mean, why does that matter?
What, you wouldn't vote for me?
I've seen you balance
your checkbook
with your fingers and your toes.
Well, come to think of
it, you could be governor.
All right, yeah, we're
not talking politics.
Wait. What's wrong
with this staircase?
It's the seventh one
- I've walked today?
- No.
The one leading up is
covered with crud, right?
No one's been up that way
in a couple of weeks at least.
Look at the one leading
down to the basement.
Yeah, it's clean.
Ten bucks says it's
wet and dark down there.
Don't move!
Please.
I'm trying very
hard not to kill you.
Agent Sinclair, right?
Yeah.
You're Shepard. Shepard Crater.
You know who I am, then
you know about Resist First,
about my skill set.
I know that you walked
away from violence
20 years ago.
Why now?
Why Polk?
Because he doesn't deserve
the things that he says.
Ask him about Portland.
Ask him about people
that did anything
he asked them to.
People he sacrificed
like cannon fodder.
Portland?
The riots?
Who got sacrificed?
Shepard, who did he sacrifice?
Come on!
If Polk were standing
there right now,
would you put yourself
between him and a bullet?
Told you before.
That's our job.
Right, your job.
Well, that means that
you're better men than him,
which means your
lives are more valuable,
which means you shouldn't
be standing in front of that bullet.
I've warned you.
I've shown you.
Anything that happens
now isn't my fault.
Come on.
We're trying to understand
what it is you want, okay?
You got to help us
out a little bit here.
Give us one good reason
why you're doing this.
Okay?
Give us two reasons.
Three.
The bomb squad says
the detonators found
in Crater's crash pad
were for something
considerably bigger
than firecrackers.
So, what have we got
here, a shooter or a bomber?
Or both.
From Nevada.
Crater had a son by
a common-law wife...
Richard Sloan.
Now, in 2007, Sloan's
at a Trade protest,
and guess who's on the bullhorn.
A young Mr. Polk.
Yup. This is still Polk 1.0.
The protest ended in tear gas,
a whole lot of
arrests and six dead.
- What? The kid?
- No.
Richard Sloan got
arrested, and four days later,
he was stabbed to
death in a jail fight.
So Crater's putting it on Polk?
There were rumors Polk
planned the violence.
Okay, so the next day,
he has a press conference,
denounces his own people
for getting out of hand,
and then takes half of
the movement with him
to a much more
media-friendly Polk 2.0.
Okay. Now you hit him.
All right, I-I guess I've
missed you guys again.
Um...
it's-it's no big deal,
but if you could please
call me back, that
would be great.
Thank you.
You on a new diet?
New train of thought...
The flavor of the cosmos.
Ethyl formate.
Where's that train taking you?
You know, it's hard to say.
Right now, I am
suspended in this...
this maddening, thrilling moment
just prior to the
exhilaration of epiphany.
It's the intellectual itch about
to explode into a sneeze.
How about you?
Well, I already did my FBI
deed for the day, so, uh...
Yeah, you know what?
I'm gonna start banging
around on these boards.
Oh, hey, that was good
work you did on the optic flow.
Um, you and Amita.
Raspberry seeds...
They're arranged in
a Fibonacci sequence,
- are they not?
- Yes, they are.
Aren't you curious
about what's-what's
going on with, uh...
- with me and Amita?
- Well,
given your historical trends,
you factor in age,
career dynamics,
uh, concomitant
cultural pressures,
it's fairly self-evident
that one of you has
proposed marriage.
And assuming that as my given,
it's observable that neither
of you is as yet prepared
to share the outcome
of said proposal,
but it's a position
I intend to respect.
Richard Sloan.
He was killed in Portland, 2007.
Trade protest.
I could feel myself spinning
off in the wrong direction.
We were building
day-care centers,
reaching out to the homeless.
All anybody ever saw were
the overturned police cars.
That day it...
just got all out of control.
Did it?
You couldn't walk away
from The New Way,
'cause everyone would know
you were that flaky rich boy
you were trying so hard to
convince them you weren't.
But a tragic riot, well...
That gave you an excuse
and a new platform.
A way to go respectable and
keep your street fighter cred.
You've been reading the blogs.
I've been watching the video.
They can gas us,
they can club us.
They cannot ignore us!
Five seconds later, first
round of garbage cans
go through a
department store window.
Almost as if on cue.
And that guy looks like
he's just given the cue.
It's not exactly
the Zapruder film.
Seven people died.
It was a tragedy.
A tragedy that
led to a lot of good
and saved a lot more lives.
We can shut you down,
revoke your permit.
Eight hours before the rally?
A couple hundred cops try
to kick 10,000
people out of the park?
That guy would eat it up.
Play victim
for the cameras and blame
all the violence on the FBI.
Now, I don't see your boss
or the governor
or the mayor
having a big appetite
for that kind of risk.
All that crap you
said yesterday...
you believe any of it?
I believe all of it.
- Next time you offer to buy me lunch...
- Yeah?
Remind me to ask for specifics.
Well, I-I am a retiree
on a fixed income
in these rather
uncertain economic times.
Mmm, hot dog is good.
I'm gonna have to head
back in a few minutes. Okay?
Oh, I know you're
very busy. I just,
uh, I was just
checking in with you.
- Don is doing fine.
- I know that.
- I meant with you.
- Me?
Well, since your promotion,
you've been shouldering
more and more responsibility,
but you never complain, David.
Well, if you ever need
someone to complain to...
- Thanks. I'll keep that in mind, okay.
- Okay.
Actually, can I ask
you a question?
- Some...
- Yeah.
A... a father's point of view?
Well, I do have that.
Say that your son is killed,
a-and you know
who's responsible...
A-at least you think
you do, anyway...
And he's not getting justice,
so you decide to get it for him.
What else am I going
to do? It's my son.
See, my life stops
until he's spoken for.
Okay, all right.
You spend two years
planning to kill this guy, right,
- and you're waiting for...
- Well, I'm afraid
- I can't help you there, David.
- Why not?
Well, because...
I-I'm not a killer.
If I allow my rage
to change who I am,
then this man has
taken two lives.
SOG 4 is clear on Wilshire,
heading into the Frozen Zone.
You kind of liked
the Kool-Aid, huh?
Turning your life around,
using your own mistakes
to help other people.
Guess I'm a
sucker for that story.
Your fans.
When you lead, you
have to sacrifice your soul.
You make decisions
you know will haunt you,
sacrifice the few
to benefit the most.
Anyone who tells
you any different
hasn't studied history.
You know, I've studied
a little bit of history,
and I've led.
Think I'll try to hang
on to my soul, though.
I thought they were pulling
out all the garbage cans.
Garbage cans and mailboxes.
Yeah, we've got possible
explosives on Wilshire.
Pull off.
Get down!
Liz, talk to me.
There's a lot of
smoke and flame,
but almost no concussion.
It was more like pyro
than serious explosives.
Let's get the bomb
squad here anyway,
and let's start
shutting down that rally.
- We're going back to the hotel.
- You can't shut us down.
- That's what Crater wants.
- Yeah, well, then he won.
You heard what
happened at the rally, right?
Yeah, I was just
applying the attack
- to some war game scenarios I've been running.
- And?
Well, it makes perfect
sense with Crater's strategy,
which has been making no sense.
How so?
Crater and the FBI are playing
an imperfect information game
like dominoes.
Right, where they
only see their own tiles,
not their opponents'.
But Crater is playing checkers,
exposing not only
his own strategy
but the weaknesses in ours.
In the hangman's paradox,
there's one school of thought
that argues that the
problem itself is flawed.
Right, just because the
judge sets a rule doesn't mean
the prisoner should assume
he's going to follow that rule.
Every time Crater exposes
a flaw in our strategy,
he forces us to
behave reactively.
Closing the holes by
moving the resources
on the terms that he set.
Moving Polk toward
Crater's terrain.
He never intended
to kill him at that rally.
Put the gun down, Shepard.
Does he know you
used him as a decoy?
No.
Maybe you're not
that good a man.
I could tell you how all this
wouldn't bring your son back
and how you would have
made a hero out of him.
It just comes down to the fact
that we can't let
you pull that trigger.
I visited Richie in
jail two days be...
befo...
befo...
before...
I tried to bail him out, but,
uh, there were so many arrests
that it took them a
week to arraign everyone.
By then...
Richie told me Polk
planned the whole thing,
used them.
I've been carrying his
story around for two years.
So put down the gun and tell it.
Sure... sure.
The words of a ghost
through the voice of a...
of a what?
What?
What am I?
What?
You're a father that
lost his son, right,
that does not want
to lose himself.
I told Richie all those stories
about, uh, who I'd
been, what I'd done.
I told him...
I told him that a man was
the things that he believes in.
I did everything but
drive him to that rally.
Shepard, when everyone
else was arrested in 1978,
there's a reason
that you were not.
Okay, I don't think you
could have taken it that far.
Listen... you...
are not a killer.
I killed my son!
Polk was just...
He was just the thing I
didn't protect him from.
But it doesn't matter.
No, it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter at all.
Doesn't matter to anyone but me.
It matters to us, Shepard.
Come on.
Listen, just put the gun down.
Come back.
Please.
Ple...
Control, we need a medic.
Ambulance is on the way.
Nah.
My son's story
belongs to you now.
Hightower, Knox,
Newberry, Beiderman.
Each of their signatures
is a self-swallowing set,
a name that shorthands
a body of thought,
a life's work.
The question isn't who you are.
The question is: Who
did I turn out to be?
- Okay, you ready?
- Yeah.
- Hey.
- Hey.
- Hi.
- What's up?
We, uh, we have
something to tell you.
We're getting married.
We're getting married.
- Oh.
- You guys are the first to know.
After my parents, which is
my fault, because I wanted
Charlie to ask their permission.
It's just a formality,
but it's a family tradition.
Yeah, it's a
formality that required
a four-day game of
transatlantic phone tag,
which is why I've been a
little, you know, evasive.
- Oh, I see.
- But it feels
really good to get it out.
Uh, I actually...
I kind of almost
spilled the beans
more than a few
times, but, uh...
It's hard keeping a
secret, but it's kind of fun...
- It was fun.
- Keeping a secret.
I think we did good.
Congratulations.
What do you say?
I think we get the,
- the good stuff out, huh?
- Yeah.
What, you-you already knew?
- How did you already know?
- Your parents told me.
Come on, it's what
I do for a living.
- So I told him.
- All right, he might have mentioned it, but...
Come here, sister-in-law.
Congratulations.
Big secret, huh?
Who am I to you?
Are faded chalk marks
and scratches on the floor
the only evidence
that I was here,
or did some scribbled note,
some fragment of a proof
invert your perception
of the world...
♪ And then you cut ♪
even confirm it,
cementing what you knew
in your heart to be true,
with the balance of
left column to right?
♪ And everything ♪
What footprints
have I left behind?
Do they endure,
or has the ocean of discovery
washed them away already?
♪ Goes back to the beginning ♪
♪ Silence seizes
a cluttered room ♪
How many lives have I touched?
♪ Light is shed not
a breath too soon ♪
Have I touched yours?
♪ Never said it was good,
never said it was new ♪
♪ Muted whisper of
the things you feel. ♪