MONDO EXTRAS

At the crime scene, Switek informs Crockett and Trudy that the cocaine they dug up from under Roxanne's fingernail matches the brand Carla was carrying around. That's some quick turnaround from the Miami-Dade crime lab, but then again, I guess this isn't the first drug sample they've ever had to process. Having a carrot-topped dude standing around barking orders in the first-person plural probably speeds things up, too. "Same pimp, same coke, probably the same connection," says Crockett, showing that he has as much deductive reasoning prowess as he does fashion sense. Trudy also lets Crockett know about the storage locker key, and that Gina is visiting various bus terminals in the Miami area to see if there's a match -- hopefully, she had a chance to go home and change first. Team Vice decides to pay a visit to the late Roxanne's pimp -- that'd be Wesley Snipes, for those of you following along at home -- with the help of Bill Paxton, who will lead them to Wesley Snipes's hangout.

That hangout is a place called The Checker Club, where presumably the clientele is not all that interested in kinging one another, unless that's some vague euphemism for pandering that the kids were using back in 1986. "Checker Club is where all [the Overtown] pimps flash their style," says Bill Paxton, sounding a lot like a Zagat's Survey for gentlemen of leisure. ("Customers rave about the Checker Club's 'phat selection' of malt liquor and abundance of 'babies with back.' But others complained of 'too much sass' from impertinent 'hos' as well as the club's 'inadequate piano bar.'") But Bill Paxton has other things on his mind besides serving as Crockett's tour guide to the best pimp hang-outs of Southern Florida -- he wants to free Carla from her life of street-walking. In fact, he was just about to take her off when Crockett and his pals so rudely arrested the two of them. "How long have you been telling yourself that?" Crockett scoffs. Bill Paxton finds Crockett's lack of faith disturbing: "Look, I've been under for ten months. I've got a cover to protect. Everyone I hang with is street. I just can't yank somebody off in front of them without thinking about it." Crockett inquires as to what Bill Paxton's wife thinks about this. Oh ho -- he's got a wife in addition to a hooker lover. I guess this is Paxton's polygamist starter kit. "Leave my wife out of this," Bill Paxton says. "She's got nothing to do with this. It's a separate life." That's the sort of attitude that will serve him well when HBO comes calling 20 years from now. "If it's so separate, then how come you're getting bent out of shape?" Crockett asks, not unreasonably. "Because I know when to be a cop and when to be a player," Bill Paxton shoots back, which is probably the first time anyone anywhere has ever put "Bill Paxton" and "player" in the same sentence without first inserting a "is really not much of a" in between. "And I don't need anyone to tell me how to walk the line." No one tells Sonny Crockett that they don't need a self-righteous lecture about police work: "You're not walking the line. You're over it! You took a walk on the wild side, pal, only you forgot to come back. Let me tell you something, pal, I've been doing this a hell of a lot longer than ten months, and I still have to do a check with the guy in the mirror every morning." If you're scoring that little speech, that's two "pals," a couple of clichés, and one reference to the guy in the mirror. Not his all-time best speech, but still a solid effort from the World's Most Self-Important Undercover Cop.