It’s May of 1997 now, and we fade up on a Canadian Home Shopping Network host giving us some biographical background on Marilyn Miglin, who started out as a dancer and transitioned into cosmetics when the hot stage lights kept melting her face. Her face here belongs to the great Judith Light, still her gloriously bad-ass self beneath an era-appropriate immobile inverted ziggurat of Executive Lady Of A Certain Age hair. Marilyn’s co-host introduces Marilyn’s new line, Pheromone, a direct – and, for the show’s metaphorical purposes, convenient – choice of brand name, and Marilyn is pretty pleased with her grand unifying theory of fragrance: “Perfume is about our bodies talking to each other without words.”

Marilyn’s not able to talk to anyone at her house, though; later, she’s at an airport pay phone, getting the machine. “Lee, I don’t know where you are,” she says, frowning; evidently she expected him to pick her up, but she can’t wait any longer. I mostly note the bit of dialogue above because of the Edie McClurg levels of Chicago torque on the word “are.” The camera studies Marilyn’s expensive jewelry as she says she’s going to catch a taxi…

…and then, when the taxi’s dropped her off, the expensive-looking exterior of the Miglins’ townhouse. Marilyn and her array of bags stand in the manicured mulch beside the sidewalk, apparently expecting Lee – and even if you haven’t “read back” on the case and Cunanan’s non-Versace victims, you’ve probably figured out based on passing mentions of Miglin in prior episodes (and, you know, having watched TV before) that Lee is Marilyn’s husband, and is dead – to rush out the front door full of apologies.

This does not happen, although Marilyn gives Lee ample time to correct his oversight when she flings the front door open and stands expectantly on the stoop. Nothing. She bustles inside with her things and calls, “Lee?” as the camera ensures we note the long vistas of the house; the predominantly pale-neutral color scheme of the décor; and the museum-esque tidiness of the rooms before cutting to a pint of chocolate ice cream melting insolently on the counter. Marilyn is brought up short by this, and returns to the front door to look warily inside. Passing neighbors pause to check her okay. “Something’s wrong,” she asserts, and the neighbors follow her inside. Spotting the ice cream, the Coke can beside it, and Marilyn’s clenching at them, Mr. Neighbor seems to agree that something’s off here, and tells the women to wait outside and call the police.

Mr. Neighbor begins his walkthrough of the house, calling for Lee. I find it odd initially that he doesn’t stop to salivate over the Miglins’ built-ins

but that’s because he’s spotted the “centerpiece” before I have: a ham with a butcher knife buried in it, left unwrapped on the desk in the study. Mr. Neighbor climbs the stairs to the master bedroom – more white, cream, and pale gold – and finds a disorderly master bath with a telling ring of mung around the bathtub. Next, an ankle-height shot set-up watches Mr. Neighbor hustle down the stairs to the basement; behind the door he opens with some trepidation is a chapel, and it too is messy. He has nothing to report to the women waiting at the front steps, but CPD is pulling up, and they do their own walkthrough, discovering bloody clothes in the bathroom and asking if anyone’s checked the garage. Mrs. Neighbor offers to go with the uniformed officer.

Inside, Marilyn sits, rigid, and drums her fingers in an odd way, almost like she thinks she’s supposed to have a nervous tic under the circs but isn’t really feeling it. She stares at The Telltale Ice Cream.

Mrs. Neighbor was told to stay in the alley, but sticks her head into the garage to report that the Miglins’ Lexus is missing. The uniform frowns and walks around the end of what looks like a vintage Corvette, then stops.

Inside, Marilyn hears Mrs. Neighbor’s wail of horror, and flinches. We push in on her as Mrs. Neighbor rushes into the room behind her and brings up short. As if to reflect the falling apart of everything, the cosmetics titan’s lipstick is feathering as she whispers, “I knew it.”

After the title card, it’s one week earlier, at a fundraiser for Jim Edgar for governor. The Miglins exposit for us via telling their tablemates that they’re devoted not just to one another but to one another’s careers – he helped her paint her first storefront – and Lee gives Marilyn the credit for their successes. Lee is played by Mike Farrell, who’s had some later-in-life roles the last few years in which he’s impressed; I’m thinking particularly of the Law & Order: SVU with Brenda Blethyn and Clea DuVall. I’ve been waiting for him and Light to show up in this season, because I like them both, and I like that the less “famous” victims are given a decent amount of the script’s attention and dimensioning here. With that said, by the time the groundwork of the marriage and the Miglins’ rise is laid, it’s nearly 20 percent of the episode’s runtime gone, and I wonder if this shouldn’t move a little faster. Anyway, after Edgar jokingly asks Marilyn never to run against him, Marilyn gives a lovely speech introducing Lee, but also about him, that he was one of seven coal miner’s kids who started out selling pancake mix out of his trunk. He’s a real-estate mogul, but also her partner in every sense, a great father and “a perfect husband.” Well: yeah. In the wings, Lee looks thoughtful as Marilyn calls him “the American dream.”

At home, Lee observes that the dinner seemed to go well, and thanks Marilyn for her effusions: “I wasn’t expecting that.” She’s heading upstairs, but stops to ask if he remembers what color they painted the Oak Street store she mentioned earlier. “What color?” he stalls. “That was years ago.” “We painted it pink,” she says, regarding him for a moment before going up. His smile fades; he closes his eyes and sighs briefly. Not sure what’s intended here, although I will say that you remember the color of every paint job you do yourself, especially if you are an impatient painter who sucks at it, like me. I’m not saying I detour past the paint-chip display at Lowe’s to flip off Benjamin Moore’s Harvest Gold every time I’m at that store? But I’m not saying I don’t. Forest Truffle can also suck it, while I’m up. So yeah, to me it’s somewhat striking that he’s failing this test, if in fact that’s what it is, and I don’t know why she’s administering it – he’s inattentive? she’s concerned about his mental acuity? we’re supposed to take something symbolic from the “pink” aspect?

Upstairs, Marilyn slathers her face with cold cream and begins taking her face off. I kept thinking of the end of Dangerous Liaisons, Glenn Close wiping her mouth so roughly.

Marilyn removes her lashes and, almost absently, dabs behind her ears and at her cleavage with scent while staring at her denuded face in the vanity mirror.

In the study, Lee’s on the phone: “No no, it’s just so unexpected!” He doesn’t seem alarmed when Marilyn comes in, looking curious, and tells the caller, “Those arrangements are fine! …And not before that time.” He adds that “we can discuss this at the office,” and hurries the caller off the phone; pretty good cover, but it’s obviously Cunanan on the other end. Marilyn cocks a brow: “Who was that?”

Cut to a sweaty Cunanan hanging up a pay phone, and to me realizing how…restful, for lack of a better word, the episode has felt without him up to this point, even knowing we’ve just seen Miglin scheduling his own death.

The man himself pads into the bedroom, where Marilyn is already installed with a sleep mask. He peers over at her, then covers her hand with his. She regrips so it’s more handholding, less protection.

As a red Jeep approaches Chicago, Marilyn gets ready to leave for Toronto. She asks what Lee’s plans are, while she’s away; he talks about finishing her “accounts,” catching up with a Paul…he’s sort of vague, and half-staggers to sit down on the stairs, concluding that he’ll go to work, it’s what he does: “Isn’t that what I always do?” Concerned, she sits beside him and asks what’s going on. “If you’re in one of your blue moods, why don’t you come with me?” she says. She likes it when he’s there. I like it when an actor commits to an accent; Light is currently in the middle of Pennsylvania somewhere, I think? The Chicago leaks out of the performance pretty steadily, sad to say, and by episode’s end she’s firmly back in Judge Donnelly territory…speaking of SVU. Anyway: Lee seems surprised to hear that Marilyn likes him to come along; bemused, she says of course she does. He tells her he’s very proud of her: “You know that, don’t you?” She surreptitiously checks her watch and asks if he wants to come or not; he heaves a sigh and considers it for a split second, then says no, he’s “being silly.” He gives her a kiss and helps her gather her things.

Andrew Cunanan pulls the red Jeep into a parking garage, cranks the seat back, and settles in for a nap as Astrid Gilberto’s “A Certain Sadness” starts up on the soundtrack and, at the Miglinhaus, Lee seats himself at Marilyn’s vanity with a couple fingers of bourbon and stares at himself in the mirror…then dabs some of her Pheromone behind his ears. He sips his drink and steels himself.

Later, he heads downstairs to the basement chapel and lights a candle. Kneeling before the cross, facing the picture of Jesus, he shakes his head and crosses himself. His eyes fill. “I try,” he tells his God. “I. Try.” It’s quite affecting, and yet my eye is drawn over to what appears to be a conversation pit in the back of the shot.

Very odd juxtaposition that must be true to life or they’d have scotched it as distracting.

Cunanan parks around the corner and heads to the Miglinhaus. Inside, at Cunanan’s knock, Lee zhuzhes himself sartorially and mentally at the hallway mirror, then answers the door and hurries Cunanan inside, presumably so neighbors don’t see him admitting a young gentleman at night. He hugs Cunanan warmly. Cunanan stands kind of limply; his eyes are a blank as he stiffly raises his arms to return the hug.

Cunanan’s stuffing a huge sammich into his piehole as Lee makes small talk: he didn’t expect Cunanan to be in town. What brings him to Chicago? “Work,” Cunanan grunts, departing the kitchen with the sandwich and no plate or even a paper towel to catch crumbs. Trash. Tellingly, Lee makes sure to wipe the counter before hastening after Cunanan, hesitantly telling him that “a little warning” would have been “useful,” as it’s dumb luck he’s alone in the house. Cunanan asks when Marilyn’s back; Lee naively tells him. “We have some time!” Cunanan chirps. Lee, whose combined eagerness and lack of street smarts are killing me right here, asks if he can stay the night. Cunanan, through a mouthful of sandwich, garbage-persons, “Can you shut the blinds?” Lee goes to do just that.

Lee’s in the study, getting out some drawings and saying he’s wanted to “share this” with Cunanan for a while. Cunanan leans in the doorway, rummaging in his bag for his gun, and as Lee is laying out the drawings, we go to a first-person-shooter POV as Cunanan levels the gun at the back of Lee’s head. “The Skyneedle!” Lee nerds sweetly, and whether Cunanan is touched by his enthusiasm or thinks it’s too easy a shot, I don’t know, but he stashes the gun back in his pack as Lee goes on about it being the tallest building in the world once it’s built, 125 stories, 1,952 feet. This was a real project; it was never built. The Freedom Tower would have made the conversation we’re about to hear irrelevant in the second place, but: Cunanan confirms that the idea is to build it right near Sears Tower, with an observation deck that will look down on the Sears Tower’s – thereby pretty much putting the Sears Tower out of business, at least from a tall-building-tourism standpoint. Lee never thought of it like that. After a pause, Cunanan snorts, “Please. That’s exactly how you thought of it.” Lee shrugs that, actually, he saw himself mingling amongst the families visiting it, and eavesdropping anonymously on their excitement.

But this version of pride in accomplishment is alien to Cunanan – as are actual accomplishments, really, which is why he has to shit on it, asking if it’s ever going to happen. Has he broken ground on the project? Lined up the financing? Not yet, Lee admits, and Cunanan makes a lemon face and booms, “The Miglin Tower!” No no no: it’s the Skyneedle. It’s supposed to inspire people to “reach up – it’s about that, it’s not about me.” Here again, though, Cunanan’s narcissism and his rage at those he perceives as “better” than he makes him unable to tolerate a loftier explanation, and he sputters that it’s the tallest building in the world, it’s the Lee Miglin Tower! Why else is Lee showing him these plans? That he cares about Cunanan and wants to share something he’s stoked about isn’t something Cunanan can register; to him, it’s a power play, and he brats that he doesn’t want to spend the whole night “listening to how great you are.” Lee looks at him with confusion as Cunanan continues snitting about the “great Lee Miglin Tower,” inspiring schoolchildren for eons to come, but instead of suggesting that, for a guy who clearly hasn’t bathed for several large states’ worth of driving, a “the customer is always right” approach is not just indicated here but required, Lee just says they don’t have to talk. “No, we don’t,” Cunanan says, more agreeably, but he’s not done being a twat, smirking that he knows what Lee’s doing: he’s trying to impress Cunanan – to convince himself that this is “more than a business transaction,” that there’s a genuine attraction there. Lee confines himself to pointing out that Cunanan could pretend, too. Cunanan keeps that fatuous challenging smile pasted on, then leans in for a passionate kiss, during which the camera dwells unnecessarily on Lee’s wedding band. Lee’s never been kissed like that, has he? No, Lee says, fairly trembling with desire. “It feels like I’m alive!” Oh, Lee. Cunanan points out that “most escorts” don’t kiss, then crazies that he’s not like most escorts; he’s not like “most anybody.”

Well, that’s true, strictly speaking. “I could almost be…a husband. A partner!” Lee kind of cringes, which probably won’t help him, as Cunanan goes on, “I could almost be. I really could, almost.” He’s probably trying to elevate his own status in the transaction, but Lee misunderstands, thinking he’s rubbing it in more, and says he knows it’s not real; he’s not a fool. But Cunanan makes it seem soreal. “Good,” Cunanan whispers, delighted, then proposes they “go out.” Where are they going? To make a mess, Cunanan says, leading Lee to the garage, and he doesn’t want Lee to worry about it.

In the garage, he shoves Lee up against the wall. “I’m in control now.” Lee seems a little concerned, but mostly titillated, and the proportions don’t change when Cunanan open-up-and-say-ahs a gardening glove into Lee’s mouth. Lee’s little moans of excitement make this particularly difficult to watch, especially when he reaches for Cunanan but is pushed away so Cunanan can search the tool table for masking tape. As Cunanan carefully wraps Lee’s head, Lee starts to look more puzzled than turned on, and when Cunanan’s done, Lee is lowered to the floor and bound with an extension cord while Cunanan burbles about Lee’s dominance in the outside world and submission “in here.” The torture is actually listening to Cunanan blather on about inverting the natural order, in my opinion, never more than when Cunanan smugs that Lee likes “being pathetic, don’t you.” It’s really that Cunanan doesn’t like it and can’t escape feeling it, so he has to humiliate Lee fully, crawling up his body and throttling him for a few seconds, then breaking Lee’s nose with the heel of his hand. Lee emits a muffled wail. Blood leaks out from under the tape as Cunanan announces that he’s killed two people very close to him, hard though it surely is to believe of “intellectual Andrew,” “well spoken, well dressed.” Snort. Cunanan makes a point of blaring into Lee’s ear that he knows Lee isn’t wearing his hearing aid (one more tiny humiliation before the final string of big ones), so he’ll speak very clearly: when “they” find Lee’s body, he’ll have ladies’ drawers on and be surrounded by gay porn, so that “everyone will know” the “great Lee Miglin is a sissy.” This isn’t about Lee at all, of course; it’s about Cunanan feeling like he doesn’t exist, and as Lee continues to groan, Cunanan winds up by asking tearfully which Lee fears more, “death, or being disgraced?” Lee sobs. Cunanan sits back and says, as if realizing it for the first time, “You know, disgrace isn’t that bad – once you settle into it.”

He gets up and heaves a bag of Quikrete over to Lee, panting, “Concrete can build. And concrete can kill.” So on top of everything else, Cunanan’s a C-plus writer. Roger that. He heaves the bag over his head and slams it down on Lee’s torso, then shoves it off, grabs some kind of screwdriver from the pegboard, and stab-falls onto Lee’s chest.

Later, Cunanan tools through the house, almost artfully spattered in blood. He whomps the ham down on Lee’s neatly arranged Skyneedle plans and crams meat into his mouth. Expressionlessly, he picks up the drawing of the building and tears it exactly in half, right through the tower; cut to him burning it on the chapel’s altar. The hold on the shot of the hellish flames oranging his face and dancing in his eyeglass lenses is maybe a little long.

CPD Superintendent Rodriguez marches through the press scrum at the front of the townhouse, not acknowledging questions about whether Lee knew the intruder. The crime-scene techs pause at the sight of the boss, but he tells them to carry on as he looks down on Lee’s corpse, now crimson with blood thanks to torture (apparently with a handsaw) and surrounded as “promised” with porn magazines. Rodriguez’s question about “the underwear” lets us know the rest of Cunanan’s threat was also carried out. Rodriguez sighs as the lead tech says Lee had no defensive injuries to his hands, but every single rib is broken, and says he wants no leaks; the official story is that “an elderly gentleman has been killed.”

Elsewhere, Marilyn is straightening family pictures on the mantel as a guy in a suit – presumably J. Paul Beitler, Lee’s partner – quavers that “this” had nothing to do with their business. Marilyn’s like, duh, of course it didn’t, and as Rodriguez enters, doffing his hat, she begins listing with grim determination everything Cunanan took: money, leather jackets, suits, the Lexus, the “unusual” gold coins Lee gave as gifts, a dozen pairs of black socks. It was a “robbery,” no question. Rodriguez keeps his face impassive in this gust of denial, and also when Marilyn announces to Beitler that she knows who SupRod is; she didn’t call 911, she called a police commander she knows. “We’re all here for you,” SupRod merely says, and as Beitler’s face works in the back of the shot, Marilyn announces, “Lee was alone in the house. He was vulnerable. It was an opportunistic attack.” The burglar could have snuck up on Lee, if he didn’t have his hearing aid in!

Beitler hangs his head as SupRod suggests talking later. “Talk now! Why not!” Marilyn says. SupRod gently broaches the “homosexual pornographic magazines” near Lee’s body. Marilyn barely reacts, blinking and saying they must belong to the killer. SupRod has an almost reflex cop response to that theory, observing that that would mean the killer brought the magazines with him – i.e., knowing his target/that he would need them; having been invited. It took me a minute to register the implication, but Marilyn’s right on top of it, and is not having it, gritting that she’s not interested in the murderer’s “intentions.” Catch the guy; don’t talk to her about what might “or might not” be going through his mind. “I understand,” SupRod says. Marilyn squints: “Do you.” SupRod, now a little worried: “I believe so.” Marilyn, without breaking eye contact: “Dollars. Jewelry. Socks. Suits. That’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me.” He won’t take her good name – their good name. They worked too hard making it, together.

Rodriguez is likely relieved to escape into the crime scene, then, confirming that Cunanan not only took a bath and shaved, but appears to have slept over. He clenches, looking at the bed, as the lead tech says, “He must have known that Marilyn was coming home.” He clenches again when he finds two of his detectives chowing sandwiches in the downstairs hall, and politely informs Marilyn – who is seated beside her son, Duke, and now wearing a different suit, so the timeline here is a bit shuffly – that she doesn’t have to feed his officers. She chirps that a neighborhood restaurant wanted to help, and donated the food. Then she introduces Duke as “a Hollywood actor!” (hee/aw), and mommily upsells his career as an abashed Duke is like, “‘Aspiring,’ Mom.” He does mention he’s in Air Force One, but notes on Marilyn’s proud “He plays a pilot!” that there are a lot of pilots in the film. Heh. Miglin Jr.’s film career didn’t go much of anywhere, possibly because the murder of his father took him off track, possibly because most film careers…don’t; Cunanan apparently suggested to several people that he and Duke knew each other and were working together, a contention the Miglins have firmly denied.

We cut away from this awkwardness to a uniform finding Cunanan’s Jeep, festooned with parking tickets, around the corner. She peers in to see a map of Chicago and a copy of Out Magazine, and runs a plates check. A hit comes right back: it’s stolen, and linked to the homicide of Jeff Trail. And there’s more good news in terms of leads, as two detectives tell SupRod at the cop shop, namely that Lee’s car phone turns on whenever the car is turned on, which lets them track the car’s location. Based on the pings to date, it looks like he’s heading to New York. SupRod wants this intel kept in a cone of silence – the FBI, them, that’s it – and the three of them exult that wherever Cunanan goes, “we got ‘im.” (Ron Howard, wearily: “They don’t.”)

NYC’s Versace storefront. Cunanan, attired in one of Lee’s suits, I guess? Although Mike Farrell is much too tall for them to fit him properly, but that’s one of those things fictionalized narrative never gets right about borrowed clothing – anyway, he regards himself smugly in the shiny sign on the door and goes in to do some browsing. There’s a home-goods display set up on a dining-room table, and as he’s about to pull up one of the chairs and leaf through South Beach Stories by Gianni and Donatella, the chair makes an echoey skrronnnk along the floor. Darren Criss nails the jumpy “did anyone see that” reaction on Cunanan’s part; it’s just a perfect, tiny smackdown of the striver, satisfying to a viewer who has come to enjoy Cunanan’s discomfiture but also a nod to the hundreds of these tiny mortifications that may have contributed to his becoming a monster. A graffiti-ish rendering of Gianni in the book shifts the soundtrack from peppy retail jazz to the foreboding strings of Cunanan’s madness.

SupRod asks the assembled at the Miglinhaus if they’ve heard of Cunanan. Marilyn says no; who is he? He’s an escort, SupRod tells them (Beitler looks nauseated, and I honestly can’t tell if the actor is just trying to register in a scene dominated by Judith Light’s charisma; if we’re supposed to deduce that Beitler either knew for sure or strongly suspected that Lee may have had extracurricular desires; or if he didn’t know but is now homophobically revolted). Cunanan is wanted in connection with two homicides in Minnesota. “What does this have to do with Lee?” Marilyn asks. Cunanan stole a Jeep from one of the victims; it was found a block from the Miglinhaus. SupRod puts a mugshot of Cunanan on the coffee table. Marilyn says confidently she’s never seen him before; Duke looks uncomfortable, though it’s hard to know how to take that. The camera pushes out from the side of Marilyn’s face to focus on Duke’s, and on Duke hanging his head, as SupRod says reluctantly that they have to understand the case is no longer solely a CPD matter, that the FBI is now involved. Marilyn says all they care about is catching Lee’s murderer. Beitler stares straight ahead, clenching his jaw. Marilyn looks at him and at Duke all, “…What?”

Outside, SupRod is told that Cunanan’s on the move, but the cell phone towers have tracked him to outside Philadelphia. PPD and the FBI are “closin’ in.” SupRod looks over his shoulder at the living room and mutters, “I hope they’re ready.”

Beitler lets himself into the master bedroom just in time for Light’s Emmy reel, as Marilyn updates her blush and snaps that she knows what they’re saying about her. Why hasn’t she cried? Where’s the grief, the emotion? She didn’t love him. “How could a woman who cares so much about appearances appear not to care!” Beitler, probably thinking about the “allegations,” sighs that people say all kinds of nasty things at a time like this. “Especially at a time like this,” Marilyn adds, when you’re weak, when you’re down. She scrabbles around on the vanity top for a lip pencil and snaps, “How dare they say our marriage was a sham,” and points at Beitler’s reflection with the lipliner: “Lee and I – shared our whole – lives.” Breaking down, she talks about the adventures they shared, and how he rescued her when she was lost. “I…loved him,” she weeps. Beitler approaches and puts a hand on her arm. “I loved him very much!” Marilyn claps her hands to her face and starts smearing around the makeup she’s just been carefully touching up, and gasping through a possible panic attack, she snarks, “There. Is that better? Am I a real wife now?” She stumbles to the window and sits on a stool to say that they had a fairytale life, makeup straggling across her face, and as much as I always love Light and as much as I appreciate the script underlining the emotional wreckage Cunanan left in his wake (as all murderers do), the scene is quite stagey – like, there’s really no point to the blocking except to move Light around, and there’s really no point to those theatrical kinetics or whatever, because this is filmed. Light can move this ball by herself, you don’t have to block her like this is the Penfield Academy production of Mother Courage. Just run the camera.

Exhibit A: “We didn’t even fight,” delivered with an almost ashamed glance at Beitler, as if to acknowledge that that could be construed as a lack of passion. See? Light has this well in hand. She chews her upper lip with her lower teeth as she says that Lee never lifted a finger (to her, I believe she means). “But I will,” she says, getting up and crossing back to the vanity – again, for no apparent reason except that The Big Book Of Scene Anatomies appears to have called for it. There’s no “family connection” to “this Cunanan,” she says. “We’ve never heard of him.” Beitler looks stricken some more as Marilyn fairly orders him, “It was…a robbery. A random killing.” She begins to straighten up the vanity top.

It’s not so neat at the cop shop, as one of the detectives has to tell SupRod that Philly radio is running a story about the car phone, and that they’re tracking the signal, which means Cunanan will know they’re onto him – at which time the episode director leafs through TBBOSA to “Reaction Blocking, Frustrated,” drops a fingernail onto “shove everything off desk while shouting angrily,” and nods. And that’s what SupRod does. Come on, guys.

Cut to the Lexus, where Cunanan hears said report; hilariously starts whanging the receiver of the car phone on the console; then screeches over to the shoulder to wrench the antenna off and hurl it into the underbrush. Which is not sketchy at all, except it totally is, and a passing car’s passengers give him a “tf you doing” look. He pulls out again, then quickly heads into the entrance of Fort Mott State Park. (It’s in Pennsville. If you think of the state of New Jersey as a grandma in a rocker – this is the image our eighth-grade earth-science teacher always used; don’t know why it’s a grandma – Pennsville is at the southwestern tip of the state, basically Nana’s nipple.) He parks, and scans the families in the parking lot for targets/prospective carjackees…or waits for the park to empty out of extraneous witnesses, which appears to have taken a while. Cunanan finally sees an older lady who looks likely, and has his gun out, but then her husband appears and Cunanan thinks better of it. Enter the red truck, and a ponytailed caretaker stopping to pick up the mail. This is William Reese, the caretaker of the on-site Civil War cemetery. Cunanan scrambles back to the Lexus and follows Reese into the cemetery, and I am not a botanist, but I’m pretty sure this sort of tree is not native to Jersey.

Let me know in the comments, but if I’m right, it seems strange they wouldn’t just get permits for a local graveyard. Anyway, Reese parks next to the chapel building and heads inside, stopping to remove a weed from the flowerbed near the door as Cunanan is parking along the other side of the building. Reese is settling in in the office when Cunanan comes in, gun drawn, and says pleasantly that Reese should stay calm, nobody’s going to get hurt: “I’m here to steal your truck.” He asks for the keys, but tells Reese not to reach for them and to get away from the desk. Then he asks if there’s a downstairs. There’s a basement. “Can I lock you in there?” “Door’s got a lock, yessir,” Reese semi-answers.

The “basement” is in fact properly – and fittingly, alas – a crypt.

Cunanan orders Reese onto his knees. Reese tries to humanize himself for Cunanan, mentioning his wife and son and that he’d sure like to see them again, but Cunanan is Cunanan, and shoots Reese mid-sentence. He looks around at the crypt with that Starman blankness, then heads upstairs, grabs his backpack from the Lexus, and peels out in the pickup.

Back to the set of CHSN, where the co-host from the opener extends the HSN “family”’s deepest condolences and explains to viewers that Marilyn’s husband was brutally murdered. Marilyn says she had to “think long and hard” about coming back, but believes Lee would have wanted her to: “You see, his name is on these bottles too.” He was her legal counsel, her accountant, her best friend. He believed in her, she says, wiping her eyes, then wonders how many husbands really believe in their wives, treat them as equals and partners. “We were a team,” she quavers, caressing a bottle of perfume, “for 38 years, and I miss him very much.” The co-host asks if she’s able to go on. Marilyn nods, pulling herself together and remembering a piece of advice she got from a friend who hosted a TV show: “Just think of the little red light as the man you love.” Push in on Marilyn, staring sadly at the red light, then closing her eyes.

You Make It Seem So Real

March 1994, Miami. An unsteady Gianni, wearing sunglasses and with his hoodie up, is helped down a hospital hallway by Antonio. He pauses when he sees the room at the end of the hall, and its inhabitants: two frail-looking men, apparently receiving transfusions. The doctor from the previous episode approaches and murmurs, “There are no journalists here.” Gianni removes his hood and shades as he’s told in VO, “There are drugs; the therapies are complex, difficult. But there are options.”

We cut then to Gianni and Antonio and the doctor in her office, but before Gianni talks about his other sister, let’s…just get into it with The AIDS Rumor, which if I understand correctly is the Versace family’s primary objection to American Crime Story. The show to this point has taken pains not to identify Gianni’s malady, I imagine primarily to avoid a lawsuit, but also possibly in part to create a meta conversation about what viewers might presume is – and what law enforcement did presume was – afflicting a gay man. I think it’s Richard Lawson in last week’s episode of the Still Watching: Versace podcast who notes that the mid- to late nineties marked the end of the period in the culture in which every story about gay men centered around HIV/AIDS, or at least dwelt in the shadow of the disease. And if this is the diagnosis that Gianni received in 1994, we hadn’t quite gotten to the point with the cocktail and various other advances in treatment where we thought of AIDS as a manageable chronic condition; we didn’t quite think of it as an absolute death sentence the way we had even five years prior, but the odds still weren’t great.

Those odds had improved somewhat by the time Gianni was killed – but this was not widely understood, and if I’m not mistaken the family was determined to keep the diagnosis secret, if only for business reasons, so they went with a cover story about a “rare ear cancer” that had a cheerier prognosis and nothing to do with Gianni’s sexuality (and with which the doctor’s bromides above would dovetail), so as not to upset the investor herd before the IPO. The family also made sure to retrieve Gianni’s body extremely quickly from the M.E.’s office, and had it cremated just as quickly, no doubt motivated by the same fear that his actual condition might become public. It can be a little hard to plug into this particular strain of paranoia here in 2018, but if you lived through the eighties…my God, the contortions public figures would go through, felt they had to go through (and were not wrong), to deny that they were ill or that it was AIDS. Freddie Mercury in particular, it just became the only thing anyone had to say about him despite his repeated denials. (I love that he wouldn’t give the press the satisfaction until literally the day before he died. “Fine: it’s AIDS. Happy now? Great. BYE BITCHES.”) And what was his other choice? Admit it, and then on top of facing the end, he’s got to do it in the corner, heaped up with judgment. What a grimy and unjust way for the world to do Freddie after everything he gave it.

This is, then, what the Versace family wanted to avoid, and I get it. I guess I get it still continuing 20 years later, their rigid refusal to engage with this reality, because who knows what clauses lurk in various partnership agreements about transparency or due diligence or whatever. Not that I wouldn’t get behind a “yeah, he had AIDS, and it was ONE THING about the guy so fuck off” attitude, because duh, but: this is where it is right now. Where the show is, I think, is implying as strongly as it possibly can without opening the network to a full-court libel press that Gianni Versace had received an AIDS diagnosis, and because 1) I think this is likely and 2) it speaks to the larger story, to Andrew Cunanan’s story, and to the time in which we find their stories, this is how I will also proceed. End sidebar. “Thank God.” Yeah, wait ‘til I start getting granular about mint marks. You’ll long for the halcyon days of this paragraph.

Okay, so: back to the doctor’s office. Gianni relates that, before Donatella was born, his older sister Tina became very ill with peritonitis. His parents sent him to live with an aunt and uncle, but he got homesick and ran all the way home – to find his sister in an open casket, “surrounded by white flowers.” Nobody told him she had died. “Until that moment I believed that if you get sick, you can also get better,” he says grimly, and: see above. The line makes more sense if you don’t think he’s talking about ear cancer, no?

Back at the manse, Antonio tucks Gianni into a big sleigh bed. Donatella comes in to stroke Gianni’s forehead, and tells Antonio she needs to talk to Gianni. She takes his hands in hers and they look at each other before she quavers, “What is Versace without you?” It will be you, he tells her. “What am Iwithout you?” “You will find out,” he smiles. She lies on his chest and he strokes her hair.

In the hallway outside, as Donatella is rummaging through her handbag for a Morley (hee), Antonio half-asks, half-states, “You blame me?” Next to a pointedly Callipygian statue on the same table as her handbag

Donatella asks if Gianni wasn’t enough for Antonio – he had to have more men, more fun, and Gianni went along with him. Antonio says Gianni “chose to,” but Donatella corrects him: Gianni chose Antonio, and went along because of Antonio. “I am not a villain,” Antonio sighs, adding that Gianni isn’t a saint. “My brother has a weakness for beauty; he forgives it anything,” Donatella says, putting on her jacket and turning to face Antonio. “But I am not my brother.” No shit, Antonio says, but Donatella isn’t done, asking why Antonio didn’t give Gianni a family when he knew Gianni wanted one. “Because we’re not allowed!” Antonio duhs. Donatella snarks that he could have found a way. She’s heading out when Antonio explodes – fairly quietly; they’re still outside Gianni’s sickroom – that he’s always been there for her; what has she ever done besides belittle him, and Gianni for choosing him? She whirls around: what has Antonio given Gianni – safety? stability? kids? She’d respect him if he’d given Gianni anything, but he’s given him nothing.

Gianni and Antonio walk on the beach. Gianni says that, before, he could channel negative emotions into creating; now, he’s too sick. He starts to have an anxiety attack, saying he just wants to get “out of me.”

At the villa, Donatella, her arm party of huge gold bracelets, and her pork-roast-sized flip phone are smoking on the steps when the men return. She takes Gianni’s hand; he turns to face them both and announces that he won’t get through this if they can’t be a family. He goes inside. Antonio glares flatly at Donatella from behind his shades. She is chastened enough to look away.

July 16, 1997. It’s nighttime. Rain sprinkles the impromptu shrine that has sprung up outside the villa’s front gates. Donatella watches from inside, weeping. She’s heading further back into the house, past where Antonio is half-lounging in that same anteroom, and Antonio tries to get her to talk to him, but she’s like, Gianni’s dead, we don’t have to pretend anymore, and closes the bedroom door.

A mortician places a picture of Gianni next to him on the slab, and begins filling in the wound in his face and a scrape on his shoulder. As he’s being made up, Donatella comes into the courtyard, sunglasses on, and turns to look at the house, and specifically the balcony of Gianni’s room. Then, shielded by umbrellas, she runs the gantlet of flashbulbs and gets into a car.

At a funeral parlor, Donatella approaches Gianni’s open casket. A crucifix is pointedly affixed to the inside of the lid. She slowly draws her sunglasses off and stares, fear flickering across her face. Penelope Cruz looks very young in this shot. An attendant behind her unzips a suit bag; cut to Donatella carefully zhuzhing the lapels and the necktie on Gianni in the casket. Once he’s ready, Donatella’s face crumples as she looks down at him. She bends down to kiss him and continues to cry, murmuring in Italian.

The casket is pushed into the crematory oven.

Gianni’s ashes are carefully transferred to a baggie, which is affixed with a golden tag reading “GMV.” The baggie is put in a box and sealed with diplomatic-pouch tape.

The box is put into a gold ornamental urn, topped with flowers, and carried onto the family’s private jet by Santo, where Donatella sits next to it and says through tears, “After everything he survived – to be killed like this.”

After the title card, we’re in May of 1997. Cunanan is driving the red pickup through Florence, SC. He pulls into a mall to find some South Carolina plates to steal, and as he’s affixing them to the truck, he notices a girl watching him. He arranges his face into what he thinks is a cheery smile. The girl isn’t having it.

He lets the smile melt off, chucks the old plates in the truckbed, and pulls out, powering up with some Oreos and milk and dialing around on the radio. After sampling some country tunes and a bulletin about the murder of Lee Miglin – in which he is named as a suspect – he comes upon Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” which is just the thing, especially the line “If everybody wants you / why isn’t anybody callin’.” He bellows that one out the window, and as my esteemed colleague Tara Ariano noted on The Blotter Presents last week, this is quite a performance of mediocre car-singing from an actor known for his, you know, singing. But he’s really feeling himself as he bellows along, past a sign reading “Miami 650"…

…and Ms. Branigan carries us into a helicopter shot of the Miami beachfront, the Versace villa, and Cunanan speeding into town in the pickup. At the Normandy Plaza hotel, Cunanan walks past Ronnie – the guy they found in his room at the end of the premiere – smoking sketchily on the front lanai and into the lobby, where a tacko portrait of Marilyn over a fake mantel seems to tell him he’s in the right place. When a desk clerk finally appears, Cunanan makes a big show of saying he doesn’t have a reservation, but maybe they might have a room for him anyway? She’s like, it’s an SRO, Blanche; chill. Cunanan gives her a French passport as ID that says he’s Kurt DuMarrs, and starts blathering on about how he was born in Nice and she should visit sometime, and he came all the way to Miami to talk to Gianni Versace because he’s a poor fashion student, and blah blah some outfit of Carla Bruni’s with a gold belt, I don’t even know. But somewhere in there he charms the desk clerk.

Less charming: the room itself. The common areas of the motel don’t look so bad, but the interior hallways and the rooms: Wayne Grotsky.

Literally nothing is going to show dirt and fingerprint grease like that institutional pink. But Cunanan seems unbothered, and starts unloading his backpack right onto the jizzfest that is the room’s comforter, like, did we not all know not to do that yet by 1997? I feel like we did. Mostly this is so we see the gun again, which is pointless telegraphing of something that…already happened, but Cunanan heads over to the villa and marches up to the front gate and tries the front door. It’s locked, doy, but Cunanan looks a little angry, and also a little confused, like he expected his imaginary future friend Gianni to have left it open for him.

The next morning, Cunanan buys a disposable camera (kids, ask your parents) and a ball cap and sunglasses at a kiosk, which is also displaying the "MADMAN!” cover of Sports Illustrated devoted to Mike Tyson chomping Evander Holyfield’s ear. Cute – and it places us around the Fourth of July, 1997, as the coverline on that issue is 7/7/97. Cunanan heads back to the front gates and snaps several pictures of them and the house, then stares creepily into the eyes of the Medusa on the front door. Later, he carefully lays the developed pictures out in front of him in a grid, the same way he did the magazines last time, but the spell is broken when he reaches for his wallet and finds only three dollars inside.

The FBI agents are briefing Dets. Luke and Bitchface on Cunanan’s greatest hits (as it were). Bitchface isn’t clear on why they assume he’s in Miami, versus L.A. or San Diego; Agent Stan non-answers that they working under the assumption that he’s headed to the 305. Bitchface justifies her moniker:

But I’m calling her Det. Lori from now on because WTF, FBI. Luke gives her a “fuckin’ feds” brow pop, but they try to help, as Lori runs down the local gay hotspots on a city map and offers to give the Fibbies a tour. What she gets in return is some Agent Stansplaining, as he condescendingly tells her that she hasn’t read the case file, but Cunanan isn’t going to follow a pattern she can predict; he’s a “predatory escort,” so he’ll be targeting older, closeted guys – who tend to hang in Fort Lauderdale, not Miami. Lori’s like, okaaaaay so but don’t you want to even canvass South Beach, hand out some flyers? The agents shrug that they only have ten flyers printed right now, and anyway, they “aren’t a priority for us.” “That’s certainly clear,” Lori mutters, and starts making black-and-white photocopies her own self. She pins one to the middle of the bulletin board.

Cunanan returns to his room and, despairing of the crappy side-alley view from his window, rehearses his pitch to Desk Clerk to switch rooms to an ocean view. Naturally, it’s obnoxiously glib and contains a reference to Cap Ferrat, but the mojo he worked on her earlier sustains itself, and soon he’s sauntering out onto his balcony and surveying his domain, Gianni-style. He locks eyes with Ronnie, kibitzing down on the sidewalk…

…then too-casually cruises down to the front lanai and introduces himself as Andy.

Max Greenfield’s whatever face here is everything, hee. Ronnie overheard the clerk call “Andy” “Kurt.” Cunanan snappishly asks what she calls Ronnie, then. But despite this bitchy beginning, when Cunanan asks if Ronnie knows where to score, Ronnie seems to oblige. They walk down the street, Ronnie sighing that he doesn’t “do this kind of work” anymore: “Look at me.” Greenfield looks fairly fit here, but thin, and is styled scruffily and moving somewhat listlessly, so the inference we’re supposed to draw is apparently the same one Cunanan does, as he launches into a monologue about how he used to work at an AIDS outreach center in San Diego. He denies being sick himself, but he might admit it to Ronnie if he were; Ronnie doesn’t tell most people, because they freak out. He came close to dying a few years back, he goes on, but then they “handed [him] these magic pills,” and he had his life back…but he didn’t know what to do with it, so he came to Miami, to be by the ocean. Cunanan’s witty-repartee face has fallen by the time Ronnie asks if he has lost anyone. “Lost my best friend. And the love of my life,” Cunanan says, failing to clarify that he killed them, but we’ll get to it. “Recently?” Ronnie asks. “This year.” “Both of them?” Ronnie presses, likely thinking that in eighty-seven, to lose two of your closest people to the virus would track, but in ninety-seven it’s a little more unusual, particularly given that Cunanan says he’s not HIV+.

Ronnie doesn’t push it, but as Cunanan takes a whore bath at a beachside shower station and brags about knowing Versace – with a name-droppy reference to an It restaurant in San Fran clearly memorized from a Vanity Fair or similar – Ronnie makes a series of “…k” faces. There’s been some discussion on the forums about Criss’s choices here – that you don’t really see the charm the real Cunanan was evidently famous for. But you also don’t see the somewhat squashy physical presentation of the real Cunanan, for which the charm was supposed to make up in a world that prized a hyper-toned physique; what you do see is the way the social contract tends to paper over outré or awkwardly meretricious behavior like Cunanan’s, which in the larger context of “how was this ‘allowed’ to happen” is effective.

Anyway, Ronnie does manage not to burst out laughing at the idea that a guy who’s one step up from homeless was proposed to by Gianni Versace at any point, as Cunanan claims. Ronnie says Gianni’s very popular “out here,” very friendly, though Ronnie’s not into his clothes. “That’s because you don’t know him,” Cunanan snips. Ronnie’s like, well, I can look at the shop windows and form an opinion, but Cunanan isn’t having it and takes Ronnie to school on Gianni’s invention of Oroton. That is pretty cool, but Cunanan is way too intense about it for get-to-know-you small talk with a guy he just met: “I see the man behind it. A great creator. The man I coulda been.” Ronnie cocks a brow: “Been with.” That seems to snap Cunanan out of it somewhat, but then he lifts his face to the spray while the piano does a V.C. Andrews kind of a thing, like, we get it.

On the beach, Cunanan locks eyes with an older gent, then gets up, telling Ronnie that he shouldn’t worry about money, he’ll split “this” with Ronnie fifty-fifty. He emphasizes that he takes care of his friends: “That’s always been important to me.” Ronnie doesn’t know what to say, and I have a couple of suggestions, but Ronnie’s Spidey sense probably kiboshed “we just met, Galahad, settle down” as possibly triggering Braggy Carmichael. Cunanan heads over to the gent and completes the pick-up. Ronnie watches speculatively.

Back at the gent’s room, Cunanan gets kind of weird about how many times the guy’s “done this before – two, three?” and then asks how many people work for him, “in business.” Five thousand worldwide, he’s told, and makes this face

but apparently that’s the gent’s kink, as he breathes that he can be submissive. “You have no idea,” Cunanan informs him, and then we’re hearing “Easy Lover” as Cunanan straddles the guy and carefully swathes his entire head in duct tape. Once the last airway is covered, he leans in with that Starman look of scientifically curious remove: “You’re helpless. Accept it.” He dismounts, cranks the music, and fondles various items on the dresser as the gent struggles. “Accept it,” he says. “Accept it!” He fan-dances around the room as the taped-up gent gets more and more agitated, and the music seems to get steadily louder; this is shot very effectively, as I also began to get agitated on the guy’s behalf.

Cunanan approaches the bed, holding a pair of surgical scissors and regarding the guy with a mixture of curiosity and lust, then hops onto him, whispers, “Last chance,” and finally plunges the scissors through the tape over the gent’s mouth when the gent follows his direction and submits.

Later, Cunanan tucks into some expensive room-service filet and lobster. At the door, the gent whispers to the waiter to come back in half an hour, “for the trays,” then backs away from the door and the end of the bed where Cunanan is perched, stuffing his piehole and making up some story about his mom packing lobster in his school lunches. All the other kids had PB&J, and “there I was with my little sachet of cracked pepper, all wrapped up like a gram of cocaine.” Cool story, bro. He polishes off a glass of champagne, locks eyes with the gent, drops the flute on the floor with a clunk, and departs without another word. The gent can’t wait to throw the bolt, fish his ring out of the ashtray, and call 9-1-1, but when he’s asked what his emergency is, the gent is too weighed down by his wedding band to go through with it and hangs up.

Back from commercial, it’s “back to life, back to reality” with the opening strains of the Soul II Soul hit, and wow, I actually missed this song. Like, it was ehhhhhh-verywhere for a while and I never thought I would feel “oh yeah, you!” about it, but I do. Pity about the context, which is July 6, 1997, and we’re backstage at a fashion show, where Gianni is complaining that the models Antonio hired “look ill.” This seems like an anachronism to me, so if Gianni actually was at the forefront of pulling back from anorexic waifs, hit me in the comments. Certainly Donatella has taken some shelling in the not-at-all-distant past for using runway talent who looked dangerously underweight. And here she is now, cutting past the models standing around outside smoking and into the dressing room, where she asks them to give her the room: “I need to talk to my brother.” Maybe take him aside, then? It’s…the dressing room and they’re working?

Donatella tries to head him off all “you agreed to try them,” but Gianni’s like, my models should look like they eat, have cocktails, fuck, enjoy life – “What do these girls enjoy?” “Front covers?” Donatella says pointedly, going on that “everyone” is talking about Galliano and McQueen and what they’re doing next. Gianni, standing next to a carefully hung card with Shalom Harlow’s name on it,

doesn’t want to guess trends. His designs have to come from his heart first. The debate continues, Donatella saying he’s gotten too predictable, too “known,” blah blah blah. Like they’d really get into this 1) minutes before the walking starts, 2) in English instead of Italian. Point is, Gianni’s celebrating the miracle of his return to health, and doesn’t want to do the “stark and morbid” runway Donatella prefers. Donatella freshens her contouring and rolls her eyes as Gianni describes the “Versace bride” who is not dainty and pure, but proud to have loved many before choosing the one man for her. She’s kind of won over by his enthusiasm by the end, though, only correcting him that it’s their show, not his.

Backstage, Donatella peeks out and looks worried as the runway looks – proceeding down what looks like a ramp placed over Gianni’s own pool – are greeted with polite applause. The applause gathers in strength, and when the bride comes out, the response is what Gianni predicted. Donatella shakes her head and throws him a “yeah, okay” thumbs-up.

Cut to Ronnie procuring drugs for himself and Cunanan. They smoke crack together as a breeze stirs the vertical blinds, and Ronnie gets the high giggles, but Cunanan is broody, and goes into the bathroom to start wrapping his own head in duct tape. Outside the door, Ronnie says he used to be a florist, and he was thinking of starting a little flower pop-up, a two-man operation: “You and me.” They get along well enough, no? And anything’s better than working that beach, right? “…Andy?”

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Cunanan says affectlessly. “Me too, with lye, in a different time zone,” Ronnie does not say, going with “Yeah, a-a shower, why not?” He perches worriedly on the end of the bed, smoking and staring at the bathroom door. I would say it’s a good thing he can’t see the other side,

but if nothing else about Cunanan has moved the needle to Hell No for Ronnie, I doubt a crazy wall would do it either. Cunanan unwraps his head, somehow pulling out zero hair in the process, and stares at himself in the mirror.

When he emerges, apparently not having showered after all, he starts dressing silently. After a moment, Ronnie asks as gently as possible, “Andrew? What’d you do?” “Nothing,” he says, still staring at himself, but in the mirror over the chest of drawers this time. “I’ve done nothing my whole life. And that’s the truth.” Ronnie looks sad for him and holds up the pipe: “We’re out.” “I’ll get more,” Cunanan says, going for “soothing half-smile” and landing on “nauseated volcano.”

Gianni is lost in sketching thought in his bedroom as, on the bed, Antonio canoodles with a third guy. He hops out to tell Gianni to join them. Distractedly Gianni says he’ll be right there. Antonio strips off his undies and hops back into bed with the guy. Gianni looks at them making out with an expression of contentment, then returns to sketching.

The next day, Gianni finishes a lap and fetches up on Antonio’s legs at the end of the pool. Antonio muses that he doesn’t “want this” anymore; he wants Gianni, to marry Gianni. Gianni smiles that Antonio says it in the morning: “Can you say it in the evening?” He swims away. Antonio bites his lip and wisely doesn’t argue the point.

Cunanan heads into the pawn shop to hock the gold coin. Pawn Star Cathy asks where he got it. He says it’s a remarkable story. Good save. I’ll spare you the coin-nerd background, but I wonder if a pawnbroker with any experience shouldn’t have known based on the coin in question that said story involved a felony; it’s a Saint-Gaudens double eagle – one of those coins that will look familiar even to people who don’t know anything about coins, which is basically everyone. The prop here has a “mint mark” that says “COPY,” which I also find amusing. …Right, nobody cares, sorry! Anyway, as she’s weighing the coin, she checks her most-wanted posters; Cunanan, who’s filling out the forms with his real name and address, isn’t among them.

He’s out walking later when he sees a queen serving Donatella realness rattling the front gates of the estate and begging “Johnny” to let her in. A security guard notes that the real Donatella has a key, and Gianni comes out on the balcony all “enough already, kid” – “big kiss for you, but I cannot let you in, one is enough.” Hee. Cunanan watches the drama unfold, then jogs back to his room; fishes the gun out from under the mattress (ew) and loads it; rips down his crazy wall; and bids Ronnie adieu. “Will I see you again?” Ronnie asks. “I’m sure of it,” Cunanan double-meanings, and is peaceing out when Ronnie snarls down the hall after him, “You don’t have that money, do you.” Cunanan stops, comes back, and counts out the money, holding it up to Ronnie, at which time Scrip Dork McGee over here notes that, at least as far as the fifty is concerned, Props found an old one from before the 1997 printi– “Buntsy. We agreed that nobody cares.” Right, you are so right, sorry again. Ronnie is also chastened, but takes the money, then asks gravely if they were friends. “That was real, right?” But Cunanan is in full infamy-groundwork-laying mode and responds, “When someone asks you if we were friends? You’ll say no.” He hurries away; Ronnie ruefully watches him go.

Lori’s leaving the cop shop and sees that the Cunanan Most Wanted poster is mostly covered over with other flyers already.

The man himself is reading his Condé Nast book in a park across the street from the estate when Gianni and Antonio emerge. When we cut back across the street, Cunanan is gone…

…to get some stakeout grub. The guy at the sandwich shop immediately spots him and skives off into the back to call 9-1-1; the “white guy who killed four white guys” whom he saw on America’s Most Wanted is in the shop, ordering a tuna combo. The cops show up shortly thereafter, but Cunanan’s gone again.

At Twist, Gianni and Antonio cut the line and head into the club, greeting various friends and other regulars. They settle in at a table to watch a go-go boy with angel wings working it for tips.

Cunanan fetches up back at the estate. He doesn’t seem like he’s in a hurry or fleeing. He finds the bedroom windows dark, and his eyes darken in turn. He heads into Twist – with his backpack, which made me want to smack the bouncer upside the head. I forget we didn’t always live in this after-the-events-of world. Somewhere, Det. Lori gets a stabbing pain in her ass because Cunanan is right where Agent Stan told her not to bother looking, searching the dance-floor crowd for Gianni while La Bouche’s “Be My Lover” blares down. Cunanan checks the bathroom…

…but Gianni and Antonio are already outside, heading home. Gianni hangs back, seemingly to let Antonio pick up, but Antonio frowns and repeats that he doesn’t want that anymore; he wants Gianni. They nuzzle. It’s a bittersweet moment, knowing what happens, and also knowing that the actors know each other well IRL and wondering what it’s like for them in the scene, when of course they also know what happens. Gianni gives him a vaguely sad “if you’re sure” look, and off they go.

Inside, Andrew roams the dance floor, deflating, as Lisa Stansfield tells the assembled that “this is the right time / to believe in love.” A cutie named Brad locks onto Cunanan and close-dances up to him and asks what he does. “I’m a serial killer,” Cunanan chirps. Brad: “Whuh-it?” Cunanan, giggling: “I’m a banker!” He’s a stockbroker. He’s a cop! He builds movie sets and skyscrapers! Imports pineapples! Brad begins to draw away, concerned, as Cunanan tells Brad, but mostly himself, “I’m the person least likely to be forgotten. …I’m Andrew Cunanan.”

American Crime Story Does The Hustle

After a title card reading “July 16, 1997,” fade up on the trompe l’oeil clouds painted on the ceiling of the bedroom of Gianni Versace. The camera drops down to the man himself, lying in bed first thing in the morning and contemplating said clouds while Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor” begins on the soundtrack – an eminently clockable choice due to its ubiquity, but perhaps more appropriate than usual to accompany the story of the murder of a creative genius by a grifting striver, given its provenance.

Gianni rises and dons velvet slippers with the Versace seal on them. The camera follows him through his baroquely appointed home as he selects a pink bathrobe with a frieze pattern at the collar, to match the gold silk pajamas with the frieze pattern at the waist, and heads out to his balcony to enjoy the morning sun and survey his domain.

On the beach – not far away, it’s implied, but of course worlds away at the same time – Andrew Cunanan sits at the water’s edge, amid clumps of washed-ashore seaweed. He takes Caroline Seebohm’s The Man Who Would Be Vogue: The Life And Times Of Conde Nast from his grubby backpack and turns it to the camera so we get it (drink!), then takes out a gun and regards it, then stuffs both items back in the pack and broods at what looks like a healing burn mark on his left thigh before wandering into the water and screaming at it…screaming with all his might, but barely audible against the legendary piece of music and the roar of the implacable sea. Just in case you were wondering if the motif of Cunanan’s unfulfilled need to feel important weren’t in play from the moment we see him.

Gianni takes pills already laid out for him on a tray. We see the prescription bottles, but not what the pills are or are for, which I note for a reason, but we’ll get back to it; in the meantime, Gianni has descended through the house to the atrium, where casually liveried staff wait for him with perfectly correct posture. Taking the orange juice that one butler is holding on a silver salver, Gianni gives them a cheery “good morning,” and most of them bow. Sipping his juice, he heads into the pool area, which, like the rest of the house, looks like something out of Petronius (but before it gets too nutty with the live birds cooked into pastry shells).

By contrast, Cunanan is breakfasting on Jolt and blearily giving the leathery old gents in banana hammocks on the beach promenade the side-eye.

A servant brings Gianni a covered tray of fresh fruit. Gianni fondly rubs his arm when the breakfast is unveiled. I note this because here and in the scene just prior, there’s an apparent divergence between how Gianni thinks of or treats his household staff and how they’ve been instructed to behave; maybe nothing significant, but it caught my attention.

Gianni, dressed, heads out, blowing kisses to his be-tennis-whites-ed companion Antonio D’Amico and tenderly patting Antonio’s hitting partner as he passes him. When a tourist couple asks him for an autograph, he politely declines…

…as Cunanan dashes into a grotsky bathroom off the beach and hurls into a revolting toilet that, were he not already nauseated, would probably get the job done on its own. He slumps against the side of the stall and stares dully at the homophobic graffito left on the opposite wall.

Not exactly American Vandal-level work there, Miami bigots. Cunanan splashes water on his face and tries to pull it together…

…while Gianni greets a friend at the news café, then orders up a whole whack of magazines, including Vanity Fair, which he calls “Diana.” Aw.

He’s tooling home when Cunanan, seemingly almost coincidentally passing by across the street, spots him, starts, and fumbles the gun out of his bag. As Gianni is taking his time figuring out his keys, Cunanan stalks across the street, gun extended, and starts firing. Doves startle up all around Gianni, who turns and grunts, “No.” Another gunshot smashes us into the title card.

Cunanan, wearing an open shirt and grey briefs, lurks at a bedroom door, then lets himself in and creepers over to the bed, where a man and woman are asleep. (They are Phil and Elizabeth Cote; Elizabeth is described in contemporary coverage of the crime as one of Cunanan’s “patrons,” which would answer – sort of – Tara Ariano’s and my questions about their relationship from our recent The Blotter Presents conversation about the show. Maureen Orth, who wrote the book on which this season is at least loosely based, Cunanan had known Elizabeth since middle school and was godfather to the Cotes’ daughter; I haven’t read the book yet, but you can find more in this Vanity Fair article.) He tugs at himself while looking at them with an unsettlingly opaque expression, but before that goes any further, Elizabeth half-wakes to see him looming there, so Cunanan switches gears: “Guess who I met?” He leaps into bed in between them as Elizabeth wails, “Andrew!” With great fanfare, he announces, “Gianni Versace!” and Elizabeth gasps and demands that he tell her everything while Phil clambers out of bed with a “this fucking guy” expression on his face. It’s not entirely clear at the beginning of the scene when this takes place, but the next title card reads…

“October 1990,” so let’s assume shortly after that. We’re in San Francisco, following Cunanan down the stairs into a gay club to the strains of “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.” He greets a redheaded friend, and they cut through the dance floor in slo-mo so the audience has more time to appreciate the care taken by Wardrobe with the leather harnesses and mesh t-shirts. The friend gets them into the VIP area, and Cunanan hasn’t gotten more than a few steps inside when he’s ensorcelled by the sight of Gianni, deep in conversation on a banquet; you can practically hear him getting starfuck wood. He leans forward and over-accents, “Signore Versace. Buona sera.” Gianni and his seatmates give Cunanan the “asshole says what” look, so Red is obliged to lean down and note that it’s his friend, Andrew. Cunanan gets a dismissive “hi” before Gianni returns to his conversation, so he tries again: “It’s good to see you in San Francisco.” Gianni:

Again he tries to return to his friends, but Cunanan is chastened only for a second before saying grandly that he’s excited to see the opera Gianni is doing the costumes for, that it’s time a contemporary designer did that work. Impatiently, Gianni cuts him off: “Have we met before?” Taking a beat that, if you were looking for it, would give him away, Cunanan says yes, at a garden party at Gianni’s “residence” in Lago di Como. He gives just enough detail to imply that he’s actually been there, and adds, “You were most gracious, of course…I remember, but for you to remember is very flattering.” Who knows if this exchange actually took place, but it’s flawless writing of this kind of con regardless: so-called specifics, likely available to anyone with a VF subscription; assumed intimacy, which is a gamble with VIPs but will make most marks accept that it exists regardless of social station, because the first instinct is seldom to think you’re being lied to; obsequiousness that relies on the social contract to be, if not appreciated, then at least acknowledged.

It doesn’t get Cunanan as far as he’d like here, though, as Gianni gives him a perfunctory “Lago di Como; that must be it, yes,” and returns to his discussion. Cunanan sets his jaw, and Darren Criss does a wonderful job of showing us Cunanan’s wheels turning as he refocuses his fury at Gianni not immediately inviting him into the charmed circle based on his beauty and wit, and tries to find another in. It’s uncomfortable to watch, but also a master class in portraying predatory behavior that, in the beginning of its cycle, can register as merely pathetic and awkward. Cunanan hurries to say that his mother’s parents are from Italy, from the south, and blares the family name: “Maybe you know them?” Hard to say if we’re meant to see this as a saddish blunder – if Lake Como were any further north, it would be in Switzerland, and there are 55 million people in Italy – but, despite my initial assumption that Cunanan just borrowed the name of an Italian football star who had just featured in the ‘90 World Cup, “Schillaci” is in fact his mother’s maiden name and it does get Gianni’s attention, albeit in the form of a somewhat concerned expression. Cunanan quickly blathers that his mother feels a “strong connection” to Italy but she’s never visited: “Can you believe that? An Italian-American that’s never even seen her own country?” Gianni shoots his seatmates a look and confirms, not entirely interestedly, that she’s never gone to Italy; Cunanan takes the opening, sitting down and confiding that he thinks she wants to keep Italy “in her mind as this perfect place,” and of course he’s talking about himself, his own idealizing of situations and estrangement from his true self – provided you believe a sociopath can have a self, versus, in the words of Cloeckley, a finely-tuned reflex machine built to mimic human responses.

Gianni sends the guy next to him off for a refill and semi-gestures for Cunanan to take the empty seat, asking where Cunanan’s mother’s parents were born. “Palermo,” Cunanan says, scrambling into the seat and imperiously telling Red that he’ll have whatever Gianni’s having. Red sort of rolls his eyes and goes to get Cunanan a club soda.

Back at the Cote…uh, cote, Cunanan is talking up how exclusive the club is and its “strict policy” on not approaching celebrities, which he would “never do, by the way…uch, so tacky.” As Phil is rolling his eyes, Cunanan says “this agreeable-looking man” came up and introduced himself as Versace. “I say to him, honey, if you’re Versace, I’m Coco Chanel.” Remember that phrasing. Elizabeth is all “oh no you di’in’t,” but he says he did, and it was embarrassing when Gianni “established himself as, y’know. Versace.”

Phil is continuing to make “girl, please” faces as Cunanan, helping himself to breakfastry, says grandly that he’s not a fan of Versace’s clothes – “so…bright, it’s too much” – and Elizabeth has to mouth “stop it” at her husband as Cunanan proposes that “Armani designs clothes for wives, I think Versace designs clothes for sluts and don’t you look at me like that.” Remember that phrasing, too. Cunanan hops up on the counter with his cereal and snots, “Please, I know the score. Lecherous fagon the prowl.” Phil didn’t know Versace was gay, because apparently Phil is Amish, and Elizabeth scolds Cunanan for the slur. He snots through a mouthful of cereal, “What are we supposed to call them?”, adding that “homosexual” sounds too scientific, and anyway, he’s totally fine with it, which is why he agreed to a date with Versace. The Cotes exchange another “ohhhh-kay” look – apparently, they don’t know he’s gay either, although he’s been using the queenliest locutions outside Buckingham Palace during the entire scene, so maybe they’ve just agreed between them not to call him on his BS? It’s not like that wasn’t a running theme with his friends in his actual life – as Cunanan is rinsing out his cereal bowl and waxing lofty about Capriccio being a “minor work,” and Elizabeth confirms that Cunanan accepted. “My dear, sweet Lizzie,” Cunanan says, sounding almost angry with her, of course he said yes.

It’s at this point that I’d decide the fun was over and change the locks if I were Lizzie, but hindsight is etc.

Cunanan, Cunanan’s ridiculous spectacles,

his friend, and the friend’s wretched color-block sweater are walking in the Berkeley faculty courtyard as Cunanan relays this same tale to the friend. “But is it real?” the friend blunts hilariously. Cunanan’s like, uhhhhhh, and the friend notes that the other day he heard Cunanan say he was half-Jewish. “Well, that’s…complicated!” It isn’t, Friend says. “You were an altar boy. We spoke about…what happened to you.” What does it matter what I said, Cunanan snorts. It matters, Friend protests. Only if they know it isn’t true, Cunanan says. “But you know,” Friend points out. Hurt, Cunanan says he thought Friend would be happy about it. Happy about a date with Versace?, Friend incredulouses: “You can’t even tell people you’re gay!” Cunanan babbles that he does so tell people, all the time, but Friend interrupts, “You tell gay people you’re gay, and straight people you’re straight.” Busted, Cunanan quickly recovers with, “I tell people what they need to hear.” He starts to walk off, but the friend doesn’t know how he’s supposed to act: “Do I pretend to know the person you’re pretending to be? I can’t keep up! Every time I feel like I’m getting close to you you say you’re someone else.” He takes Cunanan’s hand, saying he knows he’s not impressive, but he’s nice, smart, and kind. Cunanan is utterly unmoved by this – in fact, almost disgusted – and pulls his hand away, thenmakes eye contact to swear up and down that he really does have a date with Gianni Versace, honest ‘n’ truly. Friend gives up: “I’m pleased for you.” “Good,” Cunanan smugs.

Cunanan studies Gianni’s various residences, in magazines laid out with compulsive neatness on the carpet. He gets up to survey the sad Cosby-sweater and worn-jeans contents of his closet…

…then goes shopping in Phil’s closet instead, naked.

Gianni does a fitting for one of the singers and talks about how the most important part of a dress is the look on the wearer’s face, and how he learned that from his mother, who had a little dress shop in Calabri. As he talks about how his clothes “will serve you,” the singer relaxes and starts to look happier with her gown.

Elizabeth comes home to find Cunanan helping himself to Phil’s clothes as Lisa Stansfield echoes through the house. She and her giant 1990 belt buckle lean in the closet doorway and snap, “You should have asked.” Cunanan doesn’t acknowledge this until he can arrange his face in a suitably pitiable way, then doesn’t apologize, just grunts, “I have nothing.” As he knew she would, she softens: “You look very nice.” He was going for “impressive.” Elizabeth fastens what looks like a gold Rolex onto Cunanan’s wrist to help with that as he unconvincingly objects, then murmurs, “I love you.” “You are rrrridiculous,” she tells him, maternally, but he’s pleased with what he sees in the mirror.

The opera. Men in tuxedoes give Cunanan the eye, either because he’s an out-of-place striver who’s not in a tux or because they think he’s hot. Not in that poly-barf necktie, he isn’t. Still, he’s feeling himself, and nicks a pair of opera glasses another attendee left on the bar. He’s using them to look at the audience, mostly, though when a cutie across the room makes binocul-eye contact, Cunanan drops the glasses pointedly. Pan over the soloist to Cunanan, watching something raptly – possibly Gianni, whom we cut to next, watching his dress anxiously – and then back to Cunanan, performatively dabbing his eyes and then looking around at his opulent surroundings.

Gianni opens champagne after the opera while Cunanan wanders the stage, touching the harp and various cut-glass props like a child, then stepping into the spotlight and somberly bowing, eyes closed. Gianni, amused: “Did you enjoy it?” Cunanan loved it; it inspired him. They clink glasses as Gianni asks if Cunanan is creative. “Yes, very much,” Cunanan says, which is kind of an off answer, but as we’re about to see, he is, in his way; he delivers a monologue about picking pineapples on his father’s plantation, and how his father was in the military and used to fly Imelda Marcos’s plane, and now runs his businesses from abroad with a young boyfriend as a chauffeur (his father was Filipino and did leave the family; everything else is a lie). He’s going to write a novel about it! Gianni doesn’t seem entirely to believe this rehearsed-sounding aria of try-hard, but is at least amused by it. Then they talk about family; it’s everything to Gianni, who made his first dress for Donatella: “Maybe every dress I make is for her.” “That makes me want to cry,” Cunanan says. It makes Gianni smile, so Cunanan hastily adjusts with, “Yes, that too of course.” Gianni talks about the logo of his company, that it comes from his childhood, and his hope that people will get to know him through his clothes. Maybe people will get to know Cunanan through his novel in that same way. A strange observation from a man who barely knows Cunanan; I mean, not that this scene even took place, really, but it just lands as something the writers wanted to accomplish with the scene and isn’t organic.

Anyway, Cunanan wonders if he shouldn’t have a more “literary” pseudonym like “DeSilva” – one of Cunanan’s pseudonyms IRL – but Gianni says no, he should be proud of his name. But Cunanan’s already moved on to enthusing that “when” a movie is made of his novel, Gianni has to “do the clothes.” Did Gianni know Imelda had three thousand pairs of shoes? Everyone knows this, but Gianni merely flirts that he doesn’t design shoes…but he could try, for Cunanan’s movie. Cunanan, enthralled: “I am so happy right now.” He should be, Gianni coos; he’s handsome, clever – here he plucks a stray eyelash from Cunanan’s cheekbone – and he’ll be someone really special one day. Cunanan blows the lash, timed with a gunshot on the soundtrack…

…and we’re back to the day of the murder. Antonio hears the shots from inside. Outside, Cunanan cocks his head Starman-ily at the dove he’s accidentally shot, twitching in its death throes, and Gianni’s fingers also twitching in that same way. A God’s-eye shot of Gianni’s blood pooling beneath his head cuts to Antonio’s hitting partner coming out the front gate and giving chase to Cunanan, who runs for a while and then stops and draws down on the hitting partner to back him off. Antonio bellows for help.

A patrol car pulls up. Antonio begs for an ambulance while looky-loos gather across the street.

Cunanan flees into a parking garage, to a red pickup. He jumps in, clutches the wheel, rubs his temples, and emits a very odd – and flawlessly observed by Criss – laugh/yell that seems celebratory, but is punctuated by ricti of terror. As he’s deep-breathing himself under control, sirens take us into commercial.

Miami detectives José Zúñiga and Luke Wheeler (fine: Will Chase) are briefed on the victim as Antonio continues to sob for an ambulance. As they look stricken by the celebrity aspect of the crime, a long-hair in madras shorts and a fanny pack sprints to his car parked nearby to retrieve a Polaroid camera (kids, ask your grandparents).

A blood-spattered Antonio and the house staff watch in horror as Gianni is bundled onto a gurney, his magazines still scattered on the steps, his housekeys still dangling from the lock.

The Polaroid guy gets a shot of Gianni going into the ambulance.

Uniforms get the BOLO for Cunanan – grey shirt, red cap – and spot him in a red shirt on the upper level of the parking structure.

The ambulance pulls up to the hospital, trailed by news crews, and Gianni is rushed inside.

Cops come upon a red-shirted guy whose face we don’t see trying to break into a Ford Taurus, and give chase.

The trauma team hurries Gianni past an African-American doctor, who looks taken aback, for reasons we won’t investigate further until the next episode.

The red-shirt suspect (heh) is tackled; it is not Cunanan. Cunanan, who has paired his red polo with red acid-wash jeans that I actually kind of want, but that are not indicated for staying under the radar after shooting a fashion icon, is fleeing the garage from a different staircase (or is possibly in a different garage entirely).

The trauma team works on Gianni, although based on that upsetting facial wound, there’s probably little point. A nurse cuts off his t-shirt, bisecting the Versace brand symbol on the front. I think I get it.

Outside the estate, Polaroid Dude is starting the bidding of “the only photo of Versace” at thirty grand.

As the worried doctor looks on, the trauma team calls it. They disperse; the last nurse out covers Gianni with a spattered sheet. The camera slowly pans out to take in the mess left behind, the grubby scuffed walls and crooked switchplate in the hallway.

Cunanan grabs a cab as, in the atrium, Antonio is told (I assume) by a security guard that Gianni didn’t make it. The detectives look on, and Det. Zúñiga is shocked to learn from Det. Wheeler that Antonio is Gianni’s boyfriend, like, is it your first day in Miami, Det. Zúñiga? As Antonio weeps, one of the autograph-seekers from earlier ducks under the barrier to soak a page from a Versace Voguespread in the blood on the steps. She and her husband carefully preserve the page in plastic. Consider celebrity culture indicted, show, jeez.

Cunanan heads into a schmancy, glass-brick-tastic hotel and into the restroom, where he gazes at himself in the mirror and splashes water on his face. As he’s leaving, he pauses at the bar to look at TV coverage of the shooting – and to give us a good look at those jeans.

When a woman in front of him covers her mouth in horror, he studies her response with that Starman curious head-cock again, then imitates it, but under his hand, he’s smiling. This really is a fantastic, simultaneously chilling and slappable performance by Darren Criss.

As MPD runs the VIN on the red pickup and finds that it was stolen from a William Reese – in whose murder Cunanan is a listed suspect – the FBI brass are first confusing Gianni Versace with Liberace, then with Jordache, then scrambling to figure out how to make it not their fault that a guy they’ve had on the Most Wanted list for some time killed a headline name. In Miami, Agents Gruber and Evans (a.k.a. Stan from Mad Men) half-walk, half-cringe into the estate. Agent Stan briefs the local detectives on Cunanan; Det. Lori Wieder is particularly unimpressed to hear that the FBI may have known Cunanan was in the area. She’s even less impressed when Agent Stan shows them a trunkful of Most Wanted posters with Cunanan on them as he says Cunanan’s now killed five people. Det. Luke Wheeler asks how many of those fliers actually went out. Agent Stan doesn’t respond. Det. Lori is a bitch about it: “How many have gone out, Agent Evans?” Then she stalks off. Not sure what the implication is here – that they didn’t make the cases a priority because the victims were gay? Wouldn’t surprise me given what we see shortly, but we’ll get to that.

First, a press conference about the shooting, which goes to voice-over as we see the ruined face of Gianni, then a plane door opening, but shot from below so it looks like a morgue drawer opening. Santo and Donatella exit the plane; even in mourning, she’s in full battle regalia, leather suit and heels. Technicians collect evidence from Gianni’s body, and from the dove Cunanan also shot, as the police spokesman describes Cunanan as “armed and extremely dangerous” and Donatella semi-staggers through the glare of flashbulbs and up the bloodstained steps of the estate. She greets the staff, which is again lined up quite formally, with the same warmth her brother had earlier.

Det. Luke is asking clumsily what Antonio’s “involvement” was with Gianni – was he the person who procured dancers and models for Gianni? Antonio looks ill and says he was “his partner, not his pimp.” Det. Luke is like, this is a police investigation, we need to know what’s what and the staff already told me the deal with the extracurriculars, so…what does Antonio mean by “partner,” exactly? “What do I mean?”, Antonio repeats, apparently as puzzled as I am that a Miami detective wouldn’t get it with this, even in 1997, but Det. Luke finally figures out he might get further on his own, and asks Dets. Lori and Zúñiga to excuse them. Gee, hard to believe Antonio doesn’t feel comfortable with Det. Lori there!

And if it looks like she’s giving Antonio a particularly frosty glare there, that’s literally always her face. Anyway, Det. Luke tells Antonio after the others have gone that he’s on Antonio’s side; he’s just trying to get the lay of the land (as it were) (he is classy enough not to use that phrase; I am not). Antonio clarifies that “partner” means “companion,” but Det. Luke is still confused about Antonio’s bringing home “other men…for him?” And would Antonio Do It with them too, with Gianni there? Antonio:

Well, really. I get that the show feels obliged to explain to some viewers that relationships that didn’t obey traditional heteronormative parameters faced an uphill battle vis-à-vis the judgments of society and specifically law enforcement in 1997 (and do still, no doubt, in some places), but I also feel like it’s maybe a little proud of itself for knowing better now, when really it just makes Det. Luke look naïve and unprepared. This continues with Det. Luke asking if sometimes Gianni wouldn’t join in himself…? Antonio cuts a hopeless he’ll-never-get-it side-eye and says it was whatever Gianni wanted. So did these other men “consider themselves Gianni’s partner too?” What’s the difference? “Fifteen years!” Antonio snaps. Det. Luke concedes that that’s “a good length of time,” and asks if Antonio can get him the names. Antonio can find them, yes. Were they paid? Sometimes, but usually “they just fell for him. He was a genius,” Antonio goes on, bereft. “He cast a spell.” Was Antonio paid? “Was I paid! Was I paid to love him!” Det. Luke backs off, saying this is “new to” him – no shit – and he’s just trying to clarify. Antonio responds that he’s trying to help, but he didn’t see the shooter, and before he can summon the strength to answer Det. Luke’s question as to whether one of their seemingly standard tricks might be responsible, Donatella comes into the study. Antonio gets up and, his face collapsing, extends his hand towards her and Santo. She flinches, looks down, and murmurs, “Get him out of here.” So that relationship seems cozy?

It’s possible she meant Det. Luke, as the next shot is the cops filing out the front gates, but inside, as Antonio weeps on the settee, Donatella helps herself to a cigarette from a gold box and sighs, “That’s not what I need from you right now.” She demands to know what Antonio told the police – “about my brother’s life” – while almost unconsciously correcting the position of a Greek bust Det. Luke had futzed with and moved in the previous scene. Nice bit of blocking there. Antonio sighs that they’ll “find out” everything anyway, and she asks what there is to find out, then says, “Nothing was ever asked of you, except to take care of him – and you couldn’t even do that.” She sits next to Santo and tells Antonio he’s not to speak to anyone about Gianni without consulting her first.

Antonio, through tears, regards her with an expression suggesting he was foolish to have hoped for a more compassionate reaction from her; gets up; and slumps out of the room to start washing Gianni’s blood from his arms.

But he hears Donatella and Santo going down the hall to another meeting area, so he follows them. Donatella makes eye contact with him, then closes the heavy doors against Antonio without a word. Inside, they’re meeting with men I assume are lawyers or board members, and Donatella begins by saying it’s crazy to talk about business right now. She seems to be hoping they’ll contradict or whatever-you-think-best her, but they just stare at her, so she finishes dabbing her eyes and gets down to it: her brother is dead, and the press and the police will “rake through” his life and bring up “every rumor, every indiscretion” – to find the killer, but to judge Gianni, too. “First people weep, then they whisper.” She goes on to extol Gianni’s rise from a small Milanese shop with a single rack of clothes to “all this,” adding that he was “a creator, he was a collector – he was a genius” – and his company meant everything to him. As long as the company is alive, her brother is alive: “I will not allow that man, that…nobody, to kill my brother twice.”

A family spokesperson announces that nobody in the family knew or had any contact with Cunanan, footage Pawn Star Cathy Moriarty freezes when she sees his mugshot on TV. At her pawn shop, she tells Dets. Zúñiga and Bitchface that she did everything by the book when he came in with the gold coin: got his ID, handed in the paperwork to Miami PD, the works (this system did and does exist in order to flag stolen goods, but Miami hadn’t computerized theirs as of ’97, which means Cunanan was cocky enough to get himself caught hocking stolen property, but the paperwork hadn’t been processed yet – in case you’re wondering why we’re seeing this). Bitchface stalks outside and says into her radio that they have an address on Cunanan, and can anyone do this job besides her? That last part may have been silent.

Donatella expositions to us and some bankers that Gianni was excited to be the first Italian designer on both the Milanese stock exchange and the NYSE; it’s why he was in the U.S., to sign the papers with Morgan Stanley. Santo notes that Gianni would have wanted them to go ahead with the IPO, and if they don’t, they can’t try again for many years, but Donatella isn’t hearing it; listing the company means putting it in the hands of strangers, and “now is not the time for strangers; now is the time for family.” Santo makes a “why’d you pretend to ask me, then” face that I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a bunch. Donatella tells the banker types to tell Morgan Stanley that they’ll remain a privately held company – “a family company.” She goes to the balcony of the pool area and looks out, surveying what is now her domain much as Gianni did in the beginning of the episode.

Metro-Dade SWAT descends on the address Cunanan gave Cathy Moriarty. This event isn’t quite exciting enough for the locals to put pants on

but the music agrees it’s pretty intense as SWAT and the detectives charge up to a room in a grimy no-tell, boot open the door, flash-bang whoever’s inside, and find…not Cunanan, but Deputy Leo from Veronica Mars, nearly unrecognizably the worse for wear and denying that he knows Cunanan.

Cunanan himself, attired in all shades of yellow and a pair of Versace shades, stops at a newsstand to admire his handiwork on the front pages of newspapers around the world. The counter man stacks them up for him: “All of them?” Cunanan smirks. “All of them.”

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace Begins At The End