Bellick finds Westmoreland in his cell. “You got Marilyn back,” he grumbles. Bellick lights up a cigarette and then sits down in Westmoreland’s cell. He tells Westmoreland that over the years, they have formed a sort of kinship and that he’s always treated Westmoreland fairly. Westmoreland acknowledges that he’s appreciative of the respect. Bellick continues, nearly breaking down, “I’ve known Bob since he was 18. I got him this job. You can imagine how responsible I feel.” Westmoreland anticipates Bellick’s next question and tells Bellick that he can’t help him. If a con snitches, he “isn’t long for this world.” “If you don’t tell me who killed Bob before I leave this cell, our friendship goes with it,” Bellick warns. Westmoreland just bows his head. Bellick stands up. On his way out, he leans over and pets Marilyn. Farther down the tier, T-Bag and Trokey see Bellick leave. Trokey comments to T-Bag, “Westmoreland knows. And his jaw ain’t that strong.” Trokey walks back into his cell. When T-Bag turns around, he sees Abruzzi glaring down from the upper levels.
Alone, after hours in her office, Sara studies Michael’s files when Nurse Katie enters. “You stalker,” she says through a smile to Sara. Sara replies that she’s not stalking him, she just doesn’t understand how a man of Michael’s background landed in Fox River. Katie asks Sara why she’s so concerned with Michael. She ought to know from her experience that these cons are never what they seem. Sara replies, “He’s the one guy in here I think I can get through to.” Katie leaves, but Sara continues examining Michael’s file.
Just inside the exterior prison gates, Pope explains to Lincoln what happened to LJ’s family. “I’m sorry Burrows. Both of them were dead before the paramedics got there.” Lincoln asks about LJ. Pope tells him, “He’s missing. Police are treating him as a fugitive.” Lincoln asks to call LJ, but Pope has to deny the request. Lincoln explodes, frustrated that he can’t help his son. As Pope walks off, Lincoln looks down the main entry of the prison. A truck brings in a delivery in through a wide, slow-moving gate. Lincoln eyes the armed C.O.s who guard the door, then look past them, outside the walls – to freedom.
Inmates gather around Westmoreland’s cell, whispering and looking inside. Westmoreland returns from the showers and pushes past the crowd into his cell. There, he discovers Marilyn dead on his bunk. He lifts her into his arms and looks out the cell door to lock eyes with Bellick, who is tossing a bunk across the cell. Bellick just stares right back at him.
T-Bag strolls into Trokey’s cell with a simple question of allegiance. “We family, right?” Trokey answers, “Yes, we are.” T-Bag confides that he feels the heat of Bellick closing in and it’s only a matter of time before someone opens his mouth about Bob. T-Bag asks Trokey if he would take the fall for the murder, citing that his record is better than T-Bag’s, so maybe the punishment wouldn’t be so harsh. But Trokey says he can’t step forward, he won’t go down for murdering a hack, family or no family.
Westmoreland enters the guard’s break room with a plastic tub of clean dishes. He removes a coffee pot and sets it on top of the coffee maker. Then he wanders over to the guard’s lockers and opens up Bellick’s. Inside, he takes one cigarette out of a pack and sits down to smoke it. He looks up towards the wall where he sees a giant plaque housing photos of “Fox River Penitentiary Corrections Officer of the Month.” Bellick’s photo stares back at him. Westmoreland glares at the photo as he reaches for a lighter.
Outside on yard P.I., Michael slings a bag of concrete over his shoulder and hefts it to Lincoln who is mixing cement. “I need out. I gotta find him,” Lincoln says through his teeth. Michael promises they’ll find LJ as soon as they get out of Fox River. Lincoln questions when that will be. After all, Michael can’t get access to the necessary room. Michael does his best to keep Lincoln calm before a guard breaks up their chat. When Michael walks away, Lincoln looks up towards the service entrance again. He sizes up the guards standing nearby and waits for his chance to make a break for the gate. When C.O. Patterson turns his back to talk to a truck driver, Lincoln makes his move. Michael grabs a bag of concrete and turns back; Lincoln is gone.
Crouching behind a utility box, Lincoln watches the C.O.s for his chance to flee. Just as he stands to make his move, Michael grabs him and tackles him from behind, “You go out there, they will gun you down!” Michael is furious at what his brother almost tried. Lincoln doesn’t care anymore. He’s desperate. “Think about what you’re doing. You can’t help him if you’re dead.” The brothers are moments away from a fistfight when Patterson breaks them up. Before the C.O. can take disciplinary action on the two, alarms sound around the prison and a giant plume of gray smoke rises from the guard’s break room.
Westmoreland strolls the yard and Michael crosses from another direction. “Thanks,” Michael says. But Westmoreland smiles. “I didn’t do it for you.”
Pope watches over a fire inspector searching through the ash. “Found the source,” he tells Pope and presents him with a cigarette. Pope stares at the cigarette and looks over to Bellick with an accusatory eye. Before he can begin yelling at Bellick, a C.O. tells Bellick he has a visitor. It’s Cherry; he’s shaking like a leaf. “What do you want?” yells Bellick. Cherry gulps. “I know who killed Bob, sir.”
Bellick storms into gen pop with a team of C.O.s behind him. They beeline towards Trokey and T-Bag, the latter of whose face registers alarm before Bellick makes a sharp turn into Trokey’s cell. Bellick flips up Trokey’s mattress and finds the photo of Bob’s daughter. Trokey is quick to defend himself, “I have NO idea how that got there.” The C.O.s grab Trokey and begin dragging him away. Trokey screams back to T-Bag, “You set me up!” T-Bag plays innocent, even feigning outrage at Trokey’s accusation. T-Bag tousles Cherry’s hair and ducks back into his cell. Cherry lingers outside a look of self-loathing on his face.
Nick opens the door to a rustic cabin. As he and Veronica enter, the daylight pours in, illuminating the dust on the furniture and the spider webs on the wall. Nick explains that this was his father’s cabin. He had wanted a place that was completely “off the map.” No phones. A generator for electricity. A well for water. Nick assures Veronica that they are safe here.
Sucre, Abruzzi, Michael and Lincoln walk out for P.I. duty. On the other side of the fence, T-Bag jogs over, demanding to be part of the job. Abruzzi leans toward the C.O. accompanying them and says, “I don’t think so.” With the fall guy for Bob’s death now established, T-Bag is fearless. “Ah, John. You can't be serious. Not after that long illustrious history we shared together. All those nights in New York City, in California, in St. Louis. They were good times, weren’t they, John?” Michael shoots a look at T-Bag, aware that he intends to deliver on his promise to blow the plan. Michael quickly turns to Abruzzi. Abruzzi turns to the C.O..
They march into the burned out break room. T-Bag follows behind in his own blue P.I. jumpsuit. Bellick, still smarting from the implication that he is to blame for the fire, dishes out his orders. “All I gotta say is, this room’s your only priority now. It better be brand-spankin-new when you’re done. And if you’re thinking about getting cute, trying to trunk one of those tools out of here, Brady’s got the outlines of every single piece of hardware in there.” Bellick and the C.O.s exit. Michael waits a beat before sending the men into action. They pull back the burned carpet to reveal a drain a few inches in diameter that Michael insists, “Goes down four feet. Connects to the mainline below. All we gotta do is widen it...and we have ourselves an onramp to Route 66.” The men grab sledgehammers as Michael lays down a canvas tarp to muffle the noise. Sucre stands guard. Lincoln’s hammer swings over his head and crashes to the floor.
At night, LJ is tucked against a wall, cold and tired. LJ relives the moment with Kellerman in the backyard, “ Nine. One. One. Send. You really think you can push four buttons... before I push one?” But LJ wasn’t calling for help, he was pressing the photo button on his cell phone. Saved to his camera phone, is a picture of Kellerman. LJ looks at the man who murdered his family, then closes the phone.
In well-appointed office, Hale and Kellerman stand before the desk of the Garlic Cutter. She hands Kellerman a newspaper, and asks Kellerman to summarize he lead article, “ Evidently there was an explosion in a Gold Coast apartment this morning. Gas line. Everyone inside was killed instantly,” he tells her. When she asks about LJ, Kellerman lies, “He’s in custody.” A hint of trepidation shows on Hale’s face. The Garlic Cutter continues, “Now that it's yesterday's news, we can put it behind us, can't we? Move on to the next chapter of our lives. You’re not just doing this for me. Or my brother.” A door at the side of the room opens, another Secret Service Agent enters and addresses the Garlic Cutter, “They’re ready for you Madam Vice President.” She stands, looks at Hale and Kellerman. She says, “You’re doing it for your country.” She exits into the other room. She stands behind a podium where camera flashes and eager reporters consume her attention.
The sounds of popping flashbulbs intermixes with the crashing of sledgehammers as the P.I. group gets closer to Route 66.
Prison Break
Episode 109 - "Tweener"
Airdate: 10/31/2005
Water courses down Michael’s bare arm over a tattoo of an angel. Michael looks up when he hears a meek voice from the neighboring shower head pleading, “Help me.” The voice belongs to Cherry, the young scared inmate whom T-Bag has been controlling since his arrival. Before Michael can respond, T-Bag enters the shower room and signals for Cherry to move along. T-Bag takes Cherry’s place next to Michael, apologizing for his cellmate’s gregariousness. Michael tells T-Bag to give the kid a break. T-Bag hastens to remind Michael that he has no business meddling in his affairs, “Not when I’m so fully invested in your affairs.” Michael grits his teeth. “What’s between you and him, is between you and him,” Michael says as he walks out of the showers. He passes Cherry on his way out. “You’ve got to help me,” Cherry pleads. Michael ignores him.
“You’ve got to help me,” Lincoln begs Pope as he stands shackled in the warden’s office. Lincoln is desperate to find his son and actually asks Pope to allow him out of prison, under supervision, in order to track LJ down. The request stuns Pope, but Lincoln keeps pressing. The warden can grant furloughs in the case of a family emergency. Pope informs him that this situation does not qualify as a family emergency; his son is the primary suspect in a double homicide.
Michael walks up to the guard’s break room in his blue P.I. jumpsuit. He passes T-Bag out front who inventories supplies, clipboard in hand. Bellick is inside barking orders at Sucre, accusing him of being lazy. Bellick points to his many pictures on the Employee of the Month plaque as evidence of the success that hard work will bring. When Bellick exits, T-Bag gives the all clear signal by knocking on the front door. Abruzzi, Sucre and Michael grab their sledge hammers and continue hammering away at the concrete surrounding the drainpipe. Sucre notes that if the guards find the rubble, they’re busted. Michael replies, “That’s why we need to get rid of it, one piece at a time.”
In the yard, the gang stands at different positions, dropping handfuls of concrete and mashing it into the ground with their feet. The yard inmates look up when a Department of Corrections bus enters the sallyport. A twisted smile creeps over T-Bag’s face as he zeroes in on the inmates filing off the bus. “Freshmen.”
The prisoners on the bus take in their new surroundings. A young, tough-looking inmate, Tweener, steps of the bus. He squares his shoulders and warns the nervous looking inmate in front of him to put on his jail face. “ These crabs see you puckerin’, they gonna bitchify you in a heartbeat.” T-Bag makes a satisfied sound and walks off, Michael follows seconds later. C-Note walks to where Michael stood. He bends over and examines a chunk of concrete that Michael had just dropped.
Returning to the cell block, Sucre grins at Michael. “Looks like I gotta find something else to call you now… you ain’t a fish no more. You ain’t the newest con in the tank... no... more...” Sucre trails off as the inmates look up to the second tier in shock. They see Cherry, bed sheets tied around his neck, climbing over the railing. He’s ready to jump. Before Michael can do anything but shout, “NO!” Cherry throws himself off the tier. Michael turns away from the sight of Cherry’s dangling body.
Michael sits behind Lincoln in the chapel, plagued with guilt over Cherry’s suicide. Lincoln tells him that there was nothing he could do; once T-Bag got to him, Cherry’s fate was sealed. Michael disagrees. “That’s not how she raised us. A man’s down, you give him a hand.” Michael is inconsolable. The escape is his priority, but he wrestles with the question, “At what price?” Lincoln tries to focus Michael back on the task at hand. “My son is out there with a bull’s eye on his back. Do whatever you can to get us out of here…please,” Lincoln begs.
In the kitchen of Nick’s father’s remote cabin hideout, Veronica searches for coffee in the cabinets, but most of them are bare. She opens the final cabinet and sees a false back, slightly ajar. She slowly pulls it open to reveal a sizable stash of handguns. Nick walks up behind her and immediately senses her suspicion. He tells her that she needs to stop looking at him like he’s one of the bad guys. After all, Nick notes before storming out of the room, he’s putting his life on the line for Lincoln, who unlike his father, is “a scumbag criminal who just happens to be in prison for the one crime he didn’t commit.”
In the yard, C-Note walks the fence line, hunting for more evidence of what Michael’s up to. He scans the yard and finds Michael, covertly dropping fragments of concrete on the ground. Tweener arrives at the fence next to C-Note. “Y’all mind if I lamp with y’all, Cuzzo?” he asks. C-Note is not interested in fraternizing with this punk and barks at him to go somewhere else. Tweener tries his best to fit in, but the black inmates force him to leave. T-Bag stands in the distance, admiring Tweener’s “spunk.”
Abruzzi also ditches concrete rubble, dropping it into a drain when Bellick suddenly calls out to him. The men speak through the fence. Bellick gruffly informs Abruzzi that his monthly bribe from Philly Falzone hasn’t come yet. Abruzzi is at a loss as to why the payments would have stopped. Bellick looks Abruzzi in the eye, “I’m going back into the office at the end of the day. Checking my balance again. If it’s not where it’s supposed to be... all these privileges you got? They’re gone.”
