Burn Notice Bad Blood

The only clue Carla left on the crossword puzzle for Michael Westen was “Tidy Pelican” in Lumus Park, which turned out to be a garbage can near the chess tables. Victor, Michael Westen’s new “wrangler,” said he thought that "the clue would just go right over your head." In sunglasses and the same kind of shirt that Sam wears, Victor exuded self-importance and arrogance from every pore. He told M that he was "supposed to make sure the bronco’s don’t buck or wander too far from the pen." So M summarized: "like a rodeo clown." Sitting at the chess boards, Ms voice over said that "when meeting a new person it’s sometimes best to open with an aggressive move – you learn about people when you make them play defense." So, when Victor handed him a phone and ordered him to "keep it with you at all times" he shoved it back and basically said "no." He grabbed Victor’s wrist and held his radial artery hostage with the sharp end of the queen’s crown. Victor calmly clicked an under-the-table weapon’s hammer and held Ms groin hostage in return. He announced that “the people we work for are in to the whole carrot and stick thing – and I’m the stick.”

 

Sam, now on his own after the "whole Veronica thing", had purchased a new, pre-owned Buick with his pension money. M told Sam about Victor and asked him to go stay with his mother, Madeline, to body-guard her. So Sam feigned depression over the loss of Veronica and Madeline said “come on over.” When he got to Madeline’s, he got the drop on Ricky Watkins who was lying on the floor and seemed to be planting a bug. Actually, Ricky was really helping hook up Madeline's stereo. His brother Andre, who M knew, was doing 25 to life up in Starke and Ricky had now become the head accountant for Sweet Valentine Enterprises (a company owned by a gangster-thug, rapper and hip-hop mogul calling himself Valentine.) Ricky told M that he was being set up for the embezzlement of $2 million out of a “charity” account by Valentine’s second in command, Eddie Ash. Ricky offered M $10,000 to break in and get Eddie’s "other" set of books. In the middle of staking out Valentine, Victor called M and demanded they meet at the beach. When M got there it was simply “were doing a job,” just to let M know that he was being tracked by his phone. When M tried to remove the bug he found a note tucked inside specifically to him stating that he better not remove it. So, M merely put the tracking phone on call forwarding and left it home.

 

Fiona said that now she was on the “open market,” i.e. M was not paying her the attention she wanted, she needed new shoes and wanted M to now pay her for her “tactical support.” They called in a bomb threat to the building next door to Valentine's building so M could break in to Eddie’s office. It worked, but he only found that Eddie had prospectuses from several money-laundering business opportunities. M had to escape out the false ceiling when the guards came back in. Plan "B" was to con Eddie into laundering his stolen money with M under a cover ID. Barry set up an introduction to Eddie for M through intermediaries and Sam set up the cover ID of Jimmy Glynn a real estate developer. While M was closing the laundering deal with Eddie, Victor showed up railing about M leaving his tail-phone at home and deliberately blew the deal with Eddie. Obviously he’d been stalking M to the point that he knew to switch into a Boston accent and call him Jimmy Glynn. Afterwards, M needed to take more time to rehabilitate his cover ID with Eddie; so, Fiona had to keep the nervous Ricky busy with conversation about discounts on new shoes. When they next met, M blamed his FBI tail on Eddie, which got him to think that the FBI was now closing on them both. M also had to have Fiona prevent a hit on Ricky at his house which was put on him by Eddie.  Then Sam and Madeline pretend to be FBI surveillance in order to make Eddie more nervous.

 

Back with Victor, he explained that M was to be the driver/lookout for a heist of something that would fit in the trunk of Ms car. So M altered the car's trunk into an x-ray device so he could find out what would be in the wooden crate.  Finally, M manipulated Eddie into coercing him into moving his money off-shore; but, M said that he wouldn't do it until after Ricky was dead because otherwise it would be too risky. M had to set Eddie up to go kill Ricky himself, of course using a gun which wouldn't fire and while Fiona had “arranged” for Valentine to be listening in the back room. When Valentine heard Eddie confess then pull the trigger several times, Valentine took Eddie out on his boat and didn’t bring him back. Ricky offered to pay M but was refused until Fiona snorted, obviously saying that she wanted paying for new shoes.  Finally, at the heist with Victor, M used incendiary rounds in a shotgun to thwart the security guards by setting their tires on fire then blowing up some barrels of inflammatory liquid. He then had Fiona develop the x-ray which revealed that they had just stolen a  Russian Dragunov sniper rifle.  Then, Madeline disclosed to M that she had figured out why Sam was at her house and thanked him for protecting her; but, she said, "the next time you think I need babysitting you should just tell me" (yeah right).