Castle (TV series)/Recap/S2/E13 Sucker Punch

The team investigates the death of Jack "Jackie" Coonan, an Irish Mobster who worked for the Westies. Evidence points to the blademan of the Westie's rival, the Latin Kings, but he was too short to deliver the stab wounds to kill him. And since no one in either mob is talking, Castle and Beckett need to find other avenues. They find one in Coonan's girlfriend, Molly, who gives them a key to a bus locker filled with self-help DVDs of one Johnny Vong. Except they're not filled with DVD's, but heroin. Questioning Vong, the team discovers his act is just that, and that he needed whoever Coonan was trying to bust to take his act national. But he's so scared of him that he'd rather clam up than be killed. Then Beckett discovers why, after Dr. Clark Murray, Castle's Dr. Death, makes a startling conclusion: The man who killed Coonan also killed Beckett's mother.

The shock sends Beckett into a deep contemplative state, and it takes a long talk with her father and a short talk with Castle to get her back on the case. They get Vong to talk, and he gives them Jackie's brother Dick, who he says hired a professional named Rathborne to kill Jackie. Dick, confident that they have no evidence, gets to the heart of why Beckett is chasing this case and makes her a deal: he gives up his assassin, and he gets immunity in his brother's murder. The deal goes down: Coonan contracts Rathborne to put a hit on Vong, with a $100,000 fee for the service. Beckett balks at that payment, but Castle ponys it up himself. However, the plan fails: Rathborne doesn't show, and Dick Coonan's a free man. Except that he specifically said her killer when Beckett never told her the gender of who she lost...and he's not covered for her murder. Coonan immediately grabs Castle and uses him as a hostage for safe passage out of the precinct. But Castle headbutts him in the nose, giving Beckett just enough time to shoot him. Unfortunately, the shot is fatal, meaning Beckett still doesn't know who hired him to kill her mother.

Tropes:

 * Blatant Lies: The Latin Kings' blademan who, after Beckett and Castle literally walk in on him having the shit kicked out of him by a rather angry member of the Westies, blithely attempts to persuade them that he fell. And hit his badly-battered eye on a door. And put his hand on a grate to steady his fall.
 * Call Back: Dr. Clark Murray is a consultant to Castle, whom he asks to work clandestinely on Beckett's mother's case in "A Death in the Family".
 * Cool and Unusual Punishment: Castle's proposed strategy for getting Vong to talk is to "force him to watch Paris Hilton Videos." The actual punishment they use is simply letting him go, knowing there's a man out there who'd kill him if he knew he was talking to the cops.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: The Westies may do a lot of bad things, but they do not sell drugs.
 * Failure Is the Only Option: Subverted in that Beckett does find out who killed her mother. The failure shifts to who hired him to kill her.
 * Fauxreigner: Johnny Vong. He's an MIT-educated Californian who pretends to be an immigrant because Rags to Riches stories sell better (though, in his case, not well enough to keep him from making deals to improve his profit margin).
 * Fingertip Drug Analysis
 * Gallows Humor: "We who are about to die salute you."
 * Heroic BSOD
 * I Never Said It Was My Mother
 * Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Johnny Vong breaks his faux Vietnamese accent once he hears Jackie Coonan's dead.
 * Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: Castle is made hostage yet again...and gets out of it, yet again. This one is nearly played straight by Montgomery, had Castle not headbutted Coonan.
 * Ten-Minute Retirement
 * Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Inverse: The plan to catch Rathborne is spelled out and goes horribly awry.