Meanwhile, Raylan is having an awkward conversation of his own, trying to apologize to Lindsey for having taken advantage of her in the heat of the moment. Lindsey is amused at Raylan’s posturing, as am I. Raylan, who’s so good at bantering with criminals, is so inarticulate with the ladies.
Luckily for Raylan, some out-of-town criminals save him from having to talk to Lindsey any more. He susses out from their tailoring that they’re from Detroit. Raylan speaks the language that criminals understand, banging one of them off Lindsay’s wooden bar, but he fails to pick up on the fact that these men aren’t reinforcements for Quarles. Quite the opposite, in fact!
Dickie Bennett is released from Trambell; the bright sunlight of outdoors reveals that the uneasy alliance between mohawk and mullet that sits atop Dickie’s head has been embellished by side patches that look like they were chewed away by demented hamsters. Dickie’s hair may well be the breakout star of this season of “Justified.”
Limehouse has sent Errol along with the cooler full of $46,000 and change to greet Dickie. Convinced (rightly) that Limehouse has the rest of Mags’s money somewhere, Dickie wants to become the Harlan millionaire he was always meant to be. He refuses both the money and Errol’s offer of a ride, preferring to call a cab. Unbeknownst to either Dickie or Errol, their exchange is being observed by Marshal Tim and Marshal Rachel. I’m excited to see both of them in the same episode!
Quarles is in the Harlan County Sheriff’s office, demanding that Napier repay the money he was given to win the election. Napier says he doesn’t have the money (live voters don’t come cheap, after all!) and Quarles gets to the real point of his visit: he wants the name of a drug dealer who pays protection money to Boyd. Quarles intends to rip off the drug dealer and raise some funds that way.
Dickie Bennett has a meeting with Rodney “Hot Rod” Dunham, the Memphis Pot Baron in the ruins of Mags’s old store. I kind of miss that place. He tries to convince Baron Rodney to help him storm Noble’s Holler at gunpoint and get Mags’s money back. Rodney, who is not stupid, nixes this plan so Dickie tries to get more intel on the exact whereabouts of the money.
Meanwhile, the Crowder clan has gathered at Johnny’s bar to discuss manner of Dickie’s inevitable demise at Boyd’s hands. Arlo seems to be back on his meds and a full functioning member of criminal society. Boyd says Dickie will live until he leads them to Mags’s money, but afterwards he’ll make sure Dickie dies slowly and painfully.
Quarles, pretending to be a harmless addict, arrives at the address Napier gave him. The dealers are too sure of themselves and their power to notice that Quarles has crazy eyes. He takes out one dealer with his wrist-gun and batters the other one to death (his drycleaning bills have to be astronomical!) before helping himself to their stash.
Dickie seeks out Ellen May, since he assumes she was a frequent visitor to Noble’s Holler back in the bad old battered-by-Delroy days. She tells him that she saw Limehouse bury the money under the church in Noble’s Holler and Dickie believes her story of being an eyewitness even though this particular legend has been circulating Harlan County for a while. Ellen May lays it on really thick and asks Dickie if she can be his queen when he runs things. For a few moments, I lose myself in the beautiful dream of King Dickie and his hair running Harlan County.
Meanwhile, Marshal Rachel and Marshal Tim combine to take down Hot Rod Dunham. Outside Mags’s store, Rachel is accosted by one of Dunham’s henchmen, who makes a number of racist and sexist comments. Rachel kicks a sharp field-goal right between the goalposts and as the henchman is painfully pondering the error of his ways, she enters the store. When Rachel offers the Dunham crew the choice between ratting out Dickie or prison, they laugh, until Tim suggests a third alternative: that he shoot Dunham in the head.
Boyd finds out about his dead drug dealers and pays a visit to their house. Is there no limit to Boyd’s skills? Here he plays detective, learning that the dealers were visited by a man who looked like a husky. (It was the eyes. Luckily for Boyd, Quarles wasn’t wearing sunglasses when he decided to kill those dealers.)
Upon Dickie’s return to Mags’s store, Dunham gets Dickie to tell him where he thinks the money is, right in front of the cell-phone so conspicuously displayed on the counter. Rachel and Tim are listening to the entire exchange. Since he’s been suborned by the Marshals’ service, Dunham refuses to take part in Dickie’s heist plans, leaving Dickie with knowledge but no muscle, and the Marshals with a location for the money they’re trying to seize. Outside the store, Dunham leaves in a huff, cutting off Marshal Tim’s thanks for his cooperation.
Sheriff Napier is having a truly horrid day—first the visit from Quarles, now a visit from Boyd who demands Quarles’s whereabouts at gunpoint. After all this, he may well be looking forward to the quiet life of an ex-Sheriff.
Dickie calls Errol and tells him he’ll go ahead and take the $46,000 Limehouse has been offering him. But even that is denied Dickie, as Tim and Rachel pop in to confiscate the cooler as ill-gotten gains, telling Dickie that if he can show by exactly what legal means that money was earned, he can have it all back. Poor Dickie! At least he still has his hair!
Wynn Duffy and the younger Detroit hitman arrive at Quarles’s motel, where they find poor Donovan, chained to the toilet with a ball-gag in his mouth. Meanwhile, Quarles watches Art and Raylan, who’ve staked out the motel room and had a great conversation about Raylan’s impending fatherhood, arrest the older of the two hitmen and drives away.
Quarles seeks Limehouse’s protection, offering Limehouse the drugs he stole from the dealers. Limehouse refuses, saying that he will accept cash after Quarles sells the drugs but until then, Quarles is on his own. Poor orphaned Quarles, where can he turn? Back to his unreliable ally, Sheriff Napier.
Sheriff Napier, still being held at gunpoint by Boyd, tells Quarles he can dispose of the drugs at Audrey’s.
Wynn Duffy, back in Lexington, is a man bereft of a master at the moment (Arnett is dead; Quarles is long gone on the Crazy Express). Duffy is intelligent enough to know that he can’t go it alone, so he calls Theo Tonin (played by Adam Arkin, who was a memorable bad guy on “Sons of Anarchy” and a memorable good guy on the late lamented “Life.”) Theo tells him that in order for them to do business together, Duffy will have to serve him up Quarles, dead (for $100,000) or alive (for $200,000.)
Quarles tries to sell the drugs at Audrey’s, but stops to call Wynn Duffy, who tells him about the price on his head. They’re still talking as Boyd emerges from his hiding place in Ellen Mae’s trailer with a tazer. Boyd orders the girls to strip Quarles and chain him to the bed, and then continues the phone conversation with Duffy, asking what the price on Quarles head is. Duffy suggests that he and Boyd cooperate in the matter of Quarles and warns Boyd that Quarles is dangerous and should be killed immediately.
Errol and Dickie are still in Mags’s store and we learn that Errol has decided to sell Limehouse out for being behind the times. He puts to rest Dickie’s absurd idea about the money being under the church and tells Dickie that he knows exactly where the money is. They need one other person to do the job right, though, and “his initials are Boyd Crowder.”
Now this I cannot wait to see!
Regina Thorne is an avid reader of just about everything, an aspiring writer, a lover of old movies and current tv shows, and a hopeless romantic.
Read all of Regina Thorne’s posts for Criminal Element.