CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 7 - Episode 21 - Ending Happy

Written by: Evan Dunsky
Directed by: Kenneth Fink
Special Guest Stars:
Wallace Langham as “David Hodges”
Peter Stormare as half of the quirky husband and wife team who run the brothel
Tony Award, Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner and Academy Award Nominee James Whitmore Guest Stars as resident of the Brothel community

Lorenzo “Happy” Morales, a washed-up boxer, floats dead in the pool of a legalized brothel. The brothel owner had bought Happy’s contract and kept him around to train, but he was lazy and stopped paying for sex with the girls. With a contusion on his skull, odd holes in his neck, punctures in his leg, and swollen genitals, Dr. Robbins sets to finding the COD.

 The CSIs find a crowbar bearing Happy’s DNA, and a local man brings out a photo of his wife that’s been punctured by a bloody arrow, the weapon responsible for the holes in Happy’s neck. The crowbar belonged to prostitute Dreama Little, and the arrow carries the prints of Connor Foster, a bar-hand in love with Dreama. As they confess, Dr. Robbins discovers the contusion was non-lethal and the arrow holes miraculously served as an emergency tracheotomy. Happy was undergoing anaphylactic shock, reacting to his allergy to shellfish despite not having eaten any.

The CSIs find shrimp tails with the brothel owner George “Binky” Babinkian’s prints, and his wife Doris’ lipstick. Binky was testing Doris’ fidelity by feeding her the shrimp, and that she unwittingly passed on the allergen in an oral-genital transfer.  At the lab, Happy’s tox screen comes back positive for snake venom, matching a syringe found in Dreama’s room.

 The CSIs put the timeline together: Binky fed Doris shrimp while Happy passes out after sex with Dreama and she and Connor inject his leg with venom. Connor dumps him in a culvert, but Happy returns and runs into Doris for an impromptu rendezvous. Later, Connor sees Happy alive but in anaphylactic shock, and shoots him with a crossbow. The enraged Happy seeks out Dreama only to receive a blow from a crowbar. He finally stumbles to a chair, and the leg snaps, sending him into the pool.