Hightown Episode 4 recap: Did Jackie fall off the wagon?

Ray puts his new criminal informant on the field

Across town at Xavier’s, Ray stops by the club to visit Renee while she serves…tacos? To the patrons? I guess they do it buffet-style at this strip club. He asks her when she gets off work, and is it just me, or is Renee getting a little too invested in this role? Could she already have genuine feelings for Ray?

After his visit to Renee, Ray gets to work and goes straight to the interrogation room to chat with the junkie who overdosed in the last episode. He plies him with food, I’m guessing from Xaviers, and plays good cop with him. He gets Ethan to give him information on a guy called Sean “Kizzle” Gandam — I’m guessing he’s our Eminem-looking dude.

It doesn’t take much for Ray to coax poor Ethan into becoming his new CI, although I kind of have a feeling he might need to pick out his body bag already. Ray wants Ethan to wear a wire while meeting him in the afternoon when he finishes his work shift.

In the meantime, Ray asks Alan to investigate Auto Theft to learn more about Osito and his menagerie of ever-changing vehicles, since Ethan says he drives a different one to all of his meetings.

Alan doesn’t have much luck getting any information at the Auto Theft because apparently the owner and Ray Abruzzo have some serious bad blood between them.

Back at the precinct, Alan confronts Ray about the whole Lou Jones things. Ray is evasive about what happened between him and Lou in the past, but the entire situation clearly causes Alan to have some serious doubts about his partner.

It looks even worse because Lou is black, and Alan is black — it seems like Ray thought Lou would be more likely to open up to Alan because of their shared skin color. Ray thinks he’s a lot smarter than the people around him, and Alan is supposed to be his equal, not a pawn to move around the map.

Before Alan can ask more questions, Ethan shows up, prepared to visit with Kizzle while wearing the wire. Ethan tries to cozy up to Sean at a local bar he hangs out at, but “Kizzle” has ulterior motives. He starts asking questions about this girl from Ethan’s school named Emily Broder.

Ethan doesn’t seem to have much clue who Emily is, so he steamrolls ahead with questions concerning Osito and his girlfriend. Kizzle starts to get increasingly irritated by his questions, especially as it starts to seem like Ethan wants to get with Osito’s girl.

At first, it seems like Kizzle might be suspicious of even wearing a wire, but it quickly becomes apparent that he thinks Ethan had sex with Emily, who Kizzle is either dating or has feelings for. Either way, Kizzle throws a punch and starts savagely beating Ethan in the middle of the bar.

Alan wants to go in and pull Ethan out. Ray doesn’t want to blow his cover and locks the car doors. However, when Ethan doesn’t fight back and continues to get beaten to a pulp Ray finally relents, and they break it up. Ray arrests Kizzle for assault while Alan tends to Ethan. The poor kid just wants to be told he did a good job of not hitting the other guy back.

Ray and Alan drill into Kizzle at the precinct, and Kizzle demands an attorney. Ray loses his temper when Kizzle won’t give up any information and wants a lawyer, so he resorts to roughing him up. Suddenly this episode turns out to be pretty timely as Kizzle yells “police brutality” and Alan all but shoves Ray out of the room.

Alan has caught on to the fact that Ray is taking Sherry’s murder more personal than he should be because we know he was likely sleeping with her. Alan just wants them to work Kizzle the right and lawful way.

During this conversation, Ray gets a text from Renee and bails. Alan is definitely not wrong about Ray being a son of a b***h.

It doesn’t take long for Ray to show up at Renee’s, and the two get down and dirty fast. Once finished, they partake in a little pillow talk. Ray reveals that he was once married and has a 17-year-old son who he doesn’t talk too much anymore.

Renee tells him she’s done being a snitch, and Ray is like sure that’s fine. Except, seconds later, he gets the information he needs on Osito’s girlfriend, Kathleen, by dangling bait for Renee, which she gladly accepts. She spills a few much-needed details without even realizing she’s doing it.

Then Frankie calls up and breaks up their late-night rendezvous. Renee can’t just ignore the call since Frankie knows her schedule. He calls her only to hear his son’s breaths while he sleeps, which is kind of sweet.

Ray immediately starts searching for Kathleen online and tracks down O’Connell’s Auto Services, could that be where Osito is getting his cars?

Since Ray is an impulsive idiot, he decides to go to O’Connell’s at night and runs straight into Osito, who is totally unphased by the cop, despite knowing exactly who he is. Ray backs off nice and slow.