Forever Episode 1.05 The Pugilist Break

Henry and Jo investigate the death of a boxer, Raul Lopez, whose decaying body is found in his apartment in New York's Alphabet City. The needle in his arm suggests he overdosed. Henry has other ideas. The victim had been hit hard in the head. Henry orders Lucas to catch one of the rats that chewed at the body postmortem. There'd still be traces of the heroin that's supposedly in Raul's body.

Henry has a flashback to the 1890s. He worked as a doctor in the same tenement where Raul was killed. Back in those days, he did his best to help the poor. He met a young boy, Jacob, who had lost his father to illness. The child gave Henry a leather medical bag. His father had made it for him. Henry barely had time to appreciate the gift before he was beaten up by the henchman of the man who owned the tenement. In the present day, Henry is upset to learn that Abe sold the old medical bag.

Henry tries to purchase some heroin on the streets for research purposes only. He's promptly arrested. Lieutenant Reece is in the middle of telling Henry just how dumb his drug buy was when Lucas comes in with a cage full of rats. One of the furry little guys swallowed a ring that belonged to Raul. Henry later realizes that the victim recently fractured his hand in an injury known as the pugilist's break.

Raul's fiancée says he mentored kids so they wouldn't make the mistakes he made with drugs. Fabian North said Raul never missed a day volunteering at the rec center he runs. The owner of a local bodega tells a tale that backs up the story that there was bad blood between the victim and Tommy Delgros, a real estate developer looking to build in the neighborhood. Henry believes that Raul was murdered at a Delgros construction site. He tears up the playground area to find the victim's cell phone. The last person he called: Tommy Delgros.

Lou Spaganelli works for Tommy Delgros. He used to be a muscle guy for the mob. Henry and Jo catch Tommy making a handoff to Lou. They trace the latter man to the neighborhood rec center. The package is left inside. Henry and Jo show Fabian North his old friend's dead body after they find $50,000 in his locker. The money was to be used to convince the neighborhood folks to sell to Delgros. Raul broke his hand on Fabian's face when he punched him after learning he was in cahoots with Delgros.

Fabian confronts Tommy Delgros about how he had Raul killed. He's wearing a wire. While the police listen in on the conversation, Henry has a flashback to the day he learned that the boy who gave him the medical bag died. In the present day, he realizes the young kid who was being mentored by Raul was there the night he died. He knows who the killer is. The boy is kidnapped in broad daylight. The race is on to find him.

Henry and Jo realize that the boy may have been grabbed by the owner of the bodega who wanted to sell for big bucks. Yelling is heard from inside. BANG! BANG! Shots are fired from inside the store. The boy is safe, but the bodega owner is hit by a garbage truck while trying to escape. He's not going to make it. Henry pleads with him to fess up about how Tommy Delgros was behind Raul's murder, but the man dies before that can happen.

There's not enough evidence to get Tommy Delgros on murder, but he's still going down for his admission of bribery that was heard when Fabian was wearing a wire. Because of this, the rec center is safe and the neighborhood playground will be completed as promised. At the end of a long day, Abe surprises Henry by getting back the medical bag he sold before. This has Jo curious as to how these two know each other. That's a long story, though not quite the convoluted one the two men make up.